Welcome back everyone!  The children all seem to have grown noticeably taller during the holiday, if that’s possible in only one week!

For the rest of this term, we will be continuing with our Out and About topic with a particular focus on animals and their life-cycles.

This week, we read an old favourite – the story of the Very Hungry Caterpillar who eats his way through a week’s worth of food and gives himself a very sore tummy.  He then wraps himself up in a cocoon for two weeks before emerging as a beautiful butterfly!

Weekend Challenge: Can you remember the days of the week? Can you say them in the right order?  How many days are there in one week? How many days are there in two weeks? How do you know?

We wondered why the Hungry Caterpillar got such a sore tummy and most of us agreed it was because he ate too much food.  It was also suggested that he got a sore tummy because of the sorts of food he ate.  We thought that eating lots of sugary foods might have given him the sore tummy too.

We decided to sort the foods that he ate into those foods that are ok to eat often (the yellow circle) and those foods that should only be eaten now and again (the red circle).

Weekend Challenge: Can you remember why we decided to put the sausages in the middle, in both circles?  Can you make your own circle chart at home? Find some pictures of different foods to sort or perhaps use real foods! Remember to take a photo to show us or you could post it to our blog!

During our Maths lessons this week we started to think about the idea of taking away.   We sang the song “Five Little Men in a Flying Saucer” but we changed the words a little and started with 10 little men instead of 5, taking one little man away each time until we were left with zero.

Here are our ten little men:

Before we started singing our song, we suddenly realised there was something not quite right about the order of our little men.  Luckily we were able to sort out the problem in no time at all!

That’s better!

Here are the words to the song if you would like to sing it again at home:

There are lots of taking away songs you could sing, for example:

And…

Weekend Challenge: Can you sing a taking away song? Do you know any other taking away songs? Can you make up your own taking away song?

In our phonics lessons this week, we learnt three new sounds.  The first sound we learnt is a new sort of sound known as a trigraph.  It’s a bit like a digraph (where two sounds sit together to make one sound) but in this case three letters sit together to make one sound.

The trigraph we learnt is ‘igh’, as in ‘high’.  Although the word high is made up of 4 letters, it is only made up of 2 sounds, i.e. h-igh.  We decided that the action for ‘igh’ would be holding three fingers up high.

Next we learnt the digraph ‘oa’ as in ‘goat’ and ‘boat’.  This sound is the same as the letter name ‘o’ and the mouth shape looks like this:

We used the jolly phonics action for this sound where you put your hand in front of your mouth as if you are shocked or surprised:

Just before half term, we learnt the digraph ‘ee’ and I had promised the children that I would explain why the action for ‘ee’ was to put their hands up on their heads like donkey ears.  So, we decided to jump ahead on our sound mat a little bit and learn the digraph ‘or’ which, as you can see, goes with the ‘ee’ sound action, as in ‘ee-or’.

Finally, our Star of the Week from before half term did a fantastic job of filling the number of the week bag with things related to the number 10.  Here’s what he brought in to show us:

Our new number of the week has been chosen as number:

Don’t forget to dress up as a favourite book character for World Book Day next Thursday (2nd March) and bring a £1 donation for Book Aid International.

Many thanks to those of you who were able to come along to the Phonics workshop last week.  We hope you found it useful and informative.

Please ask if you have any further questions!

Here is the handout from the session:

phonics booklet

And here is the list of high frequency words:

Please note, high frequency words are commonly occurring words that children should be able to read at the end of each phase including, but not only, tricky words.  Tricky words, which are non-decodable, can be found in the box in each column below.

The other words in each column are decodable (i.e. can be sounded out) but, as they occur so frequently within texts, children are encouraged to learn them so they can be read on-sight).

There was much excitement in Reception this week, as we noticed that our beans have started to sprout and grow!  Peek through the window and you will be able to see them too!

“They’re growing!”

“It’s got a tail!”

“I can see a beanstalk!”

“Look at mine!”

We explored our understanding of how seeds grow into different vegetables and fruit a little further by reading the stories of Oliver’s Vegetables and Oliver’s Fruit Salad.  Oliver’s Grandpa has an allotment and grows all sorts of fruit and vegetables, much to Oliver’s amazement.

After reading these stories, we talked about the different fruits and vegetables that we like to eat.  And then, we made our very own delicious fruit salad!  We used 4 different fruits in our fruit salad – can you remember what they were?  Here are some clues:

• an orange, sphere-shaped fruit
• a sphere-shaped fruit that starts with the sound ‘a’
• a yellow fruit shaped like a crescent moon
• and a small fruit with brown, hairy skin and green flesh

The children carefully chopped up the fruits and put them into a big bowl.  Do you remember what the fruits looked like inside? Can you match these pictures with the ones above?  What did you see inside? Did you see any seeds? What was different about the seeds in the different fruits?

Here’s what our fruit salad looked like when it was ready to eat.  Doesn’t it look delicious! And here we are enjoying our healthy, school-made snack!

Weekend challenge: can you make your own fruit salad at home? Which fruits will you use? Can you write down the steps you took to make your fruit salad?

How about watching this classic clip of The Wiggles singing their Fruit Salad song for a little inspiration!

We learnt one new sound this week; the diagraph ‘th’.  There are actually two versions of this sound: a ‘voiced’ one and an ‘unvoiced’ one.  If you say the words ‘thin’ and ‘that’, you should notice the rather subtle difference (i.e. air being blown or not).

In class, we talked about this sound being a little rude, in that you need to stick your tongue out – just a tiny bit when saying words like that, the and this – and a little bit further when saying words like thin, Thursday and thumb.

At this point, we would just like the children to be recognising this digraph as the one where they stick their tongue out and we are not too concerned about them hearing the difference between these two versions.  If you would like to explore the difference with them, however, please do!

Here’s another way of explaining it!

Instead of the jolly phonics action, we decided to say the voiced sound ‘th’ and show a thumbs up.

We just learnt one sound this week as we would like the children to feel really confident with the consonant digraphs ‘ch’, ‘sh’ and ‘th’ before we move on.  We spent some time practising these three sounds in class this week.  Please do so at home too, thank you!

Last week, our number of the week was number 8.  Here’s what our Star of the Week collected in her number bag over the weekend:

Our new number of the week has been chosen as number…

Weekend challenge: can you make a number bag for the number three? What would you put inside? How many different ways can you find to make the number three?  Is this right: 1+2=3?  How do you know? How about this one: 1+3=3? How do you know?

Remember to use your fingers!

If you would like to find out more about what phonics is, how it is taught at St. Matthew’s and what you can do to support your child at home, do come along to the Phonics Workshop.  It will be presented by Miss Manhire (Year 1) and myself this coming Tuesday at 2.30pm in the school hall. We hope to see many of you there!

Parent Workshops