Week commencing 16th November 2020 - Lindfield.

Welcome to our latest blog.

This week we have focused on Literacy – Reading.

We closely observed the children and then using our observations and knowledge of each child we can make judgements as to where they are within the ‘Development Matters’ age bands.

During the parent consultations on Thursday many parents were intrigued as to how we make our judgements and what the document looks like.

Please see this example below.

READING - LITERACY

22-36 months

*Has some favourite stories, rhymes and songs.

*Repeats words or phrases from familiar books.

*Fills in missing word in a known story, rhyme or game, E.g. Humpty Dumpty sat on a …..

30-50 months *Shows awareness of rhyme.

*Listens to and joins in with stories and poems.

*Joins in with repeated refrains.

*Beginning to be aware of the way stories are structured.

*Suggests how a story may end.

*Listens with increasing attention and recall.

*Shows and interest in print within the environment.

*Handles books with care.

*Recognises familiar words such as own name and advertising logos.

40-60 months

*Hears and say the initial sound in words.

*Can segment the sounds in words and blend them together.

*Links sounds to letters.

*Begins to read words.

*Knows that information can be retrieved from books and from a device.

*Can continue a rhyming string.

*Uses vocabulary that is increasingly influenced by their experiences of books.

Mrs Franks is always happy to show you a copy of the document and to explain further how we use it every day at The Acorns to plan opportunities for the children to support their development and to devise next steps in learning.

The Development Matters document can be found here.

https://www.foundationyears.org.uk/files/2012/03/Development-Matters-FINAL-PRINT-AMENDED.pdf

We shared many stories together this week as a group, some children brought books in from home to share too.

We have been finding words and letters within our environment and trying to figure out what they say.

Some of the children have been busy making treasure maps and we learned that even although the maps may have no words – you still ‘read’ them by looking at the pictures and signs.

X marks the spot!

We were hoping to find some buried treasure.

The map play lead on to more pirate play and the children decided they needed to make some telescopes too. We sailed off on the pirate ship to far away islands and went in search of the buried gold.

William brought in his big nursery school book to share with us.

We loved looking through his wonderful book and seeing all of his amazing photos.

We have Nursery School Book weeks set out on our planning calendar so please keep a look out for those dates.

Some of the children made superhero masks this week.

In this photo we can see Jack modelling his spider man mask and wearing his superhero cape.

I wonder what super powers he has ?

We spent lots of time in the garden this week, It is getting colder and colder and we needed to wear hats and gloves to keep us warm.

Sam noticed something amazing whilst in the garden. “When I breathe out it looks like smoke.”

Google told us “When you exhale when it is cold outside, the water vapour in your breath condenses into tiny droplets of liquid water and ice that you can see in the air. Similar to fog.”

This was a great example of how we can learn things from reading information.

We went on a bug hunt and found some interesting creatures under the mat by the climbing frame.

We looked at them and some children carefully held them before outing them back safely in their hiding spots.

We made some marks on the chalk board sing paint brushes dipped in water. This is one of our favourite garden activities. The children enjoy painting the benches and the pirate ship.