I have thoroughly enjoyed welcoming the children back to school this week. The children embraced our new classroom and routine enthusiastically and responded well to the increased hygiene procedures. Many thanks to parents for your co-operation and preparing your children so well.
My thoughts are with those children learning at home and hope you enjoy sharing Reception 2’s activities. Mr Sallis will also be posting a blog to celebration Reception 1’s learning.
We talked about germs on our hands and conducted a hand washing experiment. This is an interesting experiment to try at home.
The children rubbed a small amount of hand lotion all over their hands. This was followed by a small amount of glitter which they rubbed evenly over their hands to represent the germs.
We presented the children with buckets of cold soapy water, warm soapy water and paper towels. Interestingly, all the children seemed to be very well informed and all predicted that the warm water was the best solution to use. After experimenting with all the options, we discovered that the children were indeed quite right! However, this activity provided a concrete example of the importance of warm soapy water when washing hands.
The children have been learning about protecting our group bubble to keep safe. They enjoyed playing bubble games and drawing pictures of their friends in our bubble. The children also connected with Group 1’s bubble by joining a video call where each group a sang song to the other group. In addition, the whole school came together to share a video school assembly and end of week video celebration.
We began Letters and Sounds teaching by playing games such as tricky word hunt and sound bingo. Parents at home can play sound bingo by using the sound mats sent home. Call out individual sounds for your child to mark off with a non-permanent pen. We have also been learning letter names, ask your child to tell you the letter names as well as the sound when identifying each sound.
During the warm weather, we took the opportunity to share our snack time on the field. This is one of my favourite times of the day which normally inspires some fascinating discussions.
The children were delighted when they made coloured water using tissue paper. As expected, this led to lots of colour mixing experiments. This discovery was quite by accident. Interestingly, additional experiments revealed that the colour runs out easily from tissue paper but not from other types of paper.
A game children can try at home is ‘catapult the number’. Just chalk a number square on an area outside to act as a target. We used bean bags to aim at our target. At home you could try a soft toy or other soft object. In school the children also wrote down the numbers and talked about who had scored the highest number.
Home Learning
I will post a ‘home learning’ blog each Monday with ideas for all our Reception children .
Wishing you all a wonderful weekend.
Nicola Palmer