Composition - 'parts' and 'whole' 30/11/22

This week, the children have been exploring 'composition', by focusing on the concept of ‘wholes’ and ‘parts’. By investigating their own bodies and familiar toys they have begun to understand that whole things are often made up of smaller parts and that a whole is, therefore, bigger than its parts.

Here are some ideas for activities at home to support this learning:

* Complete jigsaw puzzles with your child - "have we got all the parts we need to complete the whole puzzle?"
* Make fruit skewer kebabs, encouraging the children to identify the different parts that will make up the whole kebab – how many parts will they need and what sort of parts will they choose?
* Outdoors, help the children to spot things with moving parts, such as bikes and scooters. Talk about how these things need all the parts to make them work properly as a whole.

Please share any photographs or observations on Tapestry. Thank you for your continued support.

The Reception Team

'Counting' - 16/11/22

This week, the children will continue to explore the purpose of counting – to find out ‘how many’ objects there are altogether. They will reinforce their understanding of cardinality - that the last number in the count tells us ‘how many’ things there are altogether in a set of objects – and they will further practise their 1:1 correspondence skill, by counting numbers at the same time as moving or tagging objects.

Please try some of the following activities at home to support your child's learning.

• Using different collections of objects (e.g. buttons, cones, counting toys, etc.) for your child to count. Observe your child counting and ask relevant questions, e.g. How have you grouped your objects? Do you need to move them as you count? Which group has more? Which group has fewer?

• Draw a chalk track outside, roll a die and ask your child to jump that many spaces along the track.

Please share any photos/comments of your child's learning at home.

'More' than and 'fewer' than - 09/11/22

This week in Maths, we have been focusing on developing the children's innate skill to look carefully and use the language of comparison to describe sets of objects that they can see. 
Language is a key focus and adults should model the language of ‘more than’ and ‘fewer than’ to describe how many objects are in a set. (‘Fewer than’ is used rather than ‘less than’ because the focus is on countable things.)   
Please can you practise this skill at home.  Using toys, make two groups and ask the questions "Who has more? Who has less?"

Please share any photos/comments of your child's learning at home.