This week we will be completing our topic on ‘Winter’. We will be looking at the story ‘The Snow Queen’ and will be using this to help us plan and write our own story set in the Winter. We will also be concluding the topic with a winter themed ‘Frozen’ day on Friday 23rd January. A separate letter has been sent out explaining this so please make sure you check your emails. We will have a frozen themed day with different activities and the children can come in dressed in Frozen colours.
The children have now settled in to their new phonics groups and are working hard to plug any gaps in their sound knowledge and are learning new sounds. When working with your child at home continue to go through the sound cards and if you notice they are stuck on a particular sound then please spend some time going over this. Continue to read the ditty sheets or book in your child’s bag and don’t forget to go on line to do the work on Oxford Owl that has been set by your child’s Phonics teacher. All groups except Mrs Alford’s should now have online work set. Mrs Alford’s group will have QR codes in their diary for videos that they need to watch to help with their blending.
This week, the children will continue to engage with activities that draw attention to the purpose of counting – to find out ‘how many’ objects there are. Adults will continue to name the objects being counted to emphasise the numerosity of the set, e.g. Would you please collect 6 crayons and bring them to me? The children will also revisit the concept of cardinality – that the last number in the count tells us how many things there are ALTOGETHER. They will continue to be provided with opportunities to hear, join in with and develop their knowledge of the counting sequence. A key focus this week will be the stable order principle – rehearsing the order of the first 5 numbers and understanding that the position each number holds in our number sequence does not change. While continuing to work with numbers to 5, the children will develop their understanding of the ordinal aspect by investigating the difference in value of consecutive whole numbers. They will spend time discovering that each number has a value of 1 more than the previous number. Using blocks and squares to order quantities from 1 to 5 will help to embed this key understanding.
Reception have their PE session on Monday’s. Your child should come in to school on this day in a red Coundon Primary T-shirt and hoodie and black bottoms suitable for PE lessons. They should also wear suitable footwear such as trainers. We ask that children are able to do their trainers up and would recommend if possible that Velcro shoes be worn. The laces on some of the children’s shoes are often coming undone and staff are spending a lot of time doing up shoelaces multiple times throughout the day.
Thank you for bringing your child into school when we had the snowy weather it was lovely to see them enjoy playing in the snow. We noticed that there were a number of children that still do not have a pair of wellington boots in school. This meant that they could not join their friends having fun in the snow outside as their shoes and socks would have become wet and cold. Please provide a pair of cheap wellies for your child to be left in school so that they can change into them when the weather warrants it.
Have a wonderful week
The Reception Team