Early Years 1 matters
English Book: Ten Red Apples
Author: Pat Hutchins
Illustrator: Pat Hutchins
Through this famous author for Early Years, this week, the children had the experience to count apples to ten. Reinforcing the knowledge of red, children had the opportunity to name the colour. This showed our team that some children are beginning to remember the name of some colours in English. Ms Delphine asked for the children’s help to count the apples on the class tree from five to zero. This story also has a rhyming pattern that supports English literacy development too, delivered in a fun way with actions that children were beginning to imitate, as familiar animals gobbled the apples!
Early Years 2 matters
It’s been another busy week of exploring fun in EY2B. Here are some of the exciting subjects we have been covering this week.
We have been looking some more at animals and identifying them by using only our hands. Our class used their sense of touch to distinguish different features of animals: the size of the animal, neck length, tail and mouth type are just some of the ways we guessed the animal correctly in the ‘secret box’. We also spoke more about colour and personal colour preferences. We expanded on this by choosing colours for our paper aeroplanes and then testing different paper planes ranging from very small to HUGE. This grabbed the attention of our class, and it is a subject we will continue to explore next week. It was beautiful to see so many children interested in building and using paper planes!
Outside, we have been looking at ways of working together; riding on trikes, pushing oil barrels and counting how long we can hold onto the climbing frame all help build social connections and strengthen the bonds between us all, not to mention helping with gross-motor skills.
Early Years 3 matters
In our Phonics sessions, we are focusing on the sounds /g/ /o/ and /c/. We start by reviewing each sound as a class, then we go into our smaller groups and focus on reading and writing the sounds to help us be secure in applying them. This also provides opportunities for the children to share their knowledge and ideas of the sounds. The children enjoy the phonics lessons, especially our “Magic Chest”, which has many different things starting with the sound of the day.
In the Maths area, we have started experimenting with speed and distance, rolling things down ramps and seeing which is faster or goes further. This has also led to great discussions about why some things can roll more than others, with the children developing their understanding of the concepts of friction and weight and how this affects things. Again, this has been very popular, with the children trying to work out what has the most significant effect.
Early Years 4 matters
We have introduced the children to some different travel books and maps. The children have shown an interest in looking through the books, which show photographs from other countries worldwide. From their exploration, the children began to ask more questions, such as why the people look different and why the scenery is different? We will use these questions to explore deeper in our project. Alongside this, the children have been looking at a map of China and the surrounding countries. They have talked about different cities that they have travelled to and how they got there. The children have started to use string to show their journeys and the places they have visited.