This week we have ​continued to explore how the numbers 6, 7, 8 and 9 can all be composed of two parts where 5 is one of the parts. 

On Thursday afternoon we had our first Welly Walk of the year! We were very excited about this, we learnt how to keep safe on Welly Walk, walked down sensibly in pairs and had fun exploring our nature reserve. We have already spotted signs of Autumn - we can’t wait to go back down to take part in an Autumn hunt! 

​This week our learning has been focused around the question “What is a family?”. Our book and Talk through Stories of the week was “Owl Babies”. We have listened to the story, identified the characters and the problem, joined in with favourite phrases and used freeze-frames to show how we felt as ‘Bill’ in certain situations. We have discussed how all families are different – we know that we live with family and some of our family live in different houses such as our grandparents, aunties, uncles and cousins. We know they can be people that we are related to or people who are close to us and care for us. We have shared with our talk partners who is in our immediate family and we have held a circle time to share why our special people are special to us.

Our learning activities this week have included; making bun-case owl families, drawing and painting pictures of our family, using the construction resources to build houses and in the funky fingers area we have been threading pipe cleaners through the holes in balls.

Here are some photos of us choosing our own learning this week:

Reception children have continued to work in appropriate groups to learn new sounds – they are learning to say pure sounds, write the sound saying the handwriting phrase and to blend sounds in words using ‘Fred Talk’ and the magnetic boards.

In Maths, we have been focusing on the composition of 2,3 and 4. We know that; 2 is made of 1 and another 1, 3 is made of 1 and another 1 and another 1 and 4 can be made of 3 and 1 or 1 and another 1 and another 1 and another 1. 

We have made our own collections of 3 and 4 using; 1 and another 1 and another 1 makes 3 and 1 and another 1 and another 1 and another 1 makes 4.

Some of the Sunshines' have also enjoyed drawing pictures of the NumberBlocks in their choosing time - we love maths!

​Year 1 children continue to work on perfecting their letter formation, reading and spelling tricky red words, spelling the days of the week and writing a hold a sentence. 

​In Maths, we have continued to count within 100. This week we have focused on identifying missing numbers on number lines and 100-squares. We have identified what number comes before each multiple of 10 and we have practiced our number formation as we have started to make our own 100-square.

We are developing Oracy skills to help our children become effective communicators. One way to help us do this is to sing songs and learn new vocabulary. We learn the vocabulary first to help us understand the song.

This week we have learnt a song called "How to ready for learning". The song is to the tune of "Here we go round the mulberry bush".

Our new vocabulary that we have been learning this week has been;
Place – put down gently
Seal – To close properly
Speaker – The person who is talking
Learning – To find out new things.

The children have been learning to speak in full sentences saying the word and what it means.

This week our learning has been focused around the question “What makes a good friend?”. Our book of the week was “Rainbow Fish” and we discussed how the Rainbow Fish and his friends felt throughout the story. The children were pleased that Rainbow Fish turned into a good friend and shared his scales! Our activities this week included drawing a picture of ourselves and our friends, printing with celery in the painting area, rolling the dice subitising the number of dots and carefully counting out the correct number of scales and in our funky finger area this week we have been making friendship bracelets for our friends! We have learnt to name the 3 primary colours and we have explored what happens when we mix them. We have practised a song called “Mixing Colours” to the tune of ‘The Wheels on the Bus’ to help us remember how to make the secondary colours – can your child tell you which primary colours make purple, green and orange?
​Our Talk through Stories this week was “The Lion Inside”

Our Reception children have continued to practise oral blending through Fred Talk. They have been working hard to consolidate previously taught sounds, learn new sounds and form taught letters/sounds correctly in books. Some children have been learning to blend using magnetic boards. In Maths, Reception children have been focusing on counting, cardinality (the knowledge of how many things are in a set and the number name for the quantity) and ordinality.

On Wednesday afternoon we sat at the tables to practise writing our names!

​Year 1 children have been working hard in their Literacy learning where we have been learning Set 2, practising letter formation to ensure we are starting and finishing in the correct place – we will be continuing with this over the coming weeks. We have also been practising writing the days of the week and reading and writing tricky red words and writing a sentence through ‘hold a sentence’. In maths, we have been practising counting within 100 in different ways using songs and a Gattegno chart.

 In Mastering Number this week our Year 1 children have been exploring making the numbers 6, 7, 8 and 9 using the "5 and a bit" structure. Here we are in action!

In Geography, we developed our confidence in saying how many months there are in a year and how many seasons there are. We could identify the 4 seasons and we have looked at what the weather might be like in each season.
​In Science, we focused on Autumnal changes – we learnt about the Autumn months, how the days get shorter, what the weather is like and what happens to animals.

This half-term our Year 1 children will be having PE with Mr Smith on a Friday afternoon. The unit they are working on is 'Games 1'. This unit builds on fundamental movement skills (agility, balance, coordination) and basic ball skills (rolling, bouncing and catching).

Here we are practicing our rolling with a partner. Our activities included;
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• 2-handed rolls for partner to stop.
• 2-handed rolls through partner’s legs.
• 1-handed rolls aiming for cone (place between the pairs).
• Rolling and swapping balls with partner (give each pupil a ball).

This week our learning has been focused around the question “What makes me a me?”, our book of the week has been “Super Dupa You” which is also our class book for this half-term. We have learnt about different body parts and that we have 5 senses – can your child remember what they are? Children have had the opportunity to paint self-portraits using mirrors to add their unique features. Children have had the opportunity to make name collages and to draw around their foot with a friend to then measure with cubes to see who has the longest/shortest foot. Children have had the opportunity to use pattern tracing sheets to practise their pencil control and have accessed a fine motor game called “Feed the Bird” to strengthen their funky finger. We have continued to explore our new learning environment and adapt to new routines. In our ‘One Life’ learning listened to the story “I am Enough”. Our Talk through Stories this week has been “Ruby’s Worry”.

Our Reception children have been taught the first 5 RWI sounds ‘m’, ‘a’, ‘s’, ‘d’ and ‘t’ and we have been doing lots of Fred Talk to secure our oral blending. In Maths, we have been learning to subitise amounts to 3 (saying how many we see without counting), describing spatial patterns with 3 dots, representing quantities on our fingers in different ways and identifying sub-groups of 1, 2 and 3 within larger arrangements.

Year 1 children have been working hard in their Literacy learning where we have been practising letter formation to ensure we are starting and finishing in the correct place – we will be continuing with this over the coming weeks. We have also been practising writing the days of the week and reading and writing tricky red words. In maths, we have been practising counting within 100 in different ways using lots of fun songs.
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Our Geography and Science learning have linked really closely this week. We have been able to name the 4 seasons and describe the weather in each. We have used songs to help us remember the order of the months of the year and we have tried really hard to remember the months of each season. This is something we will continually revisit.

Here are some photos of this weeks' learning:

​This week we have been focusing on our transition into school - we have been getting used to our classroom, our teachers, teaching assistants and our routines. We have been accessing different areas of our classroom, exploring our outdoor area and we have been in the dinner hall for our dinner! We have read lots of stories relating to starting school such ‘Harry and the Dinosaurs go to School’, ‘Peter Rabbit Tales: Starting School’, ‘The Colour Monster Goes to School’ and ‘First Week at Cow school’. We have been learning what it means to be ‘ready’. We have had lots of fun painting, drawing, building and exploring our funky finger activity where we had to use the tweezers to match pom-poms to the correct colour on the dinosaurs!

Our Reception children have been working hard to blend words together using our Fred Talk and we have been introduced and recapped the pictures on our RWI cards ready for starting learning sounds next week! We have tried really hard to hold our pencils and write our names. In our Maths learning we have been practising using our fingers to represent numbers and we have been signing lots of counting songs!

Year 1 children have been working hard in their RWI learning to read Set 1 special friends and write words containing these sounds. We have been practising writing our full names and have tried really hard to form our letters correctly. In maths, we have been practising our counting to 20 and beyond using lots of fun songs, and showing numbers in different ways. We have completed our pre-unit assessment for Science and Geography – we have discussed what we already know about the weather and the different seasons. We are looking forward to getting into Geography and Science learning.

The adults in Team EO are very proud of how the children have transitioned into school this week and we are looking forward a wonderful year together.

Here are some photos of us enjoying our first week at school!