YearR-20192020

If you have any questions, or need any help you can email us on : yearr@stmarksce.org.uk

We will be looking at this account regularly during school hours and look forward to hearing from you. 

Kind Regards,

The Year R Team 

Hello everyone!

We hope you have had a fun morning at home. We have been busy collecting some ideas for activities we would like you to complete at home so that your learning continues while we are not together.

Each morning we will send you some new things to do at home. We would love it if you could share photos on Tapestry of these activities being completed. Let us know how you get on with them.
Have fun and stay safe!
From all your Year R teachers ????

Tuesday 17th March 2020

Maths Activities for Year R

This week we are meeting our next Numberblock – Numberblock 10!!

Before we go, Numberblock 9 would like to set you each a challenge – Can you make 9 in lots of different ways using a part – part whole?
(He has shown a couple of examples using Numicon in a part-part whole below below).
You can get a grown up to draw a part –part whole on a piece of paper for you OR could get three plates and arrange them like a part-part whole and share out 9 objects that you have at home.
Once you have created your two ‘parts’ don’t forget to move them to the ‘whole’ to find your total and to check you have made 9.

Numberblock 9 would LOVE to see what you have done – maybe you could send him some photos on Tapestry!  
Numberblock 9 is ready for you to meet the next Numberblock! Drum roll please for Numberblock 10!!!

Click here to watch our next episode –https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oEZc2Deeqc

Reading and writing activities for Year R

Rhyming Word Families
Look at the words below. I have made a list of words which rhyme with tap. The words are sometimes real and sometimes nonsense. I have coloured in the real words green and the nonsense words red.

tap
lap
fap
nap
map

Can you think of any that I missed?

Now have a go at finding rhyming words to match the words below. Remember, you can write these words using your cursive school handwriting. Have your name and handwriting mat with you so you can show your parents how each letter is formed ????

Parents – some of these words include Set 2 sounds and your child may not have been introduced to these yet. We are sending you a pdf which introduces the Set 2 sounds and the special rhymes that we teach the children to help them memorise the sounds. Please feel free to share these with your children if you feel that it is appropriate.  Click here to download the Set 2 sounds. – Set 2 Sounds

cat
dad
pin

say
car
snow

Name writing

Can you use your special pen to carefully trace the letters on your name writing card? Remember each letter starts at the bottom except for the first letter which is a capital letter. Next, try practising writing your name on paper using school letters. Can you use different types of pens and pencils? Be careful with how you hold your pencil – “Peter Pointer” and “Tommy Thumb” should be pinching, and the pencil should rest on “Toby Tall”.

We’ll be back with more tomorrow!  

‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ and ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ proved very popular over the last two weeks in capturing the children’s imaginations. They have been demonstrating their storytelling skills and developing their understanding of what might happen at the beginning, the middle and the end of a story. They enjoyed thinking of their own ideas for a personal version of Jack and the Beanstalk and explored the characters traits of ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies.’ 

In Maths the children have been using ‘part part whole’ models and ‘tens frame’ models alongside their number learning in Maths to arrange numbers in different ways using counting objects and begin to look at addition facts for 6, 7 and 8. 

In Music the children have had lots of fun exploring high and low sounds to represent the voices of different characters, and practising playing a steady beat along to songs they’ve learned.  We hope the children have been sharing these songs with you!

In Art the children painted a picture of their favourite Traditional Tale character. Can your child spot theirs to show you?

To find out more about the children’s learning next half term look out for the topic newsletter which will be on the website next week.

Enjoy the rest of your Half Term. We’d love to see what the children have been doing. Remember you can use Tapestry to keep us posted and the children will love showing their class photos of their activities when we return.

Year R have been busy bees since Christmas. Already this term we have covered our RE theme ‘Jesus as a storyteller’, started our journey through the story of ‘The Jolly Postman’ and celebrated Chinese New Year. 

The children were particularly enthused by Chinese New Year and learned lots about the differences between England and China, the different ways that Chinese New Year is celebrated and how Chinese people prepare for this special event. Thank you very much to Arthur’s Mum for coming in to speak to children. The week culminated in a celebration and more information and photos about this can be found on Tapestry.

So far in ‘The Jolly Postman’ he has delivered a letter from Goldilocks to The Three Bears. The children enjoyed a week’s learning based on this traditional tale, in particular investigating the textures of different cereals, learning songs involving high and low sounds to represent the bear’s voices in Music and acting out the story with their friends. 

We have now read on in the story and the Jolly Postman has just delivered a letter to the Witch, so next week our learning will be centred around ‘Hansel and Gretel’. We will focus on the journey that Hansel and Gretel take through the woods, leaving a trail of pebbles, and then their end destination – the gingerbread house! The children will make their own gingerbread house biscuit complete with sweetie decoration and this will lead to some descriptive writing.

Phonics

The children have settled well into their new phonics groups. Please continue to practise recognising the individual sounds by sight (letter side now, not the picture side) and building and reading words using the sound cards they have at home. These could be 3 letter words e.g. mat, words containing sounds like ‘sh’ e.g. ship, or for those children who have had set 2 sounds sent home, words containing these e.g. play.

Please also regularly practise reading their green or red key words by sight.

Handwriting

The children practise their handwriting daily when they first arrive at school before register. We have been working hard on the ‘One armed robots’ and ‘Curly caterpillar’ letters, so see if your child can show how it’s done!  Please note we form our ‘f’ slightly differently to this. You can refer to your child’s laminated handwriting card from their Summer activity pack for this.

The rhymes for these are as follows:

• One-armed robot letters “Swoop up for one leg, straight down for the other, up and over his arm.”
• Curly caterpillar letters “Up and over to his nose and all the way round to his toes.”

Happy New Year to you all!

Please click on this link to view the latest Year R newsletter: Year R newsletter Spring 1 2020 

This week we will be sending home a report on your child’s learning over the Autumn term. Within this report we will comment briefly on your child’s ‘Characteristics of Effective Learning’. These are:

• playing and exploring – how your child investigates and experiences things, and their ability to ‘have a go’.
• active learning – how your child concentrates and perseveres if they encounter difficulties, and enjoys achievements.
• creating and thinking critically how your child can develop their own ideas, make links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things.

This report will include ‘I can’ statements (things your child has achieved and learned to do since starting school) and next steps. We hope you find the reports useful.