Week commencing 10th June- What was it the ladybird heard?

We've had so much fun this week, with our trip to Coombe Abbey Park and the first of our Outdoor Learning Theme Days being particular highlights. Not to mention the Big Mental Health Get-together this afternoon. We hope that those of you who joined us enjoyed it.

Thank you so much to the parent helpers who were able to accompany us on our trip. We really couldn't do it without you and so very much appreciate your support.

Next week, we still have the second Outdoor Learning Theme Day to look forward to.

We'll also start learning about caterpillars next week, and may even have some to stay with us awhile in class!

We hope you have a lovely weekend.

Week commencing 3rd June - What is a minibeast? Week 1 - Do all bees make honey?

The children have returned to school so well after half term.

We can't believe how quickly the year has flown by, now we're in our last half term and only have six weeks left in reception! 

The week has kicked off this last topic in style, and the children have been like busy worker bees!

This half term will be a fun-filled one, with lots of learning opportunities linked to our new topic 'What is a minibeast?' 

The topic is all about minibeasts and their habitats. We plan to get outside into our outdoor classroom and the whole school grounds to explore and investigate what minibeasts we can find. We will get our magnifying glasses out as well as hopefully the microscopes! We will learn about the lifecycles of bees, ladybirds and butterflies and will actually have some butterflies hatching in the classroom hopefully! You will have already received a letter about our trip to Coombe Abbey Park next week, on Wednesday 12th June, so please keep your fingers crossed for good weather!

In PE we will be continuing our physical development (gross motor skills: core strength, coordination, agility and balance) in PE with class teachers on Wednesday mornings and with Miss Sprayson on Thursday afternoons.  

As part of our Personal, Social and Emotional development we will be talking and thinking keeping our bodies healthy with healthy foods, as well as thinking about how we change and grow. 

We will also gently begin transition to year 1 by talking about what to expect and taking quick visits to the year 1 classrooms, discussing any things we are looking forward to or that we might be worried about. Classes and class teachers will be shared with you all very soon, once the whole school structure is finalised - then the children will begin interacting with their teachers for next year, on a regular basis, so they feel confident and prepared.

This half term is one of readying the children for being even more independent next year and we will be encouraging them to empty their own book bags in the mornings as well as tying laces, taking off and putting on jumpers and coats themselves. Any help or support at home with this will be greatly appreciated.

In Literacy we will be continuing with ‘Floppy’s Phonics’ by revising and securing the children’s phonic knowledge and also introducing some consonant blends like ‘tr’, ‘tw’ and ‘fl’. We will be focusing on the ‘Fantastics’ lenses which are part of the ‘Reading Rainbow’. This is a school wide programme which introduces the children to a way of categorising words into different groups. These include things we feel, hear, notice or imagine amongst other things. The children will learn to spot these words in stories or texts and then hopefully use them in their discussion or their writing.  Spelling will also be a focus.  Please continue to use the ‘helpful words’ cards which are sent home, to play games and practise writing so their shape can be committed to muscle memory.

Shared learning and reading books will continue to come home on Wednesdays for return the following Monday.

If you have any questions or concerns about classroom matters, you can always talk to us at drop off or pick up times or email us using this address.

We hope you have a lovely weekend.

Week commencing 20th May - Are turnips really enormous?

It has been yet another very busy week! 

Thank you to those of you who could join us for the interactive topic and work sharing session on Wednesday. All children should now have brought home their planted sunflower seed and sunflower diary to keep updated. It's yours to decorate, draw, annotate in whatever way you'd like. If your child draws the plant's weekly growth progress and you jot down what they notice, that's fine. Alternatively you could add photos or measure how tall the stem is each week. Your child may wish to label their drawings or even write their own sentences to describe what they observe.

 There is absolutely no pressure to complete the booklets and hand them in - we know you are all very busy juggling an awful lot. If you'd like to send it back into school after the 5 weeks, we'd love to put the diaries on display in the classrooms.

We hope you have a wonderful half term and the weather holds up for us all.

Monday 3^rd June is a teacher training day, so the children will be returning to school on Tuesday 4^th. 

We look forward to seeing you all then!

Week commencing 13th May - Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf ?  

Last week was such a busy one, learning all about 'The Three Little Pigs', introducing Rekenreks in maths and taking part in all of the kindness activities for Mental Health Awareness Week.

Thank you to those who were able to make it into school on Friday afternoon. We hope you enjoyed seeing what we'd been learning about and our expressive rendition of 'Happy'!

This week, you're invited into the reception classes at 2:30pm to see your child's work and take part in a topic activity. It would be really helpful if you could let us know if there will be an adult attending, so we know which books to get ready and can organise which children will go to the Rainbow Room instead.

Week commencing the 6th May - Week 5 How did the Billy Goats Gruff get across the bridge?

We made it through the short but jam-packed week and the heat!

The children have really enjoyed our work on The Three Billy Goats Gruff this week, as well as building their understanding and skills of visualising number tracks and number lines.

We hope you have a lovely weekend and enjoy the wonderful weather.

Week commencing  29th April - Is a magic porridge pot a good idea?

We've had a fantastic week, enjoying the story of 'The Magic Porridge Pot', making number bonds to 10 within the context of 'Ten Fat Sausages Sizzling in a Pan'.

We've even made the most of the sunny weather and spent lots of time outside!

Week commencing 22nd April 

It's been a fantastic week in reception, full of fun and exciting activities for the children to explore within the context of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. There has been lots of roleplay, singing and getting messy!

The children have worked hard in phonics as they've continued learning new graphemes for 'long vowel sounds': 'igh' and 'oa'. They've also been consolidating their understanding of the composition of different numbers using a counting rhyme about kittens jumping on a bed (very similar to another one we know!).

We've discovered that some children in reception have brought in small items of food from home in their pockets and shared them with other pupils, without our knowledge. We have talked to the children and will remind them that we don't share food at school, in case of allergies, dietary requirements and religious beliefs. 

Any birthday sweets or treats that get sent home are put in bookbags so that parents and carers can decide when/if their child can eat it. Where possible, if we know that it is something a pupil cannot have, staff try their best to find an appropriate substitute. 

We would really appreciate it if parents and carers could talk to their children and echo what's been said in school, so we can keep everyone safe and also be respectful of others' beliefs and cultures. Thank you for your continued support.

Week commencing 15th April - Week 2

This week, we learnt all about the Gingerbread Man, learning the story using a story map and adding actions following Pie Corbett's 'Talk4Writing' approach. We explored lots of different versions of the story and started to develop our understanding of fairytales coming from oral tradition, resulting in many different takes on the tales with some subtle differences as well as some major changes to the endings!

We also carried out and wrote up our findings from a science experiment: 'Which liquid puddle would the Gingerbread Man survive in?' 

We made lots of observations and drew out some brilliant vocabulary to describe what we noticed.

In maths, we continued work on counting up to 20 and beyond, as well as understanding composition of larger numbers by subitising smaller numbers within them. We had to 'take a picture' in our minds to help visualise a dot pattern we'd seen, then recreate it using concrete manipulatives, from memory! 

We also learnt about how Sikhs all around the world have been celebrating Vaisakhi. We hope that all our families who observe the festival have had a wonderful time and enjoy any processions and events they might attend this weekend.

Next week we'll be focusing on another favourite traditional tale: Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

Week commencing 4th April - Summer Term Week 1

We hope you all had a lovely Easter break - although it feels like a long time ago now!

We also hope that the families celebrating Eid this week had a wonderful time. The children have been learning about the Muslim tradition of Ramadan and how Eid al-Fitr is a celebration to break the fast.

This week we've begun our new topic for this half term: 'What stories could our magic carpet take us to?'

We have focused on learning and reciting all the various nursery rhymes we know and managed to produce quite extensive lists in both classes!

In phonics, we've been revising Levels 1+ and 2, assessing to identify where any knowledge gaps are so we can keep revisiting alongside our progression onto Level 3 next week!

In maths, we've been reminding ourselves of the important rules we need to follow for accurate counting, as we move to counting larger quantities, beyond 20! See if your child can tell you what good counting involves.

We've also started following our new handwriting programme 'Letter-join'. You'll find a sheet in your child's phonics folder this week, where the front side has been completed and there's another copy on the back for you to help your child practise at home if you get a chance. We'll try to send a sheet or two home most weeks, to help you support your child to develop clear and neat letter formation.

Next week we will be  starting work on our first fairytale ... The Gingerbread Man!

Week commencing 8th April - Week 4 

We've had a super busy week with visits from a nurse, firefighters with their fire engine and paramedics with their ambulance! The children really enjoyed these fantastic hands-on experiences and had the chance to explore different equipment, learn new vocabulary and ask lots of questions. Thank you so much to all our visitors so far for giving up their time and providing such fabulous sessions for the children to enjoy. We're very lucky to have so many parents and carers who are real-life superheroes!

Thank you to everyone who could make it to the interactive parents' phonics session on Monday. It was great for you to see how we teach reading and writing in school as well as having positive learning interactions with your children in the school setting. We sent home the packs with phonics and 'Helpful/Tricky Word' games and suggestions for activities. We hope they're useful to you.

It was also lovely to meet with so many of you at parents' evening yesterday evening. Thank you for your support and working with us to maximise your children's learning. We're looking forward to the remaining meetings taking place next Wednesday (20^th March).

Don't forget, it's the FoB EYFS disco next Monday 18^th March, 3:15pm-4:30pm.

In case you haven't yet booked and would like to, please see the attached letter with all relevant information.

Vegetable plea

Next week we'll be focusing on the story of 'Supertato'. Could all children please bring in one vegetable of their choice for Monday 18th? We will be fashioning our own superhero veggies to inspire roleplay and writing. We'll provide all the other parts in school, we just need the veg please! 

See below for the type of thing we're aiming for:

Week commencing 19th Feb - Spring 2 Week 1 - What makes a superhero?

We hope you all had a great half term break. The children have loved getting stuck into our new topic 'Do we know any superheroes?'.This week, we've been dressing up as our favourite comic book characters, making cuffs and lollipop stick heroes, writing invisible Batman messages, drawing webs for Spiderman and much more!

We've returned to reading fiction in our Book Talk sessions and learned two more sounds in phonics. Now that we're familiar with the routine, we complete our phonics sheets more independently as morning jobs twice a week. This frees up more learning time to develop and practise our writing skills!

We have also been continuing to consolidate our subitising skills and understanding of the composition of the numbers 6, 7 and 8, seeing them as 'five and a bit'. 

We also managed to cram in different activities for 'Active Day' today! Please ask your child what they got up to as it quite different from our usual Friday routine.

Here are the links we've used to aid our learning this week. We're now taking requests from the children for dough disco songs instead of choosing our own.

Because we carried out lots of our planned activities for Children's Mental Health Week this week, we've included a few of the breathing and mindfulness exercises the children took part in. They've been a big hit with the children so we will be using them regularly in reception.

Week commencing 5th Feb Week 5 - How do children and their families celebrate Chinese New Year?

The children have enjoyed a wide range of activities inspired by the Lunar New Year this week.They are making fantastic progress in their learning, across all the seven areas of learning.

There have been a few occasions over the past couple of weeks where children have helped themselves to our playground equipment after the school day has ended. We must insist that this does not happen and that any stray equipment found is returned to the trolley as school property is being lost and damaged.

An important part of our ethos and what we teach children about school life is showing respect to and taking care of others around us as well as our environment. This includes looking after resources and equipment. We appreciate your support with this as parents and carers, ensuring the children understand that the things we have in school are not easily replaceable.

Week commencing 29th Jan Week 4 - Is it always sunny in Australia?
 

This week we've learned all about the land down under and enjoyed getting creative through designing boomerangs, making didgeridoos and creating dot art lizards. We even enjoyed a visit from some very special guests this afternoon - See if you can spot them in our floor book photos.

We've been practising writing more CVC words, working on spelling, letter formation and finger spaces when recording a dictated sentence about Uluru, as well as composing our own sentences about an Australian animal.

We have also been exploring the composition of numbers bigger than five, finding the '5 within'.

We now have just one more week left before half term - it's flown by! Next week we'll be learning about China and the Lunar New Year.

Children's Mental Health Week falls across next week too, but we'll be focussing on the activities we have planned for it in the week after half term (beginning 19^th February). The theme this year is: 'My Voice Matters'. Watch this video to hear more about the theme, directly from children and young people.

It's also Safer Internet Day on Tuesday 6^th February and Mrs Colston will be leading some activities to raise the children's awareness of how to stay safe online when she teaches them on Thursday afternoon. The learning will be based around the theme ‘Inspiring change? Making a difference, managing influence and navigating change online’.