Many thanks to everyone who came along to the parent evening meetings this week.  We hope you found your meeting useful and enjoyed getting an idea of what your child gets up to during the school day!

This week, we have continued to think carefully about the properties of 2D shapes and we have been looking for shapes in the world around us.

Weekend challenge: how many circles, triangles, squares and rectangles can you find at home?  Can you find any other 2D shapes?

The first sound in our sound bag this week was ‘o’.  When saying the sound, we made sure we were making the ‘o’ letter shape with our mouths and used our pointy finger to draw the ‘o’ shape around our mouths.  (Please note, there is a jolly phonics action for ‘o’ where the children pretend to turn a light switch on and off – the children didn’t learn this one as we felt reinforcing the letter shape was more important at this point but if you are using any jolly phonics resources at home please feel free to use both actions).

The next two sounds to come out of the bag were ‘c’ (curly ‘c’) and ‘k’ (kicking ‘k’), which have exactly the same sound and the same action.  We pretended we were Spanish dancers playing our casatanets as we said ‘c, c, c, c, c’ and ‘k, k, k, k, k’.

This week, we also introduced the idea of tricky words.  These are words that cannot be sounded out as they just don’t make sense when you try to do so.  For example, the tricky word ‘to’ sounds like ‘toh’ if you sound out the sounds ‘t’ and ‘o’and blend them together. So, instead of sounding out, tricky words need to be learnt on-sight as whole words.

Within phase 2 of the letters and sounds programme, there are five tricky words to learn ‘no, go, I, to, the’.

This week, we learnt the tricky words ‘go’ and ‘to‘. We said ‘hey, you’re a tricky word!  You can’t trick me!’ These tricky words were lurking all around the classroom, so we searched high and low to find them and feed them to Sharkey the Shark who thinks tricky words are delicious!  

Lots of words can be sounded out and it is really important at this stage that the children understand the difference.  Here are some words that can be sounded out and use all the sounds we have learnt so far.

sat, pat, tap, sap, as

it, is, sit, sat, pit, tip, pip, sip

an, in, nip, pan, pin, tin, tan, nap

am, man, mam, mat, map, Pam, Tim, Sam

dad, and, sad, dim, dip, din, did, Sid

tag, gag, gig, gap, nag, sag, gas, pig, dig

got, on, not, pot, top, dog, pop, God, Mog

can, cot, cop, cap, cat, cod

kid, kit, Kim, Ken

Weekend challenge: How many of these words can you read? Don’t forget to use your robot arms!

Welcome back everyone, we hope you all had a fun and restful half term break!

In Reception, we have jumped straight back into lots of very busy playing, exploring and learning.  We have been putting together a new role-play area (more details to follow…) and we have been learning the names and properties (e.g. number of sides and corners) of 2D shapes (i.e. circles, triangles, rectangles and squares).

This week, we have also been taking some time to think about what it means to be a good friend.  We read the story of the beautiful Rainbow Fish who learns how to make friends by sharing his shimmery scales and the story of George and Nepo (Kings of the Castle) who work out how to become friends even though they don’t speak the same language. These are both particularly lovely books if you have a chance to re-read them at home.

We also pulled three new sounds out of the sound bag.

First came ‘m’ and we used our imaginations to think about a delicious chocolate cupcake with ice-cream, chocolate sauce and sprinkles on top!  We all said ‘mmmmmm’ as we rubbed our tummies.  What is your favourite food? What makes you say ‘mmmmmm’!

Next came the sound ‘d’ and we all used our drumsticks to play our imaginary drums – d, d, d, d, d, d, d.

Finally, we read the story of Inky Mouse who puts the plug in the sink, fills it up with water and carefully washes his ears and whiskers.  When he’s nice and clean, he pulls the plug out of the sink and listens carefully as the water swirls down the plughole – g, g, g, g, g.

We have been working really hard this week to make sure we are saying the sounds correctly and not ‘dropping our lower jaw’ especially when we say sounds like ‘n’ (remember it’s not ‘nuh’) and ‘t’ (it’s not ‘tuh’).

Keep practising everyone!

A huge thank you to all the parents and carers who came to celebrate our Harvest festival in the Church on Friday.  And many thanks for all the donations of pasta which were gratefully received by Wimbledon Guild.  We hope everyone is having a lovely half term break!

This coming Friday (21st October) our Harvest Celebration will take place in St. Matthew’s Church.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/St+Matthew’s+Church+Wimbledon/@51.411839,-0.233871,15z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x17b05f5f474b3532!8m2!3d51.411839!4d-0.233871

Parents and carers are all most welcome to join us for the service which will start at 2pm.

Please note that after school pick-up will be straight from the Church at approx. 3pm.

When collecting your child in the Church, please bear with us as we will hand the children over one-by-one to ensure everyone has been collected and we will ask the children not to go to you until we have called their name.  Most importantly, please do not leave with your child without making sure we have seen you together.

We will bring water bottles, snack bags/boxes and lunch bags with us to the Church, so please remember to collect these before leaving.

Finally, Reception class are collecting packets of pasta for our Harvest box which is donated to Wimbledon Guild.  We will be putting our box together all this week, so please send in your donation if you are able to.

Many thanks for all your support!

Here’s a handout from a website called Twinkl that I think explains quite nicely how phonics (letter sounds) are used when learning to read.  Hope you find it helpful!

Guide-For-Parents-How-To-Help-Your-Child-Read-Using-Phonics

This week, we pulled three new sounds out of the sound bag.  They are ‘p‘, ‘i‘ and ‘n‘.

When practising ‘p’, we pretended our pointy (index) finger was a birthday cake candle that we were blowing out.  When you say ‘p’, you’ll notice a short puff of air on your fingertip.

When saying ‘i’, we made sure our lips stretched right back into a grimace and we could see each other’s teeth.  It’s very easy to muddle ‘i’ with ‘e’, so we tried to think of the sound at the start of ‘igloo’.  Our action for ‘i’ is to wiggle our fingers on the end of our noses, pretending to be Inky the mouse; Inky is a character from the Jolly Phonics stories that we dip in and out of.

When learning ‘n’, we pretending to be airplanes putting our arms out as wings.  The ‘n’ sound is a bit like an engine sound, with your tongue tucked up on the roof of your mouth.  Be careful not to drop your jaw – it’s not ‘nuh’!

A real highlight of the St. Matthew’s calendar this coming Friday at 6pm.

Our Autumn term topic in Reception is ‘Who am I’?

Please find our topic booklet and song sheet below…

topic letter to reception parents October 2016 who am I

Word for who am I songs reception

We are always in need of resources for our junk modelling area and would be grateful for any donations of:

• small boxes and tubs (plastic or cardboard)
• cardboard rolls (toilet and kitchen)
• egg boxes
• plastic lids (bottle tops, margarine lids, etc.)
• ribbons, string, wool, buttons, sequins, material scraps
• anything else of an interesting shape or feel from your recycling box!

Many thanks!

• We would like to remind everyone that all toys and treasures should stay at home where they can be kept nice and safe.
• If children have made or written something at home we would love them to bring these things in and we’ll do our best to find some time for them to share their work with the rest of the class.
• Similarly, the children are always encouraged to bring things in related to our current topic (please check the current topic booklet for suggestions – you can find this on the handout tab of this blog).