Home » EYFS – Newsletter – 09/01/26

EYFS – Newsletter – 09/01/26

Brrrrrr! It’s been a very cold start to the year but Reception have certainly enjoyed getting outdoors and investigating all the frost and ice. The children loved finding ice and looking for ways to break it up or melt it (by adding warm water or leaving it out in the sun). As we were expecting further ice on Tuesday, the children set out different containers filled with water to see which would freeze overnight.

As we have entered a new term in Reception, we have begun a new topic – Amazing Animals! This week we have discussed how animals can be categorised by their characteristics and the children have had a go at putting a range of animals into groups (mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians and insects). For our first week we have focused on animals that live in rainforest habitats and took a look at the main areas of jungle on our planet by using Google Earth and our class maps and atlases. The children loved exploring the maps and looking at photos from Mr Verdi’s travels to Borneo where he photographed orangutans and proboscis monkeys among others.

The children enjoyed interacting with our new mini jungle in the middle of the classroom too – with some children even insisting they cut out blue paper to add raindrops to the forest. Many snakes were also added to our rainforest by children colouring in paper snakes and carefully cutting them out in a spiral. There were also a lot of children who took on the challenge of painting their own rainforest pictures inspired by those of painter Henri Rousseau using many different shades of green. Others chose to have a go at making a tiger face from a paper plate, adding paper details to great effect!

Also this week, we saw the opening of a new veterinary surgery in class, which the children loved spending time in, role playing as vets and pet owners bringing in their animals for the vets to treat. The surgery has been a flurry of activity since it was introduced with many animals wrapped and bandaged and helped to recuperate from a wide range of injuries.

Monday afternoon saw the welcome return of our Reading Buddies time. We met the Year 6 children in the dinner hall and spent some time together sharing books and enjoying stories.

Phonics sessions have begun introducing the first sounds of Level 3 of our scheme. We learned the phonemes ‘j’ (jet) ‘v’ (vest) and ‘w’ (wave). The children have practised how to recognise these graphemes and their associated sound, as well as how to write them. Most excitingly, this week all the children have begun writing in their very own ‘golden’ book which is kept in school for us to practise our word and sentence writing going forward. There are Level 3 phonics resources available to use at home on the Twinkl website – if you have misplaced your log-in for the Twinkl site please just let us know and we can find them for you.

Maths sessions this week have focused on the concept of how to measure capacity and mass. Inside the children have explored the language around comparing masses using balance scales (which item is heavier or lighter?) and considered how different containers have varying capacities by investigating how many cubes or beads could fit inside a range of bowls and cups. Outside the children had a tonne of fun with (the non-frozen) water and exploring which containers were the best for transporting water from one water tray to another.