This week we read the story of ‘Cendrillon’ which is another version of the classic Cinderella fairytale.  I didn’t tell the children that it was a Cinderella story but it didn’t take them long to figure it out!  “It’s like Cinderella”! many of them said, and we were able to talk about the similarities and differences between the two stories.

‘Cendrillon’ is actually the French word for Cinderella and was one of the earliest European versions of the story to be published by Charles Perrault in 1697!  He is famous for having used old folktales to write the sort of stories that we now call fairytales!

Our own investigation into the mystery footprint has continued with much excitement, with several people on our list now having had their footprints measured. We will finish off collecting the remaining footprints next week and we should then be able to work out who the mystery footprint belongs to!

In our phonics lessons, we have been working hard to make sure we are confident when it comes to recognising digraphs ( when two letters sit together making just one sound).

Weekend challenge: Have a look at your sound-mat…can you spot all the digraphs?  Can you write a list of words with these digraphs in them? Ask a grown-up to think of the words and then see if you can sound them out and write them!

We learnt two new digraphs this week: ‘zz’ and ‘qu’.

We have started using picture prompts in our phonics lessons to help the children put the sounds they are learning into meaningful contexts and to support them when using the sounds in their writing.  I’ll try to remember to post the prompts here alongside the actions and mouth shapes for each new sound as you might find it useful to link the picture and sound with your child at home.

Please note the action and mouth shape for ‘zz’ are the same as those for ‘z’:

In our maths lessons we have continued to enjoy lots more estimating and measuring…

And our star of the week did a fantastic job of filling her number bag with all sorts of things to do with the number 11, including an amazing homemade numbered necklace!

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

We have also been enjoying lots of lovely messy play in our creative area – here the children were busy making numerals out of sand and glue!

And during a particularly rainy day this week, we put a rainforest scene complete with gentle waterfall sound effects up on the whiteboard – the children were delighted by this and responded by setting themselves us “like a movie-night!” with rows of chairs and clipboards!

On Thursday morning, when I arrived at school, I discovered a muddy footprint just outside the classroom door.  It had not been there when I had left school the previous evening and I wondered who on earth it might belong to.  Knowing that the Reception children are such super problem-solvers, I decided to draw the outline of the footprint onto a piece of paper to show the children.  When they arrived in the classroom, I explained what I had found and they all agreed…it was a bit of a mystery!

The first thought the children had was that the footprint might have been left by a “stranger”, “a robber” or “a bad guy”.  However, after much discussion, this idea was firmly ruled out as we all agreed our school is a very safe place.  As one child explained; “the door is locked and you have to go to the office”.  I explained to the children that strangers do not come into our school unless they have come to visit us.  Visitors always wear a red lanyard around their necks (instead of the blue ones which teachers wear) which means Mrs Saunders or Mrs Morgan has said they can come in.

Since we knew the footprint must belong to someone in school, we decided to make a list of possible people.  Here is our list:

1. Miss Cronin
2. Mr Norris (our caretaker)
3. Mrs Warner (our deputy head)
4. A year 1 child
5. A year 6 child
6. Mrs Mooney
7. Mrs Rainey (our year 2 teacher)
8. Miss Leutchford (our year 1 teacher)

Next, we wondered how we could find out which person on our list had left the footprint.  The children quickly suggested we would need to get the footprints of the people on the list and then check to see which one matches our footprint!  “If it is the same then we know it is his!”

We made a start on our footprint investigation by drawing around our very own Mrs Mooney’s foot…but discovered her footprint was actually too small!  Next week, we will be taking the measurements of the other people on the list to try and solve our very own Cinderella mystery!  Watch this space…

The children were very taken with idea of measuring their own feet and several set off during choosing time to do so!  We also used the unifix cubes to have a go at estimating how long they thought their foot might be and then measuring it to find out if they were right.

Weekend Challenge: Measure around the feet or shoes of the people in your family.  Can you put them in order from smallest to biggest?  Now do some measuring; you can use anything you can find at home as long as it is the same size, e.g. bottle tops, cars, lego pieces or you could have a go at measuring with a ruler or a measuring tape.  Don’t forget to estimate (make a guess) first and then find out how close you were.  Write a list of the people you are going to measure, then write down your estimate for how long you think their foot will be, then write down the actual measurement.

Of course, it seemed only ‘fitting’ that we also read the story of Cinderella this week.  We read a version called “Cinderella and her very bossy sisters” which can be found in Raynes Park library.  It is a modern version of the classic fairytale.

Weekend Challenge: Can you remember the story of Cinderella? Can you re-tell the story to someone in your family? Don’t forget to start with “Once Upon a Time…” What happens in the end? Could you make up a different ending?

During our phonics lessons this week, we learnt the final 3 sounds of the alphabet ‘x’, ‘y’ and ‘z’.  Please note, we decided not to use the jolly phonics action for ‘x’ (where you pretend to take an x-ray photo) as it can be confusing for the children that x uses it’s name at the start of words like x-ray, but uses its sound (ks) at the end of words like f-o-x.  Instead, we came up with our own action which is to cross our arms to make the shape of the letter.

Our Star of the Week did a fantastic job of filling up his number bag with all things to do with the number 3:

And our new number of the week was chosen as number 11:

A very happy new year to everyone and welcome back to school!  The children certainly seem to have come back having had a super break, feeling rested and ready to launch themselves back into lots of busy playing and learning.

This term our topic will be ‘Once Upon a Time’.  We will be immersing ourselves in the wonderful world of fairytales and reading lots of well-known stories.  This week, we started to have a think about some of the key features of fairytales, i.e. the sort of characters and settings we might expect to find in these types of books.

We all agreed we might well find a princess or two, perhaps a prince, a dragon and most likely, a big bad wolf! To challenge the children’s assumptions about what might happen to these characters we read two (less well-known) stories that contain rather unexpected twists!  Both are well-worth a re-read if you happen to come across them (the first can be found in Raynes Park Library and we have copies of the second in school).

As the children have now learnt all the phase 2 sounds, we moved on this week into phase 3 of the Letters & Sounds programme that we follow.

At this point, please take a moment to sit down with your child and have a look over the phase 2 sound mat (that we gave you at parents evening).  Your child should now feel confident recognising all of these sounds.

The first sound in phase 3 is j…which is for jelly of course!

“Wibble wobble wibble wobble jelly on a plate!”

We couldn’t resist the opportunity to make (and of course eat!) some jelly of our own.

Weekend challenge: Can you remember how we made our jelly? Can you write a list of the things we needed to make our jelly?

1.Break up the jelly cubes (“they are squidgy!”)

2.Pour in boiling hot water (“be careful, it is very hot!”)

3.Mix carefully (“the water is turning orange!”)

4.Add cold water and mix again (“it is not hot anymore”)

5.Put in the fridge (“we need to make it like jelly again!”)

6.Eat your jelly (“it’s yummy!”)

Here are the actions and mouth shapes for ‘j’ and the two other sounds we learnt this week (‘v’ and ‘w’).

We have also started learning the tricky words for phase 3.  This week we learnt ‘he‘ and ‘she‘.  We will be adding more tricky words to your child’s word pots over the coming weeks, so please continue to return the pots in your book bag each week, thank you!

Our Star of the Week did a fantastic job of filling up his number bag with all things to do with the number 12; we had an egg box, two toy train carriages with 6 windows on each, a shopping receipt showing £12 and a ruler showing 12cm!

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

Weekend Challenge:  Challenge someone in your family to a number battle! Can you explain what they have to do, just like we do in school? Here are some tricky number battles for you to try…can you find the next two numbers to start off these number battles?

4,5,_,_

9,8,_,_

15,14,_,_

2,4,_,_

10,8, _,_

Now have a go at thinking of your own two numbers to start off a number battle!

Finally, you might be interested to know that every Friday afternoon, it is Reception’s turn to visit our ICT suite in school.  The class is divided into three groups (i.e. each child visits once every three weeks) so that we can give the children more individualised support.  The children have been working very hard to practise using their mouse skills; moving it around, noticing when the arrow changes into a hand and clicking in the right place on the mouse!