Reception Newsletter

For week ending 31st January 2020

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This week’s learning has focussed around the traditional tale of The Elves and The Shoemaker.  The children have been designing their own shoes and then making them from junk modelling, they have marvellously re-written parts of the story, and shoes have been flying in all directions as they have been pretending to visit the class shoe shops.  Hopefully they have come home wearing the correct footwear! 

In maths we have been learning about number 17, with continued practice of 1 more and 1 less.  All the way along since we got past 10 we have been talking about these 2-digit numbers as “ten and 4 more….ten and 6 more…ten and 1 more etc”.  This is very important early practice for the understanding of place value.  Some children are ready to think about numbers other than 1 in the tens column – if you wanted to you could look at 2-digit numbers around the home and in the local environment and talk about them being, for example 3 tens and 6 more [36]. 5 tens and 9 more [59] etc but only do this if your child is really secure saying what the numbers between 10 and 17 are composed of.

Next week we will look at our final traditional tale Little Red Riding Hood.  There are writing opportunities for making lists and creative ideas for making things to go into the basket to take to Grandmother.  In maths the children will be switching their focus to number 18, and becoming more fluent still with 1 more and 1 less.

Requests and reminders

·         The Writing Workshop is next Wednesday evening at 6pm in the Studio.  All welcome, but not children please.  We will be showing you how we teach children to write and giving you information about how you can help your child at home to develop their confidence and skills.

·         An email was sent out this week requesting the return of clothes we have provided following toileting accidents.  Many thanks to those of you who have risen to the challenge – if all the boys trousers could be returned we would be very grateful.

·         We are continually battling the non-labelling of school uniform and PE items – please please please ensure that all of your child’s clothes are named.

·         Some non-uniform items are creeping in – in particular nail varnish and trainers instead of plain black school shoes.  Please make sure that all nail varnish is removed and proper shoes are provided as soon as possible.

Have a lovely weekend

 

The Reception Team

pgreenwood@wimbledonpark.merton.sch.uk

fdavies@wimbledonpark.merton.sch.uk

obacon@wimbledonpark.merton.sch.uk

 

Quotes of the week:

Child to teacher “is it an insect day tomorrow?...”

The children are having fun in the class “shoe shop”.  When asked what they could do with the shoes they had chosen one child confides “well I can walk on water with these…” [white brogues, if you are interested], and other said “well I am going to the North Pole in these boots…” [long black womens boots – thigh high on the child wearing them].

Following on from calling Mrs Greenwood “Granny” last week, she has been called ”…daddy?...” this week.

Whilst doing a matching activity under teacher direction the children were asked to match certain footwear types with images of people doing the jobs those shoes would most be suited to. One of the options was a fireman, matching with black and yellow wellington boots with handles on.  When asked why those were the most suitable items of footwear for a fireman, one child answered “well it’s so his ankles don’t get burnt and his feet fall off…” In a similar vein the children were asked “who wears trainers?...” and amongst the responses were “a girl who runs… tennis players…the gingerbread man because he needs to get away fast…”