EYFS – Newsletter – 14.03.25

It has been another fabulous and fun-packed week in Reception! Our global travels ‘Around the World’ this week took us to Africa, where we took in several sights and learned something about life in different parts of this amazing continent. The animals of the Kenyan national parks caused much interest and we enjoyed creating some wonderful animal prints with painted sponges. Some also took on the safari writing challenge and applied their phonics learning to write sentences about what could be seen on an African safari. Our creativity was sparked by looking at the textile art of Malian artist Aboulaye Konate. We had some beautiful artworks created by children who followed a similar approach to Konate and assembled different pieces of colourful fabrics to make vibrant collages. 

There has again been lots of activity in our DT area as children continue to build their own modes of transportation that could be used to travel the globe. We’ve also enjoyed studying atlases, maps and pictures of Africa (including some featuring our own family members!) and getting to know more about this part of our world. When looking at the island of Madagascar, we took inspiration from the majestic baobab trees to create a special tree of our own in Reception class. The children helped come up with some affirming messages for their friends which we wrote on the leaves and stuck them on the branches of our own baobab to create a positvi-TREE!

In the past week or so, Reception has unfortunately been beset by different illnesses, so we’ve made extra sure that the children understand the need for good personal hygiene. We demonstrated the power of soap against germs and used paint on a few children’s hands to show just how quick and easy it is to spread germs around the class. Hopefully we’ll see everyone back to good health next week!

Very excitingly, our school is having some building work done this week on the grounds which we would usually use for Forest Schools sessions. All shall be revealed soon, but there is going to be some great new additions which will greatly enhance our outdoor learning for future Forest Schools sessions. With these areas out of use, we decided to take the children on a walk of the local area around school to look at and discuss the amenities and services available in Cookridge. We first walked up the hill to look at Cookridge water tower and applied our recently acquired knowledge of 3D shapes to talk about it’s shape. We took in the local fire station, high school, leisure centre and supermarkets as well as the handy little free library from into which books can be deposited and from which we took a little book to read back in class! What a lot of great resources we have in the area around our school! We were very impressed by the children’s local knowledge as well as their stamina for keeping up with Mr Verdi down and uphill in some rather chilly (and at times, rather wet) weather.

Back in class on the afternoon after our walk, the class took on a team building challenge inspired by the local landmark of Cookridge water tower. Equipped with some paper art straws, a role of tape and a small pot of play-doh the children worked with an adult to construct a tower that could hold aloft a bowl full of water. Much discussion was made about how to go about it, with all four teams making different approaches to the building challenge. The children helped cut, join and assemble the pieces to make a (hopefully) strong and stable tower that would be able to take the weight of water high above ground. With the allotted time up, it was time to test the towers and see which teams had succeeded. All towers were able to carry 100ml of water, but as more water was added Mr Verdi’s team’s tower sadly buckled under the weight and collapsed first. Ms Colefax’s tower was filled almost to the brim but had a slight slant so could not quite hold as much water at the remaining two towers, which were both able to successfully hold up a full bowl of 350ml of water above ground! Needing an outright winner, we decided to put the last two towers through an earthquake simulation (Mr Verdi shaking the table) and though both stood firm for some time, it was Mrs Andrews team that were victorious as eventually Miss Kendrick’s team’s terrific tower toppled too!

Phonics sessions this week have introduced the final sounds of Phase 3, which are ‘air’ (as in chair) ‘er’ (as in pepper) and ‘ure’ (as in pure). The children have enjoyed activities to find, recognise, read and write these new sounds in words and sentences. This now means that we have learned all the new sounds that we learn in Reception and are starting to be able to apply this knowledge with more independence. We’ll also be putting emphasis on letter formation to ensure we can refine handwriting going forward.

Our Maths sessions this weeks has been all about 3D shapes and how we can recognise and talk about these shapes. The children have been introduced to the vocabulary to describe the properties of 3D shapes (faces, edges, vertices) and have been encouraged to seek out where we might see these 3D shapes in the world around us. Outside we had a game of rolling different 3D shapes downhill to see which ones would roll and travel and which would not, which brought out lots of lively discussion around flat and curved faces and edges and really helped us embed the names of some common 3D shapes as we handled them. 

All children in school this week have had an opportunity to visit the book fair which has visited Cookridge recently. The children will have brought home a ‘wish’ list of books they are interested in with the option to purchase them online. Thank you to those that were able to support the book fair and make a purchase – some funds raised from the sale of these books go directly back into out school library so that we can purchase even more exciting books for the children to enjoy.

Have a lovely weekend!

The Reception Team

KEY DATES FOR YOUR DIARY:

Tuesday 18th March – Parent consultations

Thursday 3rd April – Foods of the World Parent Event – 2:00pm – parents and carers invited to join us in Reception to share in our learning and enjoy some delicious foods.

Friday 4th April – Last day of Spring 2 term