Week beginning 7th November

Date: 2nd Nov 2022 @ 5:09pm

This week we will be reading a wonderful book called 'Binny's Diwali'. We will be focusing on learning about the festival of Diwali (the festival of light) that was celebrated at the end of October. We will be learning about how it is celebrated by people of different faiths all across India and the world. The story is told through the eyes of a child and we hope that it captures the imagination of all the children in Reception as we indulge in Diva lamp making, Mehdhi patters and Rangoli patterns.

You could talk to your child about how we celebrate different festivals. How do we celebrate Bonfire night? They may then notice some similarities with Diwali.

We will be looking at similarities between Diwali and festivals that we celebrate like how fireworkds are used on both occasions. We will be focusing on the Understanding of the World Early Learning Goal. We will be talking about hisorical figures like Guy Fawkes and James 1st. We will be looking at historical buildings too. We will investigate different light sources.

If you go to a firework display you could talk about how the fireworks light up the sky and look for patterns and colours. You could talk about how it is a celebration from many years ago. You could discuss how to keep safe on Bonfire night.

In our 'Outdoor Learning session' we looked at the different colours of autumn, collected leaves and made our own leaf animals. The children worked in teams and showed real maturity and excellent social skills when taking turns and sharing resources.

In mathematics we are learning all about the number 4. We will explore and notice the different compositions of 4 and use Numicon and cubes to explore different ways of making the number. We will model writing number sentences alongside them and encourage the children to make marks and number representations.

At home you could group things in 4's. you could look at doing this in a line in 1's, in pairs as 2's and any other combinations that the children can find. Can you find the number 4 around your home or in the local environment?

We talked about Remebrance day and the reasons why we wear poppies. We created our own pictures of the poppy fields. The children talked about clips and short animations that we watched on Cbeebies. They talked about their feelings and why we remember the people who fought for their countries.