‘If you want your children to be smart, tell them stories. If you want them to be brilliant, tell them more stories’. - Albert Einstein
When you tell your first story, there is a magical moment. The children sit enthralled, mouths open, eyes wide. If that isn’t enough reason, then consider that storytelling:
Ø Inspires purposeful talking, and not just about the story — there are many games you can play.
Ø Stories raise enthusiasm for reading different kinds of texts.
Ø Initiates writing because children will quickly want to write stories and tell them. Improves listening skills.
Ø Story telling is enjoyed by children from kindergarten to the end of elementary school.
Ø Gives a motivating reason for English-language learners to speak and write English.
Nursery and Reception have been immersed in the magic of storytelling this week. We continued with the story of ‘The Gruffalo’ paying particular attention to descriptive words. Purple prickles, black tongue, orange eyes, terrible claws, knobbly knees etc. This will be linked in a future lesson to the description of Arctic animals.
Story week: Our book choice for story week is ‘Room on the Broom’ BY Julia Donaldson. This story will be used in our Talk for writing for the next 3 weeks
Phonics: We have almost finished working on the first set of the ‘jolly phonics’ letters. This week we consolidated the letter sound ‘p’. In class we go through the rhyme songs and actions of all the letters learned so far as well as their correct letter formation. The children experiment with trying to write the letter sounds on their mini whiteboard after doing the formation on the big whiteboard with their finger. A very exciting development in our phonics this week was the blending of three letter CVC words as we continue on our journey to becoming competent readers.
In Numeracy this week many of our activities were linked to ‘Room on the Broom’ our chosen story for ‘Story Week’. We continued with developing number sense in numbers 1- 10, taking into account differentiation as some groups are on 1-5. Other activities linked to the attainment of our Numeracy Early Learning Goals included; grasping concepts like more and less, and larger and smaller. Understanding the order of numbers in a list: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. Arranging objects and pictures according to size from biggest to smallest.
Next week we hope to continue with our story ‘Room on the Broom’ as one week was just not long enough to do all the exciting things we have planned. Join us next week for an update on our travels as we continue to read.
MUSIC
Nursery and Reception have been learning new songs “What is the weather like today?”. We have created simple rhythm with percussion instruments and have made appropriate activities.
