We are off to a flying start with our letters and sounds!

Hope you have all enjoyed a good week managing to avoid the rain showers unlike us! …The heavy rains this week reminded us just how tricky it is to keep 30 excited 4 year old’s  from becoming over zealous in puddles!  Despite wearing wellies many of our little ones had to change into spare clothes as they just couldn’t help themselves!!

We chanted  the nursery rhyme :

Doctor Foster went to Gloucester
In a shower of rain;
He stepped in a puddle,
Right up to his middle,
And never went there again.

This week has been very busy staring learning our sounds. We don’t learn sounds in alphabetical order but in an order that allows us to blend and make words quickly. This week we have covered s a t p.

We use lots of methods to learn, reinforce and practice all our new sounds.  All our sounds have an accompanying action – please see the above images to see the actions. For ‘a’ we have used taking a bite out of an apple rather than the ants up the arm action.

You can find out more about this phonics programme here: http://www.letters-and-sounds.com.

 Check how the sounds should sound by watching this video clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqhXUW_v-1s

Tricky words this week have been ‘ he’ and ‘ she’.

We learn all of the sounds and tricky words rapidly and then spend the Spring term reinforcing and revisiting.

In other news,  this week has been ‘ interview week’  for various  members of our school community. Mr Quinn, ( Head teacher) Mrs Morgan,  ( Office admin) Mr Norris, ( school caretaker ) and Henrietta and Sam the head girl and boy have all been to visit us. They gave us a brief description of their roles and then opened the floor to questions. It was lovely to see the children thinking hard for appropriate questions. They were all enthralled by Mr Norris’ leaf blowing machine and quite liked the sound of the residential trips that our head boy and girl spoke about that take place further up the school. Best question of the week goes to Jack, who after listening to the many jobs Mr Quinn has to accomplish in a day asked: ‘ Do you like fish and chips?’ !

Our number work has seen us ordering more numbers, making patterns and matching actual amounts to written numbers.

Our first Number Bag of the year. The chosen number was ‘7’ and  lots of items that showed either the number ‘ 7’ or 7 objects  were brought in.  Friends to come and hold up her various items representing number 7! This weeks number bag has gone home with the lucky number being number 4!  We can’t wait to see what is brought in  next week to represent number 4.

Have a great weekend all.

We are all here! Everyone has now started in Reception and we are really proud of each and every one of them.  They have come in willing and ready and tackled each day with gusto and enthusiasm!

It’s been a second busy week settling in and getting started on our reading, writing and numbers!

This term’s topic is called ‘ WHO AM I? ‘ We are starting by taking a good look at ourselves…

All the children have managed a first piece of writing in their book and completed a first number task. We have practised name writing everyday and would ask you to practice this at home too if your child is developing name writing skills.

Our tricky word of the week was ‘ I ‘ – all the children made a big cardboard I for our wall. We used our big I’s for circle time and learnt taking turns, listening to our friends and found out something about each other as in turn we held up our I’s and said ‘ I am …. ‘ and ‘ I like…. ‘. We discovered lots of our class like sweets!

This week has seen the children have a close look at their eyes in a mirror and have a go at drawing them and finding the correct colour for their eyes. We used their eye pictures to create a bar chart of eye colour in Reception. The children managed to ask and answer questions regarding the graph. ‘ What is the most popular eye colour in our class? ‘ ‘ How many children have green eyes?’ and so on.

This weeks class discussion was all about our hands and what we use them for .. lots of good ideas here! Our focus was to reiterate that we use gentle or kind hands !  We documented all the great ideas and had a picture taken of our hands.

Our portrait wall is complete now this week’s starters have arrived. Everyone painted themselves in their new uniform, chatted about what they liked best about it and all wrote their name for our display.

While one of us is busy working one to one on directed tasks with the children, the rest are busying themselves with the continuous provision activities in the classroom. These times allow the children to play, explore, try something out that we’ve talked about, build, make, paint, cut and best of all learn to share and play with each other. Here are a few photos of some of the children working independently.

I’m looking forward to the fun that will be had next week in Oak Class Reception already, see you then!

Hello and welcome to Oak Class Reception’s blog.

Each week I will post a few photos of the children learning and playing. I will focus on the weekly themes, sounds, letters, numbers and stories.

This week we have all been settling in to the new school routine, as well as getting to know our friends.

All the children have managed to paint a self portrait of themselves, have a go at writing their name independently, admired and spoken about their new uniform, and managed to tell us a little about their summer’s.

Mrs Rainey has set up a ‘ cafe’ in our outdoor classroom and the children have been busy making salt dough food, creating signage and organising, chairs/ plates/ cups/ waiters and the like.  Creating fantastic opportunities to collaborate and get to know each other.

Our stories this week have all been starting school stories: 

More to follow next week as we have the final 5 children staring on Monday.

The children have been busy in the classroom playing schools in the role play area, building with lego and the big community blocks outside, riding the school bicycles,  and investigating all the activities on offer in the classroom.

The children have attended their first assembly and managed beautifully to sit and listen in the big assembly hall. They were also lucky enough to have a tennis session with coaches from The All England Tennis Club. Each year the AELTC vist our school, play some balance games and ball skill games with our children and ‘ talent spot’. If they spot an emerging talent ( a child with fantastic body awareness and control, with great hand eye coordination ) they invite the children to free tennis coaching at the club ‘ for life’ ! This is a scheme to find and train up the next generation of tennis players for England. Over the years many children from our school have been selected and enjoyed the free weekly tennis coaching. We are still waiting to spot a St Matthew’s alumni at Wimbledon though ! We will obviously let you know if your child was spotted by the coaches! They usually pick one or two from the whole school – we will see!

For information – our Reception Class meeting will take place on Wednesday 25th September – a chance for you to ask questions and hear how we are going to teach the children to read, write and develop number fluency. Please check your emails for the time of this meeting.

General class logistics:

• Please line up in front of the shed in the morning and say good bye to your children in the line.
• Please bring any recycling and fill up our big brown trug outside our outdoor classroom – we fly through cereal boxes and the like!
• Please put a named pair of wellies for your child in the other big brown trug outside the outdoor classroom.
• Your children know to place their water bottles on their named water bottle spot on the window sill and their PE bag stays on their peg until half term.
• Please only bring your book bag in on the day named on the front of your yellow book. NOT EVERYDAY. 
• Book bags go in the boxes on top of the trays. There is an in box and out box! Please don’t forget to take your book bag home when it has been changed. The children are currently bringing 4 books of their choice home a week. As term progresses we will add ‘ reading books’ into the bag for them to read to you.
• Please contribute crackers/ breadsticks/ biscuits/ chedders etc to our class snack scheme every so often. This means there is NO NEED TO BRING A SEPARATE SNACK EACH DAY. 
• Any letters or bits and pieces the children have completed and want to bring home will either be in their tray or book bag. We also have the green going home box for larger items. Please check your child’s tray and the going home box daily! Please feel free to use the trays for party invitations and thank you letters too.

Sorry for all these logistics – once in place – the year runs very smoothly!

Thanks so much for your support – please pass on the details of this blog to all the parents/ carers in the class. Also I will post a weekly overview above the book bag boxes each week outlining the main activities /objectives of the week. Please can someone take a picture of it and put it on the class whatsapp group as some parents won’t be dropping off and picking up and might miss it.

Enjoy this super sunny weekend!

Looking forward to next week already!

Mrs Bibby 🙂