EYFS – Newsletter – 10/10/2025

What a brilliant week we’ve had in Reception! A real highlight was Thursday’s school-wide ‘Hello Yellow!’ day to raise awareness of children’s mental health charity Young Minds. After some yoga, meditation and nature bathing outdoors during Forest School (please see Mr Gamble’s web-post for pictures) we brought some lovely autumn leaves indoors to have a go at some leaf printing. All children were invited to paint a leaf and print it onto some yellow fabric to make their own yellow flag which they were very happy to take away to wave hello to the weekend! We had also brought back to class the cooked turmeric that we used to stain Mr Verdi’s tee-shirt yellow that morning and used this to make some natural yellow paint, which the children used to colour in some pictures. Finally, the whole class added their own fingerprint to represent a leaf on an autumnal tree. This tree helps us to see Reception as one big community and we’re all able to help each other and support each other’s mental health (sometimes Mrs Andrews really needs a smile and a cuddle!). 

We’ve been enjoying our topic of ‘All About Me’ and as we’ve been thinking about mental health this week we spent time thinking about our emotions. The children have thought about different feelings and how we can recognise in ourselves and others. The children discussed different scenarios and how they might feel, using some new vocabulary such as envious, embarrassed and anxious. Lots of children enjoyed cutting and sticking facial features to represent different emotions on a paper plate face. Many others took the challenge to colour in the different emotions from the Pixar film ‘Inside Out’ using number cues to colour each section appropriately. 

Phonics sessions this week have seen us recapping the previously learned sounds of s,a,t,p,i and n. We have been focusing particularly on hearing and identifying the initial sound of words and the children have engaged in activities to sort objects, identify pictures and pick out the letter graphemes themselves based on there sounds. This is something that is easy to practise at home in an ‘I-spy’ game as you hunt for words that begin with a certain sound. By revisiting these six sounds we hope to give the children time to become confident and secure in how to identify, read and write them before learning further letter sounds. 

Our Maths sessions have been a lot of fun as we were out investigating different repeating patterns. The children have loved exploring the concept of patterns with physical resources such as beads and cubes as well as spotting patterns in stories and representing patterns with movement and music. We acted out the story of ‘We’re Going On A Bear Hunt’ and spotted lots of repeated AB patterns (swishy, swoshy, swishy, swoshy) which we had a lot of fun performing around the playground. 

On Tuesday, it was time again for our Reading Buddies time with the children from Class 10. As ever, it was lovely to see the children getting together to share and enjoy stories together. Reception are growing really fond of their Year 6 buddies and these relationships are wonderful to see and really help the little ones feel confident and secure as part of the Cookridge family. 

With Autumn well and truly under way, Reception playground is besieged by leaves from our neighbouring oak trees! Thankfully, we took receipt of some new child-size sweeping brushes this week and have a wonderful bunch of willing leaf-sweepers happily helping us to keep the leaves at bay. It is yet to be seen if this early enthusiasm will last through the coming annual onslaught as we head towards winter!

Have a lovely weekend!

The Reception Team

DATES FOR THE DIARY: 

Monday 13th October: SEND Parent workshop – Understanding Autism (2:00pm) Kirstine Addison from the Family Hub will be delivering a talk focussed on Understanding Autism. It would be a great opportunity to ask questions and gain some reassurance and further understanding to support parents who have children with SEND needs. If you would like to attend please complete the form on the events page or follow this link. https://www.cookridgeprimary.co.uk/events/send-parent-workshop-understanding-autism-2pm/ 

Tuesday 21st October: Halloween Disco (immediately after school). Tickets on sale now!

Thursday 23rd October: School Photographs (as such, please send children in PE kit uniform colours despite it being EYFS Forest Schools).

Thursday 23rd October: Last day of Autumn 1

Friday 24th October: School closed

Monday 3rd November: First day of Autumn 2

Thursday 6th November: EYFS Parent Workshop – Early Reading (5:00pm) We are holding a workshop for Reception parents and carers around the area of early reading. During the session we will show you some of the strategies and resources we use. If you come to the main entrance a member of staff will come and collect you.