Week 4 - 27th September

What a fantastic start to the week, we were delighted with the egg-citing news (couldn't help that one) that one of our Robins had come in a very well deserved 3rd place for her egg design at the Newbury Show last weekend!

Congratulations, what a beautiful egg!!

This week we continued to develop our fine motor skills engaging in activities such as stretching the loom bands, rolling and cutting play dough and even picking up pom poms with tweezers! Developing these fine motor skills is really important because they involve using small muscles that children need when doing things such as manipulating objects, getting dressed and really importantly using tools accurately such as scissors, cutlery and writing / drawing equipment - of course the children don't realise any of this, they just think they are playing!

In Maths this week we started the week by reading the book 'The button box' and explored sorting buttons using different rules, we then played 'guess my rule' where the children loved seeing if they could guess how I had sorted my buttons...they were amazing at it! 

Robins even had a go at working in pairs and sorting their own buttons and creating their own rules. Some created a rule based on the colour of the buttons and others based on how many holes the buttons had.

This week, in the junk modelling area, some of the Robins children brought other areas of their learning into their creations, for example creating this Octopus after being inspired by the story of 'Octopus shocktopus'! 

The main focus this week has been all about the Phonics - we are really looking forward to discussing this further in the Phonics workshop next Thursday 3.30-4.30 - if you haven't signed up yet (although most of you have I know), then please do so.

The children are really getting to grips with all the sounds taught so far, our next step is to segment and blend (this technique will also be explained in the workshop) so that we can start to read words. Mrs Langford has a wealth of phonics games and activities at her fingertips and we look forward to sharing some of these with you next week and of course the all important 'sending the first reading book home' will happen, they are all in folders just waiting for little hands to open them and enjoy!

And finally, I like to think that I am in control of most things that happen on a day to day basis in Robins, however, I have to admit that there are some things out of my control.....like ....the weather! What a week, I don't think I have ever known it to rain so much (apart from when I am back home in Wales!!!!). We just couldn't let the weather dictate to us any longer - waterproofs went on and we got outside and what a fun afternoon we had! 

And finally finally (its like an encore isn't it, which always reminds me of my mother in law, who will probably be reading this page - when she came to watch my children in their Christmas Nativities she always used to shout for an encore so I suppose I have just fallen into the habit of always giving a bit extra at the end!!!), we LOVE this display that went up this week - can you guess which is your child???? When you come in on Monday morning, feel free to take a closer look!

Have a great weekend and see you all on Monday