Autumn Term Week 10

We had a very exciting SNOW DAY on Thursday this week – we were able to get outside and enjoy the snow while it fell and then come in to warm ourselves up. It was our first ever Forest School session in the snow, we had an explore and the fire and hot chocolate and then came in to defrost and join our friends in the normal session. We apologise for needing to send the Star group home for the PM session – once Cullompton Community College and Willowbank School closed we were unable to meet our ratio for the Star group as we had a number of staff that needed to leave to collect their own children. We will ensure you are offered another session to replace the one you missed and you will receive an email from Mandy about that next week.

Our focus this week during our circle times has been maths – but not just numbers, we have been learning about patterns and there are so many Maths skills that are really important for life skills. Maths skills are essential and a building block for life and Maths is also an area that can cause worry – you often hear people saying “I’m no good at Maths” but Maths is everywhere! Timetables, patterns, routines, shapes, size, capacity, numbers, counting, estimating, guessing, we use shape and pattern to recognise places we visit, faces we look at, directions, layout of a shop or library, to learn about distance and orientation. We work hard to build a love of Maths, solving problems and feeling really confident.

Star circle – matching shapes and sizes, learning about one more and one less with numbers, colour matching and sorting colours, reading number stories and learning number songs and looking at animal patterns.

Sun and Moon – we have worked on repeating patterns, motivating mistakes and correcting them, playing lots of fun games and having competitions and races. Sorting colour beads and counters and making patterns as a team, working together to match colours for a pattern and making shape pictures, looking at numbers on a giant phone and matching the numbers and the order of numbers. The groups have also learnt about measuring too! We will continue with maths for another week, collecting really good observations for the children so that we know where to go next with their learning.

Outside we have enjoyed a theatre role play area and we will be bringing that inside next week, supporting the children to grow in confidence before our Nativity which we have now started to practice!

Our literacy trays have been lovely this week and the collection of photos will appear on Tapestry at the end of the series for inspiration for home learning! You should all have had a note from your key person by now to let you know when they have time to work on learning journeys and please add observations (not messages) for any info you would like to share and this can form part of your child’s learning journey.

Next week more Christmas activities will begin to appear at pre-school, cinema role play, a sleigh outside with a cosy Xmas book area in the gingerbread house and a yoga and chill out zone in the Moon room!