Thank you to everyone for waiting to ‘see’ me for the parents evening slots – it was great to chat to all and reassure you that the children have great days and are all progressing as they should be! Not least from all the hard work put in at home. Thank you parents.

Following on from Cinderella we turned our focus from lost slippers to shoe making. We had a class bank and materials shop enabling the children to take money out of the bank and pay for materials they needed to make their own shoes! Our circle time ‘ What is a bank? ‘ beforehand generated lots of interesting answers… including ‘… well you can rob a bank!’ !!!!

On Tuesday – 1 year since the start of the first lockdown we held a minutes silence to remember those people who have lost their lives to the corona-virus. The children did very well, being able to explain the problems that Covid 19 has caused us all over the past year.. the main consensus was the lack of swimming this year! We also went out onto the field ( with the nursery – who are in our school bubble) to say a prayer and plant a cherry tree to remember the people lost to corona-virus.

We have been thinking about 3D shape and deciding the differences and similarities between them – shapes that can roll or not roll and other ways to differentiate between them.

Tricky words or RED words have been back this week with lots of reading and writing practice of them.

For fine motor skills we have threaded ribbons around the shoe makers shoes and paired socks – after sorting all the socks most of the children decided to wear the socks!

Our materials shop stayed for the week and was always busy with a queue of customers.

The bank enabled the children to ask for the right money for materials they wanted to buy to make their shoes. The banker ( or customer if the banker had a taken a break!) wrote down their name and which coins or amount of money they had withdrawn from the bank.

More sounds this week – including ee, ar, or, ur, oi  and oo.  Our whiteboards are a great resource for learning and practising our sounds – a great example of ‘ur’ words below.

Making elves was  a very popular activity that stayed for the week too…

Some 2D shape drawing in our outdoor classroom.

The 1 minute timer was used in the water tray to time how many elves could be fished out! The record was 79 elves in 1 minute!

Our science table caused lots of interest testing out the grips on various shoes from our role play shoe shop in slippy soapy water – some were deemed ‘ useless’ ! We decided the big work boots we had had the best grip.

We have 1 white vest left over from PE LAST week – its a white – probably boys vest. Please let me know if you are missing one!

Have a lovely weekend everybody.

Erin Bibby

Cinderella has been our focus for the past two weeks and we have had a mystery to solve, just like Prince Charming in Cinderella, trying to find the owner of the lost glass slipper.  A special box containing some slippers with silver stars was found on our carpet area one day after break time. A complete mystery – they weren’t mine or Mrs Mooney’s – too big and too small respectively- so who did they belong to?

A great discussion evolved thinking about who had popped into our classroom lately … (hardly anyone as we are in strict learning bubbles! )  The children decided to make some posters for me to put up around the school so the owner could see the poster and come and collect their slippers. Some good investigating revealed they could belong to Fizz the drama lady who visits us or perhaps Mrs Warner as she does pop in to see us now and again. Slippers were tried onto both parties but were too small for them. Finally the owner spotted our posters and came to  our classroom … it was Mrs Morgan! Mystery solved!

In other news we have done lots of work on positional language – including building marble runs and describing how / where the marble is travelling. Later on in the week we used Tom’s Den ( the climbing frame) to carry on positional language – getting on, under, beneath, behind and next to Tom’s Den.

Our Cinderella small world was popular with children re-telling the story.

Magic wands were made for the fairy godmother ( pipe cleaners fantastic for fine motor work as we are not allowed play dough at the moment)

Number puzzles…

2D shape games .,.

Using all our cutting and sticking skills to make Cinderella’s coach.

Using the clocks to find midnight…. and other times…

Practising our writing…

Some super rolls, jumps and balances in PE.

We are learning more sounds including oo, ar, or this week and our daily writing practice using our traffic light sentence activity. Our ICT session this week was a sound game also recognising and practising these sounds.

Our whiteboards are great for practising writing our sounds in lots of different ways.

Another lovely week in Reception and Mrs Mooney and I are so touched by the beautiful flowers you have given us today. ( Along with cakes and chocolate earlier in the week !! – we were just told they came from The Parents!) Thank you all so much. Your children are a joy to spend our days with, we really enjoy their company! We  both feel very lucky to have such a great class and thank you all for your ongoing support through what has been an extremely disrupted academic year.

Thank you so much,

Erin Bibby

Hello! Thank you all VERY MUCH for all the hard work you undertook at home. We missed your children, their happy smiles and laughter and the fun we have together at school. We are delighted they are back and they have all settled back in smoothly, enjoying playing and learning with their friends.

This terms theme is ONCE UPON A TIME… hence the fairy tales throughout the lock-down learning. This week and next we are concentrating on Cinderella – you will be pleased to know we have already played Who AM I ? – all the practice at home has enabled them to think of some super clues, including: ‘ I invited all the girls to my party!’ … Lucky Prince Charming!

Otherwise we are repeating number bonds to 10, have each done 2 pieces of  extended writing, we are enjoying gymnastics in PE, doing lots and lots of reading and refreshing our positional language  – mainly doing the limbo !

Our PE days are Wednesday and Friday – please make sure the children have their NAMED kit in school. We have ICT on a Thursday, Well -being drama on a Monday for the next 3 weeks ( to ensure a smooth transition back into school) and assemblies twice a week too.

Here are some of the activities we have completed this week: 

Happy Mother’s Day for Sunday Mummies!

See you on Monday!