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!

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

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!

This week we have taken a good look at The Elves and The Shoemaker story.

Lots of our activities have been based around shoes and making.

We  had some Christmas colouring at the end of the week, along with a viewing of our school Christmas show – I hope you have all received the link to view it at home!

Our number work included measuring our footprints – drawing around our feet/ cutting out and measuring the length of the footprint.

Some fine motor work threading around the footprints…

and for those a little more advanced learning how to tie a shoelace!

Outside we had Christmas elves swimming in the water – quite a job to catch them in the time allowed!

Our formal writing is coming along well – the class are very good at concentrating and staying focused.

In assembly the children listened to the Christmas story. We learnt about the manger.  We were given bundles of hay on our way back from assembly. Each time someone did something kind they were chosen to take their hay bundle into the hall to fill the manger and write their name on a heart for the wall display.

We forgot to take lots of photos at the Christmas party but here are the children enjoying their lovely snack boxes. Thank you all so much for providing them along with super party outfits.

We have had a great term. Thank you for all your support and help. The children are doing very well and are a pleasure to spend our time with each day.  Happy Christmas to you all. Enjoy a well earned rest and a magical Christmas with your little ones.

Hello!

This week we have based our learning around The Jolly Postman stories by Janet and Allan Ahlberg. They are wonderful books ( a super Christmas present from a grandparent or similar if you need any ideas!) with real letters related to each page of the story, as the postman makes his way around the houses of all the characters from traditional fairy tales and nursery rhymes. The children really enjoyed making the links from these stories to those they had read featuring the same characters.

It’s the season of advent and we too in  Reception have our advent calendar to help us mark the preparation for and celebration of the birth of Jesus

The children are becoming more and more confident and able in PE and this week enjoyed ball skills and balancing acts!

Our role play area is now a very busy post office with cards and letters being written, parcels being wrapped and mail being stamped and delivered.

We had so much mail that we had to make an extra postbox … many apologies for the children who came home covered in red paint… they do put aprons on … they just don’t seem to be that effective – I’ve added more substantial aprons to the next school order…

Our  sound work has been in action with the children using their knowledge to create and read these word puzzles…

We always enjoy numbers and this week used the multi-link cubes to make porridge for the 3 bears ( featured in our Jolly Postman stories) How many cubes for baby bear? How many more for Mummy Bear, Daddy Bear?  etc. Lots of lovely learning from a simple activity.

The children also particularly enjoyed ‘ pass the number around the circle game’ where we simply said the next number to the person next to us .. we managed to count all the way to 100!

We always need some fine motor activities to help strengthen the muscles in our forearms and hands for writing, doing up buttons and other such fiddly work. This week the children made pictures using the tap and pin shapes. They all enjoyed hammering in the pins!

Independent sound practice has the children choosing, reading and writing sounds and even blending them for words.

Our junk modelling table has become a hive of activity with present wrapping – we are certainly getting organised for Christmas!

Christmas card writing all underway…

and stamping the parcels has probably been this weeks favourite activity!

The children have been dressing up as the characters from the Jolly Postman books – mainly Cinderella!!

Retelling the story of Little Red Riding hood …

and doing plenty of singing practice for Christmas.

Here are the children’s skeletons from our Light and Dark week.

Hope you have all enjoyed a good week.

We will be having a Reception Christmas Party on Tuesday 15th December. The children are welcome to bring party clothes in a NAMED bag to get changed into . Since we are not allowed to share party food this year, please could you make up a little party disposable snack box for your child and bring it in on that day.  (NO NUTS PLEASE!)

Thank you

Erin Bibby