NURSERY and RECEPTION
Valentine’s week is always a special week in that it affords us the opportunity in ‘Early Years’ to talk about having special friends and showing kindness and love, to those around us. It is a great opportunity to talk about ‘sharing is caring’.
A good story to illustrate this is “A Sick Day for Amos McGee” by Phillip C Stead.
This charming book tells the story of an elderly zoo keeper who made time each day for his animal friends-- racing a tortoise, reading stories to an owl, spending time with a shy penguin...Then when Amos is home sick, his animal friends return the favour, going to his home to cheer him up.
Amos is an adorable little guy and the attention he gives to his animal friends is tenderly portrayed. The result of his kindness--that his animal friends rushed to his side when he's sick--is a nice reminder to children that they create caring friendships through the way they treat others. Plus, it's lots of fun to see animals do human things like taking the bus, playing games...
In Understanding the World, we looked at the value of having a good friend. How we should treat our friends? Why it is important to share? This was linked to ‘Valentine’s Day’
In Literacy we introducing a storyline or narrative into play. We used various construction materials to describe texture and colour through ‘Valentine’s Day’ activities.
In Russian class we worked on recognising and writing letters. Every week we learn a new letter-sound, this includes writing using the correct letter formation. Blending syllables and words with letters we have already learned, identifying the position of the letter in the word (in the beginning, in the middle or in the end). When the children are introduced to a new letter we usually do some crafts – create something that begin with this sound.
Phonics: We have almost finished working on the first set of the ‘Jolly Phonics’ letters. The letters s, a, t, p, i. This week we introduced the letter ‘n’. We revised the rhymes, songs and actions of all the letters learned so far as well as the correct letter formation. The children experimented with trying to write the letter sounds on their mini whiteboards, after doing the formation on the big whiteboard with their finger. We consolidated our sounds through interactive white board games. This week we continued blending our CVC words ending in –at –ot –et It is so exciting to see the children starting to read. Some of the children will soon be bringing home their first reading books.
In Numeracy we continued developing our number sense in Numbers 1- 10. Taking into account differentiation as some groups are on 1-5. Understanding quantities. Grasping concepts like more and less, and larger and smaller. Recognizing relationships between single items and groups of items (seven means one group of seven items). Understanding symbols that represent quantities (8 means the same thing as eight). Making number comparisons (5 is greater than 6, and two is half of four). Understanding the order of numbers in a list: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. ordinal numbers. Ordering according to size.
Our children are so excited to present their family with special crafts, made exclusively for you, by their loving little hands and feet for ‘Valentines Day’.
