Hedgehog
Welcome to Hedgehog Class!
Our class is made up of 15 enthusiastic Foundation Stage Children, 2 highly experienced teachers and our lovely teaching assistants Mrs Ansell (Mon, Tues, Wed, Fri) and Mrs Marriot (Thurs). Our teachers are very passionate about early years and are dedicated to developing a love of learning and discovery.
To nurture our natural curiosity and develop awe and wonder, we love to explore outside in all weathers and find out about the world around us through a 'hands on' ethos. We are encouraged to ask our own questions and experiment to find the answers. We learn best when we discover for ourselves, nurtured and guided by our teachers.
We believe that working together is an essential part of developing our social and emotional skills. We work collaboratively in lots of ways; talk partners, team work to build and create, earning class rewards to name a few.
To help us become lifelong learners we think it is important to develop independent skills and have ownership of our learning. We take responsibility for our growth by choosing our next steps together and talking regularly about the challenges we face.
We are courageous and practice our resilience through risk taking and perseverance in solving problems in our child initiated play.
The Hedgehog Team
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Notices...
Our new topic for next term is 'Space'. Please find our topic web below and let us know if you have any questions or are able to help with any enrichment opportunities e.g. you have a relevant skill or knowledge you would like to share with the children.
Curriculum news
How to help at home with phonics, reading and writing...
Please find below some useful resources and videos on how to help develop your childs early literacy skills.
writing support resources
Early Writing
An instructional video on how to help at home with early sentence writing.
Pink sounds Rocket Phonics
A video of the correct pronunciations for the short vowel and consonants
Mrs Hall's photo of the week...
A thing called Spring
The children wrote a book together this week. Here it is for your enjoyment.
This week has been 'Mental Health Week' and the children have been talking a lot about how to look after not just our own but others mental health. We've talked about how to identify feelings by our faces and how we can be kind to others when they are experiencing uncomfortable feelings. The children have really blessed us with their ideas and conversations with their friends. To achieve this photo the girls had to work together to balance while helping each other onto the tires and then stay really still!
Mixing paint
This week I have chosen a video which is a lovely snap shot of the way the children have approached their learning this week. They have been applying great investigation skills by mixing shades of blue, trying different printing techniques and adapting their work in light of new learning. It has been a privilege to see them develop such independence since they've started school.
The photo I've chosen this week demonstrates our fantastic maths work this week. We used the rule of one more to build some steps in the physical area. We then realised that if we stood on thesteps we got taller and taller. We also had great fun jumping off the end!
I've chosen this lovely photo of making our Diva lamps this week. The children had a wonderful have-a-go attitude and tried all the tools to chose their favourite effect. We can't wait to paint them!
Diva lamps
I love this photo because it shows that however busy we get with our learning, we always have time for birthdays!
Birthday Celebrations!
This weeks photo is one of my favourites. It shows how well the children have engaged this week with our star challenges. They have loved our fairy tale topic this term and have really immersed themselves in putting on plays and puppet shows. They have used the provided resources to enhance their play and it has been lovely to see them blossom in confidence since those early days in September. They are really bonding well together and it's lovely to see.
Red Ridng Hood
I couldn't choose just one photo this week as we have had so much fun! This week we celebrated all our hard work as a class, making Gingerbread men and eating them while we watched a movie. 50 marbles well spent!
For this weeks photo I have chosen our Harvest Assembly. It was a great celebration of how far the children have come already. They were able to listen to and learn a brand new poem (and not a short one!) They worked so well as a class to perform and recite the poem. We were very proud of them!
Harvest Assembly
This weeks photo is of our first forest school. We had so much fun using the new spades kindly bought by Leon's mum. We worked together in groups to dig and fill up our buckets with mud and use it to make mud paint. Great messy fun! It was lovely to see the children helping each other not to slip on the mud too.
I love this photo as it shows the fun the children have had this week outside. They have really enjoyed exploring the playhouse and making dens! It's lovely to see them so settled already!
This weeks photo shows the amazing teamwork skills the children have demonstrated this week building sandcastles, helping each other with aprons, playing games and completing puzzles. This group demonstrated great skills by using talk to work out who would do each role, they took turns, interacted politely and got the job done! Well done Hedgehogs!
Phonics and Early Reading Parents Information...
Please find below a video of the early reading skills presentation for your information. Please be aware that we are transitioning this year to a new phonics scheme so there may be a few small differences in the way that we teach phonics but the principles of early reading are the same. Please do ask if you have any questions.
Query Box
Please do write any questions you may have (not about individual children please, these can be discussed with class teachers) and we will try and answer them on here.
Useful online links to support learning at home...
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An introduction to phase 3 sounds Use this to practice the digraph and trigraph sounds for phase 3
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Maths Zone A great site for links to games covering different aspects of Maths. We recommend 100 square hunt, Funky Mummy and Save the whale!
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Top Marks Links to various educational games, search by subject and age. Very good for Maths and some good phonics games too!
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ICT games A reallky good range of games to practice learning at home. We recommend letters and sounds bingo and tell a T-Rex - Suitable for Foundation Stage and Year 1.
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Phonics Play Free games to practice their spelling, reading and phonic skills, subscribe for more choice!