This week, we listened to the story of the magic porridge pot which is based on one of the Grimm’s brothers’ fairy-tales, originally published in the 19th Century. You can re-listen to the story here. We loved learning the magic rhyme and luckily, when Miss Cronin discovered a magic porridge pot in the nursery kitchen, we were able to say it to get our own porridge bubbling away on the stove-top! Once it had cooled a little, we had a porridge party and (nearly all of us) decided that the porridge was delicious!

Please note, if your child tells you they have yet to make some porridge – they may be correct! We will be finishing off our porridge parties next week and making sure everyone has a turn.

Making porridge gave us an ideal opportunity to talk about how to keep ourselves safe in the kitchen and I was so impressed by the children’s knowledge! They knew not to touch kettles or stove-tops and not to touch or use knives without an adult helping them. Here are some more ideas for how to keep safe in the kitchen which you might like to talk about at home.

Another of our spotlight stories this week was the wonderful ‘A Chair for Baby Bear’ by Kaye Umansky which tells the tale of Baby Bear’s search for a new chair after Goldilock’s visit. You can revisit this story here. Our drawing club focus this week was on creating our own chairs for Baby Bear and we designed some wonderfully imaginative drawings including a shark chair that pulls you through the water, a fire and water chair, a rainbow chair and a chair filled with gadgets and remote controls!

In maths, we have been practising our subitising skills (‘don’t count, see the amount!’) and learning that 4 dots are still 4 dots no matter how the dots are arranged.

In our phonics lessons, we learnt two more special friends sounds: th ( as in thin, thick, Thursday) and ng (as in king, sing, ring, thing). Here are the sayings that go with these sounds:

We also learnt that there are some words which we are not decodable so we can’t use our Fred-talk to read them. These words are known as red words and we say ‘you can’t Fred a red!’

This week, we learnt the red words I (as in I am Miss Cronin) and the (as in the apple).

Here is a red words song we have been enjoying – although please note, we have not learnt all of these yet:

Our final spotlight story (which you can revisit here) kept us in the deep, dark wood where we met a big bad wolf and a little girl wearing red clothes…I wonder if you can think of another story where we meet those characters…

Have a lovely weekend everyone!

Welcome back to a new term at school and we hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas break.  The children have returned full of enthusiasm and news of their holidays and we have very much enjoyed catching up with them all.  They all look a little bit taller too!

This term, our spotlight stories will be inspired by the topic ‘Once Upon A Time’. We will be immersing ourselves in the wonderfully imaginative world of traditional tales and what better place to start than deep in the forest in the home of the three bears. Here is the classic story (from Parragon Books) which you might like to revisit with your child – you could turn the sound off and read it yourself – don’t forget to do different voices for the different bears or ask your child to join in and help you if you prefer!

Next, we read a different version of the story called ‘Goldilocks, Eat Your Greens’ by Steve Smallman which we loved! We talked about what the phrase ‘different version’ might mean and we used words like different and similar. You can revisit the story here – as before, why not turn the sound off and read it yourself.

This story helped us to think about healthy foods and we talked about the sort of foods we eat for breakfast everyday. We all agreed that while coco pops and pain au chocolat are yummy, we must try not to eat sugary foods everyday and save them instead for a treat now and again.

In our R.E. lessons this term, we will be learning about our wonderful world and what Christians believe happened in the beginning. To help us understand more about the word ‘beginning’, we then talked about what happens at the start of our day, for example, eating healthy foods for breakfast, getting dressed, brushing our teeth, walking to school and giving our grown-ups a big hug before waving goodbye for the day.

We also listened to a version of Goldilocks on BBC radio. Because this version was on the radio, without pictures, we had to use our extra special listening ears! You can listen to the story again at home if you like by following this link:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/school-radio/eyfs-listen-and-play-the-house-of-the-bears/zfj8gwx

We have now learnt all of the single sounds and this week, we learnt the sound sh (as in ship, sheep, fish, etc.) which is the first of several digraphs we will be learning. A digraph is a single sound (or phoneme) that is represented by two letters (or graphemes). In the Read, Write, Inc Phonics program that we use here at St. Matthew’s, we call digraphs ‘special friends’. When learning ‘special friends’, the picture prompt includes a saying to help the children remember the letters that make up the digraph:

Here is a reminder of all of the handwriting sayings we have learnt to date:

Have a lovely weekend everyone and stay warm!