This week, Reception has become gardeners and has been learning all about plants. They have learned where the roots, stem, and leaves of a plant are, what they do, and also what a plant needs to grow. We have planted bean and cress seeds for growing experiments; the children made predictions about what they think will happen to the seeds that don’t have one of the four elements a plant needs to grow. The children donned their gardening gloves and took the watering cans when we planted some sunflower seeds in the learning garden; they took a lot of pride and ownership and were very serious about checking each day if they needed watering! In English, children have been drawing a plant and labelling the three parts. In phonics, the children have been very excited to learn two new sounds this week, "ea" and "oi." In maths, Reception has started to learn numbers past 10 and have been introduced to the concept of place value; they have been learning how teen numbers are ten and one, two, or three more. In free learning, we have been using our fine motor skills to place seeds on a tens frame and match them to the Numicon shape. In art, children have been printing, using celery hearts to make flowers. What a green-fingered week!

  

               

Key messages 

• To review the phonics sounds that your child has been learning, please visit the phonics website: https://sites.google.com/thevineyardschool.org/phonicsthevineyard/reception 

• Please continue to give us donations of clean recycling to add to our junk modelling as we use it throughout the year. Egg boxes, small boxes, toilet rolls etc. 

• The flower beds in our learning garden are looking a little sad so we would love to brighten them up. If you would like to donate any bedding plants, such as pansy or primrose or any herbs, they would be gratefully received.

• Vineyard Adventurers has started; please make sure children come in in their PE kit, but with some wellies and a waterproof coat. If they have waterproof trousers, please send them in too.