We have had a busy few weeks happily learning together in Year 1/ Reception.
We had a large pile of sticks arrive in our classroom this month and afterwards, we had a lovely class discussion about where the sticks could have come from. Where did they come from? Who left them there? Was it a cheeky elf, Stick Man, a monster, or even some burglars who left them on our carpet but didn’t actually want to steal anything from us? We decided they were magic sticks and the children wrote their own lovely stories about magic sticks, trees or whole forests, and they were so proud to read their stories to their friends afterwards.
The children continue to enjoy their daily ‘Letters and Sounds’ sessions. Every morning the children are split into groups to build their understanding of phonics and reading skills through games and focused spellings with a member of staff. After Christmas, the list of spelling words your child is focusing on that week will be given out every Monday for you to practise together at home.
Our numeracy focus recently has been exploring our counting skills using a number stick. We have counted forwards and backwards from different starting numbers, practised our halving and doubling skills and counting in 2’s, 5’s and 10’s. We have also looked at odd and even numbers from looking at the Numicon shapes together and many children can now read a three-digit number and say whether it is odd or even. Ardderchog!
The story ‘The Snowman’ by Raymond Briggs has been a lovely stimulus to discuss the value of friendship and adventure with someone you trust. The children completed beautiful chalk pictures of a Snowman and discussed where they would like to visit with it. There were some interesting responses to where they would love to go with their new friend too.
Lastly, the children are in the middle of creating a Christmas picture on their Hwb account. The focus has been on children creating and exploring the use of text and images in their digital work. They have also been taught how to have ownership of their creations, by adding their name, date and using a familiar word or phrase as a filename when they save it. We hope you will be able to see their masterpieces soon!
