The children were introduced to some very important visitors this week; their very own mini-mes!  Mini-mes are miniature versions of the children that they can hold, move around and stand up by themselves. They are a fantastic way of encouraging the development of both communication & language skills and personal, social and emotional skills through imaginative and real-world role-play.

Naturally, they have been a great hit and many have already been taken on adventures around the classroom and out into the playground.  We are chronicling their adventures on a display in the classroom so do take a look next time you visit.  So far, a mini-me has already come face to face to with a large earthworm whilst adventuring through the undergrowth in the nursery playground!  While another needed emergency medical treatment after breaking his arm.  Luckily, he was taken straight to the doctor’s office for emergency treatment including arm bandaging!

In our phonics lessons, we learnt two new sounds.  The first was ‘k’ which makes exactly the same sound and has the same action as ‘c’, which we learnt last week.  To distinguish between the two, we refer to ‘c’ as ‘curly c’ and to ‘k’ as ‘kicking k’.

The second sound we learnt was ‘ck’ which, as you can see, is actually two letters.  Even though this sound is made up of two letters, it only makes one sound, not two.  We call these types of sounds ‘digraphs’ or ‘holding hands sounds’ and we link our thumbs together, as if holding hands, when we see them.

The sound that ‘ck’ makes is exactly the same as the sounds ‘c’ and ‘k’.  The action (pretending to play castanets) is also the same.

Weekend challenge: can you read the word duck, using your robot arms?  Can you think of any other ‘ck’ words? Can you make a list of them?

The children were also introduced to 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’, ‘to‘ and ‘I’.  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 Sharky 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!  Perhaps you could write some too?

In our maths lessons this week we have been practising our counting and reasoning skills. We played a game of beanbag toss alongside a partner and then counted to see how many beanbags we had tossed into our hoop and how many we had tossed outside of our hoop.  We also compared our numbers with our partner’s hoop.  When we are thinking about numbers, we always try to explain how we know our answer to be true.

To support the children’s understanding of how number is represented in both written form and by quantity, we have introduced a ‘number of the week’.  Each week, the child who has been our star of the week will be given the challenge of filling up a number bag with objects/photos/pictures of the number of the week.  This week, our star did a fantastic job of filling up his bag with all sorts of things to do with the number 6 and he presented the contents of his bag to the class.  Well done!

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

Welcome back to the second half of the Autumn Term!  We hope everyone had an enjoyable and restful half term break.  The children have jumped straight back into lots of very busy playing, exploring and learning.

This week we have been talking about Bonfire Night and how to keep ourselves safe around bonfires and fireworks.  Here are some of the important safety rules we talked about:

We also used our ‘listening ears’ and our ‘looking eyes’ to think about the sounds and sights created by fireworks in the night sky.  We made some fantastic firework pictures using shiny paint and interesting tools (i.e. the tips of cotton buds and the ends of toilet rolls).

Afterwards, we created silhouettes to add to our firework pictures.  This was a great opportunity to practise using prepositions and the names of 2D shapes correctly as we selected and placed the shapes along a piece of black card.  We then drew a line along the top of the shapes and carefully cut along the line to create the effect of a silhouette of buildings.

And here are our completed pictures!  Well done Reception, you can almost hear the fireworks “popping” and “booming” into the night sky!

Weekend challenge: Have a go at practising using prepositions correctly.   Use a favourite teddy or toy and take it on an adventure around your home or bedroom.  Try putting it under, above, next to, in, on, behind, in front of and in between something.  Perhaps you could even take some photos of your teddy’s travels and write some labels or captions to go with the photos showing each time exactly where your teddy is in relation to the objects around it.  Bon voyage!

In our phonics lessons this week, we learnt three new sounds: ‘g’, ‘o’ and ‘c’.  Here are the actions and mouth shapes for each of these sounds.

We also started some very special music lessons this week!  One of our St. Matthew’s mums, who many of you will already know, came to work with the children to develop their understanding and sense of musicality.  The children loved their first session and we are so delighted that Leilani will be coming back every week to work with the class.

Finally, we welcomed a new classmate in Reception this week.  As we do not post children’s names on our blog, please do take a moment to ask your child the name of the new boy.  I am sure you will all join me in wishing him and his family a very warm welcome to Oak Class and St. Matthew’s.

Please look out for this letter and your child’s QR code coming home today:

Dear Reception Parents and Carers,

As you know, we collect observations of your child throughout the day as they play and learn in our Reception class here at St. Matthew’s.

These observations help us to build up a profile of their learning and development across the 17 areas of the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile.

We currently use an app called Seesaw to collect and file these observations.  Every half term, we plan to enable parental access to this app so that you can find out more about what your child has been doing at school.

We are sending home a QR code that is unique to your child’s Seesaw profile.  Please follow the included instructions to create a Seesaw account and view your child’s observations online.

Please note:

1. Seesaw access will only be open from Saturday 21^st October until Sunday 29^th October (i.e. during half-term).
2. Seesaw will be open again during parent’s evenings as well as during each half term and over the Christmas and Easter breaks.
3. At the end of the year, you will be invited to download a zip file of your child’s profile.
4. Any photos within your child’s profile that include other children from our class must never be reposted or shared on any social media account – thank you for your understanding!
5. Finally, we welcome your feedback and would encourage you to add comments to your child’s observations on Seesaw (for example, you could add to an observation if you child has followed up on their learning at home perhaps through a conversation with you or something they made or wrote).

Do feel free to ask if you have any further questions.

Kind regards,

Miss Cronin

This week, all the children at St. Matthew’s thought about how they can keep themselves safe when they are online.  We all learnt a new safety code that we will be using to remind themselves about how to keep safe when we go online to play games or look at videos.

First, the children need to remember to ‘zip it’ – in other words, they shouldn’t tell anyone online their name, their age or where they go to school – just like they wouldn’t tell a stranger in the park these things.  Second, the children need to remember to block it; meaning they shouldn’t click on videos, games or pop-ups they are not sure about.  And finally, the children need to remember to flag it; they should go to a trusted adult (‘flag it up’) if they do see something online that makes them feel worried or uncomfortable.

We have also been busy learning 3 new sounds this week.  They are ‘p’, ‘i’ and ‘n’.  Here are the actions and mouth shapes for these sounds.

Weekend challenge: can you remember the six sounds we have learnt so far? Can you remember the actions? How many different words can you make with the six sounds we know? (e.g. sat, pat, pin…)

In our maths lessons, we have been working hard to recognise numerals and show that we understand the quantities that different numerals represent.

Finally, we have been very busy practising for our Harvest celebration which will take place next Friday.  We have been learning a poem about a little brown seed.  If you have time, please do practise the poem with your child as we are trying to learn the words by heart! (Please note, we say ‘sprinkle’ and ‘twinkle’ twice, not three times).

Thank you!

We continued with our topic work this week by taking another peek inside our bodies.  This time, we had a think about something you can’t actually see, even with an X-ray! It’s something that we often say you will find inside your heart – our feelings.

We read a lovely story all about the different feelings we might have and some of the reasons we might be feeling these things.  The children were so eloquent when it came to expressing their thoughts about their own feelings and many of them shared different situations that have made them feel happy, sad, excited, scared and shy.

Later in the week, we also had a think about how we can tell what a person is feeling in their heart and we all agreed that you can usually tell by looking at someone’s face.  We then read the delightful story of Beegu, an alien who arrives on planet Earth in search of friendship.  Throughout the story, Beegu finds herself in some situations that make her feel sad and others that make her feel happy.  The children looked very carefully at the illustrations in the story and realised that whenever Beegu had her ears up, she was feeling happy inside.  Whenever she felt sad, she had her ears down.

One of the prime areas of the Early Years Curriculum is called Managing Feelings and Behaviour and as part of this area, the children are expected to be able to “talk about how they and others show feelings”.

Weekend challenge: Have a look at the photos below.  How do you think the child is feeling inside? Why do you think they might be feeling like this?  Have you ever felt like this?  What happened to make you feel like this?

We also continued with our phonics lessons this week; learning two new sounds ‘a‘ and ‘t‘.  When saying ‘a’, remember to open your mouth wide, as if eating an apple (this is also the action that we learnt for ‘a’).  When saying ‘t’, remember it is a very quiet sound – it is not ‘tuh’ so be careful you don’t drop your jaw too far when saying this one!

As we had already learnt the sound ‘s’ last week, we now knew three sounds ‘s’, ‘a’ and ‘t’ and we were ready to start making words!  We had a go at making the words ‘at’ and ‘sat’.  The first thing we needed to do was pull these words apart to listen for the individual sounds – so Miss Cronin sound-walked the words while the children counted the sounds on their fingers.  We then chose the correct graphemes (letters – in printed form) in the correct order starting with the first sound, then the middle sound and finally the last sound.  The last step was to squeeze the sounds back together again to make the word we needed!  Well done Reception!

In our maths lessons, we spent lots of time thinking about the names and properties of 2D shapes, including a heart!  We talked about the number of sides and corners that a circle, a triangle, a square and a rectangle have.  We also talked about shapes that have curvy sides and shapes that have straight sides.

Weekend challenge: Can you think of a shape that has 1 curvy side and 1 flat side? Can you find some different 2D shapes in your house?

Finally, we have been continuing to enjoy singing our number songs together.  Here’s another one for you to try singing to together at home (please note, we have been singing ‘knock on the door’ instead of ‘open the door’ – but this version is the closest I could find to the one we use – enjoy!):

Our Harvest Festival will take place at St.Matthew’s Church in Durham Road on Friday 20th October at 2pm.  

You are most welcome to come to the service.

Please note that the children should be collected from the Church that day rather than from school.  If your child normally goes to after school club on a Friday we will walk them back to school.

Our class has been asked to collect bags of pasta to support the work of Wimbledon Guild as part of the Harvest Festival.  If you would like to contribute, please hand your donation to anyone of us at the classroom door from today onwards.

Many thanks!

It is hard to believe that we are already here at the end of September! Since the start of term, the children have been doing a fantastic job of settling into their new classroom, making new friends and getting used to the school routine.  We have all been very impressed, so thank you parents and carers for all the support you have given them and us!

Our topic this term is ‘Take a Peek’ and we have been busy ‘taking a peek’ inside our bodies by reading the story of ‘Funny Bones’ and thinking about the things we might find inside our bodies such a bones, a heart, a brain and lungs.  The children were fascinated when they met ‘Fred’, our skeleton, who is currently visiting the classroom and they produced some amazing skeleton pictures of their own!

As we explained at the meet the teacher meeting, the children will have phonics lessons most days this year.  This week, we started these lessons by introducing the idea that letters make sounds and we pulled our very first letter (letter s) out of the sound bag.  We listened carefully to the sound (sssss) that this letter makes.  Please note, our main focus this year is on letter sounds and not letter names, although we do mention these too!

When making the sound, we thought carefully about the shape we make with our mouths and we checked our friends mouth shapes to see if we could see their teeth as they said the sound.

We also used an action to help us remember the sound; we made a snake with our hand as we said the sound.

This sound is the first one within phase 2 of the letters and sounds programme that we follow here at St. Matthew’s.  You can find out more about this phonics programme here: http://www.letters-and-sounds.com.

Remember, you can check how the sounds should sound by watching this video clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqhXUW_v-1s

Weekend Challenge:  look around your house or bedroom…how many things can you find that start with the letter s?  Can you find anything that ends with the letter s?

In our maths lessons, we have been singing lots of number songs.  Here’s one that you might like to sing at home too:

We have also been learning to recognise the different numicon pieces that we will be using to help us with our numbers this year.

Weekend Challenge: can you remember which number is which colour?

A very warm welcome to all the parents and carers of our new Reception class.  We hope you will find this blog useful and that it will help you to support your child’s learning at home.

Many thanks to all of you who came along to the Meet the Teacher meeting yesterday. If you were unable to make it, it is not a problem – please do check your child’s tray next week for copies of the handouts and feel free to ask if you have questions.  You will also find the presentation from the meeting (including our class timetable) here: meet the teacher 2017.

Monday 17th July:

• Summer reading scheme assembly (with Raynes Park library staff)
• Transition afternoon
• Open evening

Tuesday 18th July:

• Sports day (come to school dressed in P.E. kit and remain in kit all day, don’t forget school caps and water bottles).
• Parents welcome to come and watch.
• P.E. kits do not need to be returned to school after sports day.

Friday 21st July:

• Last day of term – school finishes 2pm.

Please return book bags, all books and little yellow reading record books if you have not already done so.  Many thanks!