Roaaaar! We’ve had a brilliant week in Reception as we begin our Dinosaur topic. There has been lots of excitement for this topic, with loads of children coming with lots of existing knowledge, happy to share what they already know, and keen to learn more! The class spent time discussing what dinosaurs are and when they lived on earth using a timeline. The children loved learning about our ‘Dino of the Week’ which was the Coelophysis, which lived around 200 million years ago in the Triassic period. We’ve also had a variety of dino-themed activities for the children to get stuck into this week, with lots of opportunities to refine their skills (and hopefully have fun along the way!).
Many children chose to colour and cut-out their own dinosaur mask using a choice of pencils, pastels and crayons. We had a lot of fun playing a guessing game, where children had to practise asking questions to try and work out which dinosaur their partner had chosen – with such questions as, “Does your dinosaur walk on two legs?” “Does you dinosaur have a long neck?”. Children challenged themselves to find, read and then write down rhyming words that were hidden on dino eggs around the playground. To help revisit and embed our maths learning this week, we have also challenged children to count out different numbers of eggs and share them between nests fairly to see if they can be divided neatly or if there is a remainder.
Thanks to Mr Joy and his DT skills, we’ve also had a new addition arrive in class this week, as he helped the class to construct a large scale dinosaur our of carboard boxes and tubes. With help from the children this dinosaur has been covered in coloured paper that was given texture by rubbing on logs and has had different modifications added by imaginative children through the week (at one point he/she was given a beard!).
Phonics sessions this week have had us further embedding our learning from Phase 2 and 3 of the phonics scheme and applying our knowledge in reading and writing. The children blended sounds to carefully read sentences and then demonstrated their understanding by drawing pictures of what they had read. Most excitingly though, this week we have completed our first piece of ‘published’ writing which is to be kept in a special writing folder that will move up with the children throughout their time at Cookridge Primary. To get to a such a high standard of published writing we spent a long time on oracy first – talking in depth about a picture and discussing the different elements in detail, such as who and what we could see and what was happening. The children came up with masses of ideas through this talk, which then gave us plenty of things to choose to write about. So we all thought up a sentence (or two, or three or even four!) and had a go at drafting them in our books, allowing time for making mistakes but then refining this sentence ready to be written up on some special bordered paper. Once copied out in our best handwriting the ‘published’ writing was ready for the new writing folders.
In our Maths learning this week we have begun exploring the concept of division as sharing by having a go at some fun activities. We discussed how when sharing out a group of items, it must always be shared equally and fairly and sometimes there may be items left over (a remainder) that cannot be shared out. The children had a go at playing throwing games but first had to share our the apparatus fairly within their group – sometimes it was equal with no remainder, sometimes there was ball or beanbags left over. Inside we shared different objects out amongst a group as found them on a imaginative ‘woodland’ walk.
Have a lovely half term!
The Reception Team.
DATES FOR THE DIARY:
Wednesday 24th June: EYFS and KS1 Sports Day (13:00-15:00)
Tuesday 14th July: EYFS Summer Celebration (14:15-15:15) – Parents are invited to attend for an afternoon of games, crafts and a mini certificate celebration!
Friday 17th July: Last day of Summer 2 Term
Tinshill Drive
Cookridge
Leeds
West Yorkshire
LS16 7DH
0113 386 2500
