This week in Reception, we have encouraged the children to engage with activities that draw attention to the purpose of counting – to find out ‘how many’ objects there are. They have used subitising to identify the number in a set; they will now develop their counting skills to enable them to identify how many there are in a set that cannot be subitised. This connects subitising and counting to cardinality whereby the last number in the count tells us ‘how many’ things there are altogether. Using a ‘circling’ gesture to indicate all of the objects in a set will support children to develop an understanding of cardinality. They will also practise developing 1:1 correspondence, by counting numbers at the same time as moving or tagging the objects. We also learnt two new shapes this week (rectangle and triangle) and went on a shape hunt around the classroom.
In Phonics we have introduced the sounds c, k, ck, e and their corresponding rhymes. The children have enjoyed thinking of different words that start with these initial sounds. We have also been continuing to segment and blend simple words using our robot arms. It would be great if you could continue to encourage your children to use robot arms when reading at home.
This week’s topic focus has been about homes all around the world. We have enjoyed reading books and looking at pictures of different homes. We have then thought about why some homes are built differently and use alternative materials in different countries. The children then choose one of the houses they had learnt about to have a go at drawing.
We introduced Reception to junk modelling. We spent time thinking about what we would like to make and the materials and resources that we might need to create these. We challenged the children to make junk model homes for our small world area. Children can access the junk modelling resources in discovery time, any junk modelling and recycling that you have at home would be greatly appreciated.
Key Points
- We are in need of both girls and boys pants and socks if anyone has them going spare.
- In the next few weeks we will be learning about ‘People who help us’. If you or anyone you know is a doctor, nurse, paramedic, dentist, firefighter, police officer etc.. please let us know. We would love you to come in and talk about your role to the children.
