Tiny Turtles

Here is the curriculum web for this Half Term. Although not at school for the next few weeks at least, I thought it may offer you some insight into what is going to be covered in my daily plans for the home learning tasks to try and keep the children on track in all areas of their learning. 

You need:

• 2 cups plain flour (all purpose this can be substituted fir gluten free flour too)
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil  (baby oil and coconut oil work too)
• 1/2 cup salt
• 2 tablespoons cream of tartar
• 1 to 1.5 cups boiling water (adding in increments until it feels just right)
• gel food colouring (optional)

• few drops glycerine ( for stretch and shine- but this is optional)

Method

• Mix the flour, salt, cream of tartar and oil in a large mixing bowl
• Add food colouring (and glitter if you want) to the boiling water then this mixture into the dry ingredients

• Stir continuously until it becomes a sticky, combined dough
• Add the glycerine (optional)
• Allow it to cool down then take it out of the bowl and knead it vigorously for a couple of minutes until all of the stickiness has gone. * This is the most important part of the process, so keep at it until it’s the perfect consistency!*
• If it remains a little sticky then add a touch more flour until just right
• Keep in an air tight container

 Click to view and download all the exciting things we'll be learning this term: 

It was lovely to see all of the children embrace the 'When I grow up' dress up day on Friday. This not only rounded up the whole half term's learning, but it also brought with it so many learning opportunities. All week the children were so excited about their costumes, writing about these, drawing pictures of what they would look like, and role playing their chosen occupation.

Thank you to those who also attended the song at the end of the day. The room was full to the brim and the children's confidence during this was outstanding.  

As part of our enterprise week, we were lucky enough to have a visit from some ladies who work at Pets At Home. They informed us about what their day at work usually looks like and also bought some furry friends in for us to meet. The children asked some fantastic questions about their occupations and also about how to look after the guinea pigs. 

The children had a fun filled day learning about many different traditions celebrated on Chinese New Year. They made lanterns and decorated these with fortune cats, tasted some new foods and took part in a dance workshop. The children were so immersed in all this learning and kept asking questions, keen to learn more about this celebration. 

To help the children learn shape names and their properties, we made shape pizza during maths! They picked different shaped ingredients, described these and then put them on their triangle piece of pizza! They did a great job and remembered most names.

They will be bringing their pizza home for you to cook later. 

 Dear Parents and Carers,

I hope you had a lovely Christmas and would like to wish you all a Happy New Year. I am extremely proud of the children for their enthusiasm and confidence during the Nativity play, they all tried exceptionally hard in front of some very large audiences which is understandably quite nerve wracking for some. We hope you enjoyed it also.

 This half term our topic is ‘Real Life Superheroes.’ Here the children will explore lots of different occupations and discover their roles in helping us with day to day tasks. We will split the topic into areas such as People who help us; at home, at school, stay healthy, get food and keep safe. In the final week of this topic we will then look at what the children would like to be when they grow up! This will be celebrated with a “When I grow up” dress up day where the children will be invited to dress up as the occupation they would like to do when they grow up.  I am also looking to invite people of different occupations in to class in order to talk about their roles and develop the children’s questioning skills, if you would like to come in and talk about your profession then please let me know.  

English (Communication, Language & Literacy)
We will be focusing on looking at non-fiction texts this half-term. Here we will be exploring how these differ from picture books and identifying some of their key features. We will also include the talk4writing practice that some of you witnessed on the video posted on Class Dojo of our rendition of Jack and The Beanstalk. This encourages children to organise facts as well as recognise language used when writing them down.  Using similar techniques we will also learn a version of the story ‘Cops and Robbers’ by Allen Ahlberg.

 The children will be encouraged to use full sentences when writing and break their flow of speech into words. We will be looking for them to use capital letters, finger spaces and full stops, so any support at home with this would be very useful. 

The children will be given a range of opportunities to utilise these skills this half term with different activities such as creating posters to promote helpfulness at school or writing about what a doctor might need in their bag.  The children will also be completing a weekly independent writing activity to further develop their confidence to form sentences and words using their own knowledge as some of the children have become extremely reliable on adult presence when writing, and are reluctant to have a go. We have tried this out last term and it has been extremely successful and the progress made already has been amazing.

I have noticed that some children are still very dependent on adult support when writing. If children do any writing at home I advise that you help them plan it by saying the sentences together a number of times, marking each word by using your fingers (a video will be posted on dojo about how to do this) and then leaving your child to write the sentence on their own. This may be a challenge at first, but it will help them read over their work to see what sounds come next as well as develop their critical thinking skills, enabling them to sequence their own ideas. Once they have completed this, I would recommend going over their writing and correcting one or two things such as letter formation, or adding in some missing sounds. This again encourages your child to think about reading over their work and editing it.

Phonics
We are continuing with Phase 3 of letters and sounds this half term where children will continue to pick up new digraphs (2 letters which make one sound eg ai as in r/ai/n .) They will also be introduced to trigraphs, (3 letters which make 1 sound eg igh as in t/ight/t) new tricky and HFW and also encourage the blending and segmenting of CVCC words (as in frog).

It is vital that children practice their reading and writing at home as well as school as it consolidates their understanding and also heightens their confidence. Also please may I express the importance of letting the children use their robot talk to isolate each sound in a word independently, and not being given a word to copy as this makes them reluctant to have a go on their own and hinders their progress. I can often tell which children are reliant on their parents for this when it comes to writing in school. Please can I also encourage the use of cursive letters in all writing otherwise it will confuse children in the future if they are swapping.  

Maths
Shape will be our focus this half term where the children will be looking at repeating patterns first, before moving into identifying 2d and 3d shapes and their properties. Although main teaching and activities will have this focus, we will still incorporate daily number starters and focus on this in Friday maths lessons to ensure the children’s number sense continues to develop. To support your child in this area you could begin to look at shapes in the environment and allow them to play and construct with various shaped items to make images and models to develop their understanding of tessellation and edges.  Please note I will be using the term ‘rectangle’ and not oblong, due to recent studies suggesting this is the correct name for this shape!

Passport
Children are making great progress in completing their passport targets. We will be focusing on ‘solving a problem without arguing’ this half term and try and encourage children to use communication and kind gestures to keep play going when challenges may occur.

Boys (and girls!) Learning
Emotional development- “Many boys have difficulty naming and expressing their own feelings. Sometimes they just know they don’t feel quite right. Some boys don’t have the words to identify the feeling of being sad, cross, scared or worried. Therefore it is vitally important that we help boys to understand and express their emotions. Sometimes boys can find it difficult to read non-verbal cues and may respond inappropriately.” – Gary Wilson. With this in mind we have been trying to develop the children’s understanding and expression of their feelings as without the ability to do so, they often will have difficulty empathising and building relationships with others. I have included some more information about emotional development towards the end of this newsletter.
A few further bits of information:

• PE will continue to be on Thursday and Friday.
• We will be inviting you in to hear a song we will be learning to celebrate ‘people who help us.’ This will be on the same date as the dress up day, just before home time. Dates will be confirmed in the next week for this.
• We are in desperate need of parent helpers to listen to readers at school. If you are able to give up an hour of your time, then please let me know.
• If you have any questions about anything in this letter then please do not hesitate to ask. I look forward to another fun filled half term.
• Independence is key this half term in order to help the children make good progress. To help this you could encourage children to do little jobs at home such as set the table, make their bed, match socks etc and this in turn should help them regain their independence and allow them to redeem critical thinking skills, encouraging them to process information by themselves and act on what they have heard with little adult intervention. If independence is lacking, children will find making progress very difficult as they become reliant on an adult doing absolutely everything for them which is not beneficial in the long run.
• Some children have mentioned that they still have dummies. As mentioned at my phonics workshop this can be very detrimental to their speech and language at this age as dummies can make teeth growth irregular and also stop muscles in their tongue from developing properly which can make speech slurred due to correct tongue placement being difficult.

Thank you for your continued support,

Miss Jolly

 Click to view and download all the exciting things we'll be learning this term:

This week the children have been learning how we can alter traditional tales and came up with some ideas about what animals Jack could sell instead of a cow in the story of ‘Jack And The Beanstalk.‘ I had to share these with you as the children were so imaginative and the work shown in the photo was done with good levels of independence. 

A favourite activity this week was experimenting with watercolour paints to mix and blend colours together to make magic beans. Many of the children decided to visit this activity multiple times throughout the week and create different patterned and coloured beans. They found it fascinating to watch the paint spread when mixed with lots of water or the vibrant colours created when using less water. 

 It is lovely to see some of the effort the children put into the drawings on the Anti-Bullying T-shirts some of them made for the fashion show. The messages were very clear about kindness and putting a stop to bullying. Well done to Mason who was voted the winner by the anti-bullying ambassadors.

Anti-bullying week was lovely this year. The children showed good understanding about what bullying looks like and what to do if someone is unkind to them. They also explored the idea about how we can be kind to others in different ways such as through compliments and it was lovely to see the compliments you wrote on the bookmarks for your child. 

 On Friday the children started making their poppies as a mark of respect for armistice day. It was lovely that so many of the children already knew why we wear poppies and who we think about at this time and discussed this as they painted. On Monday 11th November we will send these home with your child which you are welcome to hang on the fence at the back of the playground. 

 This week we have been learning about Diwali and today the children were writing about the characters from the story of Rama and Sita. Wow, is all I can say! Some of the children wrote fantastic sentences with limited adult support. They used their sound knowledge to isolate each sound in every word and used neat handwriting to record these. I have included only some of the fantastic work from today as examples so you can see what your child should be working towards.

Dear Parents/Carers,

Welcome back, I hope you had a restful break after such a busy, but fantastic first half term. I am extremely pleased with how the children are settling in and can already see some brilliant progress as they embrace all the new topics and learning concepts I keep sending their way. Autumn 2 is going to be another action packed half term, particularly with all the celebrations in the run up to Christmas, which is always an extremely exciting time of year for the children.

Thank you to those who attended Parents evening at the end of the last half term. It was lovely to share with you what they have been up to and the progress they have made.

Topic
This half term we will be looking at Traditional Tales. We will be focusing on exploring the language included in these books, different character roles and beginning to learn how we can be authors and change elements of a story ourselves. We will also be learning about celebrations and family traditions such as Diwali, Firework night and Christmas.  To help your children develop in this area it would be great to share some of your favourite traditional tales as well as the more modern ‘messed up fairy tales’ which often tell the stories from a different perspective. This will help extend the children’s vocabulary even further and also explore the concept of differing narratives.

Phonics
The children are rapidly picking up each new sound introduced, as well as the skills needed to read and write words and captions. Due to their hard work, we will be finishing Phase 2 in the second week back and then move onto Phase 3 where more sounds will be introduced as well as high frequency words(HFW) and common exception words (Tricky words.) New bookmarks will be coming home with your child. If you could attach these to the others on your reading log then this would be great. I have had a few parents say that their child is a little reluctant to read at home. This could be due to a number of things such as time of day, lack of understanding of the narrative so it therefore becomes boring, or un-engagement. To try and help with these issues I would firstly suggest picking the reading time according to your child’s mood. If you know your chid is more responsive in the mornings, try and have a morning cuddle and spend 5-10 minutes reading before the morning kicks in.  In order to hook the child into the narrative and also help them learn how to understand these through the use of pictures and text you could first act out what you think will happen using the pictures to help before ‘being a detective’ and actually reading the story to see if they were correct.

The word cards sent home are helping develop children’s reading skills and with continual practice will develop into them being able to sight read these so that new ones can be sent home too.

Literacy
Literacy will focus on encouraging children to use their phonic knowledge to segment words in order to build sentences with less adult support as previously needed, due to the majority showing great understanding of how to use skills taught in phonics lessons to do this. We will also be using ‘talk 4 writing’ methods to look at Jack and the Beanstalk.

I will be including lots of videos on Class dojo so that you can see how talk 4 writing is used to develop children’s language and understanding of the features of a book. This will give you insight into little activities that can be done at home to help develop these further. I will also be showing you how we encourage children to write independently, without copying words and going over dots to help them grow into independent writers.

Maths
This half term we will continue to focus on number work. This includes recognising numerals to 20, (or beyond) counting accurately and matching totals to a number, adding 1 more than to a number, estimating totals with realistic answers. We will also be introducing combining groups to find the total (simple addition) and then recording this using the plus symbol. Finally in week 7 we will be beginning to look at simple patterns, ready to lead us to shape in the Spring term.  Any additional number learning at home will benefit your child’s number sense. Your children have really enjoyed some of the number songs I have introduced so I have included links to these below. Song to 100- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0dJWfQHF8Y  I have noticed that there are some children who have come to school lacking any number knowledge or number sense making it difficult to recognise numbers 1-10 and count out totals to match each numeral. Any additional practice at home would help develop these skills quickly.  You can also use the number games I have created on the home learning section of the website.

Home Learning
The response to the writing home learning activities has been fantastic and the children are consolidating skills learnt at school very quickly by practising them at home too. This will continue over Autumn 2 and I will now include a maths activity linked to what we have been learning in school. It has been fantastic to see how many children get excited about this weekly, and I see a huge difference in the children who complete it regularly. May I remind you it is not compulsory, however strongly recommended that this is completed as again it consolidates skills and builds independence.

Reading Records
There will be a green box next to the book bag box as of this half term. Please could reading records be put in this every morning as we will be starting to do individual reading with your children. This way it will make it easier for us to let you know how your child has got on during these sessions. We will continue to change books weekly every Monday.

Boys Learning Update
I have included two more information sheets about how to support early literacy development with a little questionnaire to help you asses the level that your child is at currently and some ideas to further support them. Please note it does state on it that ‘too much pressure at an early age can create literacy difficulties.’ This is extremely important as pressure can lead to low self-esteem and also reluctance. This doesn’t mean you give up trying if your child is a little reluctant, it means you try new strategies to engage them. I have also included some maths ideas for home. Again these are not focused solely on boys and would be very useful for both genders learning development.

Bear Adventure Book
As of this half term I will be introducing the ‘Bear Adventures Book.’ The child who receives the star award on a Friday will get to take home a little box with 2 bear dolls in and a selection of clothes. Your child will then have to dress them appropriately (independently to help fine motor development) and take them on an adventure. They will then draw a picture of the bears or take a photo and write a sentence showing what they have been up to for the week. This only has to be one page, however if you would like to complete more that is fine. The bears will be sent home on a Friday and returned the following Friday, allowing you enough time to complete it. Please be aware I am not looking for correctly spelt sentences as the children are not at this stage and this is a clear indicator that lots of adult input has been given. I am looking for children to sound out words using their phonics, however they may need you to repeat the words to do so and also reminding of what these sounds look like by pointing them out on the alphabet mats sent home. I look forward to seeing what the bears get up to when in your care.

Additional information

• Any reply slips or notes in book bags may get missed as we sometimes do not get the opportunity to check them. With this in mind, please hand all slips to the class teacher. If your child is being brought to school by an out of school club or child minder, please pass the slip to them so that they can hand it to us.
• We have already had lots of forms returned for wreath making, please make sure these are returned soon if you want to attend a workshop so you don’t miss out on a space.
  
  Yours Sincerely,

 Miss Jolly

Click to view and download all the exciting things we'll be learning this term: 

For Black History day we have been exploring Mary Secole and Lewis Hamilton. We have made herbal remedies, car models and racing cars around different tracks.

The children were fascinated by both their lives and enjoyed asking many questions to find out more about each.  

Thank you so much for all those who attended the family breakfast this morning. I hope you enjoyed spending quality time with your child and taking part in the various activities. I must say you are a very creative bunch! The children have not stopped smiling since you left and saying how much they enjoyed having their loved ones in the classroom.
Thank you also to the people who donated food or money towards the resources needed for the activities, without this we wouldn't be able to put on such events.

Please leave some feedback about the event below. 

Here is a video I put together with the information I gave to those who attended the Phonics information evening. I hope this is useful. I have also added the actual presentation that I used on the day. They are very similar, just one a little bit more fancy! If you have any questions then please don't hesitate to ask.  

 Wow, what a busy day! Reception definitely showcased their extensive energy levels today, giving their all in every physical activity that we took part in! We started the day with Yoga, then we had an active maths lesson before taking on some personal challenges at break and lunch times. This included counting how many times you could hop, jumping over an obstacle, or holding a wall squat. We then played games with a parachute which led to lots of giggles and still, somehow, an abundance of energy, so we finished the day with a group dance!

I hope your children sleep well tonight! 

 Every week I keep asking if the children want to keep the sand in the classroom or change it and every week they vote that it stays! In order to keep it engaging and encourage different areas of learning to be exercised I do keep adding small components into it. First it was socks, then glue and water and this week I decided to put tubes and funnels in it. The discussion this has generated from the children as they worked to fill the tubes up or problem solved how to try and make it pour through the funnels was incredible. The children even created their own races, working in teams to see who could fill the tubes up quicker and tried various methods and tools to help speed up the operation. It has been a simple but effective activity.

 Reading at home is vital to help your children consolidate skills learnt at school, as well as develop essential comprehension skills needed to take meaning from the text. With this in mind I have created a video showcasing different ideas you can do at home to help your child blend words together, develop sight recognition skills and read full sentences in books, all whilst ensuring they understand what they are actually reading. 

We have sent out similar word cards to those used in the videos so that you can practice reading these with your child, with the hope that they will read these by sight. 

Thank you to Lily for taking part in the video. Please note, children will all be at different stages of reading, but there are ideas included in this video to suit all children within the class.

I hope it is helpful and will be filming some more ideas soon. 

 Giving children opportunities to explore a broad range of vocabulary is very important in Reception so every week we introduce 'wow words' to the class. We will explore the varied meanings they have in a variety of contexts. This is supposed to improve the children's speech, writing and also their confidence, particularly for those who currently have limited vocabulary skills.

In order to do this I have gathered the common language which children already have prior knowledge of, which is linked to our topic (Tier 1 of pyramid.) I then went through the key text we are using this half term and picked words which have many different meanings or may be a little confusing to understand due to limited experiences with these. (Tier 2) We will introduce 1 or 2 of these words a week and look at it in depth  to encourage children to understand it's meaning, use it in context and embed it in their mind. We then have subject specific words (Tier 3) which children will access throughout the topic.

I will be displaying the pyramid on the learning wall in the corridor and highlighting the words we have explored so you can use them at home too. I also invite you to add to Tier 1 of the pyramid with any topic based language your child seems to use a lot and have a good understanding of, this in turn may encourage us and parents to also incorporate these words into our learning

This week we have had two very popular activities, both linked to maths again! The boys in particular have really enjoyed exploring the number garage. I labelled the cars with number stickers and then created parking spaces in the garage, again by numbering these. The children then had to match the numeral on the car, to that on the parking space and park it. This helps their numeral recognition with numerals from 0 all the way to 20.  This could also be done with making either the labels on the cars or parking spaces dots for the children to count and match this to a numeral. This also encourages hand strength and communication skills as they talk to their peers to discuss where they are parking their car.

The second activity was a very simple number decoration task. The children had a large selection of collage materials for them to stick on numerals of their choice. This again had numerous learning opportunities, such as fine motor skill development as they picked up and placed sequins and small parts, as well as encouraging them to be imaginative as they considered where to place each item. This could be adapted at home with children looking through magazines to find numerals the same as their chosen one and sticking these on.

We have been very busy this morning, making self-portrait pizzas! The children did a wonderful job at explaining what they were using to create their unique features, as well as discussing other ways that make them special, such as their interests. The children will be bringing these home for you to cook and enjoy later. 

This week we are officially starting our daily Phonics lessons, as the children seem more settled and ready to learn. Here we learn one sound a day and then use these in a range of activities to develop the skills for them to read and write.

Here are this weeks sounds, please ensure that if your child practices at home, they include the lead in and lead out line seen in these videos, otherwise it can really confuse your child and result in very messy letter formation. If you need any more help with this then please ask as I know it is also a massive learning curve for parents too.  

 This week the children have enjoyed matching numerals and quantities using padlocks and keys.
This is a very simple activity that brings with it many learning opportunities, some of which include: strengthening of fine motor skills as they turn the keys, number recognition, problem solving and perseverance.

If you would like to try similar at home, all you will need is various padlocks and keys, (I picked a multi-pack up from Pound Land) sticky labels and some key fobs.

You will then need to draw numerals or dots on the labels and stick these on the padlock and fob so that when they are matched, the padlock will open. I make this slightly more engaging by locking the padlocks on hooks that are screwed into a log and have small teddies or toys that need rescuing once the padlock has been opened.

If you would like any more maths or phonics ideas to do with your child at home, please visit this page on our website.

I have sent the first set of reading books home this week for you and your child to use to retell stories based on the images. If your child is ready, they can also see what sounds and words they can find on the page. Along with the books, I have also sent home some guidance on how to tackle reading with your little ones and get the most learning out of it.

Please find this below in case it has been misplaced.

 We are nearing the end of the first full week at school and I just wanted to take the time to say how proud I am of every single child. They are trying exceptionally hard with all of the rules and routines and have shown great confidence around lots of new faces. 

There may be a few more tears in the mornings towards the end of the week as their little bodies adjust to the busy school week. This is perfectly normal and hopefully will soon stop all together.

Well done to the children, but also to you parents as I know it can be emotional sending your children to school and getting your head around it too.

Click to view and download all the exciting things we'll be learning this term: