Phonics in K3

Every morning in K3, the children sit down on the carpet for our whole class phonics lesson. We follow the phonics program 'Letters and Sounds' and have finished set 7 of phase 3. In K1 and K2, the children were taught the action for each letter sound from jolly phonics, which we continue using in K3.
This week we looked at the phonemes: 'z', 'zz' and 'qu'. On Friday, the children reviewed the sounds of the week and enjoyed playing some interactive phonics games.

                         

                                          

µ

Cuisenaire rods - writing equations

We are beginning to write down some of what we've made with the Cuisenaire rods.

To do this we're using the equals sign = and the plus sign +. As here, in 'Make a Face':

This week we used this interactive page - https://nrich.maths.org/2724 - to talk about which red/white trains can be made to have the same length as the yellow rod. (You might like to have a go at home!) We also talked about how to write down what we'd found.

Of course, we had a go at this with the real rods, and had a go at writing down what we'd made.

Wheels Day

Thank you everyone for sending in wheels with your child on Monday. Despite the bad weather we were able to get out and use them.

We started off, creating a network of roads, signs, traffic lights, petrol stations and car parks:

 Then we got our bikes and scooters and skates.

See an album of photos here.

We also drew a bike, trying to draw exactly what we saw. (Drawing things as we see them is something we will do regularly through the year!)

It's not easy to draw a bike, but we can see that everyone did some careful looking. See an album of our sketches here.

Snakes and Ladders

We like Charlie and Lola books in K3. We're reading this one, "I've Won, No I've Won, No I've Won", which is all about how Lola always likes to win.

We've also been playing Snakes and Ladders, practicing deciding who goes first, taking turns, working out which direction to go in, counting squares... and being OK about losing!

We're going to be sending the board home for families to play at home too!

Free Flow Friday

Every Friday afternoon, we open up all the kindergarten classrooms (including the outdoor play area) for the children to discover, have fun and play all together.

'Trains' of Rods of Equal Length

In maths, we were looking at finding Cusenaire rod 'trains' that equal one another in length.

We're beginning to draw the equal-length trains, and to use the = sign.

Sometimes there's lots of different ways to make the same length 'train':

Made on the nrich website