EYFS – Newsletter – 13.06.25

It’s been an exciting and eventful week in Reception! On Tuesday we arrived in school to find our playground area in disarray and as the children helped us investigate it quickly became apparent that we’d had a visitor. Large muddy prints were found in tracks across our playground and out over the gate towards the field. There were also scratch marks on the grass banking and a trail of torn up branches and leaves scattered about. The children were certain these prints could only be those of a dinosaur and they were eager to follow them and see where they lead. As we followed the tracks over to the school field there was further signs of disruption, with logs tossed aside and more branches thrown about the paths. The children were lead up to the field where we found a large and mysterious object that looked very much like an egg! We very carefully brought the egg back with us to keep it safe and warm in Reception and upon reaching the classroom, Mr Verdi had found an urgent email on his laptop which contained a video of CCTV footage of a huge dinosaur stomping across the playground. The children were understandably pretty excited by our discovery and only too happy to heed Mrs Hunter’s request for warning signs to be put up around the perimeter. There has since been much speculation on the egg and the CCTV footage – is real?; how can it be real if dinosaurs are extinct?; maybe it is an elaborate hoax with a remote control dinosaur sent to fool us?; perhaps the egg is just made of cardboard after all? But still there has been many a watchful eye as cracks have begun appearing in the egg over the past days. Who knows what the coming days will bring?

All over the classroom there has been an assortment of dino-themed activities to keep the children challenged by and engaged with our latest topic. There have been giant jigsaw puzzles and art challenges to create dinosaur pictures and papier mâché dinosaur eggs. Children have loved putting back together dinosaur eggs by matching letters with words beginning with that letter as it’s initial sound. Lots of children also took on a maths challenge to share dinosaur eggs fairly amongst nests to see if there would be any remainder of if the eggs would divide equally. Outdoors the children were challenged to read the action words on dino footprints to act out different ways to move around the track (stomping, creeping, splashing etc.).

Phonics sessions this week have mainly concentrated on reading and writing words with a cvcc pattern (consonant, vowel, consonant, consonant) such as belt or tent. Some children can find it a little trick to hear both consonants at the end of these words which can cause errors when attempting to spell them, so a little practise in listening carefully as you say each sound that makes up a word like this is useful. We have been encouraging the children to read back the words they have written by carefully reading each sound they have used and blending them together, which can often help them to realise if they have missed any of the sounds out. 

In Maths we have continued thinking about division as a mathematical concept, by practising grouping objects and people into equal parts. We’ve done this through tower-building and by splitting up into equal teams to play  a relay game. The children have enjoyed these hands-on and active approaches to exploring the concept of dividing up a larger number and it really helped to visualise the concept of a ‘remainder’ when a group cannot be equally shared into a certain number of groups. 

This week, there has been another whole-school art competition launched as part of the ‘Challenge of Champions’. This week in a special assembly Reception’s own Sam Jackson was awarded 50 team points for his brilliant contribution to the last competition – well done Sam! The new competition invites entries of A4 size that are inspired by the colourful pop-art portraits of the artist Andy Warhol. Please see the linked web-post for details. The closing date for entries is Thursday 26th June – so just under two weeks! Good luck! 

https://www.cookridgeprimary.co.uk/challenge-of-champions-competition/

There is also a new web-post with information about the returning ‘Poetry Slam’ contest which takes place at the Cookridge Summer Fair (Saturday 28th June). Please take a look if you are interested. 

https://www.cookridgeprimary.co.uk/poetry-slam-2/ 

Have a lovely weekend

The Reception Team

KEY DATES FOR YOUR DIARY:

Thursday 19th June – Sports day (EYFS/KS1 – 1pm-3pm)

Saturday 28th June – Summer Fair (12pm-4pm)

Wednesday 16th July – Reception end-of-year Celebration (2pm)  – parents and carers welcome in Reception.

Friday 18th July – Last day of Summer 2 term