Farnborough Focus: Numeracy and Literacy
As part of preparing our children for the more formal learning of Primary School, we aim to equip them with the skills to take forward with them. Numeracy and literacy are of course high on our agenda. But it is our aim to incorporate all the learning objectives which meet the early curriculum requirements in a way which make them accessible to every child as well as filled with passion, fun, laughter and applied to a wide range of other important fine motor, gross motor and social skills.
So what have we been up to this January?
At Farnborough, we love to work with natural resources to allow children to not only explore numbers and letters, but the world around them too. For example the children loved counting different natural resources and grouping them in the right category. We also used pine cones to talk about sizes and weights. This critical thinking is the basis for so much future numeracy work. We tested their ability to be critical thinkers with a giant game of noughts and crosses using paper plates and a huge grid taped onto the floor. They loved the dexterity of this game. We know that all the parents are going to be very surprised at just how good they are when they play at home too!
We like to use a range of resources including developing important ICT skills – although most children are more used to technology than the team these days! We learnt how to use the scanner and printer to make copies of our hands and then used them to measure how tall we were on our hand-made height chart. Its activities like this that help children think that maths is truly marvellous.
Literacy is lots of fun at Footsteps too. We loved making giant robot monsters in junk modelling which we painted. We then put letters onto different foods and we enjoyed seeing which letters they liked eating the most as the children fed them into their mouths. We talked about which letters they had in their names and found them amongst the other letters to stop our monsters going hungry.
A huge part of literacy is all about fostering a love of books, being read to and discovering the adventures inside. Our favourite story is Little Rabbit Foofoo at the moment so we made a story board. First we read the story and Claire was silly and read the wrong words!! We recognised (with lots of laughter) when it was wrong and corrected her. We learnt how to check the words in print in the book. Then we cut out pictures, drew pictures of the characters and wrote words and numbers that we are familiar with in the book. Now we are all able to read along with the story ourselves and sing the repeated refrains. What a fantastic achievement!
As we move into February we can’t wait to share our love of learning with our Footsteps families.
