EYFS Newsletter – 09.10.26

Well this week has seemed to fly by! We’ve kept very busy inside and out with lots of fun activities. As part of our ‘All About Me’ topic we’ve finished looking through the children’s family photos and the children have loved showing them to the class and telling us all about their loved ones. We’ve also been talking about our special places this week too, with children telling us places they love to be and what is special about them. Some children had a go at putting their own community of places together by placing houses, shops, play areas an churches on a map. Talking of churches, we had whole-class discussions around how people in our community can visit places of worship and how they are important to different cultures. We watched videos showing children talking through the features of a Christian church and a Muslin mosque. In our creative area we encouraged children to play around with adding the features to mosques such as the domes, minarets, doors and windows.

Outdoors the children have had the usual fun of building, bike-riding, singing and dancing but we also set some different challenges too. Given a selection of different pumpkins the children were asked to compare how heavy they were using the large bucket scales in the playground. They had lots of fun seeing the scales tip and working out which of the pumpkins came out heaviest and lightest overall. We also put out some playground markers and tested out the children’s ability to follow verbal instructions by moving between coloured dots, arrows etc by directions given.

This week’s phonics sessions have seen us revisiting the six sounds we’ve learned so far (s/a/t/p/i/n) and become more confident in hearing, reading and writing these sounds. We began the week with work on letter formation using reference to our four letter starters, with the children getting lots of practise forming the letters correctly and becoming more confident with their handwriting skills. In small groups over the week we’ve rehearsed listening carefully for the initial sounds in words and enjoyed sorting and matching activities to develop this important skill. 

In maths this week we’ve been exploring the concept of repeating patterns. The children have had a go at building and continuing visual patterns with coloured blocks; developing and repeating patterns through movement and song (such as heads, shoulders, knees and toes) and also by recognising and repeating aural patterns via the repeated refrains in the classic Michael Rosen book ‘We’re Going On A Bear Hunt’. 

Our outdoor DT area continues to prove very popular, with lots of children getting a chance to come in and use the woodwork tools to cut, join and decorate creations of their own choosing. We’ve had some fantastic things made this week from aeroplanes and robots to dinosaurs and horses. We have also implemented a visual queue system this week to help everyone understand when it will be there turn to use this area next, as it can only be safely used by a very few children at once under adult supervision and everyone deserves a fair opportunity to access this area.

Friday’s Hello Yellow Day was a lot of fun too! We talked a bit as a class about mental health as the day is and initiative organised by the charity Young Minds. We read a story about how we can feel a range of different emotions and we discussed how all feelings are valid and have their uses. We want to continue to encourage the children to be able to identity their emotions and help them manage their feelings throughout their time in school. Everyone looked fabulous in their bright and sunny clothes which helped to cheer us already and we had lots of fun creating exciting artworks throughout the day. We used the turmeric that we used to soak Mr Verdi’s polo shirt in during yesterday’s Forest Schools session (see Mr Gamble’s web-post for details) to make our very own natural yellow paint by mashing it down in a bit of water to make a great yellow dye that the children used to paint sunflower pictures. We also all followed a video drawing tutorial to draw our own sunflower pictures step-by-step with some fantastic results. The whole class also added their own fingerprints to a shared artwork of an autumnal tree using yellow, orange and brown paints to help represent that we are all p rt of a community that can be there to support and help each other. Outside on the approach to Reception’s doors the children all helped create a ‘Path of Positivity’ in colourful chalks to bring a smile to our families at pick-up time. We hope it worked!

Have a lovely weekend!

The Reception Team.

DATES FOR THE DIARY:

Thursday 15th October – Parent Early Reading and Phonics Workshop (5:00pm-5:30pm) – Please sign up using the form on the calendar to let us know how many to expect.

Tuesday 20th October – Halloween Disco: EYFS and KS1 3:30pm-4:30pm – Information about tickets and event details can be found on the Halloween Disco 2026 website post.

Friday 23rd October – Parent Consultations – school closed to children. Appointments are available to book online for a meeting with the class teachers.