Farmyard Hullabaloo
Week beginning 20th March
Last week:
Last week in Reception we continued our learning of Down on the Farm, with a story called Farmyard Hullabaloo. This story looks at different animals on the farm and the noises that they make. We had so many fun activities in our classroom last week and we could really see the children taking such an interest in their learning.
In Maths last week we were looking at combining 2 groups of numbers together. Simple addition is a skill that we have been working hard on in Reception and it is great to see that the children have made such progress. The children used the maths cubes to help them combine 2 numbers, it was lovely to see the children using their initiative and independence to complete their work.
Our phonics activity last week was so much fun and so many of the children were engaged in this. As well as practising their fine motor skills through cutting and sticking, the children has to read the word correctly to match the animal to the word underneath. Some of the children chose to do this working in pairs, and some of them chose to do it independently - both of which were nice to see their progress in phonics as well as the relationships they have been building over the year.
The children focussed on their writing a lot last week,one of their activities was to label the parts of a farm from their phonics knowledge and using support of a word mat as well as their teachers. This was amazing to see how much they have learnt and taken in through our topic this half term. The children were so focused in this area of the classroom and have really taken a liking to their writing over the last couple of weeks.
We also had bee-bots out in our classroom last week and the children LOVED this activity. This provides so many different learning opportunities such as using mathematical language by counting how many moved their bee is going to make, who’s is going further, which way it is turning, how quick it is going and so on. This activity also lends itself nicely to communication and language development as the children are learning new vocabulary and language through this activity that they may not have been exposed to otherwise.
Last week the children took a real interest in the outdoor area, particularly writing and drawing outside. We took paper and pencils outside with us for the majority of the last week and it was wonderful to see the children creating pictures or writing completely independently.
This Week:
This week in Reception we will be looking at the Easter story. Learning about different celebrations and religions allows the children to speak about their own experiences and understand that not everybody celebrates the same events and that it’s okay to have faith and celebrate different things. This allows the children with their Understanding of the World.
In Maths this week we are moving on to length and height. In our classroom the children will have the chance to use some comparative language in our maths area as well as throughout our lessons. You can help their learning with length and height by asking them “which one is taller?” “Which one do you think is longer? How can we check?”
The children have finished all of their phase 2 and 3 phonics sounds now - and we are so proud of them! We will be focussing this week on applying our phonics through reading and writing sentences. Please continue to read your child’s book as much as you can, we have noticed such a positive difference in their reading through their practising at home and it is really lovely to see all of you parents supporting your children.
We will also be having our pilgrimage on Wednesday to share the Easter story with some grown ups and we can’t wait!
We hope you have a super week and we will fill you in about our activities next week!
Miss Davies and Mrs Cooper.
