This week an igloo popped up in our role play area and we became Arctic Explorers. We looked at our globe and learned that the Arctic is at the top, the north, and the Antarctic is down at the bottom, the south. We learnt that polar bears live at the top and penguins live down at the bottom. We looked at non fiction books to find out about the coldest parts of our planet and we wondered how a shelter made of snow would keep us warm. This will continue into next week. Safer Internet day takes place on the 11th February, in reception we will be talking about how to use technology responsibly and how to stay safe online throughout the whole of next week.

On Thursday we went birdwatching in the school grounds with our year 6 buddies. This was a roll over activity from a previous week when the bad weather put a stop to our fun! We watched and listened and counted the birds we saw. We will send our findings to the RSPB Big Schools birdwatch.

This week in phonics we learnt our first trigraph (three letters one sound) ‘igh’ (night, sight, fight) and another digraph ‘oa’ (boat, goat, coat). Please continue to read with your child at home, it really does make such a big difference to their progress. The flashcards for the new sounds went home today, please note these do not need to be kept in your child’s reading wallet, they are for you to keep at home and practise with. Every sound has an action to help children remember them, ask them to show you the action.

In maths we learnt about odd and even numbers. We also found and made doubles, ask your child to show you their doubling machine! Next week we will continue to practice this and our perceptual subitising skills which will support children to develop mental images for addition and subtraction, helping them to move away from relying upon counting on and counting back when calculating.

Lastly a huge well done! Reception class have filled their kindness jar with pompoms! We will celebrate this next week with some music and party games on the last day of term.

Have a wonderful weekend,

Jo Bentley

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