Reception – we’re super learners

Dear parents,

We’ve had a fantastic week at school and the children have now settled into a good routine.

Our first mystery guests joined us this week via Zoom.  The children were so excited!  They learnt all about St. Patrick’s Day and listened to a hilarious story about a hippo.  Both of these ‘parent visits’ stimulated lots of discussions and investigations about snakes and hippos.

Please do let me know if you would like to join us.  Perhaps you could talk about your job or hobby to help us widen the children’s experiences.  However, a little story time is just as much fun.

We’ve also been focusing on learning behaviours and developing the language of ‘how I am learning’.  The three main characteristics of learning taught in early years are:

  • Playing and exploring – children investigate and experience things and “have a go”.
  • Active learning – children concentrate and keep on trying if they encounter difficulties and enjoy their achievements.
  • Creativity and thinking critically – children have and develop their own ideas and make links between ideas.

Our class learning super heroes help us talk about how we are learning:

Encouraging and praising your child at home will really support their attitude to learning in the future.  Here are some of the children’s ideas:  ‘I kept on trying to balance on the wobbly board’, ‘I thought of an idea’, ‘I decided to try another way’, ‘I changed my mind and did it a different way’. 

You may also be interested in this lovely book we have been reading in class “It’s Okay to Make Mistakes” by Todd Parr.

Todd Parr embraces life’s happy accidents and has a passion for making readers feel good about themselves, encouraging them to try new things, experiment, and dare to explore new paths.

Finally, in Letters and Sounds the children are revisiting digraphs (two letters/one sound) introduced over lockdown home learning. I’ve collected Letters and Sounds books to update.  These will be returned next.

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend and looking forward to another fun week with your children next week.

Nicola Palmer