A magic carpet landed in Oak Class this week – it has already taken us on many adventures..

We have travelled around the world and to many ,any magical places – we certainly have a class full of imagination! We have written about all the magical places we have visited.

More odd and even numbers this week …

Along with heights .. everyone enjoyed lining up in height order in groups. We read Jack and the Beanstalk and talked about things that get taller – lots of lovely ideas came up including ‘ my daddy’ !

This year was the 73rd Anniversary of the Empire Windrush arriving at Tilbury Docks in Essex. Many of the people on board served in the British Army during the Second World War, and were invited, with citizenship, to help rebuild Britain after the devastation of the war. Sadly, some of  the Caribbeans who made the journey were met with racism and discrimination. Windrush Day was started to remember this generation of people who helped Britain at its most vulnerable. We watched a Newsround programme to help us understand more about this time in our history. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Si3IRAPJkkU –

Tuesday was the celebratory day of the Windrush. The children made extra colourful kites. Kite making and kite flying are popular activities in the Caribbean. We joined in with this animated song, again, helping us understand more about the Windrush. 

Other activities we all had a go at included :

Bit of a short catch up this week – hope you all have a good weekend. Keep up daily reading with your children – just 5 minutes is fine – we’ve noticed a reading lull so please don’t give up now! Also please try and bring your book-bag in on the day written on the front of the reading diary. This enables us to have 6 per day.  For the last few weeks we’ve had 16 book bags come in on a Friday and it’s tricky to fit in our individual reading with 16 children along with all our other activities.

Hi Parents, another very busy week in Reception class. Our hot air balloons have finally come to fruition and here they are!

We have been busy all week learning about odd and even numbers … the children sorted their home numbers into add and even… some of you live at very high numbers!!

We have done more work on the water cycle making puddles and seeing if they evaporate or shrink in the sun. It was amazing to see them evaporate in front of our eyes on the hot days this week. We decided it was us that has made all the rain today Friday ( as we made so many puddles earlier in the week which had evaporated to form clouds!)

We started a big Father’s day project involving collecting 100’s of stones, painting them followed by some special clay work… unfortunately this project didn’t really work so we had to abandon it and start again on a different Father’s Day idea …

We carried on learning about the lift, thrust , pull ascent and descent of our aeroplane and continued flying around the world using our world maps and meeting children and their families from places as far flung as Vietnam, Peru, Canada and India.

In music we learnt a robot song and how to clap/ play along to the pulse of the piece.

Here are some of the other activities we have undertaken this week:

We also all enjoyed an ice lolly one hot afternoon.

Thank you if you have emailed in a photo of your child being active outside . If you haven’t yet please email a photo to: eshardlow@st-matthews.merton.sch.uk – we are hoping to use them in our forthcoming class assembly. Any snap of your child enjoying life out doors – running/ scooting/ cycling/ climbing/ swinging/ planting/ at the beach and so on.. 

If you are able please can you add a box of crackers/ rice cakes or similar to your shop over the next few weeks as we have run down our stocks! Thank you.

Have a great weekend all.

Erin Bibby

Hello, despite the rather bleak out look for international travel this summer Reception Oak Class have not let the news hold them back. We have a role play airport and aeroplane in the classroom and have been jetting off all around the world this week!

The children have really enjoyed making peg and lolly stick aeroplanes and our language has developed learning such words as thrust, climb, descent. runway, flight deck, captain, pilot and so on. It’s lovely to hear the children using all the correct terminology during their role play or aeroplane small world play.

We’ve all had great fun making paper aeroplanes this week… some more successful than others but some great making followed by competitions of which plane would fly the furthest!

The clouds which our planes have been flying through have helped us talk about the water cycle. We have discussed how the clouds rain make the rain to form puddles and when the sun shines the puddle evaporates and the water droplets turn into a gas to float in the air and make more clouds – all of these facts provided by the children! Some great science work!

In maths we’ve been balancing, weighing and halving.

Along with out world map puzzle we have been studying the globe and a big world map poster to find out where our plane could fly to. We have looked around the world via the Cbeebies Where in the World? series:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/watch/playlist-

meeting children from different countries and seeing what life is like for them.

Just before half term our school book week focused on nature and we read ‘ Mole’s Sunrise’ by Jeanne Willis. Here is a link to a reading of the story.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJH1QbhyoGk

We all sketched a picture of the animals and collaboratively wrote an acrostic poem about the vole and the mole who feature in the story. Some children wrote their own acrostic poems.

Here are some picture of your lovely children doing their independent aeroplane writing.

If you have one and remember, please can each child bring in the inside of a toilet roll next week! Mrs Mooney and I will bring in a few but hopefully won’t need to get through 30 toilet rolls this weekend!!

Thank you  Have a lovely weekend!