Hello from, Willow and Lilac,
We’ve had another busy week in reception this week. We’ve been focusing on the jobs of illustrators and artists. We shared the book Luna Loves Art by Joseph Coelho and discussed the beautiful poetic language of his stories. We looked at the work that is shown in the book of the artists Yayoi Kusama, Henry Moore and Henri Matisse. We experimented with colour and techniques to create our own artwork in the style of these artists. We have also been focusing on the book On the Way Home by Jill Murphy and looking carefully at the description she uses for the characters. In our own writing, we have been describing some of these characters.
We had another two fantastic talks from parents this week. Thank you to those parents who came in to share their jobs as a Vet Pathologist and a Property Development Manager.
It was so lovely to see the children dressed as their favourite characters to celebrate World Book Day on Thursday. We shared stories throughout the day and the teachers did a performance of the Gingerbread Man. We ended the day with a story and a hot chocolate.
We’ve been lucky enough to have some fantastic new Monster Phonics resources and the children have enjoyed playing with the soft toy characters and reading the Monster books
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The children learnt about St. David, the patron saint of Wales, who told people about Christianity throughout Wales. St. David was famous for the miracles he performed, Christians believe that one day he caused the ground to rise beneath him so everyone could see and hear him. We learnt that people remember St. David’s day by wearing daffodils or leaks. The children learnt that like any of the festivals we have spoken about this year people enjoy dances, wear special clothing, eat special food and have a parade.
In Maths, the children have been learning to compare numbers within 10 and different ways to make 10. The children have also been working hard practising number bonds to 5 and 10.
In phonics this week, the children were learning the digraph ‘er.’ A digraph is where 2 letters come together to make one sound. They also practised all of the tricky words that they have learnt so far this year and reading them in sentences.
Next week
- We will continue our topic learning on what people do all day. We will be focusing on construction, machines and creating inventions
- In Phonics, we will be learning the trigraph ‘igh’
- In Talk 4 Writing, we will adapt our story map of ‘On the way home’ by Jill Murphy.
- In Jigsaw, learning about foods that are healthy and not healthy and making healthy eating choices.
Supporting your child at home
- Ask your child to tell you what they know about any of the festivals and celebrations that we have been learning about this term (Chinese New Year, Burns Night, Valentine’s Day, Shrove Tuesday, St David’s Day, World Book Day).
- When talking with your child, encourage them to connect one idea or action with another using a range of conjunctions e.g. and, but or because – ‘I like that game because it was lots of fun.’
- Have fun with phrases from the story through the day e.g. ‘I searched for a pencil, but no pencil could be found.’ This will allow the children to use new vocabulary in different contexts.
Any other information
- Reception parents evening Wednesday 8th March 5pm-8pm and Thursday 9th March 4pm-7pm.
- Picture books will come home on Monday for you to share with your child. These need to be back next Thursday in time for us to swap for another school picture book.
We hope you had a good weekend!
Mrs. Fisher and Mrs Murrell
Willow and Lilac Class Teachers
