Reading cafe

Our first reading cafe of the school year was held today.

The focus was on how we teach phonics in EYFS Reception class. We began by showing our Mummy's, Daddy's, Grandma's and Grandad's how we learn our new sounds. We introduced them to our phonics friend Fred the frog!

We showed our visitors how we use 'My turn', 'your turn'and 'turn to your partner to reinforce oral sounding out of sounds and then how to segment the sounds e.g. "C , a, t" before blending them and pushing them back together to make the whole word "cat".

There were then a series of activities which the children and their guests could take part in which we use in class to reinforce our phonics and early literacy skills.

Fishing for phonics.

What sounds can you catch? Can you find them on your own board?

Did you get a good catch?!

What sound did you catch?

Feeding Fred - Fred only talks in sounds, so you have to feed Fred the cards by saying the sounds you see e.g. C, a, t'.

Playdough fun- making our letter shapes by rolling flat and pressing the shapes on or using our hands to make sausages.

Using sound cubes to find the sounds to match the word and then joining them together to make the whole word.

Wring our sounds in a variety of ways. 

Using whiteboards.

Using sand trays or glitter trays.

On chalk boards.

Tracing sound cards.

And word cards.

Marble run sounds.

Sound puzzles.

And sharing sound books and stories....

We hope you all had fun and that you learnt a little bit more about how we tach phonics in Reception.

Funky fingers

The children have really responded well to coming in and sorting themselves out and going straight to find their 'Funky fingers' job of the day.

Here are the activities we have on the go this week:

Pasta pots - using tweezers to transfer 1 piece of pasta from one pot to the other.

Sound buttons - adding 1 button at a time to accurately form the sounds we have learnt so far.

Peg-a-Saurus - adding 1 peg at a time to the dinosaur's back.

Cutting straight lines - holding scissors carefully and accurately and using to follow the dotted lines.

Cheerio threading - threading individual Cheerios to make a necklace.

This week we have carefully observed our faces and facial features, looking at size, colour and shape. The children have added these onto their blank faces, carefully selecting the right colour paint and size paintbrush.

I have introduced Beebot - a programmable toy- to help guide us to our Numicon cards on the carpet. The children have loved this.

We have enjoyed continuing exploring Numicon to print.

And using the playdough to explore the different shapes.

We have been working really hard to move up our reward ladders and this week we have had our first 'winners'. Here's what lies in store - a prize from the shiny silver box!

And just look how beautifully we can sit and give Mrs Hough 5 every time! 

1. Legs crossed

2. Hands still

3. Ears listening

4. Mouth closed

5. Eyes looking....... Well very nearly !!!