The Great Big Book Of Families
This week we’ve been reading The Great Big Book of Families. (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.) Through the book, we have explored and celebrated the variety of families. In the writing area, we drew our families and we used loose parts to make the faces of people in our families.
Help at home: Photos
Thank you for sending your family photos. There’s still time to email one if you haven’t had the chance yet. Over the next few weeks, we will also be thinking about our homes. To help support our discussions, please send in one picture of your front door. You can email photos to scholesreception@spherefederation.org
Phonics
This week, we have learnt the phonemes (the sounds a letter makes) i, n, m and d.
The children have learnt how to identify the sounds by their graphemes and how to form the graphemes in their writing. They have practised identifying initial sounds and blending sounds together to say the whole word.
We have introduced new vocabulary linked to our phonics learning:
Phoneme– The sound a letter (grapheme) makes
Grapheme– The letter that represents the sound
Segmenting- Breaking up a word into its phonemes and sounding aloud (ie. cat becomes c-a-t)
Blending- Blending the phonemes together to read the word. (ie. d-o-g becomes dog)
Each week we will be sending a ‘learn at home’ sheet, which recaps the phonics learning from the week. Please look at this with your child and complete the activities.
Help at Home: Be Sound Detectives – Find objects around your house or outside that have an initial sound that we have learnt: s a t p i n m d
School Library
Over the last couple of weeks we have introduced the children to the school library. They have impressed us with how well they followed the school rule ‘We are respectful.’ They were quiet in the space and they were very careful with the books. This week, your child chose the book they wanted to bring home to share with you. Please remember that this is a book to foster a love of reading. It is a book for you to share at home and not for your child to read aloud to you.
eBooks
Next week, you will be issued your first eBook to share with your child. The first book will be a wordless book. As with the library books, these books can foster a love of reading, even without words. Discussing story events, characters and settings all help your child to understand comprehension in reading.
Please read with your child each week. As teachers, we have access to reading reports. We will be giving out certificates in class to celebrate your child’s reading at home.
Your login details and reading record will be sent home soon. Please let us know if you do not have access to a device to read at home, as we have iPads for loan at the school office.
Poetry Picnic
Each week, we will learn a new poem and will 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 the children about how this can help us become better readers. This week’s poem is called Chop Chop.
Chop Chop
Chop, Chop, Choppity Chop.
Cut off the bottom and cut off the top.
What there is left, we put in the pot.
Chop, Chop, Choppity Chop
Here’s a video of Rainbow Class performing the poem. Look out for a video of Sunshine Class next week.
Frida Khalo Gallery
Each half term, we will introduce the children to a new artist. This week we introduced Frida Khalo. We watched a short informative video to find out about her. After that, we set off to visit a ‘gallery’ that we had set up for the children. At the ‘gallery’ we viewed photos of some of Frida Kahlo’s work. We noticed how many of her paintings had bright colours in them and that animals featured in many of them too. Frida’s self portraits will inspire us to paint our own self-portraits over the next couple of weeks.
Welcome to Reception meeting
It was great to see so many of you at the ‘Welcome to Reception‘ meeting this week. For those of you who were unable to attend, please find attached the PowerPoint shared at the meeting.
Getting to know each other!
Settling in
It’s been wonderful to see so many happy faces this week as children came into their new classrooms. Most have now completed their transition sessions and we’re really enjoying getting to know them and seeing new friendships forming.
There are lots of routines to learn and things to remember at this stage, but we’ve been amazed at how quickly children are settling in. We’ve had a few missing lunch boxes, water bottles and cardigans – thank you for your patience at the end of the day as we help children to become more independent at home time. Labelling all of your child’s items with their name really helps with this.
We’ve had lots of fun exploring our new environment and learning this week. Take a look at what we’ve been up to:
Phonics
We started our phonics lessons this week. Children have learnt the sounds s, a, t and p. They practised listening carefully to the initial sound in a word and sorted objects into those beginning with ‘s’ and those that didn’t.
In phonics lessons, we teach children to use the pure sounds. For example, we say ‘ssss’ rather than ‘suh’. If you’d like to hear the sounds pronounced, you can watch a short video clip which shows all the letters we’ll cover this half term.
You’ll find out more about how we teach phonics at our Stay and Learn Phase 2 Phonics session on 06.10.25.
Help at home: Each week, you’ll receive a recap sheet of the phonics learning. Please look at this with your child and complete the short activities together.
PE
Children loved their first PE lesson this week! Lessons are fun and active, with a focus on developing fundamental movement skills.
- Reception PE will take place every Tuesday and Wednesday.
- On PE days, children should come to school wearing their PE kit. Further details can be found by following this link to our uniform policy.
- We won’t be starting swimming lessons just yet – we’ll send out more details closer to the time.
The Great Big Book of Families
Next week, we will be reading this story to help us learn more about each other’s families. (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’ll then talk about our own families and about people who are special to us.
Help at home: To help support our discussions, please send in a family photo that can stay on display in the classroom or email us a copy.
Everyday Items
Please make sure your child brings the following to school each day:
- Book bag
- Water bottle
- Waterproof coat (we spend lots of time outdoors, rain or shine)
We also ask that each child has these items, which can stay in school:
- A pair of wellies (kept under their peg)
- A bag of spare uniform/PE kit including underwear and socks (we’ll send it home to be replenished if needed)
All items should be clearly labelled with your child’s name. Please take a few minutes this weekend to check for any missing labels – thank you!
School Gateway App
If you’d like to receive important reminders and updates, please make sure you’ve downloaded the School Gateway App. You’ll find details in the information pack you received when your child started school, or email scholesoffice@spherefederation.org for support.
Best start in life
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has written a letter to parents with a focus on ensuring children have the best start in life. It signposts parents to the best start in life website – there’s information on Best Start Family Hubs and support with your child’s early health and learning.
Dates for your diary
Here is a copy of the Dates for your diary letter that was sent home this week. It contains all the key dates for meetings, ‘Stay and Learn’ and Learning Journey drop-in sessions.
Welcome to Reception
A reminder that our ‘Welcome to Reception’ meeting is on Wednesday 17 September, 2025 at 6pm. This is held at school.
Following our first welcome session, this is an opportunity to find out some basic ‘need to knows’ about life in Reception.
We look forward to seeing you there.
Reception Baseline Assessment
Packed Lunches
Does your child have a packed lunch at school? If so, please download our Guide to Healthy Packed Lunches.
Did you know that popcorn is a choking hazard for children under 5? Lot’s of people don’t! The Food Standards Agency. has published the following advice on how to prepare food safely for your young child.
Welcome to Reception!
We are looking forward to welcoming the children to Reception this week and next week!
Here’s a sneaky peek at some of the classroom areas.
The teaching team have been having fun in some other areas of the classroom- can you see where we have been playing? Can you remember the name of your class teachers?
See you very soon!
Me and my family!
