Coming up this week in Reception 2...

We are continuing our learning on life cycles this week. Our tadpoles are growing quickly! The children are really enjoying watching and talking about them. We have learnt all about the life cycle of a frog and we have been writing 'Frog Diaries'. 

Last week all the children worked with an artist to produce artwork based on the story of 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' by Eric Carle. It looks amazing and is being displayed in the Yellow Room by the coat pegs. This week we will be learning more about the life cycle of a butterfly and we will be making our own zigzag books retelling the Hungry Caterpillar story.

In maths we are learning to double and halve. The children are learning that doubling means adding a number to itself, e.g. double 4 is the same as 4 + 4 = and they are using fingers, objects and pictorial representations of this. They will also learn that halving a number is the same as sharing into two equal groups and they will be doing lots of practical activities to support this.

I'm looking forward to another great week. See you all tomorrow.

Update

Hello, here is an update on what we have been learning over the last couple of weeks. 

The children showed a big interest in our space topic and they learnt lots about planets, astronauts and space stations. 

Last week we began a new topic - Life Cycles. Mrs Lamb brought in some frog spawn from her garden pond and we have loved watching the tadpoles hatch out. I can't wait to see how they have grown over the weekend! The children are very enthusiastic about this topic too and have learnt lots about the life cycle of a frog. each child is writing a 'Frog Diary' which will continue over the next few weeks. So far we have completed the front cover, started the contents page and written a sentence about frog spawn. Amazing!

Next week we will have an artist working with us. The children will be working together to create a piece of art based on the life cycle of a butterfly. We have read 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' by Eric Carle in preparation. 

In phonics, most children have completed Letters and Sounds Phase 3. They have now learnt 42 phonemes and can represent each by a grapheme. Some children have made more progress and are learning alternative graphemes for reading, e.g. ay, ou, ie, ea, etc. Some children are just beginning Phase 3 and are learning the vowel digraphs (two or three letters that make one sounds, e.g. ai, ee, igh, oa, oo).

In maths recently we have been learning how to subtract. The children have read subtraction number sentences and created their own. They have calculated the answer using objects - taking some away and counting how many are left - and using number tracks to count back to find the answer. This week we will be learning how to estimate and we will also be revising counting accurately - one number for one object!

Welcome back! We hope you all had a lovely holiday. If you got up to anything exciting during the break, please send us a postcard via Orbit.

Our maths focus since we have been back has been addition. the children have been learning to find one more, then two more than a given number and have moved on to simple addition using objects. All the children are able to find the total by combining two groups of objects and counting them all. We are working towards using the strategies of putting the largest number first and counting on from the first number.

This week is World Book Week and we are focusing on the story of Elmer. On Monday the children had a session in the hall with 'Imagine Action' where they developed their ball skills through the story. They loved this and were very good at it! 

We have also begun a topic on space which I am sure you have heard all about!