Newsletter 26.9.14

Dear Parents,

we have had a very busy week learning our new story Superworm, going to the field doing worm dancing. Learning how to do careful counting and practising writing our new sounds. Its no wonder we are so tired on Fridays when we work that hard!

This week we have learnt the letters n,m,d. Miss Irwin taught a rude way to remember how to write our d so we don’t get it mixed up with other letters. She says we have to draw a big curly bum first, then go up the stick and down the stick. The is makes a d. It seems to help us remember which way to do it. We know we can only use the ‘big bum’ term when we are writing our d’s.

In our careful counting we have been practicing counting objects one at a time with our counting finger. Some of us can count really high. WOO HOO!

Next week we will be learning more about insects and worms. We will be making our own Superworm and wormery. In Maths we will continue to count carefully, recognise our numbers, practice forming our numbers and to see if we can recognise bigger and smaller groups. In phonics we will be practicing our new sounds g, o and c – if our brains are big enough!

How you can help at home

• Practise writing our letters with us and trying to put them into words like mad, dad, tin, pin.
• Help us to remember our numbers and our counting by playing counting games with us when we are playing at home-how many lego bricks/teddies/dolls  have we got? Encourage us to count them carefully one at a time. Can we even write down or find the correct number for how many we have?
• Look out whenever we go out of the house to see if we can spot numbers or letters we know.
• Don’t forget to read with us-remember we do not have to read loads, but we do need lots of praise when we do.

Notices

Please make sure names are in shoes as some boys have the same pairs of shoes and we got a little confused at P.E time the other day when we had two left feet!

Harvest service is coming up on Sunday 12th October at 10am- for our Harvest theme this year we are all dressing up as Farmers, even the teachers. We can bring food with us to take to church, this will go to New life Church who will aid in giving it to the homeless. During the Harvest service we will be singing our songs we have been practicing, they will be on the blog soon so we can practice them at home if we want to.

 

Miss Irwin would like your child’s report from their Nursery to have a look at and to help with baseline assessment. She has some already but if you haven’t brought them in, please do. They will be returned to you before half term.

 

Have a good weekend.

Reception Team

 

 

Mucky afternoon

As we have been reading our Superworm book we have been creating our new role-play. We thought of things we wold like and Miss Kippen has been helping us make it. So far we have soil with our worms in it from the worm dancing. We have our tools to dig them up with and our minibeast books to look up things.

Miss Irwin decided we needed to clean up our garden beds outside and some of us decided to help her. We found loads of creatures-snails hiding under rocks, slugs and woodlice. We even found more worms! Reuben found the “smallest snail in the world!”

 

We have decided we want to go on a minibeast hunt next week to find some more interesting insects.

Friday fun with Miss Moore

While Miss Irwin was out learning about Ofsted, we got to play with our new footballs with Miss Moore. She taught us how to roll the balls, how to bounce the balls and how to pass them to our friends.

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We really like our new balls. We will definitely have to shoe Miss Irwin our new skills.

Learning sign language through song

On Thursday Mrs Heathcote comes  in to help, but today she brought her music and a special bag of toys. She taught us some songs using sign language.

We learnt lots of different signs and really enjoyed the songs.

 

Maybe you could ask us to show you some at home. The one we remembered most was ‘The wheels on the bus’.

Thank you Mrs Heathcote.

Worm Dancing

This afternoon we read our story ‘Superworm’ practising our sign language for the ‘Superworm chant’. Why don’t you ask us if we can show you!

‘Superworm is super long,

Superworm is super strong,

Watch him wiggle, see him squirm,

Hip,hip, hurray for Superworm!

After the story Miss Irwin said we were going to learn how to do some worm dancing on the field to find our own Superworm. Some of us squealed with excitement -the girls and some of us looked bemused-the boys! Was it the dancing or the worms that brought this reversal of emotions…Miss Irwin is not quite sure, but soon enough the excitement spread and we were off to find Superworm.

We went up in our Wellies and waterproofs and set to pouring lots of water on the ground and dancing. Some of us were expert worm dancers and some of needed encouragement. After a good 10 minutes of persistence and determination Jacob found our first worm. Then the worms didn’t stop wriggly upwards to meet us.

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Careful counting

Today we spent some time to learn and practise our careful counting. We were shown by Miss Irwin how to point with our counting finger and to touch and count one object at a time.

We were that good at counting we had to help the adults to count as they couldn’t remember how to do it properly, Miss Kippen needed help bowling and counting the score, Mrs Arkle needed help making and counting playdoh! Miss Irwin even counted tried to count with her nose, as she forgot how to count carefully. Silly Miss Irwin!

Then after lunch we had P.E when we practised moving with our hockey sticks and hitting the hockey balls.

We can hit the balls a good distance now. To practice our shooting skills Miss Irwin went in goal and we had to try and score past her.

Then to finish our day we listened to our new story ‘Superworm’, written by Julia Donaldson.

Our behaviour and listening today has been so fantastic we all ended up with 5 or more stickers, so we all go a prize. Well done Class Jonah 🙂

 

Meet and Greet

Thank you to all those parents who were able to attend the ‘meet and greet ‘ on Friday I really do appreciate you giving up your Friday evening. For those of you who were unable to attend please find a copy of the PowerPoint here for you to view. Meet the teacherEYFS

For those of you who did not attend the hand-outs that were available on the night will be put in children’s homework packets for your information.

I did discuss with parents that we are using a new online assessment this year called Fingertips and that in the future all parents will be able to access their child’s profile to see what they are learning and how they are progressing. To do this I will need parents emails to give them access to the online assessment program. If you would like to send me your email you can do this by writing it down or by emailing me.

jemmairwin@hotmail.co.uk

Any questions please ask.

 

Kind regards

Miss Irwin 🙂

 

 

Newsletter 19.9.14

Dear Parents,

This week has been a Gruffalo bonanza. We have had a Gruffalo hunt, made Gruffalo food and had a Gruffalo picnic! Are we Gruffalo’d out! Probably not!

We have had so much fun making our Gruffalo food and playing in the small world with our new puppet from Percy its been magical. As well as reinacting the story we have also been learning our letter sounds. We have all got our sound cards that we made on parents morning and have started to practice them with Miss Irwin. We are using them to make words.

We have also been practicing writing and started to count amounts with our adults. We are getting really good at counting and will continue this next week. But remember the extra help at home will make our brains even bigger! You might have to widen the doors at home!

Next week we will be starting our new book written by Julia Donaldson ‘Superworm’, this is one of Miss Irwin’s favourites. Over the next week we will be doing a worm dance, counting and measuring worms and learning to label worms.

How you can help at home

• Use our sound cards and cut them up so we can practice them. Get us to tell you the sounds and then see if we can segment and blend 3 letters to put them together to make words like-pat, sat, sit, pin, tin.
• Read with us and write in our diaries how well we have done.
• Practise our number rhymes with you so we can form our numbers correctly.

 

Notices

Homework sheets will be now be put in bags on Monday for you to complete by the following Monday. When homework has been checked it will get a sticker put on it, you can then keep it at home.

It’s parents morning on Friday 27th September. However, Miss Irwin will not be in class as she is on an early years course about the new Ofsted changes. So supply will be from Miss Moores. She is a P.E specialist from the high school. So I you do wish to come in on the morning you will be doing P.E! 😉 SO come in your kit.

All notes from the meet and greet will be on the blog for all to see. Any questions please come and see Miss Irwin.

 

Have a lovely weekend,

The Reception team  🙂

 

 

A Gruffalo Picnic

This morning we made all the food we wanted for our Gruffalo picnic. Our culinary skills were amazing. We did mixing, cutting and much more.

Whilst making our food we also took some time to make a fire engine! This was donated to us by a very kind family in school. But we will have a whole post about that soon.

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In the afternoon we finished our Gruffalo masks and went up to read the Gruffalo while eating our Roasted fox tails, scrambled snake, Owl ice cream, ham and mouse tail sandwiches and chocolate Gruffalo cake and crunch. Needless to say we were very full after all the food!

What a great way to finish our first Julia Donaldson book. Next week we will be starting to read Superworm!

 

 

 

 

 

Supporting Reading at home

A guide to reading.

astburyreceptionblog

How to help at home

Reading at home is one of the most important ways you can support your child. Here are some ways you can help.

· Try to create a relaxed reading atmosphere. Establish a regular time and place to read and ensure the surroundings are as calm as possible. If your child doesn’t feel like reading, offer to read to them instead. Be positive about reading!

· Children don’t have to read with you. It can be very motivating for them to read with siblings, grandparents or friends.

· Talk to your child about the books they are reading. Before reading, challenge your child to be a book detective: look at the book cover and see if they can guess what the book will be about or what type of book it is. As you read together, talk about what is happening in the book, what might…

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