Home » EYFS – Newsletter – 05/12/25

EYFS – Newsletter – 05/12/25

At the end of another busy week, Reception class have got lots to share with you again. Our ‘Toytown’ topic has this week continued by looking at different toys from around the world. At the start of the week, we looked at the phenomenon of ‘kawaii’ culture from Japan and it’s influence on ‘cute’ toys such as Hello Kitty and Labubu dolls. Some children had a go at sticking together their own Labubu doll pictures and adding the faces themselves. On Wednesday, Miss Bostock introduced the children to traditional ‘worry dolls’ from Guatemala. The children learned about how children make these simple little dolls to tell their worries to and then leave them under their pillow to help take away their anxieties. Many took up the challenge to make their own worry dolls from lolly sticks and fabric scraps. Finally on Friday we looked at the traditional Jewish toy, the dreidel (or sivivon) which has its origins in eastern Europe. The children loved playing with a version of this toy and trying to guess which of the four Hebrew letters it would land on when spun.

As we have been thinking a lot about Christmas, and practising our Christmas songs, we have also learned little about another religious festival that will soon be taking place – Hannukah! The children have been rehearsing a song about Hannukah, so we talked a bit about how this is a special time for Jewish people and we learned about the tradition of lighting candles on the Menorah as the festival progresses. Some children challenged themselves to have a go at cutting out candles to put on a menorah picture, whilst others enjoyed playing with a traditional dreidel (or sivivon).

Christmas has also well and truly taken told in Reception, with many children having a go at writing wish lists of letters to Santa Claus at our writing table. There have been many children practising to write their name accurately this week, to help them be in with a shot of winning the mystery wrapped toy this week. And we’ve brightened up the classroom with some colourful paper chains, with each link printed with one of our tricky words, to help expose the children to these and help build their reading fluency as a result. Our Reception elves have also been busy again working away in the DT area to build robot toys to delivered by Santa – with some great workmanship!

Even more excitingly, on the Christmas front, has been the arrival on Monday of a very cheeky elf! Upon finding a mysterious envelope in class, we followed a series of clues that lead us to a very special delivery from the North Pole. Inside the box was an elf and the accompanying letter explained that he had been dispatched to keep an eye on the children and ensure they are continuing to show how kind and helpful we all are – and report back to Santa. The children have been very giddy to find the silly little elf in different places each day and are keen to teach him the ways we look after our classroom as he has been caught out making a bit of a mess some mornings!

And perhaps most exciting of all was a visit in school from the big man himself – Santa Claus. Father Christmas flew in for a while on Tuesday and spoke with the children in turn before passing on a lovely present of chocolates!

Also, a big thank you to all those that supported our Cookridge Christmas Fair on Tuesday and for buying our fabulous handmade Christmas tree ornaments. All money raised goes towards helping the school do amazing things that enrich the education and experiences of the children who learn with us.

Maths sessions this week have seen us investigating shapes with four sides. We introduced the children to lots of shapes that have four sides, but we focused on rectangles and the most regular rectangle of all – the square! While also recapping our previous learning on circles and triangles, one activity found the children colouring shape pictures according to their properties – could the children identify a square from a rectangle? The children also enjoyed the challenge of using these 2D shapes to make their own shape pictures, such as robots or houses. Another activity took us on a big shape hunt all over school, trying to spot these shapes in everyday objects around the building and playgrounds.

In our phonics sessions this week we have introduced the digraph phonemes ‘ff’ (as in off) and ‘ll’ (as in bell). These digraphs have two letters to represent one sound and are usually found in the middle or at the end of words. The children practised writing these digraphs and trying to identify whether a word would use a single letter ‘f’ or ‘l’ and where a ‘ff’ or ‘ll’ digraph would be appropriate. To further practise blending skills, the children had a go at a board game where they were challenged to read words containing these digraphs to win.