We have reached the penultimate week of term, and the end of our superheroes topic. And what superheroes the children have continued to be! Thank you for your amazing Number Day outfits and donations. They are greatly appreciated.

Phonics

We continue to work on learning our set 1 sounds, and some groups have finished learning their set 2 sounds also. These special friends are especially tricky to learn as they have 2 or more letters making one sound. We provide lots of practise for children to recognise these sounds in words. Children are also beginning to learn red words. These are words which cannot be fred talked (we can’t use our sounds to segment and blend). For example was! We discuss which part of the word is being tricky and practise our speedy reading.

Please continue to support your child with their reading at home, if you have any questions please ask your class teacher.

Maths

Our learning this week has been on measure. This includes capacity and mass, using the vocabulary full, nearly full, half empty, half full, nearly empty, empty, heavy/ light and balanced. We started the week by identifying the capacity of different jugs, cups and bowls using our new vocabulary. We then filled some containers to represent the words eg full, empty or nearly empty. By the end of the week, we listened to the story Equal Schmequal again. This helped us to understand balance when exploring mass. When one side of the balance went up, it meant the item was lighter, and when one side of the balance went down, it meant the item was heavy. Our challenge was to find 2 items which caused the scales to balance. This meant they were of equal mass.

Next term, we will be learning about one more and one less.

Thematic Curriculum

This week we have focussed our learning on the story Michael Recycle, a superhero who helps a messy town clean up its act. We learnt all about how some rubbish can be recycled to make new things and not fill up our planet with rubbish. We looked at all the materials which can be recycled and thought about our own rubbish, and how we could reuse a lot of it again. Children have become eager to clean up their own environment, finding lots of rubbish to bin or recycle.

To end our superhero learning, children learnt about a variety of materials we have in our environment, including wood, glass, fabric, metal and plastic. Our learning was to design and make a cape for our superhero. Children decided to use fabric to make their capes, then thought of ways to decorate them using resources in the classroom. We ended our learning with a fashion walk to show off our creations.

As an additional challenge, we ask if your child can help with recycling at home. If they do this, please send your child’s class teacher a photo so they can earn themselves a recycling badge.

Next week, children will be learning about Lunar New Year.

Reminders

• Love to learn books have been sent home today. Please see the following information for the children’s task:

Love to learn challenge: February Half Term

Well done and thank you so much for your amazing Superhero designs and creations – they were amazing!

At the start of next term our topic will be space!  Your challenge over half term is to find out about space. This can be any aspect of space – please follow your child’s interests.  You could look in an information book, read stories set in space, look on the internet, ask a grown up and so on.  Your child can draw pictures in their Love to Learn book or stick in pictures from the internet.  They could make a model, a collage or paint a picture.  Please return the Love to Learn challenges by Wednesday 26^th February so that we can use them at the start of our topic. We would love to put some of them up on display too!

• PE kits need to be worn in to school each Thursday please.

• Please ensure that children have a named water bottle which is already filled with water at the start of each day.

• All clothing to be named please!

• Please complete the WOW moment sheets regularly so that we can add these to the children’s learning journey books.

Term 3 dates:

14/2/24 – Chinese food tasting for Reception children

11/2/24 – Online safety day 

14/2/24 - Last day of term  

24/02/24 - Term 4 starts for children  

e-mail addresses

emma.dudley-smith@chiltonprimary.co.uk

kirby.walker@chiltonprimary.co.uk

 

Many thanks for all your continued support,

EYFS team