Capacity

Children Use Everyday Language

These words are so ambiguous! Do they want us to talk about volume? Is it as simple as full and empty? Do they want use to ask the children to say which has the larger capacity?

Obviously, water play in the summer is a fantastic time to cover capacity, but to what extent?

I have been doing a few Google searches and I’ve found a few worksheets. I’m not a fan of worksheets but I think they do have their place in independent work, to allow children to consolidate their learning.

We tend to save the capacity topic until the summer as it’s best done in the water tray and it’s rather cold to play in water in the colder months.

In the Development Matters, in Positive Relationships: what adults can do it says, ‘use descriptive words like ‘big’ and ‘little’ in everyday play situations and through books and stories. Be consistent in your use of vocabulary for weight and mass.’

It is important to use words like ‘full’ and ‘empty’ when explaining capacity and ask questions like ‘which container holds more/less water?’

The children really enjoy learning in the water and it’s a fantastic environment to hear some wonderful language. Children may also talk about objects sinking and floating, a wonderful opportunity to compare objects and capture some magic moments!

Blending Cards

Phoneme Blocks with Phase 2 and Phase 3 Words

Just a quick post to share the resources I made for my Phonics intervention groups. These are resources I’m intending to use for the whole cohort in the Autumn group, for the lower attaining group in the Spring group and intervention groups in Summer.

To download these blending cards (all 52 pages) click here.

The blocks are made into phoneme blocks, not letter blocks, ie ch-i-ps and t-ur-n-i-p so where there are any diagraphs they’re to be written in the same box.

More resources coming soon!

Adjectives

‘Happy’ and ‘Sad’ Aren’t the Only Words!

My favourite way of teaching adjectives to Reception aged children is through the game, Guess Who. But you can also make your own guess who game using pictures from the internet.

I use a home made guess who game when talking about bugs. There are bugs with stripes, six legs, eight legs, wings, no legs, thin bodies, fat bodies, there are many ways to describe and identify different bugs.

This would also work well with aliens.

Writing Assessment

Test Them Test Them Test Them!!!

As we all know, there’s pressure to show progress in the Early Years. It can be difficult to show progress, you can’t really take a photo of a child not sharing and then a photo of children sharing but you can show development in writing skills.

Drawing skills also develop during Reception so it’s a good idea to assess these at the same time as writing skills.

I’ve made this writing sheet with the Early Learning Goals at the bottom so that any moderators or inspectors can see the targets your children are aiming towards.

You could print this out as a A5 sheet or an A4 sheet, depending on the time of year and the attainment level of your cohort.

Noticing Changes

A Simple Writing Frame

I’m just updating some artwork and display in my room. I’ve made the background for my writing, and I’m going to use the writing frame below for the children to write on.

There is differentiation in the size of the writing frames and through using lines or no lines. In my experience, children tend to write less when there are no lines on the paper so it might be good to target the ‘no lines’ paper at lower attainers.

Estimating

Your Most Sensible Guess

In the Early Years Development Matters, estimating comes under Mathematics, Number 40 – 60 months, with the target: Estimates how many objects they can see and checks by counting them.

It would be easy to whack out a worksheet to tick this target off, but it’s important to avoid worksheets at all costs in the Early Years.

To that end, I have created estimating question cards!

Thunks

Odd Questions to Make the Kids Think

Developing speech and language skills are an essential part of the Early Years. Language development leads to developing story ideas, critical thinking, social skills and many more!

Thunk work towards raising children’s confidence to speak in front of groups, in full sentences and to think about topics they haven’t previously considered.

I’ve often asked the kids what colour is Tuesday, which they sometimes take literally and say the colour of the word on the board.. Other Thunks could be:

• Can you touch the wind?
• If you took the stripes off a zebra, what colour would it be? (Also tiger and spots from a leopard)
• Where do words go after you’ve heard them?