This morning I asked the children what their favourite things were this term.  This is what they said:

“going to the church”

“going to the postbox”

“going to the hall with nursery and year 1 and year 2 for the story and doing our show”

“going in the writing area”

“going on the bikes outside”

“I like doing mix up and going in the drawing area and playing with baby Jesus”

“I like playing with the playdough”

“I like playing outside”

“My favourite thing was playing in the castle”

“I liked being Mary in the book corner”

“I like playing with everybody in my class”

“playing in the making area”

“I like going on the red french”

“I like learning my tricky words”

“I like learning my letters”

“I like the painting area”

“I like the drawing area and the making area”

“I like doing mix up”

It is hard to believe that Christmas is just around the corner but the amount of glitter on the classroom floor is certainly a tell-tale sign!  This week, the children had a great time at their Christmas party; playing traditional party games and enjoying their party tea. A huge thank you to all the parents and carers for their food contributions and offers of help. Photos to follow…

Back in the classroom, we have been getting ready for the end of term, finishing off our Christmas cards and other Christmas creations ready to bring home on the last day of term next week (hence the amount of glitter on the classroom floor!).  We have been thinking about the true meaning of Christmas during assemblies with Mrs Warner and Mr Quinn and we have been reading the Christmas story during our carpet times. These lovely versions of the nativity story can both be found in our local Raynes Park library if you would like to share them again at home:

In our phonics lessons, we have been busy practising blending sounds together to make words.  The children are now very good at identifying individual sounds, but many of them find it difficult to blend the sounds together in the right order.  A particularly fun way to practise blending is through the game ‘buried treasure’ which we played on our interactive whiteboard in class.  This game also asks the children to decide whether the word they have read is a real word or a made-up word.  This is quite a challenge for the children but a very good skill to start developing as they will do lots of more of this in Year 1.

If you would like to have a go at playing this game at home, you can find it here along with several other games that support the learning of phase 2 phonics.

We would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Christmas holiday full of hope, peace, joy and love!

What an exciting week we have had!  The children performed their “Christmas Recipe” show not once, not twice, but three times this week! Many thanks to all the parents, carers and other family members who came along to support the children (…I wonder if you received an invitation in the post by any chance?!).  The Reception staff are all very proud of just how hard the children worked to make the show such a success!

Here are some of the photos taken backstage before the second (of the three) performances:

Despite such a busy and exciting week, we also found time to learn the final two sounds on the phase 2 sound mat.  They are the digraphs ‘ll’ and ‘ss’.  Actually, we have already learnt the sounds that these digraphs make, as they are exactly the same as the sounds made by ‘l’ and ‘s’.  The actions are also the same (licking a lolly for ‘ll’ and moving a hand like a snake for ‘ss’) and, don’t forget, we like to use our digraph action (linking our hands together with our thumbs) to show we have spotted a digraph (in other words, two letters that hold hands to make one sound).

As we have now learnt all of the phase 2 sounds, please find some time to have a look at the phase 2 sound mat with your child.  This was sent home at parents’ evening but if you need another copy please just ask!  Encourage your child to tell you the sounds and actions they know and practise the ones they are not so sure about.  Thank you.

In our maths lessons this week, we thought about the idea of ‘one more’.  Benji and Sam, who are our class pets, love to gobble up delicious dog biscuits but however many we gave Sam (the little brother), he always wanted ‘one more’!

Finally, we have a particularly special area in our classroom at the moment.  Inspired by the ending of our ‘Christmas Recipe’ show, our cosy book corner has become a stable for baby Jesus who is happily sleeping in his manger.  It looks like the three kings may have visited too!

It has been such a busy week in Reception with Christmas rehearsals now in full swing and the dress rehearsal just around the corner (this coming Monday).  We finished off the week with a mufti day to support our Christmas Fair which is being organised by our fantastic PTA (and takes place on Friday 9th) and, as you can see, some of the Reception team are already feeling very Christmassy!

Yesterday, we found time to take a walk out of school to a nearby postbox where we each posted a letter to our parents.  We carefully checked our envelopes to make sure they all had an address and a stamp on them before taking turns to pop them in the postbox.  I won’t spoil the surprise by revealing the contents as everyone’s envelope should be arriving home very soon!  Please look out for the letter and let your child know when it arrives to encourage their understanding of the journey a letter takes from a postbox to a house.

As we were waiting to post our letters we met a real-live postman who was busy delivering to the nearby houses.  He even stopped to have a chat with us and find out what we were doing. He thought we were probably posting letters to Santa but the children soon set him straight!  Many of them thought he was Postman Pat and he was kind enough to go along with this, even chatting away about his cat Jess!

Here’s what he actually looked like!

During our phonics lessons this week, we learnt three new sounds as usual; 2 single letter sounds (f and l) and another digraph (ff).

‘F’ and ‘ff’ make the same sound and have the same action.  We imagined trying to deflate an inflatable toy by slowly squeezing it together between our hands.  As we did the action, we said ‘fffff’ making sure our top teeth gently touched our lower lips as the air came out between our lips.

When learning the digraph ‘ff’, we read the story of The Little Pigs and we all knew exactly what the Big Bad Wolf says when he tries to blow down the houses!

Weekend challenge: Can you spot the digraph ‘ff’ on the page above? How many times can you spot it? Can you have a go at writing the words ‘huff’ and ‘puff’?  Listen carefully for the three sounds in the words and write them down.  You can do it!

Finally, we pretended to lick delicious lollipops as we learnt the sound ‘l’.  This is such a tricky sound because the action encourages us to stick our tongues out when actually your tongue should stay in your mouth and touch your top teeth.  Try to think of it as ‘ull’ rather than ‘luh’.