We’ve been reading The Everywhere Bear by Julia Donaldson.
Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog (it’s along the play bar) and turn off auto play – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip.
The story follows a class bear that goes on quite the journey. Journey is our word of the week!
We’ve been re-telling parts of the story using this story map…
and we used the story introduce our own travelling teddies- Ziggy and Buddy.
We looked at an aerial view of our school, to find the different places our class teddies had visited.
Ziggy and Buddy will be coming home with a child each weekend, along with paper to record their adventures!
Maths; counting principles
In Maths, we’ve been using toys to demonstrate accurate counting. We’ve been reminding our toys to…
- “stop at the stopping number” and recall the the total amount- cardinality
- only count each item once- one-to-one correspondence
- know that objects can be counted in any order- order irrelevance
We’ve also been looking at ways to make counting easier, such as moving objects or lining them up. We’ve been counting things that cannot be seen (such as sounds or actions) and things that cannot be moved. We introduced the idea of using a ‘tagging wand’ to support careful counting.
Music: Charanga
In our Wednesday afternoon music lessons, we follow a scheme called Charanga.
The children are introduced to a wide variety of music, including traditional nursery rhymes. This week they enjoyed Happy by Pharrell Williams.
During lessons the children move in time to the music, identify what they can hear (voices/instruments), discuss tempo and pitch and make comments about how the music makes them feel. The lesson was finished with some familiar nursery rhymes; Pat-a-cake and Row Your Boat.
We love our music lessons!
Phonics
This week, the children have learnt the phonemes (the sound a letter makes) g, o, c and k. They have also been practicing writing the graphemes (the written letter).
We have started reading words, by putting sounds onto our phoneme fingers.
Can your child show you how we use our phoneme fingers in class? You could write out the following words for them to try: sat, map, tin.
We’ve also learnt a new tricky word; is. Tricky words are those we have to ‘look and say’ because they have ‘tricky’ parts that we cannot sound out.
Please continue to use the ‘Learn at home’ sheets with your child, to review our new sounds and tricky words each week.
eBooks
Reading records have been sent home today, so please check in your child’s book bag. On the back of the record book, you’ll find login details to access your child’s eBook on the Collins Hub website. Your child has already shared the wordless story in their reading sessions this week. We hope that you enjoy reading and talking about the book together and we look forward to beginning their reading journey with you.
Please let us know if you have any problems accessing your books online.
Poetry Picnic
Each week we will be learning a new poem. We will recite this poem each day. By saying the poem out loud, we can focus on the sounds and rhythm of each word or line. We talk to the children about how this can help us become better readers. This week’s poem is called Breezy Weather
Click here to watch Sunshine Class recite this week’s poem
Did you know…
Your child has their own special place, to display their learning
Next time you’re in class, check out our ‘proud walls’. The children can display learning and creations that they are super proud of, which will later be added to their learning journey books.
And you as parents and carers have a special place too! This week (and whenever you can thereafter) we’d love you too add to our ‘parent partnership’ boards. Tell us what your child is interested in at home and we’ll aim to create learning opportunities that follow their interests in the classroom.
Some pictures of our learning this week…
Reminders
- PE days are Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Please send your child to school in their PE kit on these days (school photo days are an exception)
- Library day is Thursday. Please send your ‘love of reading’ library book on Thursdays each week.
- Reading records should be returned to school each Friday.
- We are still finding a small number of un-named and unclaimed items, especially jumpers and cardigans. Please ensure all of your child’s items are named, so that we can reunite them with any that are lost.
- Please note that Reception are not included in ‘Watch us while we work’ (13 October 2:30pm–3:00pm) We will have separate stay and learn sessions throughout the school year.
Diary Dates
Phonics Phase 2 and coffee morning: 06.10.25 9.00am-10.00am
Individual school photos day: 07.10.25 (please send your child to school in school uniform, not PE kit on this day)
FOSP Disco: 17.10.25 3.15pm-4.15pm Please collect from the classroom doors.