Rise and Shine

Prep Community News

Dear Prep Families,

 

Welcome to our latest Prep newsletter! We are so excited to share with you the wonderful learning, growth, and adventures that have been happening over the past few weeks. Keep reading to find updates on what we’ve been learning, important reminders, and a few tips to support your child’s learning journey at home.

 

 

English:

Through our InitiaLit program, we have been revising all previous sounds as well as learning some new ones! We have learned that ‘z’ and ‘zz’ say /z/ and ‘ch’ says /ch/.  You can help to support your child at home by asking them “what sound?” when they see the letters. Here are some visual prompts:

Click here to practice all the sounds we have learned so far!

 

After we have introduced a new sound and connected it to its corresponding letter/s, we then practice reading and writing. We provide opportunities to read and write CVC/CVCC words using sounds they have learnt. You can support your child at home by asking them to tell you the sounds in a word and then asking them to write it. Please see a list of examples below: 

zip, zap, zit, buzz, fizz, fuzz, chop, chat, chick

We have also introduced more tricky words! These are words that cannot be sounded out using the sounds we have learnt, so we must learn them through sight. To support your child at home, you can ask them to read and spell each tricky word. Our new tricky words are:

go, so, no, this, then, put, do, as

Click here to practice all the trick words we have learned so far! 

 

 

 

Story Book:

Our new story this fortnight is When the Waterhole Dries Up, written by Kaye Baillie and illustrated by Max Hamilton. Our focus words from this text are creeps, clumsy, and quivering.

Through our story book lessons, we learn essential reading skills such as predicting, summarising as well as answering questions about the text. We then make connections between the text, ourselves and the world around us.

 

To support your child’s vocabulary development, you can ask them for the definition of each word or to use it in a sentence! Another fun activity is to act out the word, ask your child to act out the following scenarios:

  • Show me how you would look if you were a little mouse creeping around a sleeping cat
  • Let’s pretend we’re a bit clumsy and carrying a pile of books for the teacher. We might trip and drop them!
  • Show me how you would look if you were quivering at the top of a giant waterslide.

 

 

 

Writing:

In writing, we have been focusing on spacing out our words when writing. We have learned that between every word we should have a finger space as we don’t want the words to be too close together and we must be able to see where one word ends, and the next word begins. 

 

To support your child’s learning at home, you can remind them that we need a finger space after every word and encourage them to place two fingers on the paper after their previous word before writing their next word. 

 

Some sentence suggestions to practise could be:

  1. The ball was on the tall log.

  2. The queen has a red shell.

  3. I see a zebra run in the sun.

 

 

 

 

 

Maths:

In Maths, we have introduced fluency practice. Practicing fluency in recalling addition facts will help us complete maths tasks quicker and more accurately. We had a go at answering as many questions as possible within a two-minute period. This will now become a daily feature in our maths lessons and our Preps are so motivated to work towards being able to complete all questions within the time frame! 

 

We have also introduced subtraction. We have learned that subtraction means to take-away or minus and when we complete this, we change direction of counting and count backwards instead of forwards. You can support your child at home by asking them to start at a number and count backwards. For example, ask them to count backwards from 19 to 11!

 

Furthermore, we have introduced 3D objects and compared them with 2D shapes. We have learned that 2D shapes have length and height, but no thickness so is 2-dimensional (2D), whilst 3D objects can be held as they have length, height and width so are 3-dimensional (3D). We see 3D objects in our lives and can hold, feel and move them. Show your child the following images and ask them to identify whether they are 2D or 3D: 

 

 

Geography:

In Geography, we are continuing our World tour exploring each continent! Our next destination was Europe! We learned that there are forty-four countries in Europe, all with their own languages. We then looked at some of the cities in Europe, including Paris and London. We are so excited to continue our world tour and explore more continents! We love singing the continent song to help us remember all seven continents, find the link here: Seven Continents Song 

 

 

 

Werribee Zoo Excursion:

In week 5, we had the most amazing time on our first ever school trip! We visited Werribee Zoo where we learned that a habitat means an animal’s home and what an animal needs to survive. We also went on the safari bus where we got to drive past lots of different animals (Bluey and Bingo also made an appearance, how lucky are we!). We did lots of steps and were very tired but had such amazing fun! Here are some photos of the incredible animals we saw: 

 

 

 

Reminders:

 

Take Home Reading:

 At Tarneit Rise, we encourage reading every night. Each child has an assigned day to change their reading books. Please bring their reading satchel on this day so classroom teachers can check reading journals and assist your child in getting new books.

 

Building Independence:

A friendly reminder that parents should not be entering the pods in the morning. Please say goodbye to your child at the door and encourage them to walk in themselves and put their bag away independently. This will be important practice for when they progress to Grade 1 (can’t believe we are mentioning Grade 1 already, where has this year gone!?). 

 

 

We love celebrating the children’s achievements, big and small, and we hope this newsletter gives you a glimpse into their daily experiences and progress. Thank you for your continued support and partnership. We can’t wait to see what the next few weeks bring!

 

 

Warm Regards,

 

 

PLC Prep