Welcome To Reception
Cygnets Class – Mrs Davies and Mrs Stansfield
Ducklings Class – Miss Knee
Welcome to EYFS. The teachers currently in reception are Mrs Davies and Mrs Stansfield (Cygnet class) and Miss Knee (Duckling class) who are supported by Miss Murray and Mrs O'Connor
Journeys
Welcome to the second term of school! Wow that time has flown! Since September the children have come so far and we are very proud of them. They now know lots of phonic sounds and can sound out words and blend to read them! We have been having a go at writing simple words and recording all the sounds we can hear. We have also built our confidence with numbers and are becoming real experts on numbers 0-5 plus so much more! This term we have lots more exciting learning planned, our topic is Journeys. We will be looking at journeys near and far and even going on some of our own journeys! We will be looking at maps and having a go at making some of our own! Within this topic there is an opportunity to explore lots of other cultures as well as find out about our own community. If your child/family has links to another country we would love to build this into our topic! In previous years children have taught their class mates phrases in their first language, introduced the class to different cuisines and even shared some salted (Swedish fish) sweets! Please do let us know if you have any suggestions for this topic. We welcome you to come in and share with us or to offer suggestions for us to explore.
Below you will find the overview for this topic with lots of suggestions for how you might continues learning at home.
Our Key Texts - Journeys
Reading is at the centre of all of our learning. Below are the key books that we will be sharing with the children.
HOME LEARNING
Things you could do at home with your child
- Go on simple journeys and record the things you see.
- Travel via different modes of transport and talk about why you might choose to travel in that way.
-Look at photographs of past holidays and talk about where you went, how you got there, what the weather was like and how that place compares to Shoreham.
- Practise your tricky words (remember to go back and revisit the earlier ones set 1 and 2 can be found below in the reading section).
- Share stories about journeys and bring them in to share in class.
- Use junk modelling materials to make a vehicle.
- Visit the Bluebell Railway and explore how transport was different in the past.
- Make and try a dish from another culture.
Reading
Reading is one of the very best ways to support your child's learning across all areas! Just a little every day increases their vocabulary, enhances their understanding of the world and develops their comprehension. Children will continue to bring home a reading book matched to their phonic level, these books should not challenge them but instead cover sounds they know and enable them to build confidence and fluency to segment and blend. These books will also contain some of the 'tricky words' we have learnt (you can find a list of these below).
How can you help with reading?
- Choose a convenient time; for many children 5-10 minutes may be long enough.
-Use pictures and characters to engage their attention.
-Give plenty of praise!
-Stop if they are bored or become uninterested.
- Use your child's reading record to note down some comments - we love hearing how they are getting on!
You might consider-
-What they enjoyed/did not enjoy about the book and why.
-Any comparisons they made to other stories or their own lives.
-Comments about the events of the story.
-Ideas for what could happen next.
-Comments about what they notice from the pictures.
The most important thing is to enjoy reading together!
Handwriting and Letter Formation
As the children learn the sounds we also introduce them to the correct letter formation. In the Autumn term we focused on building the skills and muscles we need for hand writing through our Douch Disco and Write Dance Sessions. In each phonic session when a new phoneme is introduced we also looked at the formation with the accompanying ditty to help children form the letters correctly initially focusing on correct formation of the letters in our name. This term we will focus on letter families and practise forming letters starting from the right point and following the correct shape.
Song of Sounds formation ditties can be found here.
Song of Sounds
We have now started to learn the stage one song of Song of Sounds. You can find the video with actions below to practice at home. In the next few weeks you can also find our weekly focus sounds here too.
