The week started with finishing off our learning about the farm. Matching baby animals to their mothers and fathers and learning the names. Mr Stewart played a game to reinforce this over the past two Fridays! We also learnt about the products that come from different animals.
Monday afternoon saw the start of our ‘Looking for signs of autumn’ and has been at the centre of most adult led activity in reception this week.
In literacy we looked at fiction and non-fiction books and poems about autumn. You may like to look again at the autumn story entitled ‘In the Autumn’ on: sebastianswan.org.uk/autumn/bkau.html
The children looked at a non-fiction book on how to plant a hyacinth and we planted some in water and some in bulb fibre. The children then tried to complete a pictorial recall of the activity. We will be watching the hyacinths over the next few months.
We went on a walk to look for and collect signs of autumn and try out the newly acquired camera skills. The children have been using the magnifying glasses to look carefully at seeds and leaves they collected. They have brought home a leaf collecting bag to see how many different shaped leaves they can find this weekend. The children made hedgehogs that are getting ready to hibernate and did some wool winding by matching wool to the colours they found in the leaves.
We looked at Autumn Leaves, a painting by John Everett Millais and some of the children completed their own pictures with the same title using wax pastels.
In maths we have been copying and continuing patterns using different equipment. http://www.primaryinteractive.co.uk/early.htm is a website where you can start a pattern for your child to copy and continue
http://www.crickweb.co.uk/Early-Years.html is a site where your child just has to copy the pattern. There are lots of free I-pad apps and games on line.
We have also looked at ordering numbers according to size. There is a good game that can be played on the computer on: http://www.topmarks.co.uk/Flash.aspx?f=order
I hope that many of you have tried the ‘Teach Your Monster to Read’ game that I sent home a log-in for. It is quite repetitive but some children need this level of repetition. As I said in my reception presentation on Monday, ‘Reading Eggs’ is good and there is always a free trial period to see if it interests your child before any financial outlay is required. It’s worth a free trial over half term maybe!
Next week we are celebrating National Apple Day which actually falls on 21st October. There are some activities in Hitchin town square tomorrow on this theme and we will be looking at and tasting different types of apples. It would be helpful if you could all bring in 1 apple with the name of the child and the type of apple written on the bag. If you have an apple tree a bag of apples would be great as we could show the children how apple juice is made.
It was good to see so many of you at the reception parents’ information evening and I am looking forward to meeting you on a more individual basis next week. Please remember that parents evening appointments are only for a maximum of ten minutes. It is meant to be a quick chat about how your child has settled. If you have anything that you think will take longer to discuss, another appointment will need to be made.
Once again, have a good weekend and enjoy looking at the photos from this week and discussing with your child what we have been doing.