Autumn 1

Settling in weeks 1, 2 and 3

We’ve had a fantastic few weeks with our lovely new children who have all settled into school so confidently. They have demonstrated resilience and perseverance with their new surroundings and tasks for their first weeks of school. They have coped amazingly well with lots of new routines and many new faces to learn names for.

We have spent time focusing on our school environment ensuring that they know where to find everything. We have played lots of circle games to help the children to learn each other’s names. Their favourite game was Hickety Pickety Bumble Bee can you say your name for me?  Lots of new friendships have been made and it has been wonderful to watch the children interact with each other taking turns and sharing.

We have read lots of stories about starting school and making friends. The children could relate to many of the characters in the books and were very keen to talk about how they were feeling.

Music is a very important part of our reception day. We have been singing lots of counting rhymes such as 1,2,3,4,5 and 5 little ducks. We have taught the children a lovely Hello Hello song which we sing at the beginning of every day. We then sing the same tune but with different words, in our Goodbye Goodbye song at the end of each day. Perhaps you could ask your child to sing it to you!

Each child has their own name card which they are using to help recognise their names and to write it. Our name challenges have been really exciting for the children to see how many different ways they could find to write their name. They have used sand, paint, magnetic letters to name a few.

During this last week we have started our Read Write Inc phonics programme. The children have been taught the first four sounds in the programme. These are; m  a  s  d. We don’t use letter names at this stage and when saying the sound we are very careful to say the sound without adding on extra sounds - m not muh. We will be sending home a copy of the rhymes and letter formation for you to practise with your child at home.

Our outside environment has been a very popular choice with our children.   They have had great fun riding the bikes, playing in the sandpit, using the water tray to pour, fill and empty using different containers and bottles. The mud kitchen has seen a hive of activity where children have been mixing and making all sorts of different things. The climbing frame has been very well used and the children have developed their confidence in using it. Lots of creative things have been made with the wooden bricks and blocks. Every day we have been amazed at the variations that are created. Such imaginative young learners!

The children have been listening very well to instructions and have responded well to all staff. Such a wonderful and positive start to their school life.

We hope your children have enjoyed talking to you about their first few weeks. They are probably extremely tired after having so much fun and learning lots of new routines.  We look forward to seeing them all again on Monday.

Have a lovely weekend.

Week 4

We introduced our first big question of the year this week. ‘How have I changed?’ The children listened to the story, ‘Once there were giants’. They discussed how the main character grew from a baby to an adult and then had her own baby! The children role played growing up, they started as babies crying and drinking milk and then crawled, toddled, walked, ran and then got old and needed a walking stick! The children did their first piece of focused writing. They reflected on their past and wrote about what they did as a baby and compared that to what they do now.

We have now met the first 8 letters in our RWI sessions. The children are enjoying learning the letter sounds and practising forming the letters correctly. Keep a look out on our Marvellous Me app as we will be sending the links home to the RWI videos for you to share at home.

In Maths, we have been looking at matching, sorting and comparing. The children enjoyed listening to the story of ’The Button Box’. Throughout the week they have been using many different items to match, sort and compare. Their challenge has been to explain why some things match and why some do not.

We are now officially in autumn. The children went on a walk to look for signs of autumn and collected natural items to observe through the magnifying glasses. We will continue to observe the changes in the trees and outdoor environment as the season moves on.