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!