‘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.
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.
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.
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!
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, 
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:
Free Resources and Teaching Tips
Everyone can teach Chinese! All you need to do is give it a go!
You may worry about mispronouncing the words and teaching them incorrectly but pronunciation can be corrected at a later date. Building confidence in speaking, understanding and reading a new language is key in language acquisition.
Below you will find a list of website which will demonstrate pronunciation but Google Translate is a fantastic source when learning new words. I have also included Pronunciation Guides in the Mandarin for Beginners book.
There are a lot of resources online for learning Mandarin Chine
se. One of my favourite language programs is Poisson Rouge.I have made a few resources, lesson plan and exercise book for children to use when learning Mandarin Chinese.
Mandarin Worksheet Book
In a few days time, I will have completed my Mandarin book. It will come with lots of speaking, listening and reading activities.
(I feel writing Chinese is too difficult to teach without being there to explain it directly. However, if you want to give it a try, Chinese characters start top to bottom, left to right.)
This is a You Tube video teaching how to write ‘wǒ’ meaning ‘me’.
Resources available will be:
I’m looking forward to releasing the lot! Please give feedback if it’s useful!
