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