Reception Newsletter

For week ending 10th January 2020

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We have focussed this week on the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff and the children have done lots of fun activities and challenges with building bridges, hunting for 14 goats (pictures, not real ones) each around the classroom (organised chaos but a good maths link), size ordering and some emerging writing.  Left behind goat pictures keep emerging out of shelves and from under furniture – a bit like the pine needles after the Christmas tree has gone outside.  In maths we have focussed on the number 14, which seemed tricky for some, so any help you can give with recognising 14, counting out 14 things, writing 14 would be appreciated.

We did the first PE full change on Monday, warnings were given about the fact that a “full change” did NOT include underwear and luckily not too many bottoms were on view.  Some children did forget to put back on items of clothing, or put on someone else's – a red polo shirt completely disappeared in Wellington class and it emerged after a lucky find by Mrs Garrib during the forensic search of the classroom (well it had to be somewhere…) of a jumper with shirt still inside it inside a different child’s bookbag – however the owner of that shirt was wearing someone else’s…who was wearing someone else’s… who obviously had none at all !  These somewhat taxing and time consuming challenges can be solved more quickly if all families NAME THEIR CHILDRENS CLOTHING which surprisingly you don’t all do.  Please note the shouty capitals.

Next week we are focussing our learning around Jack and the Beanstalk and the number 15.  The children will be planting runner beans – completely the wrong time of year but still.  The “beanstalks” will come home when they become too unwieldy to have in the classroom. In addition Reception children will have their height and weight measured next Wednesday by the school nurses – this happens again in Year 6

 

Requests and reminders

• A date for the diary – February 5th at 6pm is our writing workshop. Come and find out a bit more about how to encourage your children to write, how to help them, what our expectations are etc

 

The Reception Team

pgreenwood@wimbledonpark.merton.sch.uk

fdavies@wimbledonpark.merton.sch.uk

obacon@wimbledonpark.merton.sch.uk

Quotes of the week:

During a retelling of the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff the children are taking it in turns to come to the front, use the class story map, and tell the next part of the story.  A boy comes to the front and has to retell what the troll says when he jumps on to the bridge to confront the biggest Billy Goat Gruff.  In a loud voice the boy proclaims “fee…fie…foe…fum…” and can’t understand why staff are laughing so much.

In the phonics assessment the children are asked to use their knowledge of digraphs to write the word “thin”.  A good two-thirds of those who attempted this wrote “fin…”.  Similarly when asked to write “with” several children wrote “wiv…”.

A teacher is listening to the interchange between a group of strong-minded girls at the creative table.  The girls were unable to agree about something and one girl told another that she wasn’t going to talk to her anymore and the reply was “well I’m not going to talk to you either” then a third joined in and they were all telling each other that they weren’t going to speak to each other.  All of them were trying to have the last word, when two of them saw my amused expression and suddenly saw the irony of the situation and started to laugh.  The third said “why are you laughing?…Mrs Greenwood why are they laughing?... well I’m not talking to you now either…”