Purple Mash

Dear Parents,

We are thrilled to inform you that your child has access to a fantastic range of online resources on Purple Mash.

Over the year, your child will be introduced to various activities on Purple Mash by their class teacher.

Through this they will learn to independently use the interactive whiteboard.

To explore these enriching materials, simply use your child's login, which you can find stuck inside their reading record. 

There are numerous engaging tasks linked to what we are covering in class. Scroll down to find out what we are learning this week.

Below there is also a parent guide from the Purple Mini Mash team - scroll down to the bottom of this page.

Happy exploring!

The Reception Team

PSED/RSHE Lesson 

In our RSHE/ PSED lesson (October 2025 &  April 2026) we discussed the NSPCC’s PANTS rules.

These are designed to teach pupils how to stay safe from sexual abuse, without giving explicit information or telling scary stories or even using the term “sexual abuse”. We will start the lesson by introducing the children to a character called Pantosaurus.

We  showed them this clip:

NSPCC Pantosaurus (2 mins)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SzbMEVYiyg&t=120s

This is a film featuring NSPCC’s  friendly mascot Pantosaurus.

His catchy song covers the main points of PANTS and  introduce the topic to the children.

In the lesson, children will learn about the ‘PANTS’ acrostic, which stands for:

• Privates are private.
• Always remember your body belongs to you.
• No means no.
• Talk about secrets that upset you.
• Speak up, someone can help.

The lesson is fully age-appropriate.

The Talk PANTS campaign helps teachers and parents of 4-11 year-olds keep their children safe from abuse.

Like the Green Cross Code, it takes a potentially tricky subject and gives teachers and parents the tools to talk about it in an engaging and age-appropriate way.

Cooking & Gardening

We are proud to offer all pupils the opportunity to take part in cooking sessions during the school day. These sessions take place in the School House kitchen and are led by the class teacher.

Fresh ingredients from our school garden are used wherever possible, helping children learn about food, nutrition, and sustainability.

To support this programme, we ask for a voluntary annual contribution of £13.00, which covers the cost of additional ingredients for the full school year (September 2025 – July 2026).

• To contribute, please log into your MCAS account
• The fee can be found in the Clubs section and added to your basket

Your support helps us continue offering this valuable hands-on learning experience. Thank you!

Healthy Snacks

To help keep energy levels up and minds focused, we encourage pupils to bring a healthy snack for break time.

Great options include:

• Fresh fruit or vegetables
• Plain rice cakes or crackers
• A small pot of dried fruit
• Cheese cubes or yoghurt (in a cool pack)

Please do not send sweets, chocolate, crisps, or fizzy drinks. Let’s work together to support healthy habits and happy learning!

Capturing 'Wow moments' at home

We value contributions from parents/carers of moments of achievement that have happened outside of school.   If you observe your child achieving something new or wonderful, then let one of the Reception team know by sending in a photo with a note or just singing their praises.  The wow moments are stuck in your child’s learning journey and support assessments throughout the year.  Feel free to send in as many as you would like, parents/carers usually complete a page of wow moments each half term. 

Reading Books, Key Words, Home Learning and Book Bags

At Fielding, we follow the Read Write Inc programme.

The type of ‘book’ your child receives will depend on their phonics knowledge.

• Some children will focus on learning the sounds of the alphabet.

• Some children will receive a sound blending book to help develop their blending skills.

• Some children will receive a book called ‘My Phonics Book’. A letter will be sent home with information of how this works.

• Some children will receive a reading book.

In addition to this, your child will choose their own picture book.

Your child is not expected to read this book. This book is to be shared with an adult for enjoyment and to help develop a child's comprehension skills.

All books will be changed once a week.

Please make sure your child brings their book bag to school every day.

Help your child to get into this routine.

Inside their book bag please make sure that you always have:

• picture book
• reading book
• reading record

Please look through the reading record, there is lots of useful information inside.

Please sign the reading record every week and write a comment about how your child is progressing with their reading.

Book Bags

Book bags will be going home on Monday 22^nd September.

Your child must bring their book bag to school every day.

Please make sure that you always have the following inside your child’s book bag:

• picture book
• reading book
• reading record

When you collect your child at the end of the day, please check that your child has their book bag with them.

Home Learning

Home Learning is linked to our phonics lessons; It is sent home on a Friday.

Please help your child to do the activity at home.

Please keep the home learning at home, do not send it back to school, it is for you to keep at home.

If you have any further questions, please talk to your class teacher.

English

Week commencing:  6.7.26

This week the children will have the chance to learn about the precious nature of our environment, whether this is the immediate space we inhabit, the wider neighbourhood or planet Earth.

Lessons will highlight the responsibilities that everyone has for looking after the world and emphasise the importance of caring for living things.

We will also provide the opportunity for children to learn about the religious ideas connected with Creation and the expectation that religious life can promote a caring approach to the world around us. These lessons link to our RE curriculum.

The week will begin with a nature walk around school, looking at, noticing and talking about nature in our immediate environment, e.g. trees, plants, clouds, sun, pond and the forest. The children will stop and draw the things they see and like.

The children will listen to the Creation story. In lessons, we will explain that many people have faith in God but also that there are many people that believe the world was created in other ways.

We will remind the children of our school value of respect and how we must respect that we may believe in something different to our friends and teachers.

In lessons, the children will write a list of things God created.

Features of a list:

• a title
• a new line for each word
• bullet points
• lower case letters (except for names)

The children will discuss the beauty of nature and living things. They will share what they like and write sentences about this.

For example:

Mrs Watts likes waterfalls, she says they are magnificent and beautiful. She also likes the countryside; big open spaces, full of plants and trees.

Mrs Robinson likes the sea. She likes the sound of the water, it makes her feel calm. Whenever she goes to the sea with her family, she takes a bag to litter pick!

Miss Karim likes icebergs. Icebergs can be huge structures with jagged edges and a hint of blue. Miss Karim could look at icebergs all day!

Mr Webb likes pandas because they seem clumsy. A group of pandas is called an embarrassment or a cupboard of pandas.

Throughout the week, the children will listen to stories to help them understand and think about how they can help look after the world.

Here are some of the stories we will be reading:

• The Great Kapok tree – Lynne Cherry
• A Planet Full of Plastic – Neal Layton
• Ten Things I Can Do To Help My World – Melanie Walsh
• The Earth Book – Todd Parr
• Don’t Let Them Disappear – Chelsea Clinton
• Where the Forest Meets the Sea – Jeannie Baker

The children finish the week by making a poster showing how they would like to look after the world. We will look at some examples first and pick out features that the children can incorporate into their own posters.

Supporting your child at home:

Talk to your child about some of the things they could do to look after the environment.

For example:

1. I put my litter in the bin.
2. I turn the tap off while I brush my teeth.
3. I switch off the lights off when I leave the room.
4. I use both sides of the paper when I am drawing and writing.
5. I help to recycle.
6. I walk, cycle or scoot to school.
7. I can plant seeds and help them to grow.

Read some stories with messages about how to care for the environment.

Maths

Week commencing: 6.7.26 & 13.7.26

Over the next two weeks, our maths lessons will focus on verbally counting beyond 20, looking at numbers to 20 and beyond, and recognising the pattern of the counting system.

Counting beyond 20 is an important focus this week. Unlike other languages (e.g. Welsh, Mandarin), English ‘teen’ number names do not follow a logical pattern; we say ‘eleven, twelve, thirteen’ instead of ‘ten-one, ten-two, ten-three’.

It is only when we count beyond 20 that the pattern of our number system becomes clear. For the children to develop familiarity with the structure and pattern of this system, we need to give them experience of counting to these larger numbers. The children may not remember the names of every ‘tens’ number (thirty, forty, fifty etc.) but, when prompted, they should be able to re-join the count because they have understood the pattern of the ‘ones’.

This week’s activities are designed to allow all the children to practise these skills and deepen their sense of number.

In lessons, the children will be using their knowledge of the composition of numbers to show a range of ways of making a number using a ten frame.

This is a ten frame:

First, the children will make numbers up to 10 and use the knowledge learnt in our mastering number daily sessions to make numbers using their knowledge of '5 and a bit'. For example:

                7 is 5 and 2

            8 is 5 and 3

Then the children will move on to making teen numbers using two ten frames.

We will use the stem sentence:

11 is made of 1 full ten and 1.

12 is made of 1 full ten and 2.

We will help children to recognise that the numbers 1 – 9 repeat after every full 10. Therefore:

1 full ten and 1 = 11

1 full ten and 2 = 12

1 full ten and 3 = 13 etc.

We will repeat the activity using Numicon.

Numicon is a resource used in school to support maths teaching that helps children to see the relationship between numbers. They are essentially flat pieces of plastic representing the numbers 1 to 10. Children can pick them up, count the holes, fit them together, lay them on top of each other.

The important part of this lesson is to ensure their understanding that numbers over 10 and up to 20, are made of 1 ten and x amount.

We will then move on to making numbers beyond 20 using ten frames and Numicon.

We will make explicit how you need more ten frames for numbers beyond 20.

For example:

2 ten frames for 20, 3 ten frames for 30, etc. 

23 is made of two full tens and three.

Some children will begin to see the pattern.

We will make bundles of 10 using straws, sticks and towers of 10, like Number Block 10.

Teachers will model counting the bundles/ towers by counting in tens.

This is not a Reception skill. However, some children will be ready for this challenge and extension.

By learning to count in 10s, the children will be able to make numbers beyond 20 more efficiently.

Supporting your child at home:

Look at a 100 number square.

What does your child notice?

Can you see any patterns?

Can you find number ….. ?

What comes before/ after number ….. ?

Cover up a number. What number is hiding? Can you use the numbers around it to help you work out the missing number?

Practise counting beyond 20. Listen carefully – Is your child saying the ‘teen’ numbers correctly? At this age, it is very common for a child to say ‘thirty’ instead of ‘thirteen’, ‘forty’ instead of ‘fourteen’ etc.

Next week in maths:

In maths, we will continue to focus on ‘counting beyond 20’ through the Mastering Number Programme.

Parent workshops 

Thank you to the parents who were able to attend the curriculum workshops during this term. We have linked the training materials below.