Below you will find an overview of the stimuli and learning we will be introducing children to in class this week for your information if your child is in school this week or to support you with home-schooling if your child is self-isolating at home. Support is available via your Tapestry app, email@example.com or by telephoning 01562850397.
Book of the Week
'Whatever Next!' by Jill Murphy
This book allows us to continue thinking about the importance of a good bedtime routine; to compare two different books by the same author (Peace At Last and Whatever Next!); to explore imaginative play and role play and to learn about space. As part of our learning, we will be:
- Setting up and exploring a mission control Role Play Area where we can plan for rocket missions and set them off into the sky with a 10, 9, 8, 7... 3, 2, 1... BLAST OFF!
- Mark-making in our play tray of the Moon surface (salt, glitter, silver shell and stones) with paintbrushes, rollers and scrapers.
- Finding out about silhouettes (as there are lots of silhouettes in the illustrations in the book) and using this to make our own silhouette puppets and put on a show.
- Using carboard boxes to go on our own adventures (a box can be anything - a car, a rocket, a submarine... the opportunities are endless!)
- Creating our own stories about going on adventures or going into Space.
- Finding out about a British person of historical significance: Tim Peake
- Writing lists of things we would take with us on a trip to the Moon
- Making our own rockets from junk modelling materials
- Developing our finger muscles by using toothbrushes to wash small world animals (because Baby Bear needs a bath when he gets back from the Moon as he is very dirty!) and
- Drawing our own homes in detail to help create a class piece of artwork in response to the layered sky line in the endpapers of the book.
Aside from thinking about the book, we will also be continuing our learning in other ways by carrying on our Dinosaur dance sessions by creating and performing our own sequences of movement. We will also continue monitoring our decay experiment that we have set up in class (watching what happens to fruit left in the air and left in water) and will be finding out about Autumn by exploring Autumn leaves, conkers and acorns (making art work, exploring weighing and measuring natural resources and practising developing our hand and eye co-ordination by making patterns and laying conkers and acorns on lines and patterns).
The children can now read so many more words and their blending skills are developing well. Thank you for your support with this at home. Keep it going. The more opportunities children have to blend words, the more confident they will become. They can also now read all 6 of the Phase 2 Tricky Words (I no go to the into). We will continue practising these words this week before we move on to the next set of words.
This week we will be focusing on the sounds 'h,' 'b,' 'f/ff,' 'l/ll' and 'ss.' These are the final sounds in Phase 2! We have already discussed 'ck' with the children but this is their first other exposure to double letters in words. We will be explaining to the children that "sometimes you see one f, whereas other times you see two" but that "they sound the same." We will talk about how you only tend to see double letters in the middle or at the end, rather than at the beginning. We will show them how to use a line, rather than a dot sound button for double letters as they are "letters working together to make one sound." e.g.
huff bell fuss
. . _ . . _ . . _
In class, we will be focussing on reading captions and sentences in Phonics and adult-led groups, rather than just single words now. For your information captions are short phrases that are not full sentences and do not need a capital letter and a full stop (e.g. 'a dad and a nan' 'pots and pans' 'a cat in a hat'). This will help your child be more ready for home reading books with words in, which they will begin receiving over the next two to three weeks as they become more confident in school to read and understand longer phrases. We have waited to begin sending these out so that your child is ready for this challenge and therefore have a more positive experience of early reading when they begin with word books.
The Jolly Phonics songs and correct pronunciations can be found below, along with a link to Phonics Play games which you can use to support learning these sounds at home if you are self-isolating.
This week in Maths we will be focusing on the skills of comparing identical items, comparing non-identical items and finding 'one more.' We will be comparing different representations of the same number of dots on paper plates to help children compare amounts of dots, even when they are laid out differently. We will also be comparing amounts of conkers (identical items) and then a mix of conkers and acorns (non-identical items) by laying them on 5 and 10 frames. 5 and 10 frames are important mathematical resources that help children understand and compare amounts. They are simply paper laminated grids made of 5 or 10 squares that help children understand amounts by comparing them to the whole frame of 5 or 10. They look like this:
5 frames 10 frames
At home, you could print/draw some of these frames and give your child two different amounts of conkers/acorns/stones/pieces of pasta, asking them to lay them on two different frames and using this to help you count how many were in each group and which group had 'more,' 'fewer' or if they were 'equal,' We will also be setting up a teddy bear's picnic to help us compare non-identical items. If we have three bears, can the children make sure we have three plates, 3 cups, 6 welly boots etc. We will then be using the story of 'The Enormous Turnip' to begin exploring the idea of one more by counting the number of people pulling each time and discussing how there is 'one more' each time. Below are a printable set of 5 frames and ten frames; a set of Autumn counting cards that you can use to compare amounts and order and the story of 'The Enormous Turnip' that you can read together and discuss 'one more.' If you do not have a printer you can draw your own frames on screen, discuss the counting cards on the screen and read the story on a device.
Below you will find a dinosaur dance you can do at home, a Space themed yoga and a Rocket-themed pencil control sheet to have a go at together.
Understanding the World
Here are some songs about the Solar System. Watch them together and talk about the planets. Do some more research together about the planets. You could make some planet art by painting, drawing, printing etc.