Letter Formation

Is it Important?

I’m not sure if letter formation is important. I think it is essential that children are able to use letters that are recognisable and convey meaning, but I’m not sure it’s important to use the rounded k or the kicking k.

But I am working on helping the children to improve their fine motor skills.

We have squeezed in weekly fine motor skill sessions into our already packed time table, and this term I will be focusing on letter formation.

I’ve produced some sheets. To be honest with you, I don’t know if they are appropriate. I know that the head teacher has asked me to focus on letter formation so I have made these sheets for focused letter formation.

Each session lasts 20 minutes.

As always, you are more than welcome to help yourselves to a copy of this worksheet. Download it here.

What I sometimes do, when I feel bad about giving the children worksheets to do, I will leave them out for the children to access independently.

Space Journal

A Bit of Everything

We use Learning Journeys in our Reception. Instead of using maths and literacy books, we collect key pieces of work to appear in scrap books to show how the children’s learning has progressed over time.

The Space Journal is going to be the feature piece of work in the Learning Journey for this term.

	The title page It’s important for children to individualise their work. This black and white page is emblazoned with the title however the space badge in the middle is available for children to stamp their own mark.
	Astronaut Passport This page explores the development of how children have improved on writing their names since the beginning of term and
	Non-Fiction Page In this page we can talk about facts to do with space, for example that there is air and gravity in space just not a lot of it. Children are invited to draw a picture of waht they intend to write about, and then write a sentence about that picture. Lower attainers could state, quite rightly, that Mars is red. Higher attainers could write about gravity or the order of the planets.
	Phonics Page This page encourages children to explore phonics. Obviously, aliens do not speak English. Children on this page are encouaged to make up words using the phonic sounds they know, and of course draw a picture of an alien in the middle box. Drawing topic based pictures encourages children to use topic based creativity, develops fine motor skills and drawing skills.
	Labelling and Creative Design A mixture between fiction and non-fiction, children are able to create their own space ship design. However, as they need to label their diagram, their images need to have a lot of thought put into them. This encourages thinking skills as well as fine motor and letter formation skills.
	Maths The alien friend that we are doing in school will be made out of clay, but you could use salt dough or modelling clay. We have free flow/creative time in the afternoons (as the little ones are so tired and losing concentration by the afternoon, especially after a big lunch) and our aliens will be made the previous week in our afternoon sessions. We will then use the morning maths lessons to measure, weigh and thoroughly assess our aliens. Their vital statistics will then be input into this sheet along with a small photo of their friend.

If you would like to use the the space journal, you are more than welcome to download the file, for free.

The Space Journal is intended to be done across the entire half term, one page a week. The children will be taking part in other activities and will produce other pieces of appropriate work and written work, however this would be their special topic work to appear in their Learning Journeys.

New Role Play Area

The Space Station

I think role play areas are my favourite! I do like creating these lovely spaces for the children to work in.

This term, it’s a space station!

It’s not quite finished yet,  but I think my TA has done such a fantastic job building it that I wanted to show you what it looks like already!

I have more photos of the details!

Learning Through Play

It’s about Developing Knowledge

I’m having a bit of a preach I’m afraid.

Members of staff working with older children can often think that all we do in the foundation stage is play.

I have told the children in my class that we work with the toys in the classroom, and the head teacher will tell me off if I let them play when it’s not play time. The children now delight in correcting me if I say ‘play’ by accident.

Children in the foundation stage work very hard when they are playing. They are developing relationships with other children, learning about who they are and how they relate to other people. If they actually do the activity as it is intended, they will be learning about numbers, shapes, writing, sounds and ICT.

The role of the Learning Through Play Manager is essential for ensuring that the goals in the Early Years Foundation Stage are met. It is not all about teaching knowledge but it is also about developing that knowledge.

Christmas Spirit

Children Using the New Role Play Area

It’s weird, you spend all this time making a role play area for the kids to use. You get the children to help you paint it and construct it, and you fill it with lovely laminated things.

And then you get quite protective of the whole thing and don’t want the children to play in it!

But I managed to stop myself from fussing over the role play area and the kids actually had some fun!

They were dressing up and pretending to be Santa, delivering presents and constructing toys in construction area! Everyone was on task! There were even two children who appointed themselves in charge of the post office!

All in all a successful role play area!

Here’s how I did it!

Christmas Role Play

Hours of work for just a few weeks!

Here is a photo of my Christmas role play area. It’s a Santa’s workshop.

I put some construction materials into the role play area along with a wooden tool box and some wooden tools. I explained that the children need to wear some elf ears if they’re doing construction in the role play area because the elves help Father Christmas to make the toys.

I’ve put lots of writing activities of various levels including letters to the children to thank them for their letters, naughty or nice lists and drawing toy designs.

There are also lots of dressing up opportunities and wrapping presents in a tough spot.

It will all be destroyed by 9:05am tomorrow morning, but the effort was there! lol

Gruffalo Lesson Plan: Rhyming

Going a Bit Gruffalo

As promised, a Gruffalo lesson plan. It’s not my best lesson plan and not my most ‘wow’ starter.

The children do enjoy reading the Gruffalo. If the focus of this story was different, if we were looking at retelling the story rather than rhyming, I would start this story outside in a forest area where the children could act out the story in the forest where the story is set.

Rhyming Lesson Plan based on The Gruffalo book Hopefully this will help anyone looking for a Gruffalo rhyming lesson. Like I say, it’s not got my best wow starter but it does cover all the literacy areas (speaking and listening, reading and writing) uses ICT and has the option of working outside. Download the lesson plan here.

Don’t forget to buy your copy of the Gruffalo! Normal paperback is available here. Big book of the Gruffalo available here.