We would like to welcome the children back to school after the much needed half term break. We hope your child had the opportunity to rest over the holiday and is ready for the busy half term ahead. This half term we will be very busy preparing for the celebration of Christmas and will also be practising for our Nativity paly at the end of the term – details about this will be in the weekly Friday focus nearer the time. We will start our Christmas preparations with our visit to Ash End Children’s farm. This is a lovely trip that the children really enjoy and get to see lots of different animals and enjoy meeting them and Father Christmas throughout the day. Again we will let you now more details about the trip nearer the time.
This week we will be continuing our topic on celebrations. We will be focusing on the celebration of Diwali and linking this to other celebrations that we have already learned about. The children will learn all about the celebration and how people celebrate. This will give the children a good basis for comparison as we learn about different celebrations throughout the year. The children will be involved in a wide range of activities from making their own diya lamp, to dancing to music to tasting some indian foods. You should receive a link this week asking for your permission. Please ensure you respond so that your child can join in with the food tasting with all of their friends.
Before the half term break all of the children were assessed on the sounds that they have been taught so far. We have now placed the children into groups according to their results and will now work with your child to help them learn to begin to read and write. Some children are ready to move on and continue learning new sounds while others need to recap over the sounds already taught so that they become confident with these sounds and begin to use them to blend together to read simple words. Your child will come home on a Friday with a reading diary. This diary will contain the reading activities for you to do with your child over the week. Some children will have videos to watch to help them learn to blend. Others will come home with simple blending books, while some others will come home with Ditty sheets that work on simple sentences. Do not worry about where your child is working, they are learning at their ability level and where they currently are on their reading journey. Please get into the habit of doing the reading activities each night (this shouldn’t take long but shows your child that reading is important right from the start and reinforces what they are learning in school). Sign the reading diary with a little comment to say how or what they have read e.g. Johnny watched video 1 and joined in well reading the sounds”. We will check the diaries to encourage your child to read regularly at home. Please return the diaries and any reading books (not library book) on a Wednesday so we can look at diaries and get the next weeks work ready to send home on a Friday. Some children will also get an online login to Oxford owl where there are some activities set. Log ins will be added to the front of your child’s diary once they are ready for this.
This week we will be learning about circles and triangles and looking at number of sides linking to our work before half term on numbers. The children will also hear and begin to use positional language such as ‘ in’, ‘on’, ‘under ’, ‘over ’, ‘beside’, ‘between’, ‘in front of ’, ‘around’, ‘ through’ and ‘behind’ to describe how items are positioned in relation to other items. At home you could model using these words in play. Story time is a great opportunity to focus on positional language and journeys. While reading stories, use gestures to emphasise what the vocabulary means. Encourage your child to use positional language on a larger scale outside such as when they are at the park climbing under, over, in front of, behind. If in the woods you could ask them to go under, over, in front, behind etc.
Now that we are fully into Autumn and the weather is getting colder and wetter we need to ensure the children come to school dressed appropriately for the weather. As shared at our induction evening, the children spend a good portion of the day outside in all weathers. We only stay inside if there has been a weather warning. Please make sure your child comes to school every day with a warm waterproof coat with a hood. Work with your child to ensure they can put this on by themselves and take the time to help them learn how to do it up independently. As the weather gets colder we ask that children come to school with gloves and a hat(named please). We teach the children to put their gloves in their coat pockets and their hat in the sleeve of their coat. This means they can just grab their coat off their peg and have everything they need without having to try and find things in their bag in a cramped cloakroom. We also ask that you provide a named pair of wellington boots to stay in school. Many of the children were upset before half term when they had to stay under the shelter and couldn’t go out in the rain with their friends as they did not have wellington boots or an appropriate coat. Thank you for your support with this.
Have a wonderful week,
The Reception Team