Happy Half Term!

Happy half term Hedgehogs and Hedgehog Parents!

It has been a busy, creative and marvellous first half term in Hedgehog class. All the children have settled in well and have been rekindling old friendships or making new ones. 

This week in our story, the Year 1 children made some special herbivore, carnivore and omnivore medicine to try and make sure the animals were taking their medicines.

Later on, the park keepers found an enormous tree that had fallen due to the storm, Unfortunately, it had been home to a lot of birds - the park keepers are in the middle of deciding what to do about them. For now, they are mainly roosting on the roof of Percy's hut. 

I'm sure you'll agree that the children did a wonderful job of telling you all the story of The Enormous Turnip during the Harvest Festival. I was very proud of them and I'm sure you were too!  We had practised it quite a few times, but Friday was our absolutely best performance ever. 

I am not going to set any compulsory or non-compulsory homework over this half term. The children have been working very hard and you all need a break! The only request I have is that you all keep reading.

My aim is to re-establish our Rising Stars account and send you all a Parentmail about it by Monday. This way you will all have extra books for the holidays. New parents -I will explain all about Rising Stars in the email! For now, your children should all have come home with two or three books for the holidays. 

Parents, thank you all for all you have been doing to help your children's learning this half term. I am looking forward to having everyone in full time soon!

Good bye for now!

Mrs Simpson

Week 6: Caring for injured animals, autumn poetry, and more.

 Greetings Hedgehogs and Hedgehog Parents,

Parents, I hope you have had as good a week as we have had in Hedgehog Class. It started by identifying some animals around the park that had unfortunately been injured by the storm. The children stepped into the story, became Percy's park keepers, and set to work. Percy's hut was soon filled with animals needing our help. The following day the Year 1 children discussed what animals need to survive (air, food, water and shelter) and learnt a bit more about what to feed the different animals. They used the terms carnivore, herbivore and omnivore to describe animals and advised Percy on what to feed the different animals. 

At Forest School we (once again) discussed blackberries! The children learnt that the blackberries are not really there for us (though we love them!) but are there to feed the birds, so this week we all agreed just to eat one blackberry so the birds could have full tummies. The children had another great session and some of them made some Forest School pictures in frames (see photos below).

We have also been rehearsing for next Friday's Harvest Assembly in the church. Year One children have some words to learn, so please help your child to practise reading them.

Here are a (very) few photos of the week - once again, in all the busy-ness few photos got taken!. Maths and Phonics are below.

Maths:

Reception children have been continuing their work on the principles of counting. Counting can be practised in any way, all over the place. If you have a child who is confident on the principles of counting, you could ask them to teach you how to count, encouraging them to articulate their ideas really carefully.

You could also practise subitising to 3 (this means children quickly recognise there are 3 items or pictures, without having to count) and asking your child to represent 3 in different ways, eg 'Can you draw 3 pigs in a field? Can you put three dinosaurs into that pen?'. 

Year 1 children have continued working on addition. Our focus this week has been on the = (equals) sign and what it means - the children are learning that it means 'the same' and that there must be the same number in total on each side of the equals sign. 

To practise this, you could help Merlin with his muddle. He completed some number sentences, but then some of the numbers fell out! Can you put them back in the right place?

Phonics

Reception have been building cvc words using s a t p i n m d. To do this, I teach the children to stretch a word out to hear its sounds. So to spell 'pin' we would stretch out pppiiiinnnn to hear the three sounds in it. At home, you could practise this using magnetic letters on a fridge, or giant letters written on A4 card. 

Year 1 children have been looking at oo-oooooo this week (the long and short 'oo' sounds as in book and boot). They have also learnt that sometimes, the short 'oo' sound is written just with an 'u'.

Here is next week's spelling challenge list...

and a game of boggle if you'd like to see how many of the words you can make. 

I'll also be checking the children's progress on spelling their colourful lists next week and will let you know how they get on. 

Have a good week,

From Mrs Simpson

Week 5: A storm in Percy's park

 Hello Hedgehogs and Parents!

The main event this week was on Monday. In our story, there was a huge storm. The children stepped into the story as various animals to experience the storm - there was rain, thunder and lightning! The animals (children) all managed to find shelter and survived the storm. Sadly, though, the park was destroyed during the storm and Percy was devastated. 

The good news is, he was searching for a team of park keepers to help him restore the park and care for the injured animals - and the children decided they were up to the task! They drew themselves as park keepers and so have become Percy's team of park keepers. Over the next few weeks they will help Percy to restore the park to its former beauty. 

Our Forest School session involved more blackberries! One of the children decided they'd like to have some blackberry juice and added blackberries to their water bottle... and many others followed suit. It was interesting to see the changes in the water and the blackberries as they mixed together and the children enjoyed trying their juice! They also started to gather some sticks of various sizes in the hope that we can have a fire within the next few weeks. 

Here are a few photos. Phonics and Maths are below!

Phonics and Spellings:

Reception: 
We have now covered s a t p and i. 
We are starting to do oral blending and segmenting and you can practice this at home. Try sound-talking some words to your child, for example, when it is dinner time, ask them to  s-i-t at the table. Or give the dog a p-a-t. The ability to tune into sounds and blend them together to make words is essential. 

I'm going to share this video again, as I did last week, because using pure sounds is so important in phonics. It's very easy for us (teachers included!) and children to get into the habit of saying 'nuh' instead of 'nnnn' or 'puh' instead of 'p' which can make reading and spelling difficult. So here is the video again, for your enjoyment!

There is a useful video here about the pure sounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCI2mu7URBc

Year 1:
The children have been revisiting oa and have learnt that, at the end of a word, this sound is usually written with ow - as in  snow, glow, blow, flow, yellow. 

The spelling list for next week's spelling challenge is here. As usual, the green words are compulsory and the others are optional!

If you want to play a game, use pages 1,2,3,5,6 and 7 of this pairs game.

If you don't have a printer - you can create a similar but smaller game. Use the words (and draw the pictures) for the green words from the spelling list to create a pairs game. 

Maths:

Reception:
We have been working on the principles of counting - the basic skills a child must understand when it comes to counting. An explanation of these can be found here.

A good game to play for this is Ten Lovely Things.  Each player needs to find ten  lovely things (it can be anything). Players take it in turns to roll a dice. They then ask for that number of things from another player, eg 'Mummy can I please have four of your lovely things?' The game continues until someone has run out of items, or after a given number of turns each players see who has the highest number of objects left. The key skills here are counting with 1:1 correspondence, the cardinal principle (knowing that the last number said is the total number of objects) and saying the numbers in order. 


Year 1:
The Year 1 children have been adding small numbers this week. They have been learning how to add in a variety of ways, all of which will support their maths as they move through the years. 

Addition using a part-whole diagram
Addition using a 10-frame
Addition by counting on

Addition by counting on is the newest skill the children have learnt. To practise this one, you could play this card game. 

We have also been revisiting bonds to 5. 

I hope you all have a lovely weekend. I shall add some photos to this post soon!

From Mrs Simpson :))

Week 4: Percy's hut, blackberry play dough and autumn.

 Hello Hedgehogs and Hedgehog Parents,

A very happy October to you, Hedgehog parents! Autumn has certainly arrived with blustery winds!

This week in Hedgehog Class has flown by so quickly I have had to spend some time remembering what we've been up to! On Monday the children started turning our indoor shed into Percy's hut, a task which Year 1 completed the following day. Tuesday was very exciting because, in the middle of whatever we were up to, a member of Badger Class came to tell us that the hens had laid their first eggs! Of course, up we wandered to see the eggs and count them. 

Wednesday started with an autumnal walk and then in the afternoon lots of lovely learning indoors and outdoors. It's good to see the children settling into learning and leading their own learning, as well as getting used to being together and interacting with different children. 

We had a very blustery Forest School! Lots of children took part in an optional challenge to make some blackberry play dough. This proved to be an excellent opportunity for endurance, team work, taking turns and communication. 

Here are a few photos. We've been so busy, we didn't manage to take many this week!  Reception and Year 1 maths and phonics for the week can be found below.

PHONICS this week:

Reception:
We started looking at single letter sounds, beginning with s, a, t this week. 

Some of your children already know some letter names, some know some letter sounds, and some are somewhere in between! We have decided to start all of the children from the beginning of the sounds to ensure that:

a) they are pronouncing the letter sounds, not just the names (so the letter 't' is called 'tee' but makes a very short 't' sound) and
b) they are using pure sounds, not over-pronouncing them. For example, the letter 'm' sounds like 'mmmmm' rather than 'muh'. 

There is a useful video here about the pure sounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCI2mu7URBc

Within phonics lessons, we will be saying the sounds, reading words with them in, beginning to write them and word build with them. 

If you want something to do at home:

• Spot the target sounds in your child's reading book  
• Practice writing the letters (with the correct formation) in fun ways - chalk outdoors, or paper on the wall for example
• Play 'eye spy' with s, a, and t as the initial sounds (remember, don't use the letter names, instead use the sounds, to help your child to hear initial sounds).

Year 1:

We have been looking at the /igh/ phoneme this week. We revisited 'igh' and then learnt that, at the end of a word, the sound is often spelt with a 'y'. 

Here are next Friday's spelling challenge words. Again, the words in green are the focus ones and the others are optional. The children have their own spelling challenge booklet at school now - so that they can have a go, mark their own spelling challenges and feel proud of the words they learn to spell. 

To practise the /y/ grapheme for the sound /igh/ you could also play Roll and Read. 


MATHS this week:

Reception began their exploration of number. The Reception year is all about getting to know numbers to ten really, really well. 

This week we began subitising using numbers to three. Subitising means 'just knowing' without counting - being able to recognise a pattern of numbers instantly. We played about with different patterns and looking at 'how we know' - for example, if we see a one and a one, there must be two. 

To practise this, you could have 3 beanbags (or smiliar), ask your child to close their eyes, then throw 1,2, or 3 of the beanbags on the floor, before asking your child to open their eyes and say how many they see. Ensure the beanbags land in different formations!

Year 1 have been:

Reciting number bonds to 5, using patterns of dots to visualise 5.

Creating part whole diagrams and filling in the blanks on part whole diagrams

Subitising within 5 and learning to say 'how they know', for example 'I know its five because I can see a 4 and a 1'. 

To practise at home, please practise quick recall of number bonds to 5. You can do this by printing off these number cards, or creating your own, cutting them out and timing your child to see how quickly they can pair the whole set up to make pairs to 5. 

For extra support, draw dots on the cards so your child can see '5'.

For extra challenge, create some addition number sentences for bonds to five and some matching subtraction number sentences (eg 3 + 2 = 5, 5 - 3 = 2).
For a mastery challenge, ask your child to pair up the numbers then ask them to prove to you that they are right. They might do this by using objects, or drawing pictures (e.g. 2 dots, then 3 dots). 

I think that's all for now!

Have a very good weekend. 

From

Mrs Simpson :0)