EYFS – Newsletter – 21.04.2023

What an exciting first week back it has been in Reception class!

Monday saw the very special delivery to our classroom of ten hen’s eggs in an incubator. Over the course of the week the children have watched with much excitement as the ten eggs hatched into ten fluffy chicks! It has been wonderful to see the children take such interest in observing this process and in their care and consideration for the brand new chicks as they emerged. We shall be looking after the chicks over the coming weeks and the children will be working to complete their own ‘chick diary’ to show their observations as the chicks grow. 

The chicks are obviously playing a central role in our new class topic of ‘Let it Grow!’, which will see us looking at the many joys of spring. Aside from watching the chicks grow, we have planted our own seeds in the playground and will be watching carefully to see what grows. Our seed planting was inspired by a spirited reading of the traditional tale The Enormous Turnip. Hopefully we won’t have to heave so much to harvest our radishes once they grow! We have also brought in tadpoles to the class pond, so we can observe the wonders of nature as they morph into froglets and (hopefully!) into frogs. The children will be learning all about how plants and animals grow this term; about life cycles; the water cycle; and much more. It’s sure to be lots of fun!

Our phonics sessions have continued to recap and revisit the previously learned phase 3 sounds. The reading, writing and listening activities have given opportunities for the children to grow more confident in the application of the long vowel digraphs ‘ai’ ‘ee’ and ‘igh’. It is really pleasing to see the children becoming more independent in their literacy work as these skills develop.

In Maths this week, we have spent time exploring numbers from 11-20. By investigating the composition of these numbers as a tens and ones it helps to build a strong foundation for understanding the entire number system as they go through school. By using a range of resources, inside and out, the children have been able to play around with representing these numbers in different ways and become more familiar with how numbers build on the repetition of numbers 0-9.

We spent time on Thursday discussing the end of  Ramadan and the upcoming celebration of Eid-al-Fitr. The children had remembered so much of our previous learning on this subject and were very interested to see how children and their families celebrate Eid as part of their Muslim faith.  The children took part in a range of activities related to Eid celebrations, with the design and colouring of mehndi patterns proving very popular. Eid Mubarak to all our families celebrating Eid this weekend!

Friday saw  the children thrilled to experience their first weekly Green Time reward afternoon (previously Reception have taken a shorter reward period at the end of each day) with opportunity to freely explore the gymnastics equipment and apparatus in the school hall. It was a joy to see the boys and girls getting so much enjoyment out of the climbing, balancing, jumping and dancing, all to the soundtrack of DJ Green’s banging 90s tunes! 

Have a wonderful weekend!

DATES FOR THE DIARY:

Thursday 27th April – Reception class will be closed to pupils as part of national strike action. We apologise for any inconvenience caused. 

Friday 5th May – To celebrate the coronation of King Charles III, children are invited to dress in red, white and blue. There will also be a competition to design a crown for the new King. These are to  be completed at home and brought in to school before Friday 5th May (as with the Easter Egg competition).