Welcome to Chestnut Class
Term 6
Chestnut Class- Reception
Class Teacher: Miss N Waller
Teaching Assistants : Mrs E Comeau
We Are Artists
This Term
In this topic we will be focusing on being artists!
Our key texts will be Katie and the Sunflowers, Luna Loves Art, The Colour Monster, Matisse’s Magical Trail.
We will explore different areas of Art including Colour, Drawing – Portraits, Painting – Still Life, Collage and more.
A big part of this topic is looking at different Artists, exploring the techniques they use, talking about the Art and making observations. We will be testing out different techniques and materials, then evaluating our work, deciding what works well and what we might improve on.
Our topic links very heavily into our Expressive Art and Design and Literacy early learning goals.
Understanding the World
Children will be exploring:
- Compare and contrast the past. Linking to the art and artists.
- Contrast environments.
- Explore where each painting came from. Look at the world map and label. Look at pictures of the different countries, focus on the similarities and differences.
- Look at maps of Art Gallaries.
- Create own map around school.
Art
- Looking at real life sunflowers and drawing still life fruit and veg, going on a nature walk – drawing flowers.
- Invent and adapt stories through role play and small world play.
- Who was Vincent Van Gough?
- Drawing a whole sunflower. Looking at the colour palette. Experimenting with paint, pastels, and crayons.
- Drawing/painting close ups of the seeds, petals.
- Symmetrical Butterflies- Using the technique of painting half a piece of paper/ folding
- Matisse: The Snail- Can you make your own piece of art in the style?
- Creating a scarecrow- using different materials
RSHE – Changing Me:
- My Body- Naming parts of the body.
- Respecting My Body- Talk about things I can do and foods I can eat to be healthy.
- Growing Up – Understand that we all grow from babies to adults.
- Fun and Fears- Express how I feel about moving to Year 1
- Fun and Fears- Talk about worries and things I am looking forward to about being in Year 1.
- Celebration- Share memories of the best bits of this year in Reception.
What else are we doing.....
Maths
Following the White Rose EYFS Maths Scheme:
- Week 1: F ind My Pattern: Doubling, Dice games, barrier game, domino game. Symmetrical butterflies.
- Week 2: Find My Pattern: Sharing, Minibeast Picnic, The Doorbell rang, grouping, combining groups of caterpillar food.
- Week 3: Find My Pattern: Even and Odd, One odd day, How many cubes, barrier, game, did the caterpillar eat an odd or even amount each day?
- Week 4: On the Move: Consolidating key skills- subitising, counting, composition, sorting and matching, comparing and ordering.
- Week 5: On the Move: Repeated pattern bees, hexagon beehives-sides and corners, using mathsbots on the computer to help.
- Week 6: Subtraction flies, spatial reasoning, maps, mazes, money.
- Week 7: On the Move: Sequencing events, time, recognise hours, clocks,
- Digging Deeper: Finding half, making equal groups, spatial awareness and cube patterns.
RE: Which places are special and why?
- What is your favourite story? What do you like about it, and why?
- What stories do you know about Jesus? What do you think Jesus was like?
- Do you know any bible stories? What stories do you know that are special to Christians (or other faiths)? Who are the stories about? What happens in the stories> Does the story tell you about God?
- What stories do you know that tell you how you should behave towards other people?
- What are the similarities and differences between different people’s special stories?
Phonics- Rhino Readers and Twinkl Scheme
Reception Children:
The children have finished learning all the sounds and tricky words in Level 2 and Level 3. It is really important that they continue to revise all the sounds in both levels.
We will spend a lot of time blending and segmenting words for writing. During these weeks some revision and recap work will be sent home on a Monday alongside their reading books. Please do support your children to complete these as independently as possible in preparation for Year 1.
Keywords: The children each have a personalised collection of keywords that they need to learn from sight. Some of these words cannot be sounded out, we call these tricky words. Instead these words need to be learnt and recognised by memory. Other words which can be sounded out are called high frequency words. These words are ones that appear often in books and would be beneficial for children to also recognise by sight as it helps with fluency when reading.
Once children are confident in recognising their keywords by sight extra ones will be added on. These words do not just need to be recognised on the keyring but also recognised by sight in their reading books.
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Below is what we will be covering this term:
Phonics: Level 4- with revision of all phase 3
Week 1: Polysyllabic words: Tricky Words: do when, out, what, my here
Week 2: 3 Letter adjacent consonants: Revision of all Level 4 tricky words.
Week 3: Revision of all Level 3 phonemes, graphemes and tricky words.
Week 4: Revision of all Level 3 phonemes, graphemes and tricky words.
Week 5: Revision of all Level 4 words and tricky words.
Week 6: Revision of all Level 4 words and tricky words.
Week 7: Phase 4 Phonic Assessments
PE
PE will be on Tuesdays with an outside cricket coach and Miss Waller and Thursdays with Mrs Douch and Miss Waller.
We will be focusing on Tennis, Athletics and Cricket
The children will need to come into school on those days in their kit.
Please ensure that all PE items are named and the children are wearing trainers with velcro- no laces please.
If possible, please try to clean the kit between these days as the children are very active during their PE lessons.
Reading
Childrens reading books will be changed on Monday.
Children will take home 3 books for the week:
- Phonics level book
- Reading for pleasure book (linked to reading level)
- Library book
Please ensure you read with your chidren at home and write a comment in their reading record, that way we know the book has been read and we can see how children got on at home.
Reminders
- Please ensure your child has a named water bottle in school every day.
- Children will be provided with a fruit or vegetable snack at morning break but please can you provide children with a snack for the afternoon- fruit or vegetable only.
- Name all items of school uniform.
- Keep soft toys and comforters at home (if your child really needs one in school then talk to them about it staying in their bookbag)- we would hate for it to get lost.
- Please send children to school wearing outerwear that is appropriate for the weather as we will always endeavour to be outside for playtime.
- Please make sure that hair below shoulder length is tied back using discrete hairbands in school colours.
How you can help
- Encourage children to remember what they need to bring to school each day- bookbag, waterbottle, coat and hat.
- Get children to carry their own bags and coats into school.
- Read lots of books and discuss what is happening.
- Stick to a good bedtime routine as children will get tired.
- Encourage children to dress themselves- practise doing up zips, buttons and turning clothes the right way round.
- Give children opportunites to mark make- writing name, forming letters and shapes, work on pencil grip.
- Play lots of counting games and sing rhymes.
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Please feel free to speak to one of us if you have any issues or concerns. Also, if there is any home information we need to be aware of please let us know, however small.
Phonics Websites and Resources
Teach your Monster to Read!- https://www.teachyourmonstertoread.com/
The Dinosaur's Eggs-High Frequency Words: Focus on levels 1,2 and 3. You can go up to Level 5 if childre
n are confident. https://www.ictgames.com/mobilePage/dinosaurEggsHF/index.html
The Dinosaur's Eggs- Phonics: https://www.ictgames.com/dinosaurEggs_phonics/mobile/
Forest Phonics- Choose a sound and then listen to word which is read out before trying to spell it. https://www.ictgames.com/mobilePage/forestPhonics/index.html
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Viking Full Circle: Listen to the word you have to spell then select the correct letters to spell it. Click the wave and it will read out the next word for you to make. Continue until to make the first word you started with then say full circle! http://www.ictgames.com/mobilePage/viking/index.html
Foam Phonemes: Choose different sounds to make words. Click on the letter to hear the sound. Can you repeat the sounds and then blend together to make the word? http://www.ictgames.com/mobilePage/foamPhonemes/index.html
Useful Websites:
ICT Games for Literacy and Math
Vooks – Storybooks bought to life (1 month free)
Teach handwriting, Cursive practice
Cbeebies-Alphablocks & Numberblock