Stick Man
We’ve started to get festive in Nursery this week. We all helped to put up the Christmas tree, we hope that you like it!
We made paper chains to decorate nursery, it was a bit tricky to thread them together but we did it.
In the home corner, children enjoyed decorating the Christmas tree and re-creating some experiences from home.
We’ve enjoyed listening to Stick Man by Julia Donaldson and helping to recreate it using our story props. The children loved exploring our Christmas sensory tray, finding objects that “made a noise”, some to “sprinkle”, some that were “soft” and some that were “stretchy”
Outside the children loved decorating our winter trees with baubles and tinsel.
We made Christmas trees in the dough, carefully decorating them.
We’ve also been busy learning our Christmas songs, maybe you’ve been hearing them at home? We can’t wait to sing them at our Christmas sing- a long.
Help at home
Can you find some long and short objects around the house? Which is the longest piece of tinsel on your Christmas tree? Which is the shortest?
Let us know what you find.
Next week’s learning:
We’ll continue with our Christmas themed learning and will find out about the Nativity story.
In maths, we continue to learn about length so will be using the words long, short, longer and shorter to compare different objects.
Nursery rhyme of the week – We’ll be busy learning songs for our sing – a long, so please keep singing your favourite rhymes together at home.
Here is a reminder of the Nursery rhymes we have covered this half term
Wind the Bobbin up.
Hickory Dickory Dock.
1,2,3,4,5 Once I caught a fish alive.
Twinkle twinkle Little Star.
Sound of the week – N n for net
Open your lips a bit, put your tongue behind your teeth and make a nnnnnn sound.
Reminders:
- Please send your child’s costume to Nursery by Monday 09 December. Remember to write your child’s name on all items of their costume and the bag. Thank you for your support.
- If you haven’t already returned your reply slip for the ‘Stay and Decorate’ sessions, please do so this week.
Owl Babies
This week we’ve been reading Owl Babies by Martin Waddell.
We’ve been following a story map and rehearsing actions to retell the story from the beginning to the end.
Take a look at our story actions!
In our writing, we had a go at writing a dictated caption ‘Bill is sad’ and had a try at writing our own sentences to match our action photo.
Science; Nocturnal animals
We’ve continued exploring nocturnal animals this week.
Ask your child if they can explain what a nocturnal animal is and if they can name any!
Maths; counting, ordinality and cardinality
In Maths, we’ve revisited careful counting. Making sure we say our numbers in the correct sequence (ordinality) and stopping ‘at the stopping number’ (cardinality)
In provision, we’ve been using dice with both standard and irregular dot patterns on. We’ve been subitising the number we roll and then matching it by counting out and placing the correct number of objects onto a tens frame.
Art; festive projects!
We’ve been busy making some festive masterpieces! We want to keep them a surprise but here are a few snapshots of us busily creating.
Learning journey drop-ins
Thank you to parents and carers who were able to join us for the first look at you child’s learning journey book. We’ll be inviting you back in to look at these again on specific dates in March and July but they are also available at all times in the classroom, should you wish to take a peek.
Don’t forget, each child also has their own special wall space to collect their independent learning examples throughout the current term. We call these our ‘I feel proud’ walls.
Phonics
Autumn 2 week has focused on words with s /s/ added at the end (hats, sits), words ending s /z/ (his) and with s /z/ added at the end (bags)
We’ve learnt the tricky words; we, me, be
Tricky words are words that should be read by sight.
In provision, we’ve been spotting and circling our focus tricky words.
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.
We are currently rehearsing for our Christmas performance, so will be concentrating the three poems below. There will not be recordings of these as to not spoil the big reveal on our show days!
Help at home; The Journey of a letter
Next week, we’ll be reading The Jolly Christmas Postman and learning about the journey of a letter when it has been posted.
To help with our discussions, we’d love to share some photos of your child at their local post box.
Send your photos to: scholesreception@spherefederation.org
We are also asking you to send in one stamp for your child, to support our learning next week.
More learning this week…
Diary Dates
Friday 13 December 3.15-4.15 FOSP Christmas Disco (bring named party clothes in a bag to change into at the end of the school day)
Monday 16 December 1.30pm / Tuesday 17 December 9.45am Early Years Christmas Performance
Thursday 19 December Christmas Dinner
Friday 20 December Non-uniform day. Christmas Party Day.
We have been learning about materials this half term in Science. We know lots of different materials in their properties.
‘Fabric is usually soft and smooth.’
‘Wood is usually hard and strong. It comes from trees.’
‘Glass is a man-made material but it comes from sand which is a natural material.’
This week we conducted an experiment. We collected lots of recycling materials from home and built houses out of the materials. We then dropped a wooden brick on our houses, to see which materials were strongest.
Take a look at what we’ve been up to!
Art: block printing
In art this week, children have been inspired by the work of William Morris and Orla Kiely. They have produced some prints using a styrofoam block to show a repeated pattern. We looked at adding more detail to our blocks and changing the colour.
Design and Technology – Food
This week, 1,2B have been using their food preparation skills to create their latest product – fruit smoothies.
This forms part of our Design and Technology food learning which involves following a recipe to create a product each term.
The recipe was taken from this healthy eating website. We read it so we could understand the instructions before we made our smoothies.
First, we got ready to cook by washing our hands.
We used lots of different food preparation skills including peeling, chopping, measuring and pouring.
Then, the best part, children got to enjoy their smoothies.
We always evaluate our product afterwards to see how it could be changed next time. In a link to our learning about adjectives (words that add information about a noun), there were plenty of adjectives used to describe the smoothies – yummy, flavoursome, sweet, creamy and delicious.
Help at home by encouraging your child to demonstrate some of their food preparation skills by making this again at home, or a different smoothie recipe!
Topic – Art
This half term, we are learning about art – both practically and some art history too.
We are learning about Georges Seurat, who used pointillism (dots), and Bridget Riley, who is an optical artist (uses shapes, pattern and colour to create illusions).
We have created dots using cotton buds and bubble wrap and are beginning to use them as backgrounds to add shapes, exploring which colours go well together.
Help at home by talking about your preferences for certain artists or colours and shapes.
1A’s purple smiles and moustaches
Today, Class 1A set off for The Hub to make our own smoothies. Before we could start preparing the food, we needed to wash our hands with soap and water to make sure that they were germ free. After that, we could get started on prepping the fruit. Independently, we used great peeling skills, cutting skills and practised our bridge hold when slicing the banana. We used equipment such as knives and spoons and noisy hand blenders. Our teachers helped us to press the button to make it work. We loved seeing how the colour changed as the ingredients were blended together. Someone said that “it looks like purple rain” and someone else thought it looked like “purple lava.”
Here’s what we did:
We peeled the banana, 
sliced the banana, 
spooned in some fruit, 
spooned in some yogurt, 
poured in some milk and then blended it all together before serving. 
Help at home: You could recreate the recipe below at home. Perhaps you could substitute some of the ingredients to make a different kind of smoothie which includes some of your favourite fruits.
You could also include your child in some other cooking recipes at home. For inspiration of other child friendly recipes, you could watch some episodes of Big Cook Little Cook on CBeebies.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/shows/big-cook-little-cook
Whatever Next!
This week, we listened to another one of Jill Murphy’s stories about a family of bears, titled ‘Whatever Next’. It’s about a little bear who went on an adventure to the moon in a cardboard box rocket.
This book sparked lots of conversations and interest in space. We watched some real rockets launching and used our small world area to imagine what it would be like on the moon.
Children loved making their own rockets in the creative area using different shaped boxes and bottles. It was quite tricky working out how to attach the different parts together. Some children used PVA glue, some tried a stick of glue and for some things, only Sellotape would hold the parts in place.
We loved singing ‘5 Little men in a flying saucer‘ and counting the aliens in our maths corner.
Outside we developed our throwing skills by “launching” our on foam rockets into space. We counted down for the blast off
10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 BLAST OFF!
Could they reach the planets ?
Next week’s learning:
As space has been such an inspiring theme for the children we have decided to continue this into next week.
We will then look forward to reading ‘Stickman’ by Julia Donaldson in our story times later in the week. If you don’t have a copy of the book at home, you might enjoy watching the BBC animation together.
In maths, we’re learning about length so will be using the words long, short, longer and shorter to compare different objects.
Nursery rhyme of the week – Twinkle, twinkle little star
Sound of the week – i for iguana
Pull your lips back and make the i sound at the back of your mouth i.
How to Catch a Star
Literacy
This week our focus story was ‘How to Catch a Star‘ by Oliver Jeffers. (This is a YouTube link. Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog along the play bar and turn off autoplay – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip).
In the writing area, the challenge was to think, draw and write about what we might see if we went into space. At the end of the week, we thought of our own ways to catch a star. We had lots of amazing ideas.
Maths
This week, we have built on our understanding of the composition of numbers by investigating the composition of 3, 4 and 5.
We composed and de-composed numbers by investigating the part, part, whole relations, e.g. seeing that 3 can be composed of 1 and 2.
After watching an episode of Numberblocks, we enjoyed making our own Stampoline prints to show different ways of making 5.
Poetry Picnic
Each week we learn a new poem and we recite this poem every day. By saying the poem out loud, we can focus on the sounds and rhythm of each word or line. We talk to children about how this can help us become better readers. This week’s poem is called Mice.
Art
Over the past couple of weeks, we have been inspired by Monet’s series of paintings, Houses of Parliament. We looked at the colours that we could see in the sky and thought about what time of day it might be.
The colours are reflected in the water. It’s the morning.
We created our own art work by using blocks to print shapes and make a building silhouette. Then, we explored using water colours to create the sky. We thought carefully about how different colours can change the feeling of a painting and represent the sky during different weathers or times of the day.
Help at home
- Spot some signs of winter. You may choose to take photos, draw pictures or talk about the change in season, from autumn to winter. Let us know if you spot any signs of winter – send us an email, bring in your pictures or tell us about what you found.
- Please remember to complete your child’s reading log every week to let us know how they are getting on with their reading book at home. Thank you.
Dates
Learning Journey drop-in sessions
Every child in Reception has a Learning Journey book that celebrates their learning – this might be with photos, our observations and your updates from home. Come in and share with your child their Learning Journey so far. There are four sessions planned next week – we look forward to seeing you at one of them.
Tuesday 03 December and Thursday 05 December
Times – 8.45 am-9.15am and 3.15pm-3.45pm
PE – gymnastics
We have been thoroughly enjoying gymnastics this term. We have worked on different routines as part of a group that incorporate a range of gymnastic skills. The children began by moving in different ways and then they challenged themselves to add in a balance and a piece of equipment such as a hoop. This week, we’ve been thinking about different jumps. We discussed the importance of landing safely to avoid injury. We practiced different jumps in groups and then attempted to perform jumps in time with each other or in a ‘Mexican wave’ style.
