Folly Farm

What a fabulous day we had at Folly Farm last Wednesday ! All the children were beautifully behaved and had a lovely time.
We made symmetrical butterflies , hid butterflies , played a butterfly game, went on a caterpillar trail and camouflaged caterpillars from a hungry bird! We were so busy. 
Here are some photos of our day ......
 
 
 
 

Week Three

We can't believe that it's already week three , the term is whizzing past!
We are all really excited about our mystery Trip on May 13th and if you have not sent in the consent form please could you do so by the end of this week, thank you.

We are all enjoying reading The Ice Cream King in class and this week  we will be making ice cream in class  as part of  Understanding the World - the children are very excited and hopefully we will make enough for them to have a good taste!

As the weather will , hopefully, be getting better could we remind you to send your child into school with  a water bottle filled with water and not squash or juice, a sun hat and with  sun cream on as we do go outside every day.

We really appreciate all the reading you do with your child at home and it is so important as it really supports all the reading we do in school . If you are able to please keep on reading at home through the holidays - thank you

Here are some photos of our  learning in and out of class over the last few weeks 

 

World Book Day

We had a fabulous World Book Day and really enjoyed dressing up as our favourite book characters!

We also read some Harry and the Dinosaur books and we made dinosaurs from paper plates and described different dinosaurs.Mrs Button learnt an awful lot about dinosaurs from the class  and she now knows all about flying dinosaurs!

Mrs Button and Mrs Bateman dressed up as Thing One and Thing Two from The Cat in the Hat ,one of Mrs Button's favourite books , luckily there was a Cat in the Hat in our class as throughout the day the things were very badly behaved!

We also read lots of the classes favourite books and we all enjoyed listening to them.

Here are some photos from the day..... 
 

 

Maths Challenge- Be a dinosaur!

For World Book day we are going to be reading some of the Harry and the Dinosaur books- your challenge this week is to be a dinosaur !

We want you to stride like a dinosaur and  count your steps.
Here are some ideas of where you can stride.

How many strides is it from your bedroom to the bathroom?
How many from your kitchen to your lounge?
How many across your garden?

You can also record your strides and bring it in to share with the class and put on our maths board.

Welcome to Term Four!

Welcome back , we hope you have had a good break and you are all refreshed!

Our topic this term is all about Story Telling and next week to celebrate World Book Day we are going to read Harry and the Dinosaurs go wild. 
If you have any other Harry books or any dinosaurs please could you send them in ( all named of course). Thank you 

If your child is dressing up as a book character next Thursday please ensure they are able to go to the toilet unsupported!

This term we are focusing on Keyword recognition- how many keywords does your child know? Look in the front of the Link Book that comes home with the reading book or in the pack that was sent home last year. 
Here are some ideas for games you can play- 

Simple matching game

Not so much a game this one, as there is no winner, but many young children seem to enjoy straightforward matching activities without the need for any competitiveness! Spread out six cards of one colour (face up), reading each word out as you put it down. Then give your child the matching cards in the other colour. Read out the first word for them and ask them if they can find the matching word and place their card next to it. It can help to hold the card next to each word in turn to enable easy matching. You can encourage them and emphasise the word, e.g. "This word is 'and' - does that one say 'and'? No, let's try this one. Is it 'and'?" etc.

Pelmanism

Spread out your two sets of matching cards, face down. Take turns to pick up two cards, one of each colour. Read each word as you or your child turns it over. Check whether the words match - if they do, keep them and have another go. If they don't, put them back face down and let the other player have a turn. Soon, your child will begin to read the words without you.

Snap

Shuffle up the cards and share them out. Each player takes turns to turn over their card, put it down and read the word. If it matches the previous card played, the first person to notice shouts 'snap!' and wins the pile. This game is best used to practise words your child knows fairly well, rather than new ones, as it's quite fast-paced.
Once your child knows a word reliably, you can 'retire' it from your current pack of cards and bring in a new word. Every so often, play a game with the 'retired' cards, so that your child doesn't forget them. It's a good idea to try and discard an known word and add a new word every day, once your child is getting the hang of learning new words.

http://www.familylearning.org.uk/images/hfwordsrec.pdf  
Here is a link to the reception keywords that can be printed out 

Happy Keyword playing! 

Maths Meeting Notes

Many thanks to those of you who attended our maths meeting this morning , we appreciate that some people may not be able to attend through family or work commitments and so we are attaching the Power Point slides.
If you have any questions regarding the teaching of maths in Foundation Stage please do not hesitate to ask us .
Thank you 

Mathematics in the EYFS

It involves providing opportunities to practise and improve children's skills in:- 

•Counting numbers

•Calculating simple addition and subtraction problems

• Describing shapes, space and measure

Two Early Learning Goals taken from the EYFS Curriculum Document 2012

1.Numbers

•Count reliably with numbers from 1-20

•Place them in order

•Say which number is one more or one less than a given number

•Using quantities and objects, add and subtract two single-digit numbers and count on or back to find the answer

•They solve problems, including doubling, halving and sharing

2. Shape, space and measures

•Children use everyday language to talk about size, weight, capacity, position, distance, time and money to compare quantities and objects

•Solve problems

•They recognise, create and describe patterns

•They explore characteristics of everyday objects and shapes and use mathematical language to describe them

What do we do in school?

•We make mathematics fun 

•We call children ‘mathematicians’

•We make activities as practical and interactive as possible

•We relate mathematics to real life situations

•We encourage children to solve problems

•We encourage children to explain their workings

•We explain that we can learn from our mistakes.

•

Skills in early addition

Counting all – a child doing 2+ 3 counts out two bricks and then three bricks and then finds the total by counting all the bricks.

•Counting on from the first number – a child finding 3 +5 counts on from the first number ‘four, five six, seven, eight’.

•Counting on from the larger number – a child chooses the larger number, even when it is not the first number, and counts on from there.

Skills in early subtraction

•Counting out – a child finding  9 – 3 holds up nine fingers and folds down three.

•Counting back from – a child finding  9 – 3 counts back three number from 9: ‘eight, seven, six’.

•Counting back to – a child doing 11 -7 counts back from the first number to the second, keeping a tally using fingers of the number of numbers that have been said, ‘ten, nine, eight, seven’, holding up four fingers.

Strategies for memorising

•Kinaesthetic - this involves memorising through movement, learning by matching facts to specific ways of moving, such as finger counting or action sequences.

•Visual - some children have a good visual memory, and can ‘see’ facts on the page/board.

•Aural - some children remember things by ‘hearing’ them repeated. Chanting the sequence of numbers, matching facts to rhymes, songs or music.

•Written – writing something can help the facts travel from the pen to the ‘brain! Children can see how the facts connect together when they are presented in written form, 3+2=5, 2+3=5.

•Pattern - some children find it easier to recall facts when they understand the structure of patterns in which they are embedded, dots on  dominoes or dice.




We hope you will find the Maths Activities sheet we sent home useful- why not try one of the activities at home and your child can come and tell us all about it!

New Maths Challenge!

New this term- look out for Maths challenges on our blog- you could always take a photo of the activity or record it on paper to share at school and put in your child's learning journey.

Don't forget the maths meeting on Tuesday 20th at 9am in the Lower School Hall- we will post on this blog the notes pertaining to it if you are unable to attend

Maths Challenge

Can you make a repeating pattern using forks and spoons?

If you are able to please could you send your child into with a small box eg cracker box/tea bag box for next Tuesday's maths session- thank you 

Remember it is really important to read regularly at home even if it's only for ten minutes a day

You can also practise the sounds we have learnt too by playing games with your child eg how many words with ch in can we think of in one minute 

Happy New Year!

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and your children are  recharged ready for Term Three!

This week we will be going into the woods on Friday and PE kits need to be in too- thank you 

We are learning three new digraphs this week - they are qu,ch - so perhaps you and your child  can think of some words that have the digraphs in them?

A plea for resources - Our topic this term is bears and with that in mind we were wondering if you have any non fiction books about bears at home that we could borrow? We will of course look after them and return them to you at the end of the term .

We are also holding a maths meeting at 9am  on Tuesday 20th January in the Lower School Hall - if you are unable to attend we will send home a summary of the meeting.

Thank you