Welcome To Reception
Cygnets Class – Mrs Davies and MrsDunford
Ducklings Class – Mrs La Coste
Welcome to EYFS. The teachers currently in reception are Mrs Davies and Mrs Dunford (Cygnet class) and Mrs La Coste (Duckling class) who are supported by Ms Reed.
Dinosaurs
And just like that we are half way through the school year! In Spring 2 our learning will focus around the topic of dinosaurs. Children will become dinosaur experts exploring fossils, finding out about famous palaeontologists, exploring our impact on the world through recycling and they might even encounter a surprise egg (shhhh!).
In Phonics we will continue to work on our stage 1 song and concentrate on digraphs and trigraphs (where 2/3 letters are together representing one sound e.g. ch, igh, air). We will also be building our confidence to recognise tricky words on sight and have a go at using these when writing our own simple sentences. We will continue to practise our segmenting and blending to read words and as we gain confidence with this, begin reading more fluently.
Below you will find our topic overview giving you an idea of the things we will be covering as well as some ideas as to how you could support learning at home.
OUR KEY TEXTS
Reading is at the centre of all of our learning. Below are the key books that we will be sharing with the children. Our Dinosaur topic gives us a great opportunity to look at both fiction and non fiction texts and begin to explore the difference between them!
Home Learning
Things you could do at home with your child
- Talk about what it means for something to be in the past. Help your child to understand that dinosaurs lived long long ago but yesterday was also the past!
- Play with dinosaur toys and see how many you can name- top tip- many manufacturers print the name of the dinosaur on their tummy or foot!
-clap out the syllables you hear in dinosaur names e.g. steg-o-saur-us
- 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 fiction and non fiction books about dinosaurs.
- Have a go at writing some of your own dinosaur facts
- Practise subitising (recognising up to 5 without needing to count)
- Count- forwards and backwards and ask questions to develop their knowledge of the composition of numbers e.g. 4 is 1 and 3 or 4 is 2 and 2 or what's double 4, what is half of 4?
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.
Hand Writing and Letter Formation
In the Spring term we will begin to look at correct formation for each letter. We encourage children to use the correct formation starting from the right place however, for most children at this stage they will be working on the letters in their names (using lower case). Correct formation helps children as they build fluency and will eventually support them in joining (intoduced in ks1).
Song of Sounds formation ditties can be found here.
Below please find the link for how to pronounce each sound. 
Phonics meeting
Number Sense
Early number sense video