The last week before our first half term!

Mrs Warner popped in to speak about her role as the Deputy Head of our school, she explained to the children her daily tasks and they were particularly interested on how long she spends chatting on the phone!

This week we have continued on from our healthy fruit and vegetables to looking at The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

The children had a range of activities to support the story. The writing table was busy all week with children practising forming their letters and other Hungry Caterpillar themed activities.

We are still encouraging all with fine motor skills, as ultimately we are striving for comfortable, firm, effective pencil grips to ensure each child is able to form their letters with ease. Playdough work, to hole punching leaves ( just as if the hungry caterpillar has nibbled through them!) all help to develop the flexibility and muscles in the children’s fingers.

Our Shape Space and Measure work concentrated on pattern making – repeating patterns. We tried 2/ 3 and 4 colour pattern work.

The whole class creative task this week was to make a hungry caterpillar name. Everyone enjoyed the cutting / sticking and writing the sounds for their name. We are very nearly there with all being confident name writers now. Well done all – keep practising at  home too please!

The definite highlight of the week ( well for the staff anyway! ) was a visit from Blue Watch from New Malden fire station. The children enjoyed hearing all about the day to day tasks involved in being a firefighter; from going to the gym together, daily training, community visits and being first on the scene at emergencies.  They kindly allowed us all to sit in their fire engine and examine lots of the equipment they carry from torches to masks and special protective clothing.  They even let the children put the siren on !

Thank you so much for all your pasta donations for our Harvest celebrations. All the pasta donated was taken to the Wimbledon Guild to support local homeless people. We were very touched with all your support both via your donations and support at St Matthew’s Church. A big thank you to the mummies that helped us walking down to church. The children were all exhausted and a walk to the church and the Harvest Festival was a tall order at the end of the half term. Well done to all involved.

Wishing you all a restful and safe half term break. See you next week!

Hello and welcome to this weeks Oak Class Reception blog.

It’s been a busy week with all the usual bits and pieces – this weeks sounds were ‘ g’ ‘o’ ‘c’ ‘k’ and ‘ck’! Hopefully your child has been showing you the action we learn for each sound to help us remember it! Along with counting, recognising and matching numbers to amounts and finding missing numbers.

In PE we are currently practising, negotiating space, while on the move, skipping, hop-scotch, hopping, side-stepping, balancing and throwing and catching. Our RE topic this term looks at what is special in our world. What is special to us individually, what is  special to all of us and how we should look after firstly our special things, moving on to our immediate environment and then our local community area and ultimately our world.  The children are very thoughtful and contribute some insightful ideas for us all to think about and understand.

We have been busy welcoming many visitors to our class this week! We have been jolly lucky.

Dr Jarman, one of our lovely mummies, came to visit us. She brought along her very important black medical bag,  told us all about her medical instruments and what she does while she is at work. With some live demonstrations – I had my blood pressure measured- and was relieved to find it was within the realms of ‘ normal’, while poor Mrs Mooney found she’d hurt both arms with one being bandaged and the other placed in a sling!

All the children got to hold and examine all of Dr Jarman’s very special medical  equipment. Question time was rather,  a catalogue of recounts,  of each child’s last visit to a GP!!

Following Dr Jarman we were also visited by Brian the Firefighter. Brian really enjoyed his visit to our class – he explained carefully what he did while he was at work and how he helps people. He reminded us all about having a smoke alarm in our house and to test the batteries once a week. The children enjoyed his funny stories of rescuing cats from trees and being nipped by a pet chinchilla while he was rescuing it from a house fire!  He also brought a large black bag with him. His bag contained his uniform. He invited the children to try it on – they commented how hot it was to wear and just how heavy the boots and helmet were. Brian explained when the fire alarm sounds in the fire station he has to be fully dressed in his uniform and on the fire engine in less than 1 minute!

Our third visitor was Mrs McCall , an Occupational Health Professional and also a St. Matthew’s mummy. She wore her special uniform and told the children all about how she helps people get moving!  She explained, how through using everyday activities she helps people develop, recover, improve, as well as maintain the skills needed for daily living and working.

Our final visit of the week was from Mrs Rainey’s husband: PC Rainey!  He explained the role of a police constable and how the police help us in our communities. The children have enjoyed all our visitors this week, with fingers crossed more to come next week!

The rest of the week has seen Oak class refining their fine motor skills, investigating sizes, healthy eating and taking turns.  All the activities based around fruits, vegetables and herbs.

The children enjoyed squeezing citrus fruits into the water – fantastic to work those muscles for holding a pencil ! ( Incidentally this has made the classroom smell wonderful all week! – We might do this again ! )

They have used spoons to dig out seeds and flesh from tomatoes, kiwi’s peppers, cucumbers and the like. Again another great activity to improve muscle development in little hands.

A fun activity was to try and write with a carrot dipped in paint – everyone had a go with varying degrees of success!

We have sorted foods into healthy, unhealthy and ‘ not too bad’ ! We have understood it’s good to eat lots of fruit and vegetables and less sweets and chocolate!

Looking at sizes we all had a go at ordering our fruits and vegetables from smallest to largest.

The Shopping game proved a hit this week, with excellent turn taking in action.

Jacket potatoes, cocktail sticks and chopped up fruits were an excellent staring point for designing our very own Mr Potato Heads. All the children had fun making their own version!

Anytime we’ve had left this week has been taken up with preparing for Harvest Festival next Friday 18th October. Please do come along to St Matthew’s church to join in our school Harvest celebrations.

If you examine our photographs below, I wonder if you can guess which bible story Reception will be depicting during our service…

The clues are : Pairs of animals and a beautiful rainbow!

As an answer to a question to the Blog,  ( thank you for all the positive comments by the way !) our class representatives on the School Council are Izabella and Teo, voted by their class friends. They will attend meetings a few times a term to find out any changes or ideas the school has. They will report back the information to the class and then represent our feelings/ new ideas back to the school council. The School Council is run by our head boy and girl – Sam and Henrietta in Year 6.

Hope you are managing a good weekend, despite the rain!

Check back next week to see what Oak Class Reception have been up to.

Hello!

Another busy week in Reception has seen our home corner change from a school into a doctors surgery. This was greeted with much excitement, a whole host of ideas of what we might need in a doctors, along with many tales of visits to the doctor!

Our accompanying story was : Funny Bones by The Ahlbergs: 

The children have been extremely creative and been drawing skeletons, and trying to make skeleton pictures out of cotton buds – this is easier said than done!

Number work this week has comprised of lots of counting out loud, recognising numbers, ordering sets of numbers, matching numbers to amounts and writing numbers.

Our Reception reading helpers have all started over the past two week. The children all have the opportunity to read with a reading helper over the week. Lynn, Lesley and Mrs Robinson have this week got to know the children in preparation for all the lovely reading that is to come! Our Year 6 children have also started their reading buddy scheme, where they pair up with a Reception child to read to and listen to them read too. Our group reading will get up and running once we are a little more proficient.

Looking after ourselves in the doctors has included remembering our teeth. We’ve seen how many teeth we can rescue from the crocodile pond, brushed, brushed and brushed again – helping our fine motor skills and played a dice game adding teeth to the mouths!

We are looking forward from visits from a doctor and dentist in the weeks ahead to tell us all about their work helping people.

We have had activities to enhance our fine motor skills these past few weeks – hammering pegs into playdough has proved an unexpected hit! 

This week we went for it and all got changed for PE ( rather than just socks and shoes the previous two weeks). Mrs Mooney and I were pleasantly surprised at just how independent all the children are with their self help skills! Thank you so much to all, it’s hard to work and takes time to give little ones the opportunity to be dressing themselves, but other than a few buttons, they were fantastic and we were delighted!

We are also happy to announce our two School Council representatives from Reception Oak Class. Congratulations and good luck in your important roles.

We have fitted in so much more, but this  is a snap shot of the comings and goings of Reception Oak Class this week. Have a good week!