This week we have learned about what changes happen in Autumn.  We talked about the leaves on the trees and how they change colour in the Autumn and then fall, as the sun is further away.  We looked at pictures of the beautiful colours of the leaves and compared them with the leaves in summer.  We read the story ‘Owl Babies’ and talked about how the baby owls felt at night when their mother went to find them food.  We learned that the days become shorter in Autumn and the children knew that the clocks had just gone back!  We also talked about animals that hibernate and how geese fly to warmer places for the winter and that this is called migration.  The children were able to share the facts they had learned for our learning wall display.

We made such cute owl baby pictures using leaves, paper, feathers, twigs and googly eyes.  The collaged owls look brilliant!

In English this week we thought about clothes that we need for the Autumn.  The weather has turned colder so we knew that we need coats, hats, gloves, scarves and warm clothes.  The children sorted cold weather clothes from warm weather clothes in a simple venn diagram. We then wrote a list of the clothes we need in autumn.  The children tried to sound out the words and write down the sounds they could hear, using a sound mat to help when necessary.

We continued to explore 1, 2 and 3 this week.  We practised subitising those amounts and saw that within 3 there is a 2 and a 1 because 2 and 1 is equal to 3.  There is also a 1 and a 1 and a 1.  This is great for the children’s early calculation skills and we use objects, like counters, rather than numerals to actually ‘see’ the amounts.  I have added a useful video at the bottom of this message for parents, all about why we teach the children to subitise.  It was created to support parents during home learning in Lockdown, but really explains subitising so well, if you are interested in how to support your child’s maths development.

We also played a game where we threw 5 bean bags into a hoop.  We used 5-frames and filled them with a counter each time we got a bean bag in the hoop.  After 5 throws we could see how many were in the hoops and how many were out and represented this on the 5 frames.  This is a great way of embedding number bonds to 5.  Eg, the children could see that 3 beanbags are in the hoop and 2 are out.  The 5-frame showed 3 counters and 2 spaces.

In our PE session we went to the seaside!  We listened to sounds of the seaside and then all enjoyed a dance; moving like the waves, so the count of 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8.  The children then made up their own moves to the same beat of something else from the seaside.  We had sharks, jellyfish, seagulls and even ice cream vans dancing away!

In Forest Learning we went on an autumn hunt!  We saw how the forest has changed now it’s autumn and enjoyed our hunt, looking for a variety of objects and ticking them off our list.  Please see the Forest Learning section on this webpage.

In Monster Phonics this week we learned the sounds f, ff, l, ll and ss.  We learned that a digraph is 2 letters that made one sound.  (ff, ss, ll). 

Please see the video in the Monster Phonics section of our web page to see the actions for these sounds and practise those from the start to f.  Most children are now able to hear the initial sound in a word and many can segment a cvc word into its 3 sounds, eg: ‘m – a – n…..man’.   We have also sent home the third set of high frequency words for the children to learn at home along with their reading books.

Thank you for sharing the children’s reading books with them at home.  They now all have a word book which matches the phonemes they have learned in school to date.  Please read as much as possible (daily would be ideal) even though it is repetition, it is so good for their memory of words, blending sounds and building up their confidence to read fluently.

Have a lovely weekend!