FS2 Continuing Student Learning W/C Monday 6th September
Sophie Riley
Welcome to Week 4
What a fantastic week of learning we have seen in FS2! Your teachers, TAs and specialist teachers have loved seeing the learning and experiences you have been sharing during your lessons and on Seesaw.
Click on your class to see your 'Weekly Celebration Video'. Take a sneaky peek at some other classes too, can you spot any of your other friends?
FSD
FSE
FSH
FSK
FSP
FSS
This Week's Learning
Communication and Language with Ms Elizabeth
Where do you live? What important rooms and spaces make up your home? This week we will explore two special spaces in each of our homes and how they help to keep us safe and healthy!
Please come to our PD sessions in clothes that allow you to move freely. We suggest either wearing your FS2 PE kit, or shorts/trousers and a t shirt. Skirts and dresses, although lovely are not practical for these sessions.
Guidance- English
Join Ms Gemma, Peppa Pig and her friends as we warm up our bodies and get active. We will play the balloon game and also challenge ourselves with a cup and ball challenge.
In our second lesson, we will become builders and see what kind of creations we can create. We will then draw our designs and share this on Seesaw! What will you need for our lessons next week?
This week we will be thinking about different tastes. I will share a non-fiction book about taste with the children. I will ask them about their favourite tastes.
During the call I will encourage the children to choose some fruits and vegetables for a healthy snack.
I will encourage the children to cut up the fruits and vegetables.
When they are tasting the food I will encourage them to try to follow the SSS guide – Sit, Slow, Savour. Thoroughly chew each fruit or vegetable and think about these questions:
•Can you describe the tastes of the food you have tried?
•Did you enjoy the food?
•What was the texture of the food and how did it feel in your mouth?
Extra challenge
I will encourage the children to try a mystery food chosen by you. If they do not want to try this it is absolutely fine.
This week, our Small Group Learning calls will continue to focus on a blend of phonics, maths and well-being games.
Phonics Guidance- English
Phonics plays a vital role in a child’s Literacy development. It enables them to decode words in order to read them. However, before we explore phonics, it is first important to understand the order in which we become literate.
Children begin their journey to becoming literate by first being able to listen and understand. You may have noticed that when your child was small, before they could talk very much, they were first able to follow simple instructions or respond to loud or interesting noises. As these skills develop, your child will have begun to speak. Speaking comes second to listening and understanding. It is likely that some of your child’s first words were things that they understood, for example: mum, dad, cup, ball.
It is important to develop listening and speaking skills first as, if these are not developed alongside phonics, children can have difficulty comprehending the meaning of what they have read. This is why it is so important to focus on Phase 1 phonics during the first term of Foundation Stage 2.
As a child becomes more secure in their speaking and listening skills, they can then become firstly good readers and then confident and competent writers.
What can I do at home to help my child develop their phonics skills?
In the Foundation Stage, the starting point for developing phonemic awareness is to listen to sounds that your child can hear in their environment. When you are out and about, talk about the sounds you can hear. Encourage your child to listen for them too, for example: ‘I can hear a dog barking. Can you hear it too?’ or ‘What is that noise?’. Investigate where different sounds come from and how your child can make different sounds both with their own voice and with objects.
When talking to your child, occasionally break simple, regular words down into their sound components, for example: ‘It’s a cat. C-A-T. Cat.’, so they can begin to hear all the sounds in words. They may start exploring this on their own.
Help your child learn the sounds of the alphabet and the most common regular vowel digraphs. Occasionally point to letters and ask your child to say the sound they make. They may show interest in doing this themselves. You can view the correct sequence and articulation of sounds here:
You will notice that when we have a Maths focus during our Small Group Learning calls, we keep things fun and interactive, contextualising the children’s concept of number and shape with songs, images, stories and games.
Supporting children in maths this way can start at an early age, with introduction of songs and rhymes, including numbers that count forwards, “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, once I caught a fish alive.” And songs that count backwards, “Five currant buns, or five speckled frogs.” This supports children in not only naming numbers but also learning the patterns of numbers. You can also count in twos, e.g. “the animals went in two by two” or “two little dickie birds.”
Toys can also support children’s learning of maths, using blocks to build towers or counting them in a line. Parents can also use a child’s interest to count, e.g. if your child enjoys playing with animals or cars, they can be lined up and counted in sequence. Children are able to use memory and reconciliation to understand order and patterns that can be created by counting.
Numbers and maths don’t just appear in children’s play; maths games can be played when spending time with your child in different environments. When shopping with your child, ask if they can see any shapes around them, like an apple in the shape of a circle or a box of tea bags in the shape of a square. Pick out two products and ask your child which weighs more or less and to identify numbers around them, e.g. prices or aisle numbers.
Children can also identify shapes within their environment, e.g. walking through parks or the city streets, measuring shadows against one another, identifying shapes in buildings or what children see around them. Looking at buildings and noticing square windows or a rectangular door for example.
Baking and cooking at home with children is another way in which you can support maths. Counting, measuring and weighing ingredients and getting children to take part in mixing and distributing into different containers are maths activities. When baking, children notice patterns – adding a mixture to numerous bun cases or adding food in a certain way to a bowl or container. Shapes can also play a role in cooking, by getting children to identify shapes of containers or utensils (bun or cake tins).
Even home chores such as helping with the laundry and setting the table can be a fantastic learning activity. For example, you might ask “How many plates do we need to set out on the table today?” Similarly, matching up socks into pairs really helps children to begin counting in twos. “If there are 3 pairs of socks, how many socks are there altogether?” These activities really get the children thinking about number concepts and help to develop their number sense.
Small games are another way you can support maths development, such as clapping games that include repetition and copying; these are simple but supportive activities for children. Counting syllables in their names can also be useful: Elisabeth would be four claps, sounding like E-lis-a-beth.
In your Resource Pack, you will have noticed a large art book. This is your child's, 'Me and My World Book'.
Guidance- English
Research into communication, language and emotional development tells us that young children need opportunities to talk about and share their interests and family life with others. Once back in school, this book will help to create a sense of belonging and will encourage children to talk to their friends and teachers.
This book will come home from school many times throughout the year to be updated.
What we would like you to do now:
As this is a prompt for talk, we would like you to help your child to include some of the following:
Photographs of family members and other special people
Particular interests and hobbies
Holiday photographs
Special events (cultural or family celebrations)
Pets
Favourite foods
Favourite music, TV shows, toys, characters etc..
You do not need to print everything. Children can draw their favourite things or cut out snippets from magazines or leaflets. Your child can decorate the front cover of their book anyway they wish!
We suggest, that at this time, you don’t use more than 4 or 5 pages. This will ensure there is plenty of space for your child to add and reflect upon their experiences and interests throughout the rest of the school year.
Enjoy starting to create this special book together!
To see how powerful the 'All About Me Books' can be in supporting and prompting communication, watch the way these students engage over some family photos:
Music
Join Mr Charlie for a Music session at 1pm on Thursday.
Also, watch and join in as he sings 'We are the Dinosaurs!'
Child Initiated Resource Pack Learning
Take a look at some of the ways you can explore your Learning Pack this week. Remember, these are just ideas and should your exploration take a different direction, GO FOR IT!
We really love to see videos and photos of what you have been doing at home. The best way to share this with us is via the Seesaw App. You should have received communication about how to download and login to the app. If you have not received this, please email the ISIT helpdesk- helpdesk@patana.ac.th
Birthdays
Happy Birthday to Praline, Dhwani, Catherine and Tiffany who are all celebrating this week! We hope you have a fantastic day!
Home-School Communication
We hope that you have enjoyed engaging with the FS2 Blog this week.
If you have any concerns or queries about your child’s learning, please do not hesitate to contact your child's class teacher via email. They can then arrange a mutually convenient time to meet via MS Teams. Our class teachers always welcome the opportunity to discuss your child’s needs and progress.