Our Learning > Our Classes

Hello from Reception, we hope you are all having a fabulous week!

This week

This week the children have been learning about different artists, including Henri Matisse and Vincent van Gogh, to inspire our own artistic talents.  To help us, we enjoyed the book Matisse’s Magical Trail by Tim Hopgood, a story about an artistic snail who creates drawings whilst everyone else is asleep.  The children also read two books by James Mayhew.  Firstly, they read Katie and the Sunflowers, where Katie explores five paintings by Van Gogh, Gauguin and Cezanne as their pictures come alive for her in a colourful adventure.  Secondly we read Katie and the Starry Night, where Katie sees Van Gogh’s Starry Night painting and cannot resist reaching out to take a star, however this leads to an adventure as she tries to restore the stars to the picture before the gallery guards find out.  The children learn that each artist had a different style and uses different techniques to create paintings.  The children used these pictures as inspiration for their own creative art work.  We were blown away with the children’s versions of these famous paintings – well done Reception!

In Maths, the children continued learning about sharing and grouping amounts.  We used the stem sentence ‘sharing means dividing into equal groups’  and throughout the week the children had different examples of amounts that needed sharing.  These examples included a panda sharing food with cubs equally and teddy bears sharing cakes at a picnic.

In Phonics, the children continued to apply their phonics knowledge by practising blending to read and write CCVC words.  CCVC words are made up of consonants (C) and vowels (v). We read the Monster Phonics story  ‘The Little Man’ and throughout the story the children were challenged to find CCVC words and CVCC words.  Later in the week we helped Cool Blue put instructions for making jam on toast in the correct order.  The children did really well applying their phonics knowledge in their reading and writing.

In Jigsaw, the children have been thinking about the impact of unkind words.  We spoke about different feelings we might have and we thought about what happens when we are angry or upset, the children agreed that they might shout or say unkind words.  We then shared some scenarios with the children and got them to decide if it was something they should or shouldn’t say.

It was lovely to see so many of you at our book sharing/borrowing session after school on Friday. We hope you enjoyed the opportunity to share a book with your child and look forward to seeing you at 2.55 next week.

The children were very excited to meet our book buddies on Friday. We enjoyed hearing the children talk about the stories that they had fun with. We look forward to seeing what the book buddies have got up to on their second week and will be ready to welcome them back to school on Monday.

We hope that your children are enjoying taking part in our reading challenge. Please can you upload any outstanding observations from weeks 1 to 3, so that we can stamp your child’s reading record. As a reminder:

Week 1 – Read a book outside

Week 2 – Read anything but a book

Week 3 – Read a book and review it.

This week is week 4 and the challenge is: Listen to a story using technology.  You could watch a bedtime story on CBeebies, listen to a story on an audio device or you could zoom a relative or friend who reads you a story.

Next week

• We will be reading the book Paddington’s Post.
• We will be learning about different genres of writing, for example learning about letters, recipes, postcards and their different features.
• In Jigsaw, we will be learning about how to use ‘Calm Me Time’ to manage feelings.
• In Phonics, we will continue applying our phonics knowledge by practising blending to read and write CVC+ words and previously learned diagraphs.
• In Maths, we will continue learning about number bonds to five including the inverse operation .

Supporting your child at home

• To help your child begin to understand their surroundings and know more about their locality, familiarise your child with the name of your road including house number, and roads and key landmarks that they may recognise or visit in Hitchin.
• When looking at books, magazines, TV programmes and films, encourage discussion with your child about how the lives of children in other countries may be similar or different whilst avoiding stereotypes.  You could discuss how they travel to school, what they eat, what they wear and so on.  By doing this, you will help your child to recognise similarities and differences between life in this country and life in other countries.
• Support your child to orally rehearse a complete sentence before writing. This will help your child to write short sentences with known sound-letter correspondences using a capital letter at the start, finger spaces between words and a full stop at the end.
• Reading with your child at home will significantly help them to develop their understanding of letters and sounds, as well become better readers and writers. The Monster Phonics books are designed to support the children with their learning and it is important that the children read these regularly however, additional books outside of Monster Phonics books will also help.  Please write comments in your child’s reading record to let us know how your child has got on with their book.
• Model how you read and re-read your own writing to check it makes sense. This will encourage your child to re-read what they have written to check that it makes sense.

Any other information

• BOOK BUDDIES – We have really enjoyed hearing all about the books your children and their book buddies have been reading. Please can we remind you that they be returned to school each Monday.

• READING ACTIVITIES AFTERNOON – Friday 20th May @ 2pm. We hope you’ll be able to join us in what will be a fun filled event for you to enjoy with your children to help promote their love of reading. If you have not already done so please let us know whether or not you are able to attend. Thank you
• WEEKLY READING CHALLENGE – Please don’t forget to upload the children’s weekly reading challenges to tapestry so we can see how they are getting on with the different tasks.
• WEATHER – The weather is very changeable at the moment. Even if it is lovely when you leave the house in the morning, please can children come to school with a jumper and rain coat.  The children will go out to play, even if there are showers, and we had lots of children without coats on one particularly wet lunch time this week.

We hope you have a fun filled weekend!

Mrs Fisher and Mr French
Willow and Lilac Class Teachers.