This week in Year R

Dear Families,

What an exciting week we’ve had in EYFS!

It was so lovely to see so many of you at our Phonics Workshop on Wednesday — thank you for joining us and for your enthusiasm in supporting your children’s early reading journey. We’ll be sharing a digital summary of the key takeaways within the next week, and the pure sounds will also be recorded and uploaded onto Tapestry, so that you can listen at home and ensure consistency with how we teach these sounds in school.

This week also marked the start of a magical new adventure in our handwriting learning! Our school dragons, Fearless and Mindful, arrived with their very first challenges to help us make our bodies stronger, ready for writing. The children have loved learning about our new handwriting approach — WriteStrong — and discovering how Strong Sitting, Strong Standing, and special animal positions help to build core strength for writing.

Fearless and Mindful also introduced us to our very first letter family – the Flicker Flames! We have been practising our strong pen hold and learning to write the letters l, i, t, and u. In Drawing Club, we even drew our dragons and used our new letters to write our magic code word: “lit.” The children loved imagining how the dragons lit up the night sky with their fiery sparks.

The Dragons have also shown us their home – the Enchanted Tree – which will help us understand where our letters live. Some start at the very top of the tree, while others begin on the branch or dip into the roots. Maybe your child can tell you all about how the Flicker Flames Family began in their story this week?

In Maths, we’ve been exploring the composition of the number 3, learning that it can be made from 2 and 1 more, and investigating this in lots of practical, hands-on ways around the classroom.

In Phonics, we have learnt the sounds /g/, /o/, /c/ and /k/ — and some of our dragon writers even challenged themselves in Discovery Time to write c for castle, linking beautifully to our dragon theme!

We are incredibly proud of all of our fearless and mindful dragons this week. The children have shown such enthusiasm, determination, and pride as they’ve begun their WriteStrong journey — learning to form letters correctly and to make their bodies stronger every day.

Have a wonderful weekend making memories with your children, and we look forward to seeing you next week for more autumn adventures! 🍂✨

With lots of love,
Mrs Davey and the EYFS Team 🐉

Upcoming Dates for Your Diary

Monday 13th October – EYFS Drama Workshop (in school)
Wednesday 22nd October – EYFS Autumn Walk to Gatecombe Gardens (Parent volunteers welcome — please speak to your child’s class teacher)
Friday 24th October – EYFS Spooky Day! Children can come dressed in a spooky costume or cosy pyjamas 🎃