Mrs Mooney and I would like to say a huge thank you to all the parents and children of Oak Class. We are both so thankful to you all, for allowing us to care of your little ones on this first big step into the world that is school. We have learnt so much about them (and ourselves) and feel we know, care and love them as you do! Thank you for all your support and the overwhelming gifts. They are not opened yet but we will look forward to opening and enjoying them over the summer. Enjoy a safe and happy summer; enjoy the children, do some fun things but know that it’s important for them to get bored and work out how to entertain themselves too!  Take photos and precious memories,  as from now the primary school years will fly by.

THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH

Mrs Bibby and Mrs Mooney X

A few photos from this week at school :

French day

Summer fun in the playground.

Bounc-a-thon for computers

Oak Class has been transformed, this week, into a holiday destination – we have a sandy beach for sandcastle competitions, ice- creams, shell collecting, picnics  and  a Punch and Judy show!

Continuing our fishy theme we have moved on from Tiddler to The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister. We have delved into the depths of the ocean, we watched some amazing videos in life under the sea. Everyone agreed we should all watch the edited highlights of Blue Planet. If you are able,  do show some clips of David Attenborough’s Blue Planet to your child  as they were were genuinely transfixed by the few short clips we watched about life under the sea.

The Rainbow Fish story lent itself to talk, listen, write and put into practice how to be a good friend, just as The Rainbow Fish does – we’ve been busy!

Meanwhile,  since we are coming to the end of our time in Reception,  we’ve been having some fun with our learning of phonics and played some good sound games on our interactive smart board.

The nursery role play area is currently an aeroplane which has tied in nicely with our beach holiday destination role-pay. During our ‘ mix-up’ session this week children really extended their play across the two rooms – flying off on holiday from nursery and enjoying their time on the beach in Reception! Below is an example of just one of the luggage vans taking luggage to the aeroplane!

As the year has progressed the children have been spending more and more time at our writing table – it’s been jam-packed every day for the last term!  They are independently getting themselves ready for Year 1!

The children took it upon themselves to do tally charts this week. New pens arrived in the writing area and the tally charts have been all about our favourite colours. Over the week nearly every child has made a colour chart and asked everyone and anyone they  have come into contact with what their favourite colour might be; and have then noted it down in a tally! At the last count pink and turquoise were the favourite colours.

All the usual Reception business carried on, under the sea puzzles were completed, fishy word searches and oh so much junk modelling! The love of a cardboard box never ends!

A busy week next week including French Day, Sports Day and a Bounc-a-thon!

Don’t forget to pop in on Tuesday from 3.30pm until 6pm to have a chat and of course pop into Year 1 to meet Miss Leutchford.

It will be the last blog next week. See you then.

Happy weekend all!

This weeks circle time,  or PSHE as it’s known,  caused much debate and a whole spectrum of emotions were explored. I had a large bowl of sweets and explained to the children that  I would like to share them. They were all delighted at the idea of an afternoon sweet treat and waited patiently for me to share. I announced I was going to share my sweets with the 4 year olds… there are just three children aged 4 in our class. I gave them a sweet each and sat back down in the circle.  Confused looks were exchanged. Whispers  of ‘ That’s not fair!’ could be heard. We questioned why wasn’t it fair? There were a range of replies – some angry, some upset, some confused at my non-teacher like behaviour. One 4 year old child with a sweet broke it in half and shared it with his neighbour.  Simply amazing understanding and selfless behaviour!  I went on to share my sweets with the girls … this still left the boys sweet- less.  We talked about how the children felt who had a sweet and how the children without a sweet felt. Of course we finished with the rest of the children having a sweet too. This simple exercise enabled the children to identify the emotion they were feeling and helped them understand how others might be feeling.  Hopefully they will remember how they felt when they are next in a similar sharing situation and think of what the right thing to do would be!

This weeks text is Tiddler by Julia Donaldson and Axel Sheffler.

In the story, Tiddler,  a fish,  is always always late for school,  so this week we have been learning about time –  reading an analogue clock on the hour.  The children a have been calibrating their own clocks and using a split pin to attach the hands.

The main theme of the Tiddler story is actually story telling,  as Tiddler makes up lots of tales as to why he was late again. We explored the story, thinking about how stories have a beginning, a middle and an end. We are all writing about what happens in the beginning, middle and end of the Tiddler story. The children have used a clock and fish to retell the Tiddler story themselves.

The rest of our week has been wrapping up our pirate theme … however we are still waiting for a reply from Captain Red-Beard as what to do with all his treasure that we found. We wrote a reply to him on our pirate paper and put it in a bottle. Mrs Morgan said she would take it down to the beach where she found his original message in the bottle … we will wait and see!

Meanwhile we’ve been playing pirate games, taking turns and counting treasure won …

Counting Captain Red-Beards treasure…

and playing games with it… how many pieces can you find in 1 minute?!

Not forgetting the beautiful mermaids treasure. We have been matching describing words to their treasure and writing our own describing words to match the smooth, shiny, gleaming, transparent,  shimmering treasure – just a few of the describing words the children came up with!

Last but not least we took part in the whole school ‘ Off by Heart’ poetry competition. We all learnt a poem – ‘ I think I Saw a Mermaid’ by Nick Sharratt. We practised in the classroom and choose 9 children to represent our class in the competition. They were extremely brave and recited their poem in front of the whole school and three important judges – namely Mother Helen from St Matthews Church, Mrs Warner the Deputy Head and Elizabeth Broad our Chair of Governors. The gave a good performance representing  Oak Class and we are all extremely proud of them.

Check back next week to hear more Oak Class news!