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)