We’ve been under the sea this week in Reception, exploring undersea creatures as part of our Amazing Animals topic. There was a lot of interest in our newly installed class rockpool, which gave children opportunity to practise their counting and word building. Children searched the rockpool for different types of shell and counted each accurately. Hidden amongst the sand and rocks were a collection of letters, and the children were encouraged to find letters and build words to write.
We took time to learn some amazing facts about some brilliant sea creatures like the blue whale and the octopus. Hopefully some children have come home sharing some of these fascinating facts. We also got onto Google Earth to explore the beautiful coral expanses of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. The children loved the immersive 360 degree photos of the reef and searching the reef for fish.
In Maths this week, we have been measuring and comparing length and height. We measured objects using cubes; compared and ordered lengths of ribbon; and played a throwing game to practise how to measure distance in different ways.
Phonics had us learning the phonemes ‘ng’ (ring) ‘th’ (feather – voiced) and ‘th’ (moth – unvoiced). The children have been going from strength to strength in their reading and writing and are beginning to show more independence in applying their phonics knowledge. To rehearse using the ‘ng’ phoneme in words and phrases we played the game that is sweeping the nation – Thing-in-a-ring! The children had to compete to throw an object into a hoop to win phonemes for their team to help them build words containing ‘ng’.
Tuesday’s PPA saw the children drawing colourful parrot pictures in Art with Mrs Ledda; jumping and clapping in time with musical patterns with Mrs Durrant; and making personal pizzas with Mr Joy.
There has been lots of creativity inspired by animals this week, with children choosing to draw pictures of some of the animals we saw last week at Tropical World. We had a fabulous school of jellyfish festoon the classroom, created out of paper bowls and bubble-wrap! Children also chose to create sparkling fish collage pictures inspired by the picture book ‘The Rainbow Fish’ by Marcus Pfister.
Our Cookridge pet of the week has been our most recent additions – the goats! On Friday afternoon, we took a visit up to see Nigel and Doughnut just after Mr Gamble had finished their monthly hoof trimming. The children were able to get up close with these beautiful animals and help with their grooming.
Diary Dates:
Friday 9th February – Dress to Express day
Friday 9th February – School closes for half term at 3:20pm
Monday 19th February – School reopens
Wednesday 28th February – EYFS Writing Workshop at 5:00pm
Monday 4th March – Parent’s evening
Tuesday 5th March – Parent’s evening
Thursday 7th March – World Book Day
Friday 8th March – EYFS Celebration Event at 2:00pm
Tinshill Drive
Cookridge
Leeds
West Yorkshire
LS16 7DH
0113 386 2500