Home » EYFS – Newsletter – 02/04/26

EYFS – Newsletter – 02/04/26

In our final week of our Around The World topic we have been learning about countries in North America. We looked at famous landmarks in New York City – the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty and had a zoom in to have closer look on our trusty Google Earth. Inspired by the skyscrapers of the USA we challenged the children to have a go at building towers out of Numicon tiles to match one and two-digit numbers.

We talked about the Mexican festival Dias de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) and how it is a traditional holiday were families put out gifts and tokens for the loved ones in the spirit world. Many children took the challenge to carefully colour their own skull picture inspired by the highly-decorated sugar skulls we had looked at. We also listened to a story about Totems in Alaska and how the different carved animals argued about what order they should sit in on the totem pole. Following on from this story, the children were challenged to retell the story in role-play and have a go at placing the different totems in the correct order.

One popular challenge this week was our Easter competition. We showed the children a large transparent egg filled with smaller eggs and the children were asked to estimate how many eggs they thought were inside. If they could write their guess in a sentence (with capital letters, fingers spaces and full stop!) and then post it in the box they were in with a chance of winning an Easter Egg prize. The lucky winner will be announced in the first week back.

As we come to the end of our Around The World topic, we have filled in the last continent page of our Cookridge Passports. Each week this hald-term, the children have thought about what we have learned and chosen the countries that they would like to visit. They have then written them into the passport under the appropriate continent and had it checked and date stamped in readiness for travel. These passports can now be kept at home – there is even one final page for the children to add to if they wish by listing any of the famous global landmarks they would love to visit one day.

Phonics this week saw us continue to recap the phase 3 sounds we have learned this year. We focused on the phonemes ‘th’ and ‘ng’ and gave the children opportunity to rehearse reading these sounds in phrases and sentences and demonstrate their understanding by matching pictures to what they had read. We have been very impressed with how the class are improving at writing their own sentences now and growing in confidence to write more independently.

Our Maths work this week has been spent investigating two-digit numbers all the way up to 100. The children are becoming more familiar with the number system and spotting patterns of how numbers are composed of tens and ones. We have gotten to grips with these larger numbers in fun games involving working out hidden numbers on a hundred square and counting down from 30 by rolling a dice and taking cubes away from tens frames. This will all help strengthen the children’s deeper understanding of the number system and the patterns that can found within it.

On Tuesday, the whole school had a fantastic day taking part in Sports for Champions. James Dasaolu came to the school to take part in some fitness circuits with the children. He started the day by introducing himself in an assembly and talking to the children about his journey and experience in competing. He talked about being resilient throughout his journey and being open to new opportunities when he was younger to find a love and talent for running. Afterwards, each class took part in a warm up that was led some of our Reception children in a series of exercises which they enjoyed thoroughly!