Hello again after a couple of ‘blog-less’ weeks! The butterflies have flown, we have had a holiday and the fete is over and here we are back for the last few weeks of your child’s reception year. Where has this year gone?
The children learnt about the moon last week, This week they made rockets and learnt all about the life of an astronaut and learnt about the planets. There were some good websites for looking at life in space.
We looked at some non-fiction books to learn some facts and read some stories. Our favourite fiction book this week was ‘Dogs in Space’.
Our writing included their own story from watching a silent picture show entitled ‘The way back home’ and answering questions about astronauts. Once again a few great Wow Words were used in their writing. Most children are still working to make each new idea a new sentence and to apply their phonics to spell words. Spelling unknown words will continue to improve if the children listen to the full range of sounds within the words and learn the diagraphs and apply them to spelling.
Harvesting our potatoes was great this year and gave us the chance to revisit minibeasts and discuss how and where creatures make their homes. The potato bags were a home to many minibeasts which scattered in all directions as the bags were cut open causing lots of shrieking and squealing!. Slugs, snails, ear-wigs, woodlice, spiders, a beetles and ants were in the soil and on the leaves. When we had washed and weighed the potatoes the Rudolph variety were the winners weighing in at 1955 grams with Rocket variety weighing in at 1250 grams. The biggest and the heaviest potato was also a Rudolph weighing 250grams compared to 175 grams which was the biggest Rocket. The potatoes were boiled and eaten as an afternoon snack.
Our maths this week was a lot of revisiting of areas covered earlier in the year. Money was challenging as the children were encouraged to arrange their coins in order from highest to lowest value and count on from the higher value coins to find a total. The use and understanding of prepositions was good but mixed addition and taking away was also a challenge.
Well done with writing the capital letters. The letter shapes were good but letter orientation for some was an issue at this stage. I can see some poor letter formation and incorrect pencil grips creeping in. There were quite a lot of incorrect placement of letters on the lines. Please watch your child when they do their homework writing so that bad habits are not being allowed to develop.
Next week the children will be asked to write the letters when I say the letter name. It is a requirement of the 40-60 month developmental phase that children know the 26 letter names. It might be that some children will struggle with this on Friday but it can be an area to work on over the summer holiday.
Next week we move on to alien stories and trying to use imagination and description. The children do not need to bring in anything unless you have some exciting alien stories.
Please can all library books be returned next Friday as the library needs sorting ready for packing up. If any books have been lost, let us know and you can replace it with another book from home.
In PE on Tuesday we introduced the children to skipping with a rope, both by themselves with a rope each and with two enders. Getting the rhythm of jumping for skipping is something that you could practise at home as we will be doing this again next week.
Have an enjoyable weekend and make the most of any sunshine!