Learning is fun!!!

In Reception, a lot of our learning is done through play. Here are a few of the things we do in school to help support our learning. 

Phonics

Every week we have phonics 4 times a week, so we will learn a new sound or tricky work on a Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.

Term 5, week 1

This week we are recapping the sounds we have already learnt; s, a, t, p, i, n, m, d, g, o, c, k, ck, r, u, b, h, f, ff, l, ll, ss, j, v, w, y, x, z, zz, ch, sh, th, ng, ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ear, air, ure, er and tricky words I, the, to, no, go, into, she, he, we, me, be, was, my, you, they, all, are, her, like, said, have, one, do, so, little, come, there, were, what, when, out.

We are learning to read and write cvcc (consonant, vowel, consonant, consonant) words. 

We will continue to play listening games such as:

• Playing fun rhyming games or listening to and singing rhymes! Rhyming stories are great too!!
• Exploring sounds we can make too!  A fun song we use is 'Mrs Mackenzie/Mrs Soper has a class, ee, igh, ee, igh, oh, and in that class she had a...' Each child has a turn to make a sound and everyone has to join in.
• Play 'I Spy' using initial sounds in words
• Oral segmenting and blending using 'robot talk' - "point to your 'f_ee_t'" or "Can you pass me the 's_p_oo_n'?"
• Beginning to write CVC words by sounding out and writing a letter for each sound. For example, cat, sock, ship, dog. Write lists (for example a shopping list), labels (for example for a model they have built or a picture they have drawn), plans for their construction/model, speech bubbles.

Handwriting

Alongside phonics, we will be learning to form the letters correctly. We use special line guides in school to support this. Please see attached documents to help with supporting this at home.

Term 5, week 1

We will be practicing writing h, m and k correctly on the lines.

Maths/Number

Term 5:

We are continuing to look at the composition of numbers within 10, for example how many different ways can you make 6? We will be doing some addition and subtraction within 10 too.

We will continue to look at number bonds to 10. We are learning a rhyme to help us remember (please see below) and will be doing lots of practice using Numicon, tens frames and objects to help us.

We have learnt a rhyme (with actions) to help us with our number bonds to 10:

10 and 0 - superhero

9 and 1 - Let's have some fun

8 and 2 - Chicken poo

7 and 3 - pat your knee

6 and 4 - shut the door

5 and 5 - Let's do a jive

4 and 6 - pick up sticks

3 and 7 - I'm from Devon

2 and 8 - shut the gate

1 and 9 - I'm feeling fine

0 and 10 - a big fat hen

Please see links below for some online lessons.

We are continuing to practice: 

• Numbers 1-10: We need to be able to count from 1-10 and back again. We do this regularly throughout the day. We need to be able to recognise each number too.
• Being able to say 1 more or 1 less for any number up to 10
• Recognising odds and evens
• Count beyond 10 aloud
• Counting objects/sounds/people accurately! A good way to do this is to touch the objects we are counting or to use fives or tens frames to help us. Please see the examples of these below. Another great way to do this is using an adult to count incorrectly so that the child can spot the mistake.
• Recognise that objects, fingers and dots can represent number (this is called subitising). A good way for us to learn this skill is through dice games......snakes and ladders, monopoly and lots of orchard toys games all have dice. 
• Using the correct language for weight, capacity and length. For example, short, shorter, shortest, long, longer, longest.
• Two and three step repeating patterns. For example red, green, red, green or triangle, square, circle, triangle, square, circle.

Number songs are fantastic too! A few of are favourites are:

• Alice the Camel
• 5 Little Men in a Flying Saucer
• 10 in the bed
• 5 Little monkeys swinging through the trees
• 1,2,3,4,5, Once I caught a fish alive
• 5 currant buns
• 5 little ducks

Please encourage the children to show the correct number of fingers during the song and ask them to tell you what number comes next in the song....1 less than 5 is?

Topic

Term 5, week 1:

We will spend some time chatting this week, encouraging communication about their holidays and helping to develop vocabulary and listening skills.

We will then be looking at farm animals and their babies ready for our farm visit this week!! Super exciting!!

Yoga/mindfulness

We spend a few days a week doing either mindfulness or yoga. This helps us with calming techniques and also helps us to develop our gross motor skills. We find it encourages children to persevere as some moves can be more tricky, however the children continue to try and have a go and they become super proud of their progress. 

We always start sessions sat on our bottoms, crossed legs, hands at our hearts and welcome each other by saying, 'Namaste'.

Please see below, an example of a mindfulness session and a poster of the yoga moves we are working on at the moment.