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Good morning,

Below are some ideas that we will be exploring in school this week and you can try at home.

Maths

This game is played in pairs with each player deciding who has the more and who has fewer in their hand.  Children particularly enjoy the fact that holding more doesn’t necessarily mean you will be the winner – this depends on the card that is turned over.

You will need:

• A small bag.
• A collection of small pebbles or a similar object eg. pasta, buttons.
• Some counters.
• Ten small cards shuffled and placed face down in a pile: five cards should say ‘more’; and the other five cards ‘fewer’.

What to do:

• Play in pairs.
• Each player takes a handful of pebbles and counts how many they have.
• Each player compares their count total with their partner’s count total and decides who has more and who has fewer.
• Turn over the top card on the more/fewer pile and whoever has the appropriate amount indicated on the card wins a counter.
• Return pebbles to the bag, shake it and take another handful.
• Keep playing until each player has won three counters.

To extend your child – ask how many more or how many less.

Zog

The following website provides lots of maths home learning activities based around story books.  It is possible to look back through the different weeks to find a favourite story. This week’s story is Zog written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler. It is a story of a keen young dragon in his first years at Dragon School – I’m sure you all know the story already!

https://whiterosemaths.com/homelearning/early-years/

There is a different activity for each day and you don’t need the book to access the activities.  You may also like to watch this family film based on the story with your child.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0bwdw8y/zog

Letters and Sounds

See Mrs Sallis’s blog this week, look for the digraphs (two letters/one sound) we have been revisiting at school in books you read at home.  To remind you, look for qu, ch, sh, th, ai, ee, igh.

Also as per my blog – try asking your child to read the yes/no questions.  Perhaps challenge your child to write down one of the questions.

Here is another game you could try.

Cross the River

You will need:

• Piece of fabric or paper to represent a river.
• Sounds written on pieces of paper or flash cards if you have these at home.

You can choose your own words to focus on or the sounds we have been revisiting in class.

For example:

ng: ring, king, sing, wing.  Sounds you will need: r, i, ng, s, w

ai: wait, rain, aim, main.  Sounds you will need: w, ai, t, r, n, m

ee: see, feel, seem, keep.  Sounds you will need: s, ee, f, l, k, p

igh: high, light, might, night.  Sounds you will need: h, igh, l, t, m, t, n

(Note:  Make sure you write the digraphs on one piece of paper eg. ng, ai, ee, igh.  They are individual sounds represented by two letters).

What to do:

• Lay a piece of blue fabric on the floor like a river.  If you are playing the game outside then you can use chalk instead.
• Tell your child that they have to cross the river, but a crocodile lives in it.
• Assume the role of the crocodile and stand in the river.
• The only way your child can cross the river safely is to make a bridge.
• Ask your child to make a bridge by laying letter cards across the fabric to form a word.
• Say a word for your child to form.
• Your child chooses the correct sounds to spell the word across the piece of fabric.

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If your child needs support

Use simple CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) words eg: map, peg, pig, dog, cat, cup, tin, map, pet

Ask your child to orally sound out the word and take a step across the river whilst saying each sound.

Religious Education

Refer to our blog regarding our current RE topic: Reconciliation – Friends.    Listen to our focus story The Selfish Crocodile.

Talk to your child about the story and explore the following ideas:

• Friends look after and do things for one another.
• Friends make one another happy, comfortable and glad.
• What can spoil friendships?
• How can we make friends again?
• What makes a good friend?
• How can we celebrate friendships? 

Say a prayer for a friend together.  At school we thank God for looking after our friends and keeping us safe.  We also ask God to help us to be a good friend.

Expressive Arts and Design

Art in Nature

You could start by looking at the work of Andy Goldsworthy.

Andy Goldsworthy is a British artist who uses things in nature like leaves, fallen branches, ice etc, to create enchanting sculptures.

If you have a wooded area near you, or a local park, go there and create something in this place. The sculptures should reflect the nature around it, so don’t take them home! And then perhaps someone will stumble across your creation!  You could always take a photo before you go home.

Encourage your child to think about patterns and colour and how the different materials can be used for different effects.

Wishing you all a wonderful week.

Mrs Palmer

Hello everyone,

I hope you are enjoying your weekend.  It is hard to believe that we have now been back at school for three weeks.  The children have really settled well into our routine and have been fantastic learners this week.

Maths/Physical Development

We played an addition game using numbered buckets (1 – 5).  The idea being to throw two balls into the buckets and add up the numbers indicated on each bucket to find the total score.  However, the most challenging task whilst playing this game was fine tuning our throwing skills!  The children, therefore, thoroughly enjoyed developing their throwing skills. 

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Letters and Sounds

This week we again revisited the ‘th’ sounds and learnt how to spell ‘thank you’ ready for writing our Father’s Day card.   The children previously enjoyed reading a book about bugs and we decided to read a caption which included some of our tricky words and the ‘igh’ sound – The moth likes to go to the light.

We also revisited the ‘ng’ and ‘ai’ sound and began learning to read and write the ‘ing’ suffix.  At home you can try reading and writing the following words:

ring, king, sing, song, ping pong, thing, bashing

wait, pain, paint, sail, snail, rain, main

Yes/No game

We read the following caption and the children wrote down their answer (yes or no).

Will all shops sell nails?

This is an excellent game to support comprehension and language skills.  Here are a selection of questions you could try at home. Write the message on a piece of paper, ask your child to read the question and decide upon the answer.

Is a thick book thin?
Is rain wet?
Can a boat sail?
Is all hair fair?
Can coins sing a song?

Encourage your child to explain their answer.  This will develop their talking skills in terms of clarifying their ideas and thinking.  I am often pleasantly surprised by answers such as ‘No not all boats can sail, some have engines’.

Understanding the World

The children have been very keen to make a den this week and remembered an activity we played at the beginning of the academic year – shadow puppets using torches.  We, therefore, recreated this activity.  However, this time the children made an amazing discovery – shadows can change their size.   As light moves towards the object, the shadow becomes larger.  As light moves away from the object, the shadow becomes smaller.

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This is also a great activity for story-telling and developing creativity.  In class the children made ogres!  We provided black card and lolly sticks.  The children drew their pictures on the card, cut out the shape and sellotaped the shape to a stick.  You may wish to try this at home.

Retelling a story with Nursery

We continued learning The Three Billy Goats Gruff story this week and made story maps. 

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I was excited to learn that Nursery have also learnt a story – Little Red Hen.  We, therefore, linked with Nursery via a video call with each class showing their story maps and retelling their stories. 

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Pop up Books

I also read an alternative version of The Three Billy Goats Gruff to the class which happened to be a pop-up book.  The children were inspired by this and wanted to learn a new skill – how to make a pop-up book/card.

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At home you can show your child how to make a pop-up book.  Follow the video below to make a simple pop up card.  We didn’t make ours with the exact measurements.  We just cut up strips of paper and pre folded for the children to attach their pop ups onto.  However, the video will give you the basic idea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmdW_ODhMY8

Expressive Arts and Design

The children have continued to explore colour mixing – this week we used crushed up chalk to make paint as well as powder paint.  Back in the classroom, an amazing castle was created and the children put their colour mixing skills to good use by creating grey to paint the castle.

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The problem solving and team work exhibited whilst making this castle was impressive.  They even made a draw bridge using string to move it up and down.   This required tying knots, a skill we consolidated during our funky finger session.  My blog dated 30 March outlines a method you can try at home.

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Next week we will be adapting and changing our story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff, I have a funny feeling it might include castles or ogres and am looking forward to sharing the children’s suggestions.

Wishing all the Dads a fantastic Father’s Day. Top tip: look on Tapestry on Sunday for a special message!

Nicola Palmer

Hello everyone,

Please see below this week’s ideas for home learning. 

Cooking at home

I know many of you have already been enjoying lots of cooking activities at home.  On the Memo section of Tapestry, I have posted recipe cards produced by Herts for Learning in collaboration with Muriel Green Nursery School.   The recipe cards are in an ‘easy-to-use’ format, with clear instructions for ingredients and utensils needed. They also include a clearly explained ‘method’ for following the recipes with photographs and some adaptations that could be made so that all tastes are catered for.  I hope the recipe cards will continue to inspire your cooking activities.  There are many learning opportunities when cooking with your child below are some suggestions:

Literacy

• When reading recipes or words on food packaging, support your child to recognise letter sounds and read as many words as they are able. Help them to notice the sounds of individual letters and blend them together to read whole words.
• Reading the recipe cards, books, online recipes and menus will broaden your child’s understanding of what books can be about and how they work.
• Provide pens/pencil and paper to give your child an opportunity to make a recipe book/card, a healthy eating poster. This will give your child a really good and purposeful reason to write. Make it fun and part of their pretend play.
• Have fun with words as you cook. Play games such as finding words that rhyme with ‘dough’ or ‘flour’ or ‘beans’.
• Sound out words of items that you’d like your child to help find in the kitchen for example, Can you get the ‘b-r-ea-d’ or Can you find the ‘r-e-d p-a-n’.

Maths

• Talk about numbers throughout your cooking activities such as, how many eggs or apples you might need for a recipe. Allow your child to find them and count them out, with support if needed.
• When selecting ingredients or fruit and vegetables for cooking, give your child more than the required amount and ask them to count the amount you need.    
• Encourage your child to count the food items you are using. Suggest that they gather two onions, then add three carrots and ask ‘how many vegetables do you now have altogether?’
• Encourage your child to make a mark on paper for each ingredient, or group of ingredients to see how many you have used. If you do this each time you cook together, at the end of the week you could compare your list to see which recipe used the most ingredients.
• Talk about the shapes of the ingredients you are using.  For example, the tins of ingredients that are cylindrical, boxes that are cubes or cuboid. Talk about what makes the shapes special such as the curved sides of the tins or how many corners there are on a cube or cuboid.
• When your child is helping to gather the ingredients, help them to find them by giving them mathematical clues to describe the shape of the item.
• Place all of the ingredients you need for a recipe on a tray and ask your child to pass them to you by asking specific questions such as ‘pass me the ingredient that is beside the apple, or behind the tin of tomatoes’. The game can continue with your child naming the positions of ingredients to you.
• When preparing vegetables, ask your child to put all of the beans or carrots in order of length, from shortest to longest, or the potatoes in order of size.
• If you have scales, teach your child how to use them and how to read the dial or numerals. You can also encourage your child to guess which of two items is heavier or lighter by holding one in each hand, for example a lemon in one hand and a potato in the other. You could then check if their estimate was correct.
• Cooking together lends itself ideally to talking about time. How long do different things take to cook?  Set timers together on your cooker, freestanding timer or phone. Talk about how long things are taking to cook or see if your child can guess when they’re nearly ready.

More Maths

Refer to Mrs Sallis’s and Mrs Palmer’s blogs on Friday for maths ideas.  Here is another game you could try.

Timing

• Place a timing device such as a digital timer near to a collection of small easy-to-hold items such as marbles, shells, buttons etc. and some containers.
• Ask your child how many marbles/shells/buttons they think they might be able to put in one of the containers before the timer runs out.
• Ask:  How many …… did you get in that time?  How many did you get in last time? What will you try next? What would happen if you used this different pot? What would happen if you used, for example, buttons instead of marbles?
• Encourage your child to record each attempt.  How will you remember how many ……… you managed to get into the pot that time?

Variations:

• Ask your child how many ……… they could take out of the jar before the timer runs out.   Following on from that, how long would it take to remove all the …….?
• Alternatively, rather than asking your child how many ……… they can put in a pot in a given time, you could turn the task the other way round and ask them how long it might take to put, for example, 20 marbles in the pot.  This can lead onto trying to get quicker and quicker at putting a certain number of marbles into a pot. How will they know that they are getting quicker?

You could build on this idea further by making the most of opportunities to measure lengths of time which may come up in your everyday routine. For example, can the children tidy away in less time than they did yesterday?

Letters and Sounds

Revisit sounds ‘qu’, ‘ch’, ‘sh’ and ‘th’.  Play the games suggested in Mrs Sallis’s and Mrs Palmer’s blogs on Friday; post it note hide and seek, What’s the Sound Mr Wolf or the bucket game.

The Car Boot Sale

Pretend you are going to a car boot sale.  Gather together some items for sale and ask your child to write labels for each of the items.  To develop independent writing, encourage your child to use the sounds learnt so far using their home sound mats.  Help your child to sound out and identify the sounds he or she can hear in each word.  You could even add prices (under 10p) to the items.  Invite family members to come and buy an item from your child’s boot sale.

Father’s Day

Ask your child to make a Father’s Day card and write a message inside the card – Thank you for …….

Expressive Arts and Design

Play different types of music and then dance together in different ways. Play music that is fast, slow, bouncy, smooth and so on. Vary it as much as you can and move in a way that reflects the music you are listening to.

Take it in turns with your child to perform actions such as clapping your hands, stamping your feet, clicking your fingers, blowing raspberries. How many did you count? Make some of the actions big and obvious and others quieter and more subtle.

Planning and constructing

Talk to your child about what they might build before they begin to construct. Offer them a range of things to build with that may include construction sets, wooden bricks or sugar cubes to household items such as empty food boxes and packets, tins, cushions and furniture. The construction could be tiny or enormous or both. Draw a plan, with labels before you start and make a list of what you might need. Take a photo as a record of your child’s efforts and add to making a book over time to capture photographs of all the creations made.

Observational drawings

Invite your child to make an observational drawing of something that interests them in their immediate environment. This could be a model they have made, something in your garden, such as a flower or leaf, a special toy or object that they particularly like such as an ornament. Talk to your child about the item first, asking them what they can see by looking closely at patterns, shapes and colours. Give them a magnifying glass if you have one or use your phone to zoom in to look really closely at the item. Ask your child to select just the colours they will need to draw the item from a selection of pencils or pens. Make a ‘gallery’ for all of your child’s artwork over time.

Wishing you all a fantastic week.

Mrs Palmer

Hello everyone,

We had another busy week learning at school.  I’d like to share our ideas for parents of both home and school children to try at home. However, may I begin by saying a big ‘THANK YOU’ parents for the generous hand wash contributions – our hands are definitely much softer but still beautifully clean.

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Maths

We have been concentrating on subtraction this week with a particular focus on counting down from 20.  We’ve sang lots of counting down songs including a variation of ‘Zoom Zoom We’re Going to the Moon’ choosing a different number to start counting down from each time.

Another favourite has been ‘One Man went to Mow’.  Using our fingers to count down for each verse also develops those finger skills so essential for writing.

We played Kim’s game using 10 objects on a tray.  You can try this at home using every day household objects.

• Ask your child to identify each object (just to make sure they know the name of each object).
• Cover the tray with a tea towel (we used a box).
• Remove an item.
• Ask your child to name the object missing and tell you how many objects are remaining.

We extended this game by removing more than 1 object.  We challenged the children to calculate how many objects were missing and how many remaining, encouraging the use of fingers to solve the problem.   I was very impressed that the children were able to do this with 4 or 5 objects missing (sometimes even more!).  This is also a fabulous game to develop your child’s memory skills.

Another game we played was using a number track (20 – 0) chalked on playground.  Each child put a counter on 20 and took turns to roll a dice and move their counter down the track according to the number indicated on the dice.   The first child to reach 0 was the winner.

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Letters and Sounds

This week we have revisited ‘qu’, ‘ch’ ‘sh’ and ‘th’ digraphs (one sound two letters) – all included in your child’s Letters and Sounds book.  A top tip is to use a mirror to show your child the mouth movements for each sound – ‘th’ in particular can be confused with ‘f’ and ‘v’.  Look at the mouth shape, position of the tongue and teeth.  Tongue pokes out slightly for ‘th’ and bunny teeth for ‘f’.

We really appreciate the ideas suggested by parents on Tapestry and this week played a game posted by one of our ‘home school’ friends.

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• Write individual words on pieces of paper, fold and place in a box.
• Use a bucket or box for each digraph.
• Ask your child to read each word and identify the appropriate digraph.
• Roll the word up into a ball and post into the corresponding bucket/box.

Suggested words:

quick, quit, quack, queen
chop, chin, such, chip
shop, ship, fish, rush, cash, shell
this, that, with, moth

We also played ‘What’s the Sound Mr Wolf’ which you may recall previously posted on my blog (20 May).  The wolf calls out a word and children take a step towards the wolf for each sound in the word.  Either use the words suggested above or words in your child’s word bag (excluding those tricky words – star shapes in bag – these cannot be sounded out).

Literacy

We are busy learning the story of ‘The Three Billy Goats Gruff’.  The children independently made their own bridge and used story sticks to retell the story.

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We’ve also made our own stick puppets and are continuing to fine tune those scissor skills by learning to cut out quite tricky shapes.

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Physical Development

The children have been very keen to play lots of team and circle games and have had fun playing ‘Duck, Duck, Goose’ and running in a relay race.

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Learning at home and school together

In school we also explored some of the suggestions from this week’s home learning.

Understanding of the World

We placed various pieces of fruit and a piece of bread in plastic bags to observe the changes.  The banana caused much excitement with the most extraordinary change very quickly – turning a squishy black colour on the same day!  We’ve now added a green banana to watch as well. It will be interesting to see what all the various items look like on Monday – including one bag with some pom poms in it as a comparison to man-made objects.

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3D Creative Engineering

Here are our creations!  Ideas included a fun fair with a roundabout, slide and catapult including safety instructions ‘Only older children can use it’!

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We also sang ‘5 Fat Sausage Sizzling in a Pan’ using a frying pan and objects to represent the sausages.

I will post another blog on Monday to suggest some ideas for next week’s home learning. 

Hope you’re all having a wonderful, restful and safe weekend.

Nicola Palmer

Below are some ideas for home learning this week. 

Talking

Help your child to uses talk to organise, sequence and clarify thinking, ideas, feelings and events. 

Model how to think about things to your child by making a ‘running commentary’ as you undertake daily tasks together or when you play with your child. Think out loud. Ask yourself questions out loud and then answer them together. Then encourage your child by asking questions such as ‘Tell me what you’re doing/thinking?’ or ‘I wonder why you/they chose to do that..?’

Experimenting with different ways of moving

Make an obstacle course in a space using cushions, baskets, chairs, and encourage your child to move around it in different ways. For example, slithering, sliding, shuffling, wriggling and crawling.

Draw a hopscotch on the floor with your child using chalk or home-made paint (see textures below).  Try different movements to play the game such as jumping with feet apart and then jumping with two feet together or hopping.  How many jumps can your child do without losing balance and falling over? Do they need to hold their arms out to support their balance? Jump along the hopscotch using feet apart and together alternately.

Using simple tools and materials to effect changes in materials

Make a 3D picture together. Use a piece of A4 paper (or larger paper if available such as wallpaper from a roll) as a base and place it on a flat surface. Then do some ‘paper engineering’ with other pieces of paper. You can do this by curling strips of paper using child scissors, make snips in paper to create a fringe, curl paper around a pencil, make ‘snowflakes’ from folded paper, cut a circle to make a spiral. The possibilities are endless. When you have created your pieces of ‘paper engineering’, you can stick (or just place them) on the base paper to create a work of 3D art.

Continue a rhyming string

Play a game by sitting opposite each other on the floor. Roll a ball to each other and say a rhyming word as you roll the ball for example, bat, hat, cat, mat, pat, gat, splat, zat. (You can make up your own words.) Another example, peg, heg, meg, neg, spleg, weg, beg. This game can be played with several family members taking turns to roll the ball to each other.

Learning to sound out words for spelling

Play a version of ‘I spy’ with your child. Find a range of items that are familiar to your child and place them on a tray.  Begin the game by saying, ‘I spy with my little eye, something that sounds like p-e-g’. Instead of saying the whole word, sound it out by saying one letter sound at a time. Remember to say the ‘soft sound’ for each letter (not adding an ‘-uh’ at the end, for example say a longer ‘ssssss’ rather than ‘s-uh’ – this makes blending the sounds simpler). Your child keeps the item if they guess correctly. They can then take their turn to ‘sound out’ an item to you. The one with the most at the end is the winner.

The following household items or toys will develop your child’s phonics knowledge:    pot, pan, cup, peg, hat, pig, mug, car, boot, pen, cap, lid, doll, pen, box.

More challenging words:   soap, ring, brush, egg-cup, book, cow, chicken, shell, ship, boot, coat, car, jar, fork, coin.

Recognising Numbers

Go on a number hunt around your home. Look at numbers on the front door, clock, microwave, television, phone, food packaging, toys, receipts and so on.

You could extend by looking for numbers during a local walk. Look at car number plates, road signs, drain covers, signage. 

Use a ‘bingo card’ 0 – 20 to mark off numbers as your child spots them. 

If your child, a family member or friend are celebrating a birthday you could make them a card, badge or a birthday crown with their age on. Talk about the number that is your child’s age. Have a hunt around your home for places where you can find that number, for example in books, on food packaging, the washing machine or the clock

Counting

Encourage your child to help prepare snacks with you. Give your child up to 10 food items, for example halves of grapes, blueberries, cut up banana, raisins. Tell them how many items they should have, for example, ‘You should have 8 pieces of fruit’, and ask them to check they have that number. This could be extended by giving your child too many or too few pieces of fruit and then asking them what needs to happen to make it right.  Do they need to add more or take some away?

Subtraction

Learn this song with your child – 10 Fat Sausages Sizzling in a Pan

https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/school-radio/nursery-rhymes-ten-fat-sausages/z6vh7nb

Encourage your child to use fingers or objects to calculate how many sausages left in the pan each time.   You could even use a real frying pan and use suitable objects or paper cut outs to represent the sausages.

Solving mathematical problems

Invite your child to help you sort out socks before you put them away. Put the socks into pairs and lay the pairs on the floor, talking about the reasons that they are pairs (patterns, colours or size). Count how many you’ve got altogether. Count them in ones ‘1, 2, 3…’ then try counting in twos, ‘2, 4, 6, 8…’ Ask your child ‘how many socks have we got altogether?’ You can then repeat this game using shoes whilst tidying up the shoe rack.

Science experiments – looking at changes

Conduct a ‘scientific experiment’.   Put an orange/slice of orange, lemon, onion, bread, apple into a ‘zip lock’ type or other tightly tied plastic bag. Leave it sealed over a number of days to watch the item decompose and make a book about what you see. Talk to your child about what is happening and the reasons why. Look closely at the items using a magnifying glass if one is available or use a phone camera to zoom in on the item.

You could compare this to items such as glass and plastic and highlight that they do not ever decompose, adding an element of environmental awareness to your child’s learning.

Creating different textures

Add texture to paint. Put some paint in a cup/beaker and add either sawdust, sand, oatmeal, porridge oats or anything that you have available that will change the texture of the paint. Talk to your child about what happens and encourage them to describe the changes to the texture. Invite your child to use different items such as spoons, large brushes, spoons or sticks to apply the textured paint on to paper. Make some floor paint using cornflour mixed with a little water and food colouring to use outside. Talk about the texture as your child explores and experiments painting with natural items including leaves, sticks, pebbles or twigs.

As always, it will be lovely to see your child’s learning on Tapestry. Wishing you all a fun week.

Nicola Palmer

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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

Hello Reception parents and children,

This message is for those children who are able to return to school on Monday.  However, if your child is unable to come back to school just yet, please rest assured we will endeavour to keep in touch and provide some useful home learning tips.

Firstly, I would like to say how much I am looking forward to welcoming your children and am very excited to introduce them to our new classrooms and begin teaching in school again.

As promised, I have posted a video on Tapestry of the new classrooms for the children who are able to return to school.  Our priority is to ensure your children are happy, safe and secure.

Our main focus will be becoming familiar with the new learning environment and introducing the children to the concept of our ‘group bubbles’.  We will do lots of activities to reconnect our friendships between both ‘group bubbles’.  For example, writing each other messages and painting pictures to display on our large rainbow display.  We will also aim to do a short video presentation to each other at the end of the week.

There will, of course, be a raised awareness of hygiene and cleanliness.  To prepare your child, you may wish to look at this handwashing video together and help your child learn the correct handwashing procedure.  We’ll also learn the accompanying song in class.

Rub the palms, one two
Rub the knuckles, one, two
Rub the insides of the fingers
And the back of them too
Rub the thumbs one, two
And the nails one, two
Now it’s time to rinse them
Happy clean hands for you

I am conscious that for some children separating from their parents after such a long time at home may be the first skill to develop.  If your child is at all anxious, please take this opportunity to prepare your child as much as possible with positive encouragement.  Reassure your child that we have planned lots of fun activities and are very excited to be welcoming them back to school. 

Lastly, don’t forget to send in a ‘named’ water bottle, ‘named‘ sun hat and ‘named‘ rain coat.  You never know when we may be caught out by a sudden rain shower.  Also, depending upon the weather forecast, apply sun cream prior to arriving at school. No need to send in book bags.

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend together.

Nicola Palmer

Hello everyone,

Before I start my home learning activities today, I just wanted to let you know how much I am looking forward to welcoming those children who are able to return to school. 

I will be in touch again to give you more information and some photos of the new classrooms.  Our main priority will be making sure your children are safe and happy.

Here are my suggestions for today and over half term.

This activity is a mixture of communication/Language, maths and physical development.  I know some of your children are already helping to make sandwiches at home.

Making sandwiches

• Talk to your child about their favourite fillings and healthy options.  Probably best to encourage a filling that will be easy to cut once the sandwich is made.
• Ask your child to wash their hands before preparing the food.
• Encourage your child to help you gather together the utensils and ingredients you will need to make a super sandwich.
• Invite your child to help spread the butter on the bread. Teach your child to take a little butter and to spread it evenly across the whole slice of bread. Top Tip: make sure the butter is nice and soft before you invite your child to start spreading it on the bread. 
• Finish the sandwich with the filling.

Now for the maths bit:

• Ask your child to:
  • Cut the sandwich into two rectangles.
  • Cut the rectangles into four squares.
  • Cut each square into two triangles.
  • How many triangles do you have altogether?

Now eat all the triangles!  Maybe try the activity another day and cut the sandwich into different shapes.

Letters and Sounds/Religious Education

Plan a Pentecost Party

Pentecost Day is on Sunday, 31 May so you may wish to try this activity over the half term period.

I have received lots of posts on Tapestry of children enjoying home tea parties and celebrations such as VE Day.  You may wish to plan a home Pentecost party and encourage your child to write a list of either things you will need or activities to do.   As usual, encourage your child to ‘have a go’ and use your child’s sound mat/Letters and Sounds to support their writing.

Pentecost is often named as ‘the birthday of the Church’.  The feast celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit who leads and guides people into communion with God and fills them with courage and energy for Christian life.

It is difficult at this age for children to understand the abstract concept of the Holy Spirit.  We use images such as air, wind and fire to help us explain the power of the Holy Spirit.  Here are some ideas that can help your child explore these elements and have fun on Pentecost Day.

• Red is the Church’s colour for Pentecost.  You could wear red, eat red food, make decorations in red etc.
• Make a Pentecost hat.

Make a streamer and write “Share the Good News of Jesus with Everyone” on it. This can be just strips of paper attached to a stick.

• Blow bubbles.
• Play with windmills.
• Dance with the streamer to create a ‘fire dance’.

And, of course, revisit the story of Pentecost, Pentecost prayer and Pentecost song posted on my previous blogs.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

Nicola Palmer

Hello Reception Class,

I hope you are all enjoying the sunshine and that my suggestions for today are useful.

The Door Bell Rang

Share with your child the story of ‘The Door Bell Rang’ by Pat Hutchins. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXtu90JnDkM

Maths

Sharing/Acting out

You will need:

• 12 biscuits, fruit or another suitable type of food.  If you have play dough, your child could make the ‘cookies’ with play dough or just cut out some circle shapes to represent the ‘cookies’.
• A small selection of toys (2 – 6). 

What to do:

• Begin by talking about the story.  ‘Tell me what happened?’ ‘How many people were there?’ ‘How do Sam and Victoria know there will be 6/3/2/1 cookies each?’
• Show your child 2 toys and ask ‘How can we share our food out so that the toys all have the same number?’
• Ask ‘What if 2 more toys come along?’
• Repeat until you have 6 toys.

Perhaps you could model sharing the food unequally and ask your child ‘What do you notice?’  ‘How can we solve the problem?’ Or maybe suggest 5 toys to challenge your child and introduce the concept of ‘remainder’.

Letters and Sounds/Religious Education

Write a simple prayer

I suggested in my blog yesterday that you share a simple prayer with your child.  If you had a chance to do this, it will give your child a starter for today’s activity.  Talking and exploring ideas before putting pencil to paper is an important aspect of any writing activity.  

• Ask your child to write their own simple prayer to thank God.  You can always talk about this now if you didn’t get a chance to do the prayer yesterday.
• Suggested wording:

Dear God

Thank you God for ………..

Love from

• Use word bag to support spelling tricky word:  you
• Encourage your child to use the sounds he/she knows. 
• Use sound mat or Letters and Sounds book to support sounds. 
• Remind your child to use pre cursive letter formation ‘whoosh’ writing.  This can also be found in the Letters and Sounds book.

Pentecost

Sing this simple Pentecost song with your child (to the tune of  “If you’re happy and you know it”)

Jesus sent a friend, clap your hands.
Jesus sent a friend, clap your hands.
It’s Pentecost you know, so your happiness can show.
Jesus sent a friend, clap your hands.

Thank you for reading my blog.

Nicola Palmer