This week in Pre-School 20.3.23

To celebrate Monday being the first day of Spring, we will be having a two-week spring themed learning focus. We’ll be discussing changes to the weather, hours of daylight and how to spot signs of spring. We will also compare spring to other seasons, talk about the months of the year and learn about some special UK spring events. This week, our focus story will be The Last Supper. We will be thinking about our church school values, as we read and discuss this story with the children and will also discuss new vocabulary, sequence events and create a story map.

As well as reading our focus story, we will also be reading lots of non-fiction texts about spring and will look at the differences between fiction and non-fiction texts. If your child has a spring themed book they’d like to share with their friends, they are welcome to bring it in so we can read it together.

In Phonics this week we will be focussing on voice sounds. We will play games such as ‘Metal Mike’ during which the children will listen to Mike the robot break CVC words into sounds such as c-a-t for them to blend back together. We will also experiment with sounds we can make with our voices and play games such as ‘Whose voice’ where the children will need to guess which one of their friends called out a phrase such as, ‘fish and chips!’

In Maths this week we will be learning about repeating patterns and will use lots of resources to help the children practise and develop their understanding, for example cotton reels, Duplo and sorting bears. We will also encourage the children to draw and paint their own repeating patterns. Outside, we will also use natural resources to model and create repeating patterns with the children. If you would like to play a game at home with your child, the link below is one that the children know and enjoy.

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/ordering-and-sequencing/shape-patterns

We love learning new Makaton signs and over the last week, we have started to learn signs such as tooth brush, sleep and some vegetable signs as well as practising our emotion signs. This week, we will begin to learn signs related to Spring. Please find a link below if you would like to practise at home with your children.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_q8SQhw0ME

Don't forget your child can wear odd socks tomorrow for World Down Syndrome Day. We will be joining in with the Lots Of Socks campaign which asks people to wear their brightest socks to help raise awareness and get people talking about Down's Syndrome. (It is school uniform as normal, apart from socks please) Please go to https://www.downs-syndrome.org.uk/our-work/campaigning/#day for further information about this campaign.

If your child is not at Pre-School on Tuesday but would still like to wear their odd socks, please do pop a photo on Tapestry and they can show their friends when they are next in.

The Pre-School Team