Dear Parents,  

We have had another lovely week in Reception. This week in Maths the children have explored how numbers can be composed of 1s and, from this, investigated the composition of 3 and 4. The children are encouraged to subitise (instantly recognising a number of objects without actually counting them) small quantities and are using these skills to identify the numbers within 3 and 4. They are also beginning to recognise that 3 and 4 can be made by combining sets in different ways. Perhaps at home you could encourage your child to collect items and make groups of 3 or 4. Can they spot these numbers in the environment? eg. how many lights on a traffic light? 

Naming school items... 

Please spend some time this weekend making sure that everything has a name on, including water bottles.  If something is not named and it gets lost then we won’t be able to get it back to you!  

Wellies  

If your child does not have wellies in school please can you send a named pair in. 

Do you have…? 

If you have any spare large paintbrushes please could we have them for the children to paint on large sheets of paper. This is good for developing their gross motor skills. 

 Stay and Play  

As you will notice from the ‘Dates for your diary’ below, on the 18th October we will be having a Stay and Play session at 2.15pm. This is when parents are invited down to the Reception classrooms to stay and play with your child and see how well the children have settled in. If you can’t make it, it would be great if another relative could come instead.  

Here are some things you could be doing with your child at home…  

Please continue to check out Tapestry for daily videos from Jo and Hayley. If you search #phonics you’ll find all the videos!    

Yesterday your child will have come home with a sheet of this week’s phonemes.  

The sounds for this week are ‘g’, ‘o’, ‘c’, and ‘k’.  

Please practise them together. You could cut them up and stick them around the house, then go for a hunt to find them. When you find them, say the sound!  

We have also started blending sounds to make words with the children. Blending is an important skill when reading. Here are a few oral blending games you may enjoy playing with your child. (Make sure you are saying the phonetic sounds and not the letter names) 

Can you touch your …?   l-i-p, ch-i-n, h-ea-d, f-oo-t 

Can you do the actions? s-t-ir the pot, m-ar-ch, c-l-a-p 

This week we have learnt the tricky word ‘is’. Tricky words are words which cannot be sounded out phonetically. ‘Is’ is a tricky word because the ‘s’ makes a ‘z’ sound. You could put this word up around the house and every time your child passes the word they could read it. This could be a new secret password!  

Dates for your diary 

• Friday 18 October—FLUFFY FRIDAY! £1 and non-school uniform - mufti)  
• Friday 18 October—Stay and Play at 2.15pm  
• Wednesday 23 October—Early closure at 1.15pm 
• Thursday 24 October—INSET (NO school)  
• Friday 25 October—INSET (NO school)  
• 28th October – 1st November - Half Term 

Have a lovely weekend, 

The Reception team.