The Little Red Hen

Last week: 

Last week in Reception to continue of learning focus of ‘Down on the farm’ we were reading a book called The Little Red Hen.

On Monday, we had our very first extra PE lesson with Mr Benjamin! This was a great way for the children to get active and develop their gross motor skills. The children were able to travel around the hall acting as different animals, they were snakes, giraffes, elephants, lions and so much more! The children loved being the different animals, and they may enjoy playing this game with you at home. They were able to develop skills like crawling, running, jumping and sliding on their tummy’s! The children really enjoyed being able to be more active, and it’s a great way to keep them fit and healthy! The children also really enjoyed using bean bags to practise their balancing skills. We will be having PE sessions every Monday afternoon to continue to develop their physical development - I’m sure they will tell you all about it!

In our classroom last week we kept the role play area as our farm shop - keeping the farm shop ensures that they are truly understanding the skills of shopping, counting money, deciding on prices, using tills and many more things. This week we have added some masks for the children to act out our story by being the characters. This helps to continue their communication and language development, as well as deepening their understanding of the story The Little Red Hen. 

In our maths lessons last week, we were learning all about making pairs! The children were so good at understanding that a pair is made up of 2 things. We investigated pairs of socks, and had to find our matching sock to complete the pair, as well as matching farm animals into pairs. The children were such superstars at understanding some numbers could not be put into pairs because there was sometimes 1 left over. They are able to practise putting cubes, counters, and many more things into groups of 2, then showing the ones left over. This really helped the children to understand how numbers are made up from smaller numbers!

In our creative area this week, the children have loved creating collages of the different animals. We have been using tissue paper, felt tip pens, paint and so many more things to create beautiful pictures linked to our story. We have created collages of a red hen, a black cat and other characters from our story. This helped with the children’s creative development by working together to create pictures or art work. If you would like to help the children’s creative development, feel free to send any pictures they draw at home into school, their friends would love to see!

We have been amazing at learning our sounds in phonics. This week the children have learnt or (as in horn), ur (as in church). I have noticed such a difference in the children’s blending of words and it’s so lovely to see they’re enjoying reading so much more!

Unfortunately our week was cut short because of the snow, but I was so happy to see the amount of work that was given to us that the children did at home, they had so much fun sharing what they had done with their friends. The children who managed to get here on Thursday had an amazing time in our immersive room, where they were able to have a snowball fight with each other!

This week:

This week, we will encouraging the their independent writing by using and applying their phonics knowledge. This will really push them to their next step of writing simple phrases or captions to pictures. On Monday, the children had their first go at writing a sentence, and they absolutely blew me away, they were so impressive!

The children and Miss Davies are so excited because on Wednesday we will be visiting the farm! This is such an exciting way for the children to understand a little bit more about our topic ‘Down on the farm’. Before our visit to the farm we will be looking at the map of the farm on our whiteboard, and seeing which animals or places we can find! We will also be looking at which animals we may see at the farm. If you would like to help the children prepare for our farm trip, you can encourage them to write about the animal they want to see and what it may look like, for example ‘The pig is pink and big’. Your child can also draw a picture of the animal they would like to see and label the animal they have drawn.

In our classroom this week, we have a make your own tractor activity which will help the children to develop their scissor skills. We still have the farm shop role play, which will be good for the children to use once we have visited the farm and they get a deeper understanding of what things may be in a farm shop.

We have a super exciting week planned and we can’t wait to share it all with you. We hope you have an amazing week!

Miss Davies and Mrs Cooper.