Happy New Year! Welcome back to school for the New Spring term. We hope you had a lovely Christmas break and the children are all rested and ready for the term ahead. The staff would like to save a huge thank you for all of the very kind gifts, cards and well wishes that we received before the break, they are very much appreciated.
Last week we started on our topic of winter. The children went on a winter walk and explored signs of winter. This week we will continue with our work on winter with a focus on the changing season and how winter is different to the other three seasons. The children will be identifying differences with a focus on dressing for the weather. Please ensure your child comes into school dressed for the cold weather. They need to wear a warm waterproof coat (raincoats are not warm enough), a hat and a pair of gloves. Your child should be able to put all of these on by themselves. We encourage the children to then put their gloves in their coat pocket and their hat in their coat sleeve so that everything is kept together when they need it and decreases the risk of them loosing things. The children were lucky enough last week to get out and explore the frosty ground. Talk about the weather with your child especially in the morning when the frost and ice is evident and the temperature is significantly colder to help support the discussions we are having in school.
The children have now spent a few days in their new phonics groups. They are all working very hard and making great progress with their reading. If your child comes home with log in details on the front of their diary then please make sure you log in each week to get your child to read the book set on line and do the quiz linked to their reading. You can reread the online book by clicking on Fred the Frog. Your child will also bring home a book bag book that is linked to the book read in class that week. Encourage your child to read this several times until they can read it fluently. Remember to sign the diary every time you hear your child read. If your child is still not ready for a book yet then please go through the activities outlined in your child’s reading diary and continue to practice their letter sounds. Thank you for all the support in helping your child on their reading journey.
This week, the children will use their perceptual subitising skills (seeing the quantity without counting) in increasingly complex arrangements, moving from dots in a line and arrangements of 2, to a focus on standard dice arrangements. For larger quantities, the children will begin to use skills of conceptual subitising, beginning to quickly see the sub-groups within these larger numbers. A key focus will be on developing skills of visualising; the children will be encouraged to look carefully at arrangements of dots and then to close their eyes and explain what they saw. Using spatial language to describe sub-groups within these arrangements will deepen the children’s understanding of part–whole relations and allow them to further consider composition (the numbers within numbers).
They will also be encouraged to continue representing quantities in different ways, including by showing amounts on 1 hand ‘all at once’. There will also be a new focus on the symbolic representation of number and the children will work on their recognition of numerals to 5, matching numerals to correct quantities in various games.
Towards the end of the week, the children will use a number track (with numbers placed in equal spaces in ascending order) to play dice-based games. Playing games with dice will consolidate the children’s understanding of the stable order of numbers and allow them to link the numbers on a track to the quantities on a die.
If you have any photos of your child enjoying the winter weather then please send them into us on [email protected] or [email protected]
Have a wonderful week
The Reception team