Yet another wonderful week in Reception!

This week, we focussed on the seasons. We enjoyed reading our key text ‘Seasons come seasons go tree’ continuing our topic of whatever the weather. Can your child remember the name of the 4 seasons?

In Phonics we introduced the sounds x, y, ff, ss, and zz. The children have grasped the concept of digraphs so quickly. If you ask, they should be able to tell you ‘A digraph is when 2 letters work together to make 1 sound!’. Of course, deciding if they should use the /s/ or /ss/ within their writing is tricky so you will probably start hearing ‘Is it the digraph ss/ll/zz/ff?’ very regularly! You can support your child with this by reminding them that often if they hear the sound at the end of the word it will be the digraph e.g. bell, smell, fill, fuzz but that they might find exceptions to this rule.

In Maths, we looked at staircase patterns to order numbers and show that each is one more than the next. We created towers to represent each number and noticed how quickly we can order them once we know that each number will be ‘just one more’. Some children focussed on numbers up to 10 but lots of children challenged themselves and looked at numbers beyond 10 and up to 100 during their playful learning.

Can your child use blocks to build a staircase pattern at home? Maybe they can add labels to add the numeral to each tower. We’d love to see photographs!

Next week, we will be reading non-fiction books about weather. We are going to look at extreme weather and find out about weather experienced around the world. The children will be introduced to lots of new vocabulary to name and describe these extreme weather patterns. Hopefully, the children will be so inspired that they will want to write their own non-fiction books!

We have lots of children who are looking forward to celebrating Lunar New Year so this will feature heavily in our learning next week. If you are celebrating at home then we would love to see photographs on Tapestry for the children to share with their friends.

In Phonics, we will continue to work on using x, y, ff, ss and zz. We will really focus on our sentence writing and work on our independence when writing.

In Maths, the children will be making their own counting wands! We are sure that the children will be excited to bring home their counting wands and show off their number skills.

Other information:

We are so pleased with how independent the children are becoming when using the toilet, however, we do have a few children still shouting ‘I’m finished!’ rather than attempting to wipe themselves. Of course, we are always there to help but if you could encourage your children to try to clean themselves then we’d really appreciate it.

Have a wonderful weekend,

The Reception Team