The Hedgehog Story: week ending 9th October

 Hello Hedgehog and Parents,

And, just like that, we've finished another week of hedgehogging.

It's been a good week which ended with our sponsored walk. The children did a wonderful job (there were hills). There are a few photos of it on the school website here. 

Year 1

Our Bog Baby story took a bit of a turn this week. The children wrote some news for the Parks Trust news letter, telling the public about what the bog babies have been up to. This led to a lot of interest in the bog babies, but unfortunately it went to far. The cameras captured someone reaching into the pond to take a bog baby home as a pet. The children immediately decided to construct a fence around the pond and began to bog-napping. A policewoman visited to find out more and asked the children to create some detailed sketch portraits of the suspect. We will keep you updated. Here is a photo of the missing bog baby, in case you happen to see it.

Phonics:

The children looked at 'ur' 'er' and 'ir' which, confusingly, all make the same sound. They learnt that 'er' is often found at the end of words and can sound like a short 'uh' (butter, letter, robber and so on). 

You could play a version of 'hangman' with your child to practice reading these sounds. Tell your child the word will definitely have ur, er or ir in it! Some words you could use:

bird   chirp   girl   third   first   rubber   letter   better   turn   burn   church   

For extra support, you could draw lines matching the sounds, rather than the letters and ask your child to guess sounds - e.g. for church, you would draw  ___ ___ ___  (ch - ur - ch) and for first  you would draw  _  __ _ _. 

Maths:

The children have been subtracting by:

* taking away objects
* crossing out pictures
* counting back along a number line

Please take any opportunity to practice subtracting with your child. A good game is 'race to 0' - all players start with 20, take it in turns to roll a dice and subtract that many until one player reaches 0. The only thing is... you mustn't roll a 6. Anyone that rolls a 6 has to start again! To take the CPA (concrete, pictorial, abstract) approach you could...

* begin with 20 objects and subtract objects until one player reaches 0 (restoring your collection to 20 if you roll a 6)

* have a number line to 20 and jump backwards with each turn until one player reaches 0 

* write number sentences to match as you go, eg 20 - 5 = 15;  15 - 3 = 12;  12 - 4 = 8.....

Reception:

The dinosaur eggs we found in our story last week have been carefully looked after and some have been hatching. The children are learning that in 'our story' anything can happen according to their imagination - so each child decided whether their egg had hatched or not, and if so what had hatched. Surprisingly, though we thought they were diplodocus eggs, we had all sorts of dinosaurs hatching! The children learnt that at the bottom of the next was one large, different egg that just would not hatch, no matter what the scientists did. Together, we created this egg and decided to put it up high so that no one could get it. It is currently on top of our dinosaur hospital and the children are thinking about how to get it to hatch. 

Maths

The children have been doing some sorting and matching this week. We sorted dinosaur eggs, firstly by colour and then by size. We began to use the words 'more' and 'fewer' to compare the groups as well.  You could practice this at home - sorting anything you can find (socks, teddies, food...) and using the terms - especially the word 'fewer'  (we tend to use 'less' but 'fewer' is the correct mathematical term when comparing numbers of objects).

Phonics

Mumford the dragon has helped the children to learn:

s a t p i n m d

and we have looked at the word the 

At home, please help your child to recognise these sounds and words. A good way is to have them up around the house so that whenever you and your child bump into them, you can remember them together. Ask your child to say the sound or word and if they don't know it, then...

1) you say it

2) you and your child say it together

3) they say it alone

(whilst at all times looking at the sound or word).

We also began some oral blending - Mumford talked like a 'robot', saying, for example, 'p-a-t your head' or  't-a-p your nose'. An important skill for early reading is for your child to be able to blend sounds that are heard. You can easily practice this at home, for example say to your child

'Find your s-o-ck'
'would you like h-a-m?'

(try to stick to short words to start with and say the pure sounds in the word. Pure sounds can be found here).

You could also practice writing the letters with your child. If they find holding a pen/pencil hard, you can write with fingers in a tray of paint/flour/lentils etc:

s  -         wiggly like a snake

a d  -     'round, up and down again'

n m p  - all begin 'down, up and over'

t  i  -         straight down the long ladder with a flick at the bottom

Next week, we will be consolidating these sounds and doing a lot of work with them such as writing them in paint/rice/sand (etc) or with pens, finding words that begin with them and beginning to read simple words such as sat, pin, nip. 

I wish you all a very good weekend,

from Miss Nash