Hello Reception 1 families!

Welcome to the 2nd half of our autumn term. This half term our topic will be 'Celebrations'. We will also be using another beautiful story book called Anna Hibiscus' Song by Antinuke alongside finding out about a number of celebrations that happen during the next couple of months.

It has been a busy week in Reception 1 and Miss Edwards and I have loved having the children back in school. They are all so enthusiastic about what we are going to be learning and what activities they will be doing. The children have developed in self confidence and we are seeing now that the children feel confident within themselves to choose what activities they would like to do and to ask for help from either myself or Miss Edwards if it is needed.

What have Reception 1 been busy doing this week? Well, we started our week by reading Meg's Eggs by Helen Nicoll. The story is about a witch who makes potions and spells. The children enjoyed listening to the story and we also shared some giggles! Following on from that we had a go at writing our own bubbling potions. The children worked really hard listening for the sounds they could hear in the word, finding the sound on the sound mat and then having a go at writing the sound. Miss Edwards and I are seeing improvements in the children's pencil grip and their ability to hear sounds in words. We have been securing our knowledge of numbers within 10 and 2d shapes in and around our environment. The children have been threading a given number of beads onto a lace which helped their understanding of the value of each number and helped their fine motor skills. In class we always have activities to help develop the children's fine motor skills as this helps them with their writing of letters, numbers and drawing pictures.

This week we have been trying to balance small stacking chairs (not real chairs, ha ha) one on top of another, screwing and unscrewing nuts and bolts, we discussed bonfire night, fireworks and fire safety and made some great firework pictures.

In phonics we have worked on blending sounds together to read small words and segmenting (splitting the sounds ) the words to identify the sounds. The children enjoyed a super dance session with Miss Murray about animals and have been practising drawing by watching a Draw with Rob video showing them how to draw an owl. They produced some brilliant pictures!

On Friday we were very lucky to be able to have a socially distanced Zoom assembly in the playground (each class bubble were well spaced apart) where the children took part in some dancing, we wished Toby a happy birthday and all the children signed happy birthday to him. This week our medal winner was Phoebe and she got the medal we working really hard to learn her sounds. Well done Phoebe!!

Please have a look through the photos to see what we have been doing.  

Miss Edwards and I are seeing the children becoming more confident with recognising their new sounds. Thank to all the grown ups for spending time helping your child to practise their sounds. Regular, little and often practise helps your child a great deal. Please could I ask that you write in your child's reading record book to let us know how they are getting on and please keep their books in the plastic pocket provided. As our weather is so unpredictable, we don't want reading books getting wet and damaged.

Thank you for your continued support.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend and look forward to seeing you all on Monday.

Take care

Mrs Spooner x