This week, we’ve been reading Great Fairies of the World by Stephanie Moss. This rhyming story features fairy characters that have jobs that help others; architect fairy, doctor fairy and engineer fairy, to name just a few! We’ve been discussing how the author uses the most interesting descriptions/words that they can think of. We’ve been describing images and making words more adventurous. This has helped develop our oracy skills and helped us in our writing too.
In our writing, we’ve created our own fairy characters and written about the jobs that they do.
In provision, we’ve linked our fiction reading to non-fiction information about real-life heroes in the community.
We’ve also used the fairy theme in our classroom challenges.
Living and learning: Internet Safety
We joined in with learning about Safer Internet Day on Tuesday 11 February.
When asked what being ‘online’ means and what you can do online, children had lots of ideas. Many of them talked about different games and programmes that they play and watch on-line at home.
We spoke about some important uses for the internet, such as the way we use it for our learning- our eBooks. We also discussed how we should limit our time online to keep our body and brain healthy and why we shouldn’t use electronic devices close to bed time.
In Reception, we used the story The Adventures of Smartie the Penguin to talk about internet safety. Smartie receives a tablet for his birthday but encounters some problems when using it, including adverts, websites that are too old for him and people saying unkind things online, during a game. He makes the right decisions and always asks Mummy and Daddy for help. There is a memorable song throughout the story:
Ask your child what they can remember about keeping safe online.
Maths: Length and height
We’ve been developing our understanding of how to compare and measure length and height. We’ve been ordering by length and comparing the length of objects; saying which are shorter, longer, the shortest, the longest or the same (equal). We’ve been measuring objects using non-standard forms of measurement. We measured the length of our bodies using different objects.
Phonics
It was assessment week in phonics and we’ve been reviewing and revisiting our Spring 1 learning. Your child will have come home with a grapheme mat and a tricky word mat. If any sounds are highlighted on the grapheme mat, these are those that your child is not yet secure on. Please keep practising these at home.
Tricky words can be just that-tricky! In Little Wandle phase 3, we learnt lots of new words. The children will continue to learn new tricky words fairly rapidly so it’s important to keep practising them. We’ve previously introduced a few fun games you can play at home to practice tricky words. Here’s another you could try!
Help at home: Musical tricky words
- Write the tricky words on individual pieces of paper, lay them out on the floor.
- Play your child’s favourite song for them to dance to.
- When the music stops, your child should pick a word to quickly run to and stand on.
- Your child reads the word they have landed on.
- Remove that word and repeat until there are no words left!
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 was Furry, furry squirrel.
We talk about how a poem sometimes has rhyming words and sometimes doesn’t. Can your child tell you the rhyming words in this week’s poem? We also talk about how a poem can have a fast rhythm or a slow rhythm. Can your child re-tell this week’s poem to you?
Parent-teacher meetings
Thank you to all the parents and carers who came to the parent-teacher meetings this week. It was great to see you all there, keen to find out how your child is doing in school and how you can continue to support at home.
A few people asked about how to say the graphemes correctly, using pure sounds – here are links to help you pronounce Phase 2 graphemes and Phase 3 graphemes.
If you’d like to email us any photos of your child’s home learning, share any achievements or tell us about any exciting events, please send them to our Reception email. Children love to share them with their friends and it’s also great for their confidence and communication skills too!
Reminders
SWIMMING DATES- Spring 2
Rainbow Class- 26 Feb, 12 Mar, 26 Mar
Sunshine Class- 5 Mar, 19 Mar, 02 Apr
These dates are also stuck to your child’s classroom door or window to view whenever needed.
Sponsored maths challenge – Please see the Sponsored Tens Frame Challenge letter that has been sent home this week.
World Book Day 2025: Stay and Read – Thursday 06 March. Further details to follow (see calendar).
Happy half term! Enjoy the break and we’ll see you again on Monday 24 February.