Reception January News 2020

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for being so welcoming to me as the new Reception teacher looking after your lovely children whilst Mrs Thomas is enjoying time with her new baby. The children have all continued to work with enthusiasm and with big smiles on their faces. We have had a busy few weeks so far!

We have loved reading ‘Kate and the Starry Night’ and learning more about Vincent Van Gogh and enjoyed painting our own mini canvases. We also read ‘How to Catch a Star’ and ‘Night Monkey Day Monkey’ continuing our work on the stars and night sky. We thoroughly enjoyed our week of Chinese New Year celebrations and tasting the Chinese food. We have learnt many new things and have had lots of fun trying out new activities, which I hope they have shared with you each day.

The children have revised Phase 2 of the Letters and Sounds programme and continue to practice using sound-talk to blend the letters together in order to read words, (for example c, a, t = cat). We are also learning to read and spell some of the tricky words, e.g. to, go, no, the and I. Words that cannot be sounded out. Please continue to use the sound boxes you have at home to reinforce their phonic knowledge and continue to work hard at recognising (and spelling if they are ready) the high frequency words that we have sent home, please ask if you require another copy of this list.

We have exciting plans for this half term, continuing our topic about Space following the ‘alien space ship crash’ that happened in the forest. The children have decided what they would like to find out about this topic so we will be busy finding out the answers to their questions and lots more.

Forest sessions will continue to take place on a Monday afternoon – waterproofs and warm layers are essential please, and PE will continue in the hall on a Thursday afternoon. Snack money for this half term, and any outstanding from last term, is also due. If you would like us to be able to provide your child with a healthy snack we can do this with a contribution of £1 a week. Ideally, we would like the payment to cover the half term if possible, (£6). Please send any money to school in a sealed envelope labelled with your child’s name. Thank you very much.

I have learnt how to use Twitter since becoming part of this team and hope you are enjoying seeing what we are doing!

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask me in the morning or after school and I will do my best to help.

Thank you very much!

Mrs Bowen and the Reception team