Home » EYFS – Newsletter – 30/01/2026

EYFS – Newsletter – 30/01/2026

Brrrrr! It’s been a suitably chilly week for our Amazing Animals topic to take in the polar regions. We spent time exploring the north and south pole on Google Earth to see how the landscapes contrast with our own. We took a look at some of the animals that live in the Arctic circle, such as polar bears, walruses, huskies and Arctic foxes and how they are adapted to living in such harsh freezing conditions. We also explored the idea of camouflage and how it helps both predator and prey as we enjoyed sharing the story ‘Rainbow Bear’ by Michael Morpurgo. Following this the children loved getting to build their own polar bears and paint their own Rainbow bears in the creative area. Many children enjoyed a game of placing Arctic foxes within a polar scene by following instruction they read. We encouraged the children to practice their writing this week with an enticing ice tunnel in the middle of our central display. To go within and find out which mystery animals could be found on its walls, the children had to first write a request on their whiteboards and then if they could write down what they saw in the tunnel they could earn points for their colour team.

Monday afternoon saw us come together with the pupils of Class 10 to enjoy our regular Reading Buddies session. The children have really formed a bond with the year 6 children and look forward to this time spent sharing books together and getting help from the experts as they practise their reading skills.

Maths this week has seen us investigating measurement again and the vocabulary around comparing sizes in different ways. One activity saw the children comparing lengths of string and ribbon and putting them in order from shortest to longest; another saw children measuring height in non-standard measures by using cubes to see how tall different objects were; and outside the children threw bean bags and then measured the distance by using their own footsteps to see who threw the farthest.

In our phonics sessions this week, we have introduced the Phase 3 digraphs ‘ng’ (ring) th (moth) and th (feather). The digraphs (where two letters together make one sound) can appear at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of words, so the children need to be able to recognise them and the sounds they make. For each of these digraphs the children have rehearsed recognising them, writing them accurately and reading them within words and sentences. The children read words carefully and matched the to corresponding pictures and took to their writing books to practise spelling out words featuring the new digraphs. Most fun of all however was the game of ‘Thing in a Ring’ where players were tasked to throw a ‘thing’ into a ring in order to win letters for their team. When they had gathered enough letters the team had to arrange them to make words featuring the ‘ng’ digraph and then find the matching picture.