Hello!

It’s great to be back for the Summer term – the children all seemed to have grown both in stature and confidence. We’ve had a super first week back.

Our theme for this term is Up, Up and Away and we are looking at all things above us. We’ve started with the weather. A great discussion about where we might find out about the weather took place. We watched a daily weather forecast and decided whether the meteorologist had got the weather correct each day! The majority of children had never watched a weather forecast and were most used to seeing mum or dad look at the weather on their phone.

Our role play weather station enables the children to check the daily temperature and then choose weather symbols to show the current weather. The children have a range of clothing available to dress in to suit all types of weathers… they are embracing our weather writing task – writing up various weather words for our display. Everyone made a cloud and we have done a class rainbow … we have also been singing ‘  I can sing a Rainbow ‘ with much discussion on which version of the colour order is correct! Reception aged children are all very keen for everything to be right and proper and complain if we sing the colours in the ‘ wrong’ order!

We’ve completed writing about the Easter holidays along with weather writing tasks. We’ve revised some tricky trigraphs and diagraphs – ear, igh, ture, ai, oa along with more tricky words. Over all the children are doing very well with their writing, we are still working hard on reading with group reading, daily individual reading and whole class reading. If you are not yet hearing your child have a go at reading daily – please do  – between 5 and 10 minutes is enough. Also remember to read to your child every day. Do this until they won’t let you anymore –  it’s the most important ‘ homework’ / support from home any primary aged child can have.  Read a book you loved as a child!

This fortnight’s number work is in the Shape and Space category and all about making patterns. We have made patterns with our voices, with numbers, colours, our bodies, our clothes, in songs, in stories and with coloured cubes along with more complex patterns with a variety of different objects.

Lots more weather work to cover next week. Also,  please can you provide a NAMED pair of plimsoles or old trainers for our PE lessons in the next couple of weeks,  as if the weather stays warm,  we will migrate our lessons to the field. Please don’t invest in anything too pricey – the field is often muddy or dusty.

Thanks again for all your support – we’ve had a super start back for the summer term.

See you at the gate on Monday. X

There’s always time for fun with friends too…

It’s been another busy week in reception Oak Class.  Here is a snap shot of some of the goings on…

On Thursday we made chocolate crispy cakes – everyone had a job – pouring the cornflakes, adding the chocolate, stirring, counting out the cake cases, adding the mixture or putting on the chocolate egg. All enjoyed while watching 10 minute Peter Rabbit programme at the end of the day!

For our Easter egg hunt – we had to find 40 eggs in the hidden in the playground – it didn’t take the children long at all to find them. We came back in and ordered them from 1 – 40.

Our activities this week included stories about the elves from our Elves and the Shoemaker story – What was it like where they lived? Other than make shoes what other jobs do elves do?

Our 3D shapes moved into the water tray ..

The children love drawing around the 2 D shapes on big paper so we revived thisactivity half way through the week.

Our elf construction table was a big HIT with everyone!

More 2D shapes inside – this time sorting them. The children have got really good at explaining why a triangle, rectangle etc is what it is. For example : What shape is the front door ? It’s  a rectangle… how do you know that? Because it has two long sides and two short sides. The understanding is always more important than the answer itself!

Fill in the missing sounds…

Read and write the words that appear on the wheel ..

Make yo r own 2D shape picture with a bit of fine motor work here too.

Making palm leaves to welcome Jesus on the donkey into Jerusalem…

Pom pom pattern Easter eggs..

Using collage to decorate shoes for the shoemaker..

Lots and lots of counting/ 1 more 1 less / matching numeral to quantity followed by number problems.

Great fun, pencil and forward rolls in PE.

and last but not least our amazing Easter display of all the wonderful Easter creations you made at home. Thank you all so much. The standard was very high. Mrs Mooney and I had a terrible job of narrowing the entries down to a top 4. We then left it to Mr Quinn and Mrs Warner to choose a winner. They chose 2 winners in our class. Every entry was unique and so much time effort and hard work had gone into each and every one. Thank you all so much for making such a creative and exciting experience for the children.

Wishing you all a very happy Easter time – thanks again for all your support of the children and us! We are both very grateful to have such a lovely class.

Happy Easter to you all.

PS – Please bring in the cardboard tube from a kitchen paper towel for the first week back after Easter! Oh and your child will need a NAMED sun hat for the Summer term!

Thank you XXX