The Colour Monster
This week, we have been learning about different emotions. On Monday morning, we read the story The Colour Monster by Anna Llenas. We talked each of the feelings mentioned in the story and shared times we have felt happy, sad, scared, calm or angry. After reading the story, we had a go at making our own colour monster puppets to help us talk about the different emotions. We also sorted coloured tiles or pom poms into feeling jars. The children engaged so well with these activities and are beginning to use language from the story to describe how they are feeling. We have introduced colour monster feeling cards to our calm areas, alongside calming, sensory activities to help children regulate their feelings throughout the school day.
In phonics this week we have learnt to read and write the letters ‘t,’ ‘i’, ‘n’ and ‘p’. These letters are tricky to write, and the children persevered well when trying to write them. To help children form their letters, we have introduced Squiggle Time into our week to support children’s gross motor skills ready for writing. The children have loved our Squiggle sessions so far and we look forward to showing you what we do in these sessions via Tapestry. Next week in phonics, we will be practising to read simple words with the sounds we have learnt so far. We will also learn two more letters, ‘g’ and ‘o’. On Tapestry, children have been set some phonics homework for the first time which will be due Friday 13TH October.
In maths, we have been learning to continue simple AB patterns. We began our learning by making some simple movement and sound patterns with our bodies, for example, clap, stamp, clap, stamp. We then moved on to learning a simple pattern song called ‘Clap your hands and wiggle your fingers’. Later in the week, the children helped me to continue simple AB patterns using natural materials that had been donated (Thank you!). By the end of the week, the children became confident in recognising patterns and had a go at making their own using natural materials. Next week, we will move on to the last part of our first phase of learning and will be learning to compare the size of objects using the language bigger/smaller/taller/shorter. This links beautifully to the text we will be reading in literacy called ‘Once There Were Giants’. As part of our Literacy and Understanding of the World learning, we would like all children to bring in a photo of themselves from when they were younger ready to share in class. We will be talking and drawing pictures of our families and using our sounds to write labels for our family members. We look forward to seeing all the lovely photos and will return them to you by the end of the term.
Quick reminders from this week:
– Please ensure that you child has a coat in school every day.
– Double check all clothing is labelled.
Thank you for reading,
Mrs Foster