Long Long Ago

TOPIC

Our new topic for the rest of this half term is called Long, Long Ago and is all about Dinosaurs. On Friday we asked the children to answer the question "What do they already know about dinosaurs?". It was very interesting to listen to what the children were discussing and then they were asked "What they would like to find out about dinosaurs?". They came up with an array of questions and here are some of them:- "How do Dinosaurs talk and stomp?" "How big were they?" "Did they live in the 1900's?" "What colour were the eggs?".

Mrs Foster added in a good one too "Where are they now?"and Miss Skidmore wonders if they will visit your house any time soon?

We are now set on an adventure to answer our questions, paint, build and make clay dinosaurs; read facts about them and create our very own fact files.

We are setting up a small world role-play area, so if the children have any Dinosaurs they would like to bring in and share with the class and maybe have a 'Play for the day'. We would love to meet them. Of course they may have to share their Dinosaurs with other children in class, so do not bring in any precious or delicate items as accidents can happen!!

LITERACY

We are still concentrating on Traditional Tales as our literacy focus and this week we will be introducing the Three Little Pigs. We are changing our role-play area to become The three Little Pigs house to allow the children to role-play the story with masks and props. Outside we will be creating a construction site for the pigs to design and build their houses from sticks, straw and bricks. The children will be retelling the story into a recording device called a 'chatterbox' and listening back to their recounts.

PHONICS

In phonics we will be explaining that short vowels a-e-i-o-u can be found in the middle of a word (c-a-t, sh-o-p, s-u-ch) but in some words we will find Long vowels two letters that make one sound. We will be introducing Mr 'ai' this week and showing two ways of writing and reading the 'ai', 'ay' sound. The 'ai' sound is found in the middle of a word and the 'ay' sound is usually found at the end of a word (m-ai-d and p-ay). We will be sorting words into the correct families ay/ai and reading and writing the ai/ay sounds within words and as well as sentences.

NUMERACY

We will be continuing to use numicon as a visual prompt for the children to investigate different different ways of making a number within 10, concentrating on our number bonds to 10. We will use the numicon scales to balance the correct pieces that demonstrate how to make 10. The children will start to associate the number sentence that goes with the pieces that balance 3+7=10.

PHEW!! It all sounds like we are going to be having yet another full and exciting week... so get plenty of rest and we will see you all bright eyed and bushy tailed on Monday morning.

Thanks

The Reception Team