Hello, the weekend is here at last!

Here is a flavour of what’s been happening in Reception Oak Class this week. We are still immersed in fairy tales and now have the whole class joining in with our mantras:  ‘ Once upon a time..’ and …’ happily ever after!’  Our beds for the Princess and Pea are looking good on display. Each child made their own bed for the princess and chose how many mattresses to add to her bed.

We have started learning about Rapunzel this week, we’ve been building her tower and practising plaiting her hair! – not an easy task!

The porridge making for the 3 bears continues  in different guises – using varying sized spoons and bowls. Counting how many scoops we need and following instructions.

The children really enjoyed Jack and the Beanstalk – we read three or four different versions and they enjoyed all the variation. At choosing time they went off to re- tell their own version of the story using the small world Jack and the Beanstalk.

Our maths beanstalk was a big hit !

Our number work continued with the children using post it’s to number the pages of our fairy tale books. They all had a go and worked carefully and methodically, numbering each post it and sticking their page numbers in the correct order! Great number writing and ordering of number practice.

A real highlight for me this week was listening and watching the children play  ‘ Who am I ?’ with fairy tale characters. They thought of brilliant questions, they listened to their friends carefully and deduced the fairy tale character their friend had thought of. I was really proud at how grown- up they all were: taking turns, waiting patiently, listening, asking appropriate questions! A definite game to play at home or on car journeys with any category – not just fairy tale characters!  Some of the great questions were:

Does your character eat grass?   ( the thinking behind this was it could have been the cow from Jack and the Bean stalk )

Is your character lonely? ( Rapunzel in her tower)

Does your character like eating porridge? ( Goldilocks)

Not only have we been immersing ourselves in fairy tales we have been busy writing letters of invitation to home, inviting families to come along to our Christmas Show. Thank you to everyone for bringing in the stamped addressed envelope. Here is a picture of the children at the postbox today,  ready to post their letters.   As luck would have it the postman came along to empty the box while the children were  there! Fingers crossed you will receive your invitation on Saturday or early next week!

Have a great weekend all – the Christmas fun is about to begin!

Once upon a time…

Oak Class learnt all  about Fairy Tales! This week we have started with Goldilocks and The Princess and the Pea.

Our role play has miraculously turned into the three bears cottage – 3 of everything !

Lots of table laying, sitting on various sized chairs and resting in three different size beds!

The three different sized wellie boots have proved a big hit for budding members of the bear family!

The water area has been a hive of activity all week with porridge making. Too hot, too salty, too cold, too runny, too lumpy and so on !

Everyone has had a go at constructing a lego 3 bears cottage …

and written their own story map for Goldilocks and the Three Bears. A story map , tells the story through a series of pictures. Oak class made some truly magnificent story maps with so much detail!

Here’s an example story map and an idea of the children’s work below…

Our number work has been all about 1 more or 1 less than a given number, with a tad of estimating thrown in too.

The writing table has been busy with character colouring and story map writing.

We have all made a bed for the princess from the story : The Princess and the Pea and counted our mattresses carefully.

Our outside classroom has changed to a garden centre which has proved very popular. Our tricky words this week were ‘ to’ and ‘into’ … the rest of the week was spent on The Big Question, circle time, RE – special members of our family-  and we started practising for our Christmas Show!! Please, please have a go at singing the words that went home on Tuesday with the children…I can’t wait to hear all the children singing loudly on Monday!

Have a great weekend.

Hello!

This week we marked Remembrance Day. Our assembly taught us about Armistice Day. We learned that the peace treaty to end World War One was signed on the 11th hour, on the 11 day of the 11th month in 1918. We understood that people buy and wear poppies to remember those soldiers who died or have been injured during war times. We also learnt how poppies grew in abundance in the fields where the soldiers had been battling and had since become a symbol to remember the soldiers. Each class made a poppy wreath to bring to our prayer table in the hall during assembly. Our class listened carefully and respectfully during our assembly.

At 11am our school stopped for the two minute silence to remember those who died or were injured. Reception class watched the following video, which is exactly two minutes long, during the silence.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/watch/poppies

The rest of the week concentrated on fire!

The children enjoyed making the firework pictures so much last week that we continued this week…

We thought back to our visits from Firefighter Brian and Blue Watch from New Malden Fire Station. We did circle time to discuss how brave, strong, fit and healthy you would have to be to be a fire fighter. Most of the children decided they would be able to take on the role and responsibility!

We used our problem solving skills to build our own bonfires …

We dangerously dug around in tissue paper flames ‘ saving’ and ‘ rescuing’ numbers – once rescued we checked which numbers we had saved from the flames…

and we  practised our fine motor skills putting out roaring flames in the water area…

We carried on with our shape work – using 2D shapes to make symmetrical patterns and choosing the right shapes to make pictures…

The children really enjoyed making and following patterns using the multi- link too.

This week we learnt tricky words:

‘so’ ‘no’ and ‘go’  and we sang our tricky word song:

The children have been playing lots of games to help with their reading. Recognising the letters and blending the sounds to make words. They loved digging about in the sand finding real and alien words; along with an interactive whiteboard game matching pictures to the given word.

It was lovely to see you all at Parent’s Evening last week. Parent’s Evening is always a rush so please do ask any other questions you have. Many parents asked who their children played with and this picture below is a super example of how small children all play together ; they play with the other children playing what they would like to have a go at too – boys and girls together – having great fun!

A lovely picture of some Oak Class members working and playing together. They are apparently all bundled into a car off on holiday!

As a final note,  we had one letter left on the carpet regarding our Christmas Show,  and we can’t work out who it belonged to.  Just to confirm for the parent without the letter – Reception class are all going to be snowmen. Please don’t go to any unnecessary expense. White t-shirt, white leggings, a hat and a scarf are perfect. To be brought into school during the week of 25th November in a named bag please.

That’s all for now, thank you so much for coming to parents evening and being so supportive. It really was lovely to chat to you away from the melee of the morning rush!

Hello !

This week has been all about colours, patterns, black history and solving our class mystery.

We learnt about the Festival of Diwali,listening to the story of Rama and Sita defeating the ten headed demon. The children watched a video clip of a Hindu family celebrating Diwali and learnt about the importance of light during the festival. Rama and Sita were guided home to safety by rows of lamps and the lights are used to worship Lord Ganesh and Goddess Lakshmi to bring wealth, prosperity, wisdom and good health. The children enjoyed colouring their own rangoli patterns and trying to make them with the coloured sand.

The children went on to create this wonderful paper chain Diwali lamp – they shared the knowledge they had learnt to make this colourful wall display.

We continued from the beautiful Rangoli patterns to a shape pattern game on our interactive whiteboard and a shape / pattern puzzle. Nearly everybody completed both games successfully and we were so impressed with all the children’s 2D shape knowledge. We rolled our pattern work into fireworks and learnt about Guy Fawkes and made some super firework pictures too.

The children enjoyed sorting the shapes floating in the water tray and sorting shapes to find what they needed for the shape faces.

An unexpected highlight of the week was the children working in a big team together to create this ‘ pathway’ from one end of the classroom to the other. They collaborated, took turns, helped and made a super team. Well done Oak class – teamwork isn’t easy!

This week our tricky words were ‘ we’ ‘be’ and ‘me’. We learnt ‘b’ ‘h’ ‘f’ and ‘ff’ for our sounds and practised blending the sounds we have learnt previously.

A large part of the week was taken up with learning about Mary Seacole  – a black lady who travelled from Jamaica to England,  to volunteer with the nurses to help the soldiers in the Crimean war. At that time, Mary Seacole was turned away from joining the white  nurses. She made up her mind to help anyway and took a tent and medical supplies by herself to Crimea and nursed the sick and injured soldiers. An inspiring story that we have all enjoyed learning about. Look out for our Mary Seacole portrait  at parent’s evening in the hall next week! We are all so proud of our hard, careful work creating her amazing portrait.

Last but not least we solved our fingerprint mystery! Having gathered the fingerprints from adults found in our school we used our magnifying glass to discover if their prints were whorl, arch or loop prints. We narrowed down our suspects to the loop fingerprint and our detectives worked out that the mystery fingerprints either belonged to Mrs Morgan from the school office or our headteacher Mr Quinn…

Mrs Morgan was called to our class to explain herself – she did so, included alibis and was believed by our class detectives, without the need to call her solicitor!! Thankfully she was then allowed to go home! Mr Quinn wasn’t available defend himself so was convicted in his absence. Since our mystery has been solved Mr Quinn has been interrogated by most of class as and when they have seen him around the school! He won’t live this down in a hurry!

Have a great week, look forward to seeing you next week at parents evening.

Hello!

I’m writing this just after England’s defeat to South Africa in the rugby world cup final.  Commiserations to any of the English supporters and congratulations to any South African supporters!

Back to what’s important (!) and this week Oak Class have had to become detectives, since there has been a mystery to solve. Luckily enough our role play area changed into a police station over half term  and the children have embraced their duties, particularly enjoying using the torches and magnifying glasses to help solve the mystery.

Mystery fingerprints have been discovered in numerous locations around our classroom – on the door, the walls and even the computer. Teams of Oak Class detectives have been out and about around the school, with Mrs Mooney,  collecting fingerprints from adults in our school. We have all recorded our own finger prints – working out whether we have whorl, arch or loop. We are going to use our magnifying glasses to match our mystery prints to those we collect. Once we’ve narrowed down some suspects, the interviews will begin!

Oak Class Police Station

Our sounds this week have included ‘u’ ‘e’ and ‘r’. The children are ALL working so hard to recognise, write and remember each sound. This week you should also have received a tricky word pot. This is full of those words that just won’t sound out – such as ‘ to’ ‘ no’ ‘ he’ ‘she’ and so on. Unfortunately these words just have to be learnt so any exposure is great exposure! Choose a tricky word from the pot and ask your child to spot it while your reading to them. Play snap or a memory game with the words in your pot. Tricky words are usually occur quite often in text and will need to be able to be recognised and by the end of the year, hopefully written.

Investigating a tricky word problem…

The classroom has been a hive of activity as usual including a small world police town from which some excellent stories have evolved.

To assist our number work we have had locks and keys … matching a numbered lock to a key with an amount of spots on has proved a popular yet tricky way to discover that particular amounts match particular numbers…

Disguising the baddies has also been a popular choice!

The Oak Class Detectives ready to start their police work.

And of course another successful number bag of the week

I hope you all had a good half term. The children have returned raring to go and are loving learning through their play! Next week we are concentrating on black history, along with getting ready for Remembrance Day.

Signing off with the mystery print – all to be revealed next week once investigations have come to a conclusion!  Have a great week!