Festivals
Welcome to Autumn 2! This half term, our theme is light and dark.
We’ve covered lots of important events and topics this week…
Bonfire Night
We learnt about why some people celebrate Bonfire Night, with an introduction to The Gunpowder Plot. The children enjoyed sharing their experiences of Bonfire Night and how they celebrated at home or out and about.
In the construction area, we built replicas of The Houses of Parliament. We explored casting shadows of our models with torches and used colour paddles to make the shadows look like fire!
Diwali
We found out about the Hindu festival of lights – Diwali. Our focus book was Binny’s Diwali by Thrity Umrigar.
We also found out about the festival through sharing non-fiction texts and watching My first festivals.
Take a look at some of the activities we explored, when learning about Diwali.
Our word of the week is: festival.
Maths; identifying and composing 5
In Maths, we’ve been using our fingers to identify 5. We ‘grew our fingers’ using the peas in a pod song.
Five little peas in a pea pod pressed,
One grew, two grew, so did all the rest,
They grew and they grew and they did not stop,
Until one day the pod went pop!
Later in the week, we used 5 frames and 5-die frames to explore the different ways to compose 5.
Phonics
This week, we focused on the new digraphs ff, ll, ss and the single letter phoneme j.
We’ve also learnt the tricky word; as
Tricky words are words that should be read by sight. We start by identifying which part of the word is ‘tricky’. In as, the ‘s’ is tricky because it makes the /z/ sound.
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 the children about how this can help us become better readers. This week’s poem is called Who has seen the wind?
Click the link to watch Reception recite this week’s poem! Who has seen the wind?
Help at home; World Nursery Rhyme Week
Next week, we’ll be celebrating World Nursery Rhyme Week.
If your child would like to, we’d love to share a recording of them telling their favourite nursery rhyme in class. Please send your videos to the email address below.
Dates for your diary
Anti-bullying Day and Odd Socks Day- 12.11.24 To support anti-bullying week, please send your child to school wearing a pair of odd socks (Tuesday only).
Maths Stay and Learn – 13.11.24 – 09.00 – 10.00 Please join us in the classroom to watch a short maths session and enjoy some maths activities with your child.
Children in Need – 15.11.24 Non-uniform day for Children in Need.
Swimming
Rainbow class loved their first swimming lesson this week! There were lots of happy faces splashing in the pool on Wednesday. Next week, Sunshine class will be swimming.
On your child’s swimming day, please provide a swimsuit/swim shorts, a towel and a pair of goggles if needed. No floatation equipment is required, as we provide these in school. Your child should still come to school wearing their PE kit.
Living and Learning – Me and My Community Week – Grandad Wheels
On Wednesday, the children enjoyed a fantastic and hilarious visit from Grandad Wheels, author, Brian Abram.
Brian, ‘Grandad Wheels’, delivered assemblies where he shared his story, told jokes and made us all laugh, as well as discussing what life is like in a wheelchair. We enjoyed listening to ‘Chaos at Cheapfoods!’. At the end of the assemblies, Brian set the children the challenge of designing a new wheelchair.
After reading a story to the Reception children in the school library, Brain visited each class so the children could share their designs. He was really impressed.
Thank you to FOSP for funding this wonderful visit.
Thank you to everyone who ordered a book from Brain – in total, £254 was raised through book orders – Brian puts this money towards two charities that support spinal injury.
@grandadwheels
Our new school charity
As part of our Community Week, we have been discussing about charities and how charity is the act of giving help to those who need it. There was a list of charities for each class to research and consider. The children enjoyed discussing these with their peers. A democratic vote was made in each class and the result was brought to the Junior Leadership Team. They discussed the votes and settled on The Willow Foundation.
The main objective of the charity is to support 16-40 year olds in the UK who are newly diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. When they should be enjoying the prime of life, they’re dealing with stress, isolation, medication and hospital appointments.
Willow believes that every moment should be precious. They’re dedicated to helping young adults take much needed time out from the reality of living with serious illness, creating magic moments that become lasting memories.
If you’d like to find out more about the charity, please visit the website below.
https://www.willowfoundation.org.uk/
Fundraising that takes place this year will be donated to this charity.
Thank you for your support with this.
Potion Commotion
Potion Commotion
We’ve been reading Potion Commotion by Peter Bently and Sernur Isik.
We’ve been writing our own potion recipes and making potions in the water tray. Using our growing phonic knowledge and skills, we have been able to represent the sounds (phonemes) we could hear in words with the letters (graphemes).
We’ve enjoyed themed activities, with a focus on developing important skills.
Phonics
This week has been a revision week.
In provision, we’ve been making our own flashcards.
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 Pointy Hat
Help at home; light and dark
If you go to any light shows, see any illuminations or go to a firework display over the half term break, we’d love to share your photos in class. We’ll use the pictures to support our next topic on light and dark.
Leaf Man
This week, we’ve explored all things autumn!
Understanding the world; seasonal changes
We took an autumn walk to spot changes in the natural environment. We remembered lots of these from our nature study sessions.
Leaf Man
We’ve been reading the book Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert.
“A Leaf Man’s got to go, where the wind blows”
The book takes us on Leaf Man’s journey, as he travels on the autumn wind across different autumnal landscapes.
Our ‘word of the week’ is seasons. We know that we have four seasons in the year; spring, summer, autumn and winter.
Inspired by the book, we made our own ‘Leaf Man’ pictures.
Understanding the world; Farmer time with Farmer Luke
Did you know that Reception classes have the opportunity to video call with a real-life farmer, working on his farm?! We speak to farmer Luke once each half term to see how farm life changes over the year and what jobs he is busy doing. Farmer Luke has an arable farm, so it’s a very busy harvesting time of year. He took some time out this week, to show Reception around the farm. Next door to his farm are some animals too. Reception were so excited to see the cows and were very impressed to see his amazing tractors!
Maths
Our focus in maths this week has been comparing quantities. We have developed our skills to look carefully and use the language of ‘more than’ and ‘fewer than’ to describe sets of objects.
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 Five Little Pumpkins.
click here to watch us recite this week’s poem!
Phonics
This week, the children have learnt the phonemes (the sound a letter makes) h, b, f and l. They have also been practicing writing the graphemes (the written letter).
We learnt the tricky word: the
Please continue to use the ‘Learn at home’ sheets with your child, to review our new sounds each week.
Help at home; blending
Oral segmenting/blending games are great, both if your child is still learning to blend and for those children who are confident ‘blenders’, to revisit their skills. Here’s just one idea to try at home: Dress the Baby (idea taken from earlyimpactlearning.com)
Any toy can be used for this game. Put a baby doll or another toy down with some clothes round it- for example a hat, boots, a nappy, a coat and gloves.
Say one of the pieces of clothing in sound-talk. For example a boot would be a ‘b-oo-t.’ If your child can blend it, then they can put a piece that piece of clothing on the baby/toy. To make it easier, you can say all the pieces of clothing like robots before you start.
Let us know if you try this game at home!
Dates for your diary and reminders
Parent-teacher consultation (PTC) appointments- 22.10.24/24.10.24 (individual times) A zoom link will be sent for your appointment. Please use your child’s name as your screenname. Thank you.
Swimming lessons will begin after the half term break. On your child’s swimming day, please provide a swimsuit/swim shorts, a towel and a pair of goggles if needed. No floatation equipment is required, as we provide these in school. Your child should still come to school wearing their PE kit.
During autumn 1, your child has met our swimming instructor Miss Joicey and has had an opportunity to visit the pool.
Stay and Learn; Number (session 1)- 13.11.24 9am-10am This is an opportunity for you to come into school to find out about the Early Years Curriculum and watch your child learning in school. This session will be focused on maths.
Stay and Learn; Phonics Phase 2 10.10.24
A big thank you to parents and carers who joined us on Thursday for our Phonics Phase 2 Stay and Learn session. We hope you enjoyed watching a lesson in action, taking part in some activities with your child and that the teacher presentation was informative. If you would like to access the slides from our presentation, please click here
Here’s some more information about phonics and reading in Reception…
What do reading groups look like in class?
Children read with an adult at the same time each morning. They look at the same book throughout the week, in groups of 6 or less. We usually read 4 times a week (Mon-Thurs). The current week’s eBook is usually issued by Thursday evening.
Day 1/2- Decoding– children are introduced to new vocabulary, key decodable words (words that can be segmented and blended) and read through the book together. The aim is to work towards automaticity (reading the words on sight/memory recognition), which in turn makes reading more fluent.
Day 3- Prosody– prosody is the patterns of stress, intonation and rhythm in speech (i.e. sounding like a story-teller!) this is modelled to the children and they are taught to spot features in the text that will affect the way we read the words (for example; how is the character feeling? is there an exclamation/question mark or other grammatical features? and briefly pausing when we see a full stop)
Day 4- Comprehension– the children will be asked a range of questions to check their understanding of what they have read. These can usually be found on the last page of the eBook, if you’d like to use them at home as talking points.
Reading reports and Keeping in Touch
Teachers will check reading reports each week via Collins Hub and will make ‘keeping in touch’ phone calls to those who have not read within the week, to see if we can offer any further support. You can also ask your class teacher at any time, if you are having issues accessing reading at home. Please remember that if you do not have a compatible device, you can hire an iPad through our school office.
Reading records
Please remember to send your child’s reading records to school each Friday. Please add a short comment about how your child has been getting on with their reading at home. Remember, this can also be about other reading as well as eBooks.
Feedback
Finally, another thank you to those of you who attended the Stay and Learn. We would love your feedback!
Please scan the QR code to fill out our feedback form.
Henri’s Scissors
Henri’s Scissors
We’ve been reading Henri’s Scissors, by Jeanette Winter. (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).
The story is a biographical children’s book, about the artist Henri Matisse. We found out about his life and looked at some of his artwork. 
Our word of the week was artist. We had lots of discussions about types of art, introducing new vocabulary such as sculptor/sculpture and collaging.
We’ve been artists ourselves by “painting with scissors”, just like Matisse!
Art talk
We’ve been using our language and communication skills to respond to different examples of artwork by Matisse. We thought about which parts we liked and disliked and tried to answer some questions about the artwork.
- Why do you think the artist painted this?
- Which is your favourite and why?
I like it because I can see green diamonds. Delilah
I like the sprinkles. Mila
It looks like a rainbow. Jazmin
I can see a green dinosaur footprint. Cillian
Phonics
This week, we learnt some more new phonemes: ck, e, u and r. Here’s a video on how to pronounce these sounds using pure sounds.
We’ve also learnt the tricky word; I. Tricky words are words that should be read by sight. We start by identifying which part of the word is ‘tricky’. ‘I’ is tricky because we need to say /igh/ and not /i/.
Poetry Picnic
Children continue to enjoy listening to poems during snack time. We listen to a new poem each week and recite it 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.
We also talk about how poems sometimes have rhyming words and about how poems can have fast or slow rhythms.
Follow the link to watch Reception recite this week’s poem,Leaves are falling.
Maths; counting principles
In Maths, we’ve been using our subitising skills to identify patterns to 4. We’ve practised spotting changes and identifying the changes we can see. Are there more, fewer or the same? We even tried to listen to how many sounds we could hear – without counting!
Children investigated different ways of making 4, using multilink cubes. This was inspired by our introduction to Numberblock 4.
Help at home – autumn leaves and conkers.
If you go on a walk this weekend, we’d really appreciate donations of dry leaves to help us with an art project next week. We also need some conkers to use in our maths learning – see how many you can find! Thank you for your support.
We’re Going on a Bear Hunt!
Literacy
This week, our focus book was We’re Going on a Bear Hunt.
The children were able to use their knowledge of the story to retell it using pictures and props.
Geography
On Thursday, we went for a sound walk around the school. This involved finding landmarks, such as the gazebo and writing graphemes
(letters) we found on a map.
Maths
This week, we have explored how numbers can be composed of 1s.
We have will learnt that a ‘whole’ is made up of smaller parts and is, therefore, bigger than its parts.
Phonics
This week, we have focused on the new phonemes: d,g,o,c.
We’ve also learnt a new tricky word; is.
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 Falling Apples.
Stay and Learn
Our first stay and learn session will be on Thursday 10 October.
This is an opportunity for you to come into school to find out about phonics and watch your child learning in school. There will also be a coffee morning after the session.
Please ensure you sign up at the door before Wednesday 9 October or email scholesreception@spherefederation.org.
Connect Challenge
Thursday saw the whole school take part in the Connect Challenge in support of the Rob Burrow Foundation. This event was aimed at rasiing awareness of MND whilst also linking primary schools across Leeds. It promoted the idea of collaboration, physical education and friendship. We were the first school in Leeds to compete in which the children had to complete a challenge linked to the number 7. This was Rob Burrow’s shirt number when he played for the Rhinos. The children had 1 minute to complete 7 physical activities such as passing a rugby ball, hula hooping – all sorts of crazy activities! At the end of all the challenges, we filmed Lilly in year 6 throwing a rugby ball to her left. This will be incorporated into a video in which the next school receives the ball. It will eventually show all the primary schools taking part, linking together by passing the rugby ball. It was great fun and the children loved taking part in the challenge! 
The Everywhere Bear
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! We’ve been re-telling parts of the story and have used it to introduce our own travelling teddies- Ziggy and Penelope .
We’ve been using a map of our school to find the different places our teddies have visited.
Ziggy and Penelope will be coming home with a child each weekend, along with a book 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’ to find the total amount (cardinality), only count each item once (one-to-one correspondence) and know that objects can be counted in any order (order irrelevance) We’ve been looking at ways to make counting easier. We’ve also been counting things that cannot be seen (such as sounds or actions) and things that cannot be moved, by using a ‘tagging wand’.
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. Over the past few weeks they have enjoyed Celebration by Kool and The Gang and Sing by The Carpenters!
During lessons they 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.
We love our music lessons!
Understanding the World: Nature Study
Did you know that each Friday in Reception, a group of children get to take part in nature study activities? Last week, our first group explored autumn using their senses and made fat ball bird feeders to help the birds in the upcoming months.
This week, our second group also explored autumn, hung out the bird feeders and planted some flower bulbs ready for spring!
Each group will experience 3 different nature sessions this term, with a different focus each week. We love exploring the world around us!
Phonics
This week, the children have learnt the phonemes (the sound a letter makes) i, n, m and d. 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.
Please continue to use the ‘Learn at home’ sheets with your child, to review our new sounds 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 look forward to beginning their reading journey with you.
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 Reception recite this week’s poem
More pictures from this week…
Reminders and dates