I hope everyone has enjoyed a relaxing bank holiday weekend. Sorry this is so late – our weekend has been quite busy!

The Mufti day caused much excitement in Reception with everybody keen to show off their ‘ own clothes’. There was so much interest in each others outfits that we decided  to do a quick fashion show… I have to say we don’t have many shy children in the class!!

Our writing has been getting better and better, so much so we have been using the story puzzles to create new stories, write them and add some extra description of our own.

Our hot air balloon adventure has continued – we looked down from our balloons and imagined all we could see – our small world tray helped us imagine through our play.

Lots more letter formation practice this week…

We did a real/ fake word activity this week and continued it during our ICT session. Read the word and decide if it’s a real or ‘ fake’ ( made up word). This is one of the ways using sounds to help reading is embedded. No picture clue as would be found in a story, just the word to sound out and decide if it’ s a word you know or not!

Doubles has been on the agenda in maths this week. We used Rosie and Duncan the twins to help us ‘ double one’ and moved on from there.. Ladybirds are a great resource for doubling as you can double the amount of spots on one side on the other to make a new total. We played the ladybird game and finding the correct number of spots to double on our ladybirds.

As always our writing area is always busy – this week with hot air balloon writing.

Our papier mache hot air balloon project continues… slowly…

and the children had a week of bubble blowing too!

Wishing you all a restful but exciting half term! See you next week.

Erin Bibby

Up, up, up…. up in a balloon, I’m so high I can touch the sky!  We have been flying in our hot air balloons! We’ve seen tiny cars, minuscule people, birds, the tops of trees and winding rivers. Sky scrapers boats, clouds and lakes. We have felt the cold air in our hair and felt the wet water droplets as we floated through clouds…

We have read and watched these two hot air balloon stories…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkI8IDR-uTI The Great Balloon Halabaloo 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BCGVNuEAkI The Noon Balloon 

We have embarked upon making papier mache hot air balloons … the process is taking much longer than we ever imagined! We will keep you posted on this !!

Our other hot air balloon creative activity was rather more successful.

We have continued to practice our number and letter formation in a variety of fun ways to encourage more participation – the glitter has definitely been a big hit this week!

We have had a  go at bubble art work – dyed bubble mixture – blowing bubbles onto paper – we all enjoyed it there is no doubt – the results were however quite dubious and most children dyed their hands instead of any paper! I apologise for this – you never quite know how an activity will pan out and although popular,  this one was adapted by many and hands took the brunt of the dye.

Different sizes, different amounts of bubbles – this has been so much fun!

We have had the playdough back …

Our number activities included…

We have done lots of hot air balloon writing…

and many different phonic games to embed our sounds…

More fine motor skills work …

Our kites are up…

Here are the children having fun with the hoops at play time..

…and here is our lovely Mrs Mooney – you know your children are in safe hands – she has just received her Paediatric First Aid Certificate from her latest course.

Congratulations Mrs Mooney!

We have continued with our kites and flags as the children have really enjoyed making both and using them at play times to aid their play. Here they are lining up to go outside to try their kite creations – luckily we chose a windy day!

On a Monday morning we have an ‘ Artis’ session with the lovely Fizz. This is an initiative that began after lockdown to settle the children back into the school routine. It involves, movement, drama, listening, being still and thinking – helping us all with our well – being. The sessions are calming and the children are enjoying the opportunity to express themselves and how they are feeling in a safe and calm environment. Mrs Mooney and I are also enjoying the calm of the sessions!!

Having made our semaphore flags last week, this week the children have followed the diagrams and managed to do some signalling. Everyone started signalling the initial letter in their name and moved on to trying cvc words. It was fun signalling but the children found it really tricky deciphering what their friends were signalling to them!

In RE this week we thought about what a  miracle was. We had some great suggestions – one being something you can do that you didn’t expect to be able to do!

We read the story of the loaves and fish and marvelled at how one picnic basket fed so many hungry people, even with food left over too. We acted out Jesus telling his disciples to share the little boys picnic among the people… of course we then all shared our 5 loaves between us!

Our number work has been tricky this week. We have been adding by counting on from any number. ie: 2+5=  starting at 2 on a number line and counting on 5 jumps to get to our answer. For those children that can do this kind of simple addition easily it proved much harder for them to count on to work out the answer rather than just ‘ know’ the answer. Counting on from any number is tricky as as you start to count , you are for this example: 2+5  counting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 out loud but pointing at numbers 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, as you count.  This is very confusing when you are 4 or 5! If you have any time at home – this would be a good thing to practice!

Our other number/ shape/ space measure activities included:

Our literacy activities included lots of letter formation – i did send a letter formation pack home this week. I’d be grateful if you could use it to have a practise. It doesn’t need to come back into school it’s just to add some practise time as lots of our class are forming letters in a rather round-a-about way and it will be tricky to start writing longer pieces of work next year without standard letter formation which allows each letter to flow into the next once cursive writing begins. Other activities included:

We have been allowed play dough  back at last… ( due to coronavirus  play dough has been off the menu for over a year)

We do reading everyday and the children have enjoyed paired reading this week, helping each other and reading together.  

This week has also seen us take part in some parachute games which were great fun and needed some good listening and team work skills.

Here are some other pictures of the children just enjoying playtime. Have a great weekend everyone.

Erin Bibby

Happy weekend to all Reception Oak Class families.  This week we have combined our weather topic with kites and flags and this weeks weather has lived up to expectation with a variety of sun, rain and wind to get our kites flying and our flags billowing!

Everyone in Reception has made their own kite with Mrs Mooney and then gone on to do a similar task independently. This week has seen the children ‘ flying’  around the playground, their kites bobbing along behind their shrieks of delight! It’s been a very happy week!

We are now concentrating on nearly all independent writing, rather than one on one or a small group work. The children know what they need to do and how to do it, we are currently working on confidence !

We have been learning a few songs this week, including ‘ Let’s go fly a kite’ from the musical Mary Poppins. The children have enjoyed learning and singing along. Here is the original version if they would like to sing along at home too:

We have looked at flags, their meanings and uses. We are making semaphore flags and learning how to signal to our friends! Great fun signalling across the playground and trying to decode the messages!

We have watched the following video showing flags from around the world. It has been lovely to see and hear the children spot flags from countries they know family are from or even flags from some of their holiday destinations. We have had a colouring station to colour world flags too which has been very popular. We have had a dance and joined in the chorus of ‘ Wavin’ Flag’ by K’NAAN. We have some great movers in Reception and equally some that will prefer to be at the bar than on the dance floor once they get to night clubs!!

Our directed number work was tricky this week: the main objective was :  I Can Add More. This is from any given number. The children are good at number bonds and great counting from 0 or 1 but counting on and adding more from any given number has not proved easy! We will continue the objective alongside our new objectives next week.

Our math’s activities in the classroom for choosing time have included:

Reading and writing continues to be daily practice – the children have been practising perceptual reading on our interactive board where they follow a recorded prompt for trickier words and the speed of the reading matches the child doing the reading, along with partner reading, which everyone enjoyed. We had some super reading partners that really helped and encouraged each other. After any piece of independent writing not only do we expect the children to have decided on their sentence/s, counted the words they need to write, segmented each word remembering and writing the sounds needed, in a phonetically plausible order, ensuring finger spaces between each word… but also – and this has proved particularly tricky – to be able to read back what they have written. We still needs lots of practice on this! A lot of our sound and phonics work depends on the children being able to hear well and speak clearly. One thing that has really stood out this week during our writing are misunderstandings of sounds needed because of mis-hearing or not speaking clearly. Too many children have either written ‘d’  or ‘v’ instead of ‘ the’ this week! If you are able,  please do two things – when you are reading to your child follow the line with your finger so they can see where you are and how to read along line by line, ask them to spot a key word as you read, like ‘ the’ – it will really help with these misconceptions. Also if you can hear they are not quite pronouncing a particular sound such as ‘ th’ clearly please model this for them. These little re-iterations will really help improve reading, writing and speaking.

Have a super weekend!

Erin Bibby

We continued examining the daily weather this week and decided what our favourite weather was like. Lots of articulate explanations as to why snow would be a favourite weather as well as wind! Snow and wind were the two most popular types of weather in Reception class this week.

We have continue our pattern work and  used shape and / or colour to make new even more complex patterns. The children are all excellent at creating and describing some quite complex patterns.

Our stories this week were all from The Elmer series by David McKee. Elmer encounters a different weather type in each story. He also has a patchwork which the children recreated in collage – some children made a pattern for their part of the collage.

In our outdoor classroom we changed our painting medium to clingfilm instead of the usual paper – a lot of fun for all  and fabulous for motor skills having to change the mark making pressure to suit the clingfilm surface.

We took our weather writing into the world of poetry this week hearing and writing rhyming words and rhyming phrases.  Hearing rhyme is tricky have a go at home with your child – start off easily with cat. mat, rat etc and then move on to trickier words – we did rain, sun and snow. We also chose one of our diagraphs ( two letters making one sound – ie ‘ oo’ and thought of and wrote more rhyming words – moon, soon, spoon, noon and so on.

We added to our weather display and weather centre by creating some snowflakes. This was such a popular activity and very effective as the children had to read instruction, follow the instructions, have the fine motor skills to execute the instructions and of course the patience and management of their feelings if it didn’t  go to plan. It’s really lovely to see how the children have matured so much over the year and now have the capacity to manage their feelings in these types of situations.

As it was all about the weather we quickly made a rain stick each and used it to make a sound pattern – we followed this up by using the instruments to make sound patterns in our music lesson. We did video the children playing and then in their groups performing their sound pattern but I can’t get the videos to attach to the blog – sorry – I  will try and tag the children in them on Seesaw instead so you can see them. They are great – we have some very serious performers in the class!

Lots of writing and reading practice goes on every day in Reception – here are some very hard working writers!

This week we trialled ‘ mix-up’ which used to be a staple of the Early Years curriculum. We have scheduled ‘ mix-up’ twice a week for this term – a short session where the children in nursery and Reception can ‘ mix-up’ and have a go at the activities available across Nursery, Reception and an outdoor area. Here are some of the children having lots of fun during ‘ mix-up’ :

Before Easter Reception class did a 90 mile ‘ pilgrimage’ replicating part of the Pilgrim’s way from London to Canterbury. We did this as our Lent project where we ask for sponsorship to raise money for the Lunch Bowl project in Kibera,  which provides a lunch for hundreds of children who live in the Kibera slums,  and for Wimbledon Guild, helping people in need nearer to home. To meet our 90 mile target all 30 of us walked 3 miles over the week preceding Easter ( a mile a day for 3 days ) around our school playgrounds and field. If you would like to make a donation to the said charities as sponsorship for your child taking part in the walk, please send in your donation in a sealed enveloped marked ‘ LENT PROJECT’. Thank you very much.

Have a lovely long weekend. I’ve missed my deadline to get the Blog out to you via Mrs Saunders in the office so will post it onto Seesaw so hopefully you will still be able to access it.

Thanks for all your support again. The children are all having a fine time!