F.S. Blog

Well we made it to Friday – 1 and a half weeks down of home learning for FS! 🙌 I hope you are enjoying some of the activities so far.

After Joe Wickes why not try out ‘Dough Disco’, it’s a finger workout for children. It is shown to improve fine motor skills, literacy and counting. This is a great activity for indoors. Join Shonette Bason-Wood at 9.30am everyday for live Dough Disco on her YouTube channel.  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCj0shfH3pzhrf3dOrSj_pRw?fbclid=IwAR1st85sGHrXhIkXh5fx29QnuxXTtfiBAtpHi-DbhfrkumKKlYjltkabOBk

Today’s challenge: Can you make your own play dough? If you have the ingredients at home why not have a go at making your own play dough. You can help to measure out the ingredients you need then mix it together. If you have any food colouring you can add to make it colourful.

Here’s how to make easy homemade play dough! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAIAm6BF0fs

❋ Ingredients: • Flour – 1 cup • Salt – 1/2 cup • Water – 1/2 cup • Food colour or washable paint (optional) you can also add a little vegetable or cooking oil if needed.

FS1

Have you sung the alphabet phonics song yet? Why not have a sing song over the weekend and see if you can get your family to join in. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zKr44iBFT0

Maths – Can you go on a number hunt around your house or on your daily walk – what numbers can you see? I would love to see pictures of what you can find.

FS2

Phonics – Keep practicing and recapping your phonics. The link below has a great selection of phase 3 games and videos to help you practice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHDDJiiS2Y0 https://www.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEB&search_query=simply+phonics+phase+3

Maths – Number work practice – keep working on counting, ordering, adding, subtracting, doubling, halving/sharing – this can be done practically with objects at home or written down number sentences.

Please keep the observations and photographs coming – it is lovely to see what you are keeping busy with.

Why not take a trip to the zoo today – if you have Facebook you can live stream from 10am.

It’s going to be another sunny day but Jack Frost has been to visit this morning.

Today’s challenge: it’s lovely to be seeing signs of spring in our gardens. Have a listen to the spring song and see if you can sing along. Why not then go into your garden and see what signs of spring you can see. You could go on a minibeast hunt, take some pictures if you can get close enough. Remember to look after any minibeasts or animals you find. You could even make your own bug hotel like we have in our outdoor area at school. I would love to see more pictures so don’t forget to send them in: inbox@2buildaprofile.com, email them to me: fsbrandesburton@gmail.com or add a comment below.

Extra Literacy challenge: Can you hear any rhyming words in the song? Can you tell an adult or write them down. FS2’s can you write your own spring song using your phonics? Remember to sound out carefully and use the phonics mats posted yesterday to recap your sounds.

Parents – please feel free to email me if you have any questions or queries with anything at all. This is new to us all and anything I can do to help or support please let me know. fsbrandesburton@gmail.com I know we are all missing life at Brandesburton very much so it’s lovely to see your pictures from home. Thank you for all the observations and pictures so far.

The link below has been created to support parents during COVID-19 and the closure of schools. Each fortnight, it will be releasing new home activity packs with simple 15 minute activities you can do with your child to support their online safety at a time when they will spending more time online at home. https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/parents/support-tools/home-activity-worksheets?utm_source=Thinkuknow&utm_campaign=03cb8440df-TUK_ONLINE_SAFETY_AT_HOME_24_03_20&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b54505554-03cb8440df-64750789

I hope you are all well. Thank you for the home observations so far, lovely to see what you have been busy with at home. Today is going to be bright and beautiful day and the sun is already shining.

Today’s challenge: is to get outdoors in your garden and enjoy the sunshine (wrap up – still a bit chilly). Can you mark make outdoors and create some artwork? This could be drawing your garden, your family in the garden, practice your name or numbers on the patio with chalk or water/paint brushes or can you find any shadows to try some shadow drawing?

I would love to see any mark making and art work you can create and see you enjoying time in the garden. Don’t forget to upload to: inbox@2buildaprofile.com (from your registered email) or email pictures to: fsbrandesburton@gmail.com

Below are phase 2 and 3 phonics mats and tricky words for you to keep practising your sounds at home, along with our letter rhymes for when you are practising letters and writing.

https://www.robinhoodmat.co.uk/learning-projects/ – some useful projects for at home.

https://tpet.co.uk/downloads/category/home-learning – more resources to print if you are able to.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/shows/alphablocks – alphabet and reading

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zKr44iBFT0 – a nice alphabet/phonics song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7D4K9oi7oBM – counting songs

Todays challenge: Thinking about family and friends we cannot see and spend time with at the moment – Can you tell your Mummy, Daddy or someone in your house some lovely words about them or sing them a song.

Think about ways you could do/record this – you could paint or colour a rainbow for your window, make a card or letter (FS2’s you could use your phonics to write your own, FS1’s can you copy some letters or write your name in it?), with help you could video it or ask someone to write something down for you.

I would love to see anything the children do so don’t forget to send as an observation to inbox@2buildaprofile.com from the email you registered with – remember this can be done straight from you mobile phone, tablet or iPad, alternatively you can email me any pictures or videos to fsbrandesburton@gmail.com or comment on here.

I can’t wait to see what you can come up with. 😊

Little Learners helps you support children’s learning. Based around the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum (EYFS), Little Learners can help you prepare your child for school (Reception) and with their ongoing learning journey in the early years. It is a fantastic you tube channel created by a primary school teacher working in early years. She has created a video playlist – I would definitely recommend checking it out. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCraBbapvgSgtvV9_pJ9O0OQ/featured https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDFqXo8hEdBFH4TjGRprkvQleN_dMu3Rz

Early phonics teaching in pre-school and nursery (FS1) focuses on developing children’s listening skills. Early years environments do a lot of aural work, training children in awareness of sounds.

In Phase 1 phonics (FS1), children are taught about:

• Environmental sounds
• Instrumental sounds
• Body percussion (e.g. clapping and stamping)
• Rhythm and rhyme
• Alliteration
• Voice sounds
• Oral blending and segmenting (e.g. hearing that d-o-g makes ‘dog’)

Typical activities for Phase 1 phonics include ‘listening’ walks, playing and identifying instruments, action songs, learning rhymes and playing games like I Spy. This phase is intended to develop children’s listening, vocabulary and speaking skills.

In Phase 2 (generally begins in FS2), children begin to learn the sounds that letters make (phonemes). There are 44 sounds in all. Some are made with two letters, but in Phase 2, children focus on learning the 19 most common single letter sounds.

We follow the Letters and Sounds scheme ( http://www.letters-and-sounds.com/ ) but use the Read Write Inc. letter formation rhymes (http://www.thebellbird.cambs.sch.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Letter-formation-chart.pdf ) I did change a few (I will attach the rhymes we use below).

By the end of Phase 2 children should be able to read some vowel-consonant (VC) and consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words, and to spell them out – c-a-t – cat. They also learn some high frequency ‘tricky words’ like ‘the’ and ‘go.’

Phase 3 (FS2) introduces children to the remaining, more difficult and/or less commonly used phonemes. There are around 25 of these, depending on which scheme is followed, mainly made up of two letters that make one sound (digraphs) such as /ch/, /ar/, /ow/ and /ee/ and three letters which make one sound (trigraphs) such as /igh/, /ear/ and /ure/. We need these sounds to be able to read and form useful words.

Alongside this, children are taught to recognise more tricky words, including ‘me,’ ‘was,’ ‘my,’ ‘you’ and ‘they’. They learn the names of the letters, as well as the sounds they make. Activities might include learning mnemonics (memory aids) for tricky words, practising writing letters on mini whiteboards/paper, using word cards and singing songs like the Alphabet Song.

By the end of Phase 3 (often completed in FS2 by Easter) , they should be able to say the sound made by most, or all, Phase 2 and 3 graphemes, blend and read CVC words made from these graphemes, read 12 new tricky words and write letters correctly when given an example to copy.

By now, children should be confident with each phoneme. From here on, phonics teaching is about consolidating and refining their knowledge, introducing more spelling patterns and tricky words, and increasing vocabulary.

Phase 4 phonics does not teach any new sounds, children will, among other things:

• Practise reading and spelling CVCC words (‘bump’, ‘nest’, ‘belt,’ ‘milk’, etc)
• Practise reading and spelling high frequency words
• Practise reading and writing sentences
• Learn more tricky words, including ‘have,’ ‘like,’ ‘some,’ ‘little’

Children should now be blending confidently to work out new words. They should be starting to be able to read words straight off, rather than having to sound them out. They should also be able to write every letter, mostly correctly and starting to write sentences using many of the taught sounds, tricky words and high frequency words.

To know and understand the correct pronunciation of the letters and sounds, here are a few links to some great videos. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCraBbapvgSgtvV9_pJ9O0OQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwJx1NSineE

FS2 Phase 3 Phonics sound pratise – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8Q0BaUaqrI

Tricky word songs – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvMyssfAUx0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R087lYrRpgY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NOzgR1ANc4

I know this is a lot of reading but hoping it helps a little, just covers FS1 and FS2 so have a look at what is applicable to your child. Feel free to email if you have any questions or need any help.

Good morning Foundation Stage, a daily physical development activity would be a great way to start the day and get you moving. Joe Wickes is doing a daily 30 minute PE workout on his you tube channel at 9am. Just click on the link. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAxW1XT0iEJo0TYlRfn6rYQ

Another great way to start the day is with Cosmic Kids Yoga – we often do this at the start of the morning so the children have seen it before. https://www.youtube.com/user/CosmicKidsYoga It’s a great way to help your kids become ‘stronger, calmer and wiser’.