Friday Headlines
the weekly newsletter from EHS
This Week in Westbourne
21 June 2024
This week Nursery's theme has been on the farm. Girls have been identifying animals that live on a farm, the noises they make, the homes they live in and the names of their young.
In Mathematics they made farmyard fences by ordering numbers to 10 on lollipop sticks. They also played a game where they had to roll a dice, notice the number and put that many spats of mud on the pig. The girls have enjoyed playing farmyard dominoes and Kim's game which helps to develop their visual memory skills.
During this week Kindergarten girls have been thinking about the phoneme x. There are not many words that begin with x, so the children have had to think hard to hear x at the end of words as well as in the middle of words! They really enjoyed the opportunity to play on xylophones and glockenspiels and even created their own xylophone pictures. Another area of interest was learning about x-rays and why we would have an x-ray. Girls talked about lots of different bones in our bodies and what they do to help us! This was followed up with some funny bones subtraction and practical work making number bonds to 10. The girls were also interested to see pictures of animal skeletons too.
They enjoyed reading the story 'My Cat Likes to Hide in Boxes' and were quick to hear that box has a final sound of x. We also spent time talking about the rhyming words in the book and completed an activity where the children had to decide which word was the odd one out in a rhyming string.
This week in Mathematics, Reception pupils embarked on learning how to count coins. This activity aimed to introduce the girls to the value of currency. Pupils started off using fans to demonstrate coin recognition then progressed to counting different amounts of money. They were able to play games and visit the role play shop to reinforce their understanding. In Literacy lessons girls have been recapping phonics sounds learnt this year and creating wonderful sentences describing pictures. Well done, girls!
In Topic work, girls listened to the story of 'There was an old woman who swallowed a fly' and made their own little moving figure, enabling them to sing the song over and over again. The classroom has also been filled with much anticipation with the arrival of live caterpillars ready to transform into butterflies. This is teaching the girls all about the life cycle of butterflies. The caterpillars are housed in a little pot and will be transferred to a butterfly house then eventually released. Girls have been giving us daily reports on the growth of the caterpillars and have enjoyed observing them munching away at their food. Art lessons have been centred on caterpillars and the life cycle of a butterflies, too. Here, girls made 3D caterpillars and butterfly lifecycle hats!
We have had a fun and busy week in Reception.
This Week in Westbourne
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