Good morning, well yesterday was a very exciting day being the 1st of December so it was definitely good to get out for some outdoor learning on Thursday and run around. The children don’t appear to feel the cold but as it’s getting cooler please ensure that your children are wearing warm clothes that will keep them dry and are easily washed, thanks. Both classes worked very well, and enjoyed throwing and catching the ball and hoops or generally playing in the Ozone. We are hoping on the next dry Thursday to build homes for hedgehogs, dens for foxes and straw nest for mice so fingers crossed! Yesterday unfortunately wasn’t nice enough to do this or use the sand are but still lots of fun in the Ozone – climbing and exploring.
In literacy we are continuing to revise and learn our initial sounds and this week we have been learning all about the letter oO for the sound orange, octopus and otter. Hopefully the children will have lasting memories of juicing oranges for the sound o. We have been concentrating hard this week on 3 letter words with o in the middle which in turn is developing the reading skill of decoding. I hope you are now beginning to see in your child’s reading that they are becoming more confident at deciphering 3 letter words due to their phoneme knowledge and can now make 3 letter words well helping our writing skills. Our classroom office and the Octonauts stations again are reinforcing this week’s phoneme o. The children have enjoyed being word detectives skimming and scanning some super books for this week’s common words using finger torches. They were also noting down words beginning with o.
Please could you support your child with their reading. The children are continually learning skills in blending letters together to read words they are not familiar with by using their knowledge of the initial sounds. Thanks this is really helpful.
In maths this week we have begun looking at data handling. The children actively made a bar graph of their favourite colour and we compared the most popular with the least etc. We have explored the use of tally marks and bundling bigger items/ numbers into groups of 5.
We have not left 3D shape behind as we will be looking at them in data handling plus we will next week have the elves workshop for Christmas. Where we will be wrapping parcels of all manner of 3D shape. Please continue to discuss 3D shape names if you get any deliveries this week in boxes or look at the containers and food in your kitchen cupboards to see if you can spot any cubes or cuboids, cylinders, spheres, pyramids or if anyone is lucky enough to have a Toblerone bar then triangular prisms. Enjoy playing spot the shape.
For health and wellbeing, we are continuing to explore social wellbeing through Elmer stories. This week we shared the story The Gruffalo’s child to explore a number of themes. We examined why it was dangerous for the Gruffalo’s Child to go out at night on her own in the dark wood. The children were very clear on why this was dangerous and helped reinforce a little about Stranger Danger too. The children will be involved in lots of teamwork games and activities around this story and we will engage in cross curricular learning linked to STEM, forces and friction, winter, as well as the development of good listening skills for learning and being responsible citizens and overall demonstrating kindness towards others using this story.
Thanks again for supporting your children with their homework tasks and all that you do at home to help them learn.
Wishing you a lovely relaxing week ahead.
Mrs Carey
