Reception

We hope you are all keeping well and safe. You will have seen Mr Palmer’s video about the 75th Anniversary of VE Day, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe. There are lots of activities that you could do as families to commemorate this occasion, including:

*Have your own VE Day celebration tea party
*Make bunting
*Learn ‘We’ll Meet Again’ for Mr Palmer’s karaoke challenge
*Share family stories from WWII
*Learn the National Anthem
*Make a poppy
*Make a Spitfire etc from Lego or junk modelling
*Learn how to march like a soldier
*Make a party hat

Of course, there is lots of learning to be had from all these activities. Maths activities: If you make cakes for the tea party, you will be weighing and measuring the ingredients. You could make sandwiches with your child and cut them in half, (ask your child where they should cut the sandwich if they are cutting it in half? How many pieces will you have? Will the pieces be the same size or different? If you don’t cut it in the middle will the pieces be the same size? etc). You could move on to cutting into quarters. You could share out an even amount of food between plates (division), noticing how many pieces you had to start with then how many each person had when they were shared out. You could ask them, “Is it fair?”, and discuss how, when we share things out equally, everyone should have the same amount. The Early Years objectives are added below so you can see what we are working towards.

Children love to write for a real-life purpose so you could ask for their help with planning the party. They could write a list of party games, songs or food. They could write party invitations to family members in your household.

For phonics this week, it would be great to continue to consolidate Phase 3 phonics. BBC Bitesize has some videos that you may like to watch: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zvq9bdm  It would be really helpful if you could continue to practice letter formation, making sure that your child is starting and finishing the letter in the correct place. This does not have to be using a pen and paper; you could use a baking tray with a layer of salt, sand, sugar or glitter for them to form the letter with their finger.

If your child is feeling worried or anxious about Coronavirus, there is an online book that has been created to read with young children to help them. Have a look to see if you think your child may benefit from reading and discussing it with you: https://en.calameo.com/read/000777721945cfe5bb9cc?authid=Xu9pcOzU3TQx 

The National Trust has an excellent list of ‘50 things to do before you’re 11¾’, many of which can be done in your garden, or on a local walk: https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/features/50-things-to-do-before-youre-11–activity-list 

Keep safe! We are missing you all very much and if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Thank you

This week’s suggestions are:

We have seen some lovely posts from parents using their gardens and outdoor walks to explore wildlife. The RSPB has a special Wild Challenge that you can set up as a family to complete bronze, silver and gold activities. It has lots of lovely activities that can mostly be done from your garden: https://www.rspb.org.uk/fun-and-learning/for-families/family-wild-challenge/what-is-wild-challenge/ 

For phonics, it’s good idea to consolidate Phase 3 phonics (digraphs and trigraphs: two or three letters that make one sound, such as ch and ear). We often play Bingo games as a fun way to help children recall phonic sounds, which you could do just using pieces of paper. There’s an example here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZzIT5gHYWs&list=PL3113B7935012F886&index=5&t=0s 

If you google ‘Geraldine the Giraffe phonics’ you will find short, fun videos that will help your child to recap Phase 2 and 3 sounds, and to read words (the shorter words are best for Reception children). There’s an example here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fbmpw192MSg 

It’s always a great idea to practice handwriting; we use the Read, Write Inc letter formation phrases to help children remember. You may want to have another look at the videos on Tapestry of Miss Ward teaching the sounds and letter formation.

For maths, it’s a good idea to consolidate their recognition of numbers 11-20. You could use the same Bingo game as above, adapted to teen numbers. The Numberblocks teen number videos are an excellent resource as well. You will find some fun games to help with maths here: https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/3-5-years/counting 

We hope you are all well and safe, and we look forward to seeing your Tapestry posts this week, even if your child just wants to pop on and say hello! We are missing them very much and can’t wait until it is safe enough to see them again.

Hello lovely families! Our Easter ‘holidays’ are over and we are back to what would have been your child’s last term in Reception. We do hope that you are safe and well and that have been able to enjoy a bit of the lovely sunshine from your gardens or walks. We are missing the children very much, but we are enjoying seeing the fabulous activities you have been doing as families and the wonderful learning your children are doing when they cook, plant, draw, play, and even when they help out with household chores!

I’m going to place some links and a couple of ideas below for home learning, but remember that children are learning all the time. If they are cooking with you, for example, they are learning science and maths as they weigh, measure and mix ingredients, and observe changes. They will also be working on their speaking, listening and understanding skills. Outdoors there are so many opportunities for your children to be mini scientists; the RSPB has great activities to do with children: https://www.rspb.org.uk/fun-and-learning/for-kids/games-and-activities/activities/  As does the Wildlife Trust: https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/wild-activities-families-and-schools 

There are many useful resources online to support with maths in particular: White Rose Maths has fun daily maths plans for each year group; the Reception one this week is based on the book Supertato, which the children have all enjoyed at school. You don’t need to have read the book yourself. https://whiterosemaths.com/homelearning/early-years/ 

You can also sign your child up for free to Carol Vorderman’s Maths Factor site, which has useful games and activities via the Parent Zone: https://www.themathsfactor.com/schools/ 

At school this week, we would have been recapping numbers; in particular recognising teen numbers (especially the ‘tricky’ numbers that children find difficult to recall: 11, 12, 13, 15 and 20). Counting forwards and backwards within twenty is a useful skill as it helps children to add and subtract quickly by counting on or backwards from a given number. Songs are a great way of doing this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShqXL-zfLxY 

At home, you could hide numbers to 20 on bits of paper around the house for your child to go on a number hunt. Can they put the numbers they have found in the right order?

You could use food to find one more and one less than a given number, for example, using a snack your child is eating. They could line up twenty raisins or crisps and say one less each time they eat one.

In phonics we would have been recapping the digraphs we have taught so far. Please encourage your child to recognise and write the digraphs as well as write words/sentences that contain these. It is really important to ensure the children are forming these letters correctly too so please check this as your child writes.

Ideas for literacy are to write captain Tom Moore a birthday card. You will see the information for this on our school website. Please share your cards to tapestry too 🙂

Read a book with your grownup regularly. We have sent a list of great websites that you can read books online so please make use of these. It is just as important for you to read stories to your children so please continue to do this too.

Play a game on phonics play website. This is a fantastic resource and we can’t recommend it enough. Select “phase 3” for the appropriate level.

The Early Learning Goals for some of the areas mentioned in this post are linked below for your information.

Miss Laing and Miss Ward

We hope you are all well and staying safe at home. We are missing the children very much so please pass on that we are thinking about them all.

We have seen some absolutely fantastic learning going on this week at home 🙂 Please continue to send us this via tapestry.

Last week you were practising addition with your child. This week we would like you to learn about subtraction using one digit numbers e.g. 6-4=. Please also use the language of “take away” and explain it is when we get less.

Subtraction activities:

• Snack is a great resource for subtraction. Give your children 6 raisins, they eat 3, how many are left?
• Make up your own story that the children can act out (be as creative as you like). For example “once upon a time there was a princess who lived in a castle. She had 10 precious jewels, but one day a witch took 4 of them. How many did she have left? Objects are great as the children can physically move them and count how many are left.
• Twinkl has some great PowerPoints for take away in EYFS. There is also a website called “TopMarks” which is brilliant if you type in “simple take away.”
• using fingers is a great method for takeaway, so encourage the children to put down their fingers to recognise how many are left.

Phonics:

You have been doing a wonderful job of going through the sounds that the children have learned so far, helping them to remember them. We love all the other creative ideas you have come up with to help your children too. Our top tip for phonics at home is read, read, read! This includes reading to your children and listening to them read to you. There are lots of great online ideas to help you while you don’t have access to school books, they include:

Teach Your Monster to Read, which is currently free to download: teachyourmonstertoread.com/ 

Oxford Owl has online books and tips to help children with their reading. This is the link to Reception age: home.oxfordowl.co.uk/reading/reading-age-4-5-reception/ 

This video will help them to remember their tricky words, and to learn some new ones. But beware, you won’t be able to stop singing it in your head 🙂 youtube.com/watch?v=R087lYrRpgY 

By this stage at school, we would have been teaching Phase 4 phonics. The children have been learning words with three sounds so far e.g. ‘t-e-n’ or ‘sh-i-p’. Phase 4 teaches words with four sounds that have two consonants next to each other, for example, we might turn ‘t-e-n’ into ‘t-e-n-t’ by adding another consonant at the end.

There are some great Alphablocks episodes to help you:

bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b02zc68z/alphablocks-series-4-2-clap
youtube.com/watch?v=5TilX5Lgn0k 

You may discover some perfect opportunities for the children to write; perhaps they could help to write a shopping list, write a postcard to a friend they are missing or they could make their own comic or book by folding and stapling pieces of paper.

You’re all doing an amazing job, parents. Thank you!