Reading: It’s so important!
We hope that you’re enjoying reading your child’s library book with them. We call this a ‘love of reading’ book – to do just that, encourage a love of reading for your child! Reading to and with your child can have a huge positive impact on your child’s education.
This research is a powerful message of the impact you can have when reading to/with your child:
At school, your child reads a physical book four times a week – with a focus on teaching phonics skills. This is then sent home as an eBook. The purpose of the eBook at home is to celebrate your child’s success (in phonics skills). Your child should be able to read most of this book confidently and really feel like a reader.
We’ve chosen to use eBooks at home for many benefits. Allocating eBooks frees up about two hours of teacher or TA time changing books – now spent teaching reading!
Here’s some information on how to access eBooks but if you’re having any problems please speak to your child’s class teacher.
Happy reading!
We’re going on a Bear Hunt
We’re going on a Bear hunt
The well loved story We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen was the focus story for our learning this week. Both classes enjoyed joining in with the story and retelling it in our reading areas.
We used the story as a prompt to go on our own hunt in the school grounds. With an areal map of school in hand, we went on a sound hunt. We searched for some of the graphemes we have learnt so far.
The map’s telling us to go to the gazebo!
Understanding the World
Thank you to everyone who sent in photographs of their front doors. We used them to draw our houses and other types of homes too.
This one’s my house. It has two handles and white all around.
Mine has windows.
My house has a blue door.
Phonics
Autumn 1, week 4 has focused on the new phonemes: /ck/, /e/, /u/ and /r/.
/ck/ is our first diagraph and the children have been great at remembering that two letters can work together to make one sound. We also learnt the new tricky word: the.
The children are doing ever such a good job at blending orally using all their known sounds (phonemes) and they have begun to blend to read independently in our phonics sessions too. Keep it up Reception!
Poem Of The Week
This week’s poem of the week is Falling Apples.
Help at home: you could set up a stage at home (a sofa or chair would be fine) and let your child perform the poem to you using the actions we learnt in class.
Maths
This week we have learnt that numbers can be composed of ones. We joined in with the STEM sentence “one and one and one make three” and made collections of three things for Baby Bear.
Help at home: You could make different collections of three things at home. You could look at how three can be made of one and one and one or from two and one.
Stay and Learn
Our first stay and learn session will be on Monday 6th 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 and a Phonics information presentation before the session. We look forward to welcoming you then 🙂
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. 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.
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.