Hello and a very Happy New Year to you all. We have loved hearing all about the adventures of Christmas and the lovely time children have shared at home with their families. This half term sees the start of our new topic- Traditional Tales. We will explore those lovely favourite stories that have been heard over the years and the ones that you are probably already very familiar with. This week we have been using the text The Gingerbread Man as the focus for our learning. Let's take a look at what we have explored this week in class 

As the children's interests change and develop so do the areas in our classroom. We are starting the new year off with a post office - great for talking and learning about size language, weight and money and we have changed our other role play area into the house where the gingerbread man was made. This has given us lots of opportunities to develop our speaking and listening and retell the story 

One of our favourite activities this week has been to create a story map. We have been talking aloud about the events of the story, the order of the animals and what happened at the beginning, middle and end of the story. Here is a small sample of the maps we created 

In our phonic area we created gingerbread men with simple words on them. We added them to a real baking tray and encouraged and challenged our friends to read the words aloud. This is great practice for developing our letter recognition and fred talk 

We also looked up a recipe to make gingerbread and then using our memory and recall skills we created our own ingredients list. Take a look at this fabulous, truly independent writing. Amazing 

In Maths this week we have been thinking about 4 or not 4 and subitising. We have taken a mental photograph of different arrangements of 4 and 5 and then recreated them from memory before checking how accurate we have been. Great for helping develop our memory and recall 

And finally here is a little round up of other Gingerbread Man activities we have explored and used to help us - we have been creating patterns, following the patterns and cutting parts of the gingerbread to make it whole again. Phew what a lot of work for a 4 day week! 

Next weeks traditional tale will be Jack and the Beanstalk. We have so many lovely things planned to help the children learn more about the story and to use their imagination to bring it to life. If you would like to listen to the story before Monday please click on the link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qxtmahpBwM

Have a wonderful weekend and a well earned rest

Reception W staff and children