TERM 4 WEEK 3
As we thought, this week was a lot 'calmer' routines were restored and Robins were straight back to it.
A few years ago, I can remember having a discussion with a Year 6 teacher. She was excited and melancholy at the same time, excited to see how far her Year 6 children had come, all the progress they had made and all that they had achieved and melancholy as the end of their primary school years were close and they were off to start a new chapter at secondary school - in what seemed like a blink of an eye. I, on the other hand, was super excited as it is this time of the year that we see the EYFS children really start to take off - they too are starting a new chapter, all their learning so far is now starting to make sense and all the knowledge and skills are having a real impact.
If you have the time, go right back to September and take another look at our blog pages (look how small they look!). From September to December we put a huge amount of time and effort into developing both gross and fine motor control, exercising all those small hand muscles so that when the time was right (and only when the time was right) we would be ready for writing. Fast forward six months and just take a look at our letter formation - we call this our 'fast writing', we are copying some pages from our reading books just to get used to the pencil control, finger spaces, sitting letters on the line, perfecting sizing and orientation. We do this for 10-15 minutes every day.
I can't give the game away but you will be able to see for yourselves very soon just how lovely your child's handwriting is (hint 1).
Monday means Show and Tell and again this week we had the most wonderful time, it's just fantastic being led by the children's interest, we see them at their best - just full of interest and talk, how we wish we could bottle the enthusiasm. Last week we were swimming, this week we were fishing. We were introduced to the vocabulary of rod, reel, carp, perch and eeewwwww.......maggots.
In other areas of learning we have continued our daily reading - huge thank you to those of you who are supporting this at home too, daily phonics, daily Maths, daily Worship, Pantomimus, and Drawing Club. Again, what started out as mark making has now developed into pictures (and I can actually make out what they have drawn now) and an independently written caption to go with their picture - just take a look! Isn't their writing amazing - you will see for yourself soon.....on Sunday maybe (hint 2).
There has been lots of free flow......
And there has been lots of 'special art work' going on with fingerprint painting and beautiful handwriting all completed with love....for very special people (hint 3). I have to stop there as I don't want to spoil things.
This week Mrs Harris was in on Friday instead and in maths the Reception children continued to think about mass and weighing. The children used balance scales and objects to make both sides of the scales balance. They weighed different objects to see if they could find any objects that balanced. This was quite tricky so they tried using cubes to make the scales balance. They discovered that with one bigger or heavier object on one side of the scales, they would need more of the lighter object on the other side to make the scales balance. One cube would not necessarily balance with one object. They needed several cubes to make the scales balance. The children enjoyed trying to get both sides of the scales to balance. The heavier the object, the more cubes they needed!
Finally have a great weekend - and to all the Mummy's out there, have a lovely day on Sunday, put your feet up and enjoy a well deserved rest!