Obstacle courses
One of the Prime Areas of the Early Years Foundation Stage is Physical development. Throughout the year, children have been developing their movement and balancing skills in a variety of ways. This week, we enjoyed taking part in an obstacle course. They balanced along the beams and walked across the wobble boards, trying carefully not to fall off.
At the end of the course, children showed us that they could balance on one leg without wobbling!
Next week’s learning
Following on from our learning about the seaside, we’re going to listen to ‘Pirates love underpants!’ next week. (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.)
We’re sure you can imagine the role play that this will inspire… Look out for treasure maps in children’s folders soon!
Nursery rhyme of the week – Jack and Jill
Phonics – Children in Red, Blue and Green group will be playing games to practise some key phonics skills including:
- identifying initial sounds in words (playing I-Spy type games)
- segmenting and blending words orally (e.g. h-a-t and b-u-s)
- spotting rhyming words
Clean Up!
Clean Up
This week, our story took us on a journey, all the way to Jamaica!
We discussed key words from the story: sanctuary and island.
The story even inspired a group of children to build their own animal sanctuary- Well done Harry, Liezah, Jake, Norah and Gracie!
The book had some great messages about looking after our environment. Linked to this, our word of the week was pollution.
In our writing, we’ve written about what happens when you leave rubbish on a beach and how it hurts the animals in our seas and oceans.
Maths
This week’s focus has been on deepening our understanding of how to compare quantities. We have explored this skill in a range of ways: comparing groups of objects, comparing by looking and then by counting, creating groups with equal amounts and using our sense of magnitude, e.g., knowing 8 is a lot more than 2 but 4 is only a little bit more than 2.
We’ve also explored sharing using objects and seeing which quantities can be shared fairly between 2, 3 or 4.
In provision, we’ve been playing ‘Roll and Build’- using our subitising skills to calculate total amounts on two dice, building the amount and matching it to the correct numeral.
Artist focus; Alexander Calder
We’ve been looking at Alexander Calder‘s mobiles in art this week. We started the week with a gallery experience, looking at images of the mobiles around the school hall and drawing them.
We then drew around shapes, or created our own shapes, and cut them out of paper.
Next week, we will be collaborating to make our own mobile art using our paper shapes!
Phonics
Summer 2 week 3 has focused on words ending in the suffix -ed but sounding like ‘t’,’ id’ or ‘d’ such as helped, floated and stormed.
Please continue to use the Little Wandle sheets, sent home with your child each week.
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 Five Little Peas.
Click below to watch Reception recite this week’s poem!
Reminders, Messages and Dates
Baby photos – Please send in or email (scholesreception@spherefederation.org) a baby picture of your child to support their learning. We will be discussing how they have grown and changed.
Transition Morning- Wednesday 3 July Drop off and collect your child from their usual Reception classroom on this day. We will send a slip home with your child on this day, confirming which class they will be in from September.
Learning journey drop-ins- Week commencing 8 July
An opportunity to “drop into” school and share your child’s learning journal with them. We would like to welcome you into the classroom on one of the following sessions:
Tuesday 9 July 8.45– 9.15 or 3.15-3.45
Thursday 11 July 8.45-9.15
Quarters
In Year One this week, the Maths focus was all about fractions. We already knew about halves so, this week we learnt about quarters. We know that a quarter is one piece of four pieces and that the four pieces have to be the same. They must be equal to one another in order to be quarters. Quarters in shapes helped us to think about the concept visually and we worked practically in pairs to begin to quarter numbers too.
Help at home: You could challenge your child to cut their food into quarters. Pizza or sandwiches would be a great start. How many pieces will there need to be to be quarters? Are they all equal? If they’re not equal, is it a quarter? Can you find a different way to quarter someone else’s pizza or sandwich?
Class News – PE and Design and Technology
This week, we used a template to cut the correct sized material for our pouch. We used the scissors carefully. Then, we started to sew our pouches. They’re looking great! We showed lots of resilience when threading the needle and stitching. Help at home by practising the running stitch or over stitch.
In PE, we enjoyed practising for KS2 Sports Day.
PE – tennis
All year 1 and 2 classes have been developing their tennis skills this half term. We have rolled, bounced and hit the balls as well as balancing them and striking them in different ways.
1,2B enjoyed the space on the field today for our tennis lesson.
Spectacular sport roundabout
The sun shone this year and we enjoyed a rather warm sport roundabout yesterday.
Spain were the winners with Ukraine in second place and England third.
We hope you all enjoyed it and thank you to all the families and friends who came to support us.
Design and Technology – food
5,6B channeled their inner chef last week as we attempted our newest recipe in design and technology. Our challenge this term was to make a pasta sauce. The children had to weigh out the ingredients such as tomatoes, carrots and courgettes. They then cooked the ingredients in a pan and blended it after it had simmered. The children stayed safe bu using certain hand grips when using the sharp knives. The children said the sauce tasted delicious. We hope you managed to have a little taste!
IA Sewing
This half term we are working on our Design and Technology skills. We have learnt all about the design process and we know how you need to design, make and then evaluate products. In preparation to create our very own hand puppet, we have looked at and evaluated different types of stitching. Using a needle and wool, we have been practising the running stitch and the over stitch. We used stiff plastic boards to begin with and then we practised with binca and wool. We know that because we are using needles, we need yo be very careful not to hurt ourselves or anyone else who may be near to us. Class 1A had a look at some hand puppets for ideas and then we started designing our own. We’re very excited to begin the making process this week!
Help at home: You could look at different items of clothing and find the stitching on them. Can you find the name of the stitch used?
Sun, sun, sun!
As the weather is set to be warm this week, here are a few reminders from our previous communications.
Sun safe reminders
- Bring a named sunhat every day.
- Ensure your child has a water bottle (named).
- Parents and carers must apply cream before nursery.
- Please put your child’s name on their sun cream.
- Put sun cream in your child’s group basket if you want it applying at lunchtime. Please don’t leave it in their bag.
- Collect your child’s sun cream at the end of the day.
- Help us out by using ‘All day’ cream and applying at home.
Year 1-What a fun week!
ALL of Year 1 have spent the mornings together and it has been wonderful! Our Year 2 friends have spent the mornings busily and calmly completing their SATs papers so we have been learning together. We set up a carousel of learning opportunities and rotated the groups throughout the mornings for the whole week. Our learning has ranged from measuring capacity/height/weight, sewing, 3d shapes, fact families, book writing, handwriting, numbots and more! It has been a joy to learn together.
