EYFS – Newsletter – 23.02.24

We’ve had a great first week back in Reception! Our latest topic is ‘Location, Location, Location’ and will entail us looking at places near and far, from our local area in Cookridge to the different continents of the world. By exploring the world together, we’ll be able to look at how people live in varying locations and compare these places to our home in Yorkshire. 

As a focal point, we have converted our maths shop into a travel agents, with a selection of brochures offering holidays all over the world. The children can peruse the different countries and make a booking request on paper, writing down where they would like to go. There is also ‘holiday checklists’ available for the children to write down all those holiday essentials they will need to want to pack in their suitcases. 

In our topic sessions, we have introduced the vocabulary or cities, counties, countries and continents to talk about places around the world. As it’s our first week, we have kept it local and looked at the four countries that make up the United Kingdom and where our home county of Yorkshire fits into that. Thank you to those that were able to send photos via email or Tapestry for us to share, as this really helps us make connections when discussing places around Yorkshire and further afield in the UK. We talked about what a landmark is, and showed some famous landmarks around the world and used Google Earth to look closer at some famous landmarks in the UK. 

Phonics sessions this week have introduced the digraph phonemes ‘oa’ (boat) ‘oo’ (moon) and ‘oo’ (book). These vowel sounds are very useful and the children have had opportunities to rehearse hearing and recognising the phonemes in words and phrases and the chance to apply their knowledge in their own writing. As the children have become more confident in using their known sounds to write words, we are challenging all the children to begin writing simple sentences with the correct formation and conventions of capital letters to start, ‘finger’ spaces between words and ending a full stop. 

Our Maths sessions this week have concentrated on the numbers 9 and 10. The children have joined in activities and games to practise recognising these numbers in lots of different ways and strategies to help with accurate counting of these amounts. 

As always, the children have been keen to get time on our class iPads this week. We have been challenging the children to log themselves on to the ‘Purple Mash’ educational software, which in itself has helped the children grow their proficiency with technology before accessing the learning and creative tools within. 

Tuesday’s Art session with Mrs Ledda saw the children helping to prepare for our upcoming celebrations for Chinese New Year. In the lunar calendar, we are entering the year of the dragon, so the children looked at traditional Chinese dragon art and contributed to a shared dragon project. 

Appointments are now available to book for parent consultations with the Reception Teachers for three dates in early March (see below) on the school website. If you are unsure how to do this please ask a member of staff or visit the school office for assistance. 

Have a lovely weekend!

The Reception Team

Diary Dates:

Wednesday 28th February – EYFS Writing Workshop at 5:00pm

Monday 4th March – Parent consultations after school (Miss Rushworth)

Tuesday 5th March – Parent consultations after school (Miss Rushworth/Mr Verdi)

Wednesday 6th March – Parent consultations after school (Mr Verdi)

Thursday 7th March – World Book Day (children encouraged to dress as a favourite book character).

Friday 8th March – EYFS Celebration Event at 2:00pm (parents and carers welcomed to join us in Reception).

Wednesday 27th March – School closes for half term at 3:20pm

Monday 15th April – School reopens