Fred Talk
This week some of our children had a go at ‘Fred Talk’ using only the sounds that we have learnt. We had such fun and made lots of words, such as p-a-t, s-a-t, m-a-t. Here’s a short video to explain Fred Talk. Click here
The children found out that the more sounds we learn (more after Christmas, we mustn’t run before we can walk!) the more words we can Fred Talk!
Maths Mastery
We continue to explore the ‘fourness’ of four. 4 is a small number and counting to 4 provides lots of practice in developing skills of counting such as one-one correspondence and saying numbers in the right order.
Four appears in lots of contexts, such as four legs on a table. We encourage the children to become ‘4 detectives’ Four has the special property of being a square number and the children’s attention has been drawn to this through the arrangement of 4 blocks or squares. Have a go at home at making 4!
We have also been identifying similarities between shapes:
At this stage, children show increasing intentionality in their selection of shapes, for example using cylinders to represent wheels because they can roll. Draw children’s attention to specific properties by using specific language in everyday situations, while children may use informal language. Properties may include:
curvedness
numbers of sides and corners (2D) or edges, faces and vertices (3D)
equal sides
parallel sides
angle size, including right angles
2D shapes as faces of 3D shapes.
In their play the children show that they are utilising this knowledge by gathering specific items that are needed for their construction, e.g. making a bed for a teddy and gathering blocks of equal length to make the rectangle; taking time with constructing corners so the shapes fit together to make a right angle.
Here’s a great Shape Song. Click here
Michelle’s Blog
Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s blog. We have had another fabulous week of fantastic brain growing. Our focus this week has been learning about shapes. We have learnt the names of lots of different shapes as well as looking at similarities and differences. We are able to say whether a shape has three or more sides and how many corners the shape has too. We went on a shape hunt around nursery, finding lots of shapes in different places. We also had a go at drawing the different shapes on the interactive board, as well as cutting them out to make a collage. Why don’t you try to find as many different shapes on a shape hunt at home or when you are out and about.
We also used the shapes to explore different prepositions and had to describe whether the shapes were under, on, behind, in front of or next to the chair. This is something you could also do at home. Set your child a challenge so they have to find an object only by the clues you give them, e.g “ It’s behind or in front of etc”.
Here is a fun game to reinforce the shapes we have learnt this week. Click here
We have also had lots of activities this week to develop the muscles in our hands. This is all good practice before we start Reception. These hand strengthening activities also help us to have strong hands to put our shoes and socks on and to do up our zips. WE are practising our zips every day and more and more of us are now able to do this independently.
Here are some more ideas to try at home. Click here
Finally, we have started our Christmas crafts and we are as busy as elves. All top secret now though!
We are really looking forward to welcoming you all next week for our Nativity performances. We have been practising really hard!
Have a lovely weekend everyone and we will see you next week.
Michelle
