The whole class for the whole day!

 Hello and happy Friday to you all,

Well, we have had a Very Good Week in Hedgehog class. For the first time, Reception and Year 1 have all been in class for the whole day. It's been a lot of fun and the children have adapted so well to being all together. The Reception children have enjoyed being in all day, though I think you may find they are a little tired this weekend!

Hedgehog Stories
Due to various seasonal events, especially Christmas, we are not going to be doing a 'Mantle' story this half term, Instead, we will be enjoying a story each week. Actually, this week it was two stories: 'The Hug' by Eoin McLaughlin and Polly Dunbar, and 'Hedgehugs' by Lucy Tapper and Steve Wilson.

Following these stories the children came up with ways to make hedgehogs more huggable, leading to a science investigation for Year 1. We looked at some properties of materials and decided that something 'soft' and possibly 'smooth' would make the best huggable hedgehog. 

The children made some hedgehogs using potatoes, hammers and nails. The Reception children then covered their hedgehogs in a range of materials to make them more huggable, while Year 1 carried out an investigation to find out which material was best for making a hedgehog huggable. They concluded that wool was best. 

Year 1 also learnt how to use oil pastels and created some oil pastel hedgehogs. 

At home:
You could talk to your child about properties of materials as you go about your day to day life: use words such as:  hard, soft, smooth, rough, flexible, rigid.

Phonics:

Reception have now learnt the sounds:

s a t p i n m d g o c k e u r

We have been doing a lot of work on reading and spelling words by sounding them out and blending them. We've also been reading list 1 of the High Frequency Words. I will be sending home list 2 to everyone to begin learning. 

At home:

You could play this pairs game.

Print it off, turn over the images on one side of the table/floor and the words on the other. Take it in turns to turn over one from each and see if they match. Children's early reading and blending is supported well with the use of images. If you don't have a printer, you could create your own.  

If your child finds this tricky, start with all of the pictures and words face up and match them together - it will be easier for them to blend a word if they can choose from a number of pictures. Then when they have practised, you can play the game. 

Year 1 have been working on Phase 4 blends at the start of words: for example, sp, st, sl, dr.....

To read words with these in, encourage children to get the first two sounds ready first before reading the rest. To spell them, we stretch them right out. Often, children will miss out the second sound of the blend when spelling - if they do this, ask them to read the word back to you and see if they can hear that something is missing.

At home:
Here is a game of Boggle for you to play to practice sp and st. The children are learning that words never start with 'sb' or 'sd', which these blends often sound like!

Maths:

Reception have been working on some basic counting skills. When counting with children, we focus on the five principles of counting that they need to be secure in. We will be doing a lot of work on these this year. If you go to the maths page of the school website and scroll down to find the second powerpoint (starting with '1 to 1 correspondence') you can learn more about the five principles. 

This week the children learnt two games which we will be playing in various forms this year. They are both good for practising the five principles of counting.  Here is one of them for you to play at home. 

Five Lovely Things:

• Two players and a 1-3 dice
• Each player finds 5 lovely things (we use shiny gems in class)
• Take it in turns to roll the dice and ask the other player politely for that number of lovely things, e.g. 'Dad, please can I have two of your lovely things?'
• The other player counts out and hands over that number of lovely things
• Keep going until each player has had a set number of turns
• The winner is the player with the highest number of lovely things, or when the other player runs out of lovely things.
• Good for practising: counting 1:1 correspondence, recognising numbers (if you use a numeral dice rather than spots), comparing numbers using 'more' or 'fewer', counting out a set number of objects (knowing when to stop). 
• You can extend this to 'Ten Lovely Things' and use a 1-6 dice if your child is confident.

Year 1 have been re-visiting the addition skills they were learning before half term just to make sure they are embedded. They have been:

• adding by counting on along a number line
• adding by making 10 first
• adding by adding the 1s

At home your child could complete these additions using the different methods they have learnt. 

I think that's everything for now. Have a good week end!

From Miss Nash