Read all about it!!

May I take the opportunity to thank everyone who attended Hazelnut and Cherry Classes' Reading Cafe this afternoon! Mrs Hough and I were extremely pleased to see so many of you there, to see all the fun, excitement and super learning from the children. So thank you for your commitment to us at East Harling Primary and to your child's education!

Sorry for my croaky voice... gotta love those Winter germs! I hope we gave you a brief outline of Read, Write Inc and how to support your child. If you have any questions or queries, please do not hesitate to ask a member of staff or look at the Ruth Miskin website.

For pronouncing those sounds...
http://www.ruthmiskin.com/en/resources/sound-pronunciation-guide/

For support in blending sounds...
http://www.ruthmiskin.com/en/resources/parent-tutorial-teaching-sound-blending/

Here are only a few of the highlights of today's fun...

Exploring "Hairy Letters" on the I-pads and playing I-Spy with the magnifiers and pictures.

Rosie and Daddy's crocodiles... make sure they don't each your books at home!

Bubblewrap crocodiles...watch out they are already eating the sounds!

Practising our sounds using the large magnetic phonemes

Annie teaching Daddy how to sound out his words! Well done Daddy!

"Once upon a time..." Enjoying traditional tales

Lots of Crocky-business going on here...

I think the grown-ups loved helping out today!

Storytime with Mummy!

I LOVE this picture! James was feeling shy... Crocodile wasn't though!

We love sharing stories!

Playdough letters formation!

Writing on the phoneme frames

Making CVC words with the monkeys- they do like to ch-a-t!

Pleased as punch!

Never too early to write!

We hope you enjoy lots of bedtime stories tonight!

The proof is in the pudding...

Funky Fingers this...
Funky Fingers that...

I am sure you have all heard about it, seen it and some of you may have even done it!
But here is what it is all about...

Below are a selection (sorry I cannot include them all) of my dear Hazelnuts' name writing assessments. It shows their name writing skills when they entered school in September, and now, a term on.

As you can see, they have all made fantastic progress. Letters are more recognisable, more controlled and increasingly better formed. Children are more confident and are attempting writing / mark making activities of their own choice. The children are adopting better pencil grips (the golden "Pincer Grip" / "Tripod Grip") as their muscles strengthen and become increasingly coordinated from their shoulders to their finger tips. This will then support (in time) to smaller writing, consistently sized writing and writing on the line.

But never fear... That doesn't mean Funky Fingers is finished! We still have a way to go to get "Our Hulk Hands"... But it is working and most importantly we are are having fun too!

Apologies but our film showing our warm up was too long for the blog! So stay tuned for a shorter version coming soon....

Christmas hits East Harling

Christmas has hit Early Years this week! 

Thanks to Mrs Biddell, we are lucky enough to have a Christmas tree in our outside area! It was so exciting but before the adults could even get the decorations out, Ollie from Hazelnuts had had a genius idea and began decorating the tree with the Numicon! This then led to a fabulous child-initiated maths activity involving writing Christmas tags with numbers and finding the correct numicon piece!

 And then Edward brought in a fabulous tinsel shooting star! Well that just had to go on top!
And we just HAD to wear Cherry Class' elf hats and pose!

We have been using our phonics to write letters to Santa, using our Fred Fingers to sound out words. We even drew pictures of our wishlist so that he knows which colours we would like! Although I am not sure how he will get a wishing well down a chimney...

 

We have looked at Google Earth to see where Lapland is and we even tried to zoom in... but there must be heavy Santa  security at work as it wouldn't let us see anything in Lapland, unlike when we looked at Norwich and East Harling etc. 

The week ended with us taking a walk to the post office in the village so that we could post our letters! Even Mr Wrinkles has sent a letter... Lets hope he has been a good boy this year.

A HUGE thank you to all the Mummies and Daddies who helped Hazelnuts and Cherries walk to the post office!