EYFS – Newsletter – 24.03.2023

It’s certainly been a full and varied time in Reception this week, with a variety of weather to match! 

Our Location, Location, Location topic has seen children think about the local library in Cookridge and then take on some librarian duties of their own. Our reading shelf was emptied and the children were tasked with putting the books back in alphabetical order, which handily helped us practise recognising our capital letters too! There were also a lot of book titles that had arrived at our library with our covers, so it was the children’s job to read the title and draw an appropriate book cover illustration. There was also a post box reading activity to encourage quicker recall of ‘tricky’ high frequency exception words such as ‘was’ ‘all’ and ‘here’. Children read sentences and matched them to a picture before finding the appropriate envelope and posting the letters in the post box. 

Out in the playground, children were exploring transport and how surfaces can affect how fast or slow things travel. This was investigated with cars travelling down ramps and on to a range of surfaces to see how far the cars would travel in each case. 

For their DT session this week, the children used cutting and sticking skills to make their own paper daffodils to herald the start of Spring!

The book fair has been back in school too this week, with all of Reception visiting to peruse the titles on offer and choosing a ‘wish list’ of books. Thank you to those that were able to support the book fair in buying a book as the school is rewarded with books and supplies for our school library as a result of these purchases.

Phonics this week has seen the children revisiting the ‘digrapgh phonemes’ (two letters that make one sound) ch, sh, ng and qu to help embed their previous learning and allow the children to grown in confidence. By practising the key skills of reading and writing words and sentences with these digraphs in them, the children are showing how they are becoming more independent in applying their knowledge of phonics.

In Maths, the sessions have concentrated on investigating repeating patterns in a variety of ways, such as with coloured blocks, musical instruments and even their own bodies! We have also been continuing to encourage children to play games that help them to rehearse recall of ‘number bonds’ (pairs of numbers that add together to make a larger number). Children have loved fishing with nets for pairs of numbered ping-pong balls in the foamy water tray; and also have explored how to deconstruct numbers in different ways using playing cards. 

Ramadan began this week for our Muslim families, so we spent some time discussing this month of fasting on Thursday. We talked about the reasons for fasting and how and when fasting is broken, as well as the celebration of Eid at the end of Ramadan. It was fantastic to see some children with personal experience of Ramadan in their families sharing this knowledge and experience with the rest of the class. The children were also invited to cut out and fold their own gift box to celebrate this special time and decorate it to keep.

Thursday next week will be our Forest School session and we are hopefully all going on a walk out of school to explore our community, so please can children arrive in appropriate clothes for the unpredictable Spring weather we have been experiencing. 

Next week is the last week of the Spring Term and school is shut to pupils on Friday 31st March, so the children’s last day of school will be on Thursday 30th March. School will reopen Monday 17th April for the start of the Summer term.

We hope you all have a lovely weekend!

The Reception Team.

***EDIT*** EASTER EGG COMPETITION! – Decorate an egg (or potato!) in an imaginative design to be in with a chance of winning a prize in the Cookridge Easter Egg Competition. Please bring eggs to school no later than Wednesday 29th March. Good luck!