A very warm welcome and hello to all of our prospective parents and carers.

Although we can’t meet you in person at the moment, we very much hope this post will offer you a glimpse into our lovely Reception class at St Matthew’s  and answer many of the questions you may have.

We are very proud of the learning environment we have created here at St. Matthew’s where relationships, independence and self-esteem are highly valued and fostered.

If you would like to find out more about who we are, please click these links:

Mrs Mooney

Mrs Bibby

If you would like to take a peek at  our learning environment in Reception class please have a look at the video below.

We very much hope to welcome you to St Matthew’s next September.

Hello!

This week we have been making potions! We have had a cauldron full of snakes and bats and other such bugs and grubs to help make our potion. Our main story was Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. The children knew the story well and could join in the refrain. We looked at the changing weather in the story and talked about how we could make a new broomstick for all the characters.

The children new the story so well and have spent the week using the toys to recreate and re-tell the story.

We made sure we had our safety goggles on before we started to design and make our potions. We talked about witche’s spells and scientists making potions and medicines … the Corona Virus Vaccine might well have been developed in our classroom!

Our fine motor activity saw the children using pipe cleaners and wool to make mini broomsticks…

Our sounds were: e, l h , sh and r. We have done plenty of writing, reading, blending and segmenting using all the sounds we have learnt. The children are becoming really confident now and I hope the first ‘ reading’  book home went okay. We have started to learn our tricky words or red words as they are sometimes known: words which cannot be sounded out. Unfortunately they just need to be learned. So far we have learnt I and the. When you are reading to your child at home it would be beneficial to ask them to spot any the’s or I’s in the text. They love to do this and it helps embed the tricky word firmly in their memory.

We are using this song to help us learn our tricky words too: watch it along with your child, you will soon get the idea!!

We have had lots of sound activities out this week to reinforce our learning…

Our writing table saw the children writing ingredients for potions and spells. The children enjoyed choosing slimy or disgusting ingredients to write about. Eye of a newt, legs of a frog and skin of a snake was a great example of some ingredients chosen.

Our number work concentrated on ordering numbers and comparing groups of non-identical objects.  We got into groups – white t-shirts and green cardigans, teachers and children, dark hair and light hair – we looked at which group had more or less people – we used the language of more and less and greater and lesser. We continued our learning grouping various resources around the classroom and comparing the size of the groups.

We read the Winnie the Witch series of books this week too. The children love Winnie’s antics, especially Wilbur the cat. These books have fabulous illustrations that can be poured over and always a new part of the picture to spot.

The nasal flu spray was successful for those who received it and we also had our first fire drill which went smoothly too.

Have a great rest of the weekend!

Erin

This week in Reception Oak class we looked at light and dark…

Our man story of the week was The Ahlbergs : Funnybones. It is set in the dark! We made our own skeleton art work and danced a skeleton dance…

We had circle times chatting about things that happen in the light and other things that might happen in the dark. We also talked about sources of light – a huge and interesting array of answers were including: ‘ Our eyes have lights in them that turn on when we open them and turn off when we shut them, like car lights!!’  – It’s always good fun in Reception!

We made shadow puppets and made up stories with them using a bright torch and a white sheet. A very popular activity and lots of creative ideas in stories that evolved as they each added their puppet to the show.

Our home corner turned into a bedroom with lots of pyjamas and bedtime stories. The children do so love recreating familiar routines from home!

Our sounds this week have been : u c k f b

The children enjoy finding out the sound from our sound bag, where we have a number of objects that start with that sound. Childfren are chosen to hold up an object and say what it is and then we guess the sound. After this we draw the sounds in the air, wrie them on a whiteboard, watch a 2 minute video on each sound, blend the sound and learn an action as well as a saying to help them remember how to write the sound.

We have moved our PE day to a Wednesday as this week our Monday hal time was cut short as other classes had assemblies. We returned on Wednesday to have an extended PE lesson which everyone enjoyed.

As always numbers have been an important part of the week. Catching stars in the water tray…

Number puzzles…

Continuing one more/  one less…

and timing ourselves seeing how many actions we could do in one minute – whether it be star jumps, hops, or how many balls we can get in the bucket!

We followed this up with telling each other about an activity we took part in using language such as First, next, after that and finally or at the end.

Lots of building this week both indoors and out:

In our outdoor classroom the children got creative using the building sticks and balls to make up a golf game!

Our Diwali project on display. The clay hands are wonderful!

Lovely to chat to you all this week at our  parents meeting. Don’t forget any questions email Mrs Saunders.. office@st-matthews.merton.sch.uk. ‘ Reading’ books for your child to try reading to you will be coming home from next week, along with your childs normal 4 book choice for you to read with them. -We haven’t covered every sound yet so you child won’t know some – just let them have a go. Choose a quiet moment when you can give them your full attention ( without a phone in your hand!) and help them sound out and blend the words – some children are ready, some are not quite there yet. Don’t worry we all have to start somewhere and getting in the routine of having a book they need to read to you is great practise. Even if they just manage to recognise a few sounds, give lots of praise , and then always read the story fluently to them after they have had a good go at sounding it out and blending themselves.

Good luck – let me know how it goes in the yellow book.

Thanks

Erin Bibby

We’ve had a fun week in Reception Oak class learning about the Hindu celebration of Diwali which is this weekend. We have read the special story of Rama and Sita and discovered why it’s so important to the Hindu people – a triumph of good over bad and lanterns and lights to guide Rama and Sita home. The children were particularly impressed with the 10 headed demon – we had lots of pictures and interpretations of him over the week!

Diwali is all about light, lots of colours, rangoli patterns and sparkles! The children enjoyed making sparkly doilies.

Sorting the shiny, sparkly, glittery, smooth jewels…

and making paper chains for our Diwali display.

Our fine motor activities had the children using tweezers to collect sequins from the water.

and using coloured sand to make rangoli patterns using the shapes…

More fine motor work saw the children grating chalk … we used the chalk grains to make rangoli patterns on the playground.

This week we have revised the sounds:

m a s t d n i p o g

We have recognised, learned their sound, formed each letter and blended to read. The children are working super hard. We have some fabulous readers in the class who are really helping us to progress with our sound work. Ask your child to show you how to write/ say each sound.

Our clay hand activity has been a hit with the children making their own rangoli patterns on their hands.

Our Thursday ICT lesson was a hit and the children enjoyed their visit to the ICT room and learning how to hold and click the mouse accurately.

This weeks maths was all about one more/ one less. What is one more than any given number and what is one less. We used plates and cubes to show one more or less than an amount, number fans, and had great fun playing musical chairs when I always managed to put out one less chair than we needed! Oh dear!

On Remembrance Day we talked about why we had made poppies, thought about the soldiers who had died or been injured in war and held a two minutes silence. The children watched this beautiful animation. It’s worth another watch at home and further discussion.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04p4zsl

Our RE lesson centered around the story of creation. We marvelled at God’s Wonderful world and thought about beautiful thinds we have seen in the world. Rainbows were a popular choice, along with big waves in the sea and tiny, pretty flowers.

Our photos of our marshmallows around the fire have failed to download from our class  ipad. I will try to get them again for next week.

Have a lovely weekend everyone.

Looking forward to Monday already!

Hello!

A busy week back in Reception Oak Class this week. Lots to concentrate on including revising our sounds. This week we have revised:  m a s t d. We have practised recognising these sounds for reading, forming these letters, saying these sounds, thinking of words that start with these sounds and independently writing cvc words ( consonant vowel consonant )  starting with these sounds. To help with this at home it would be a good game to see who can think of 5 words beginning with one of these sounds.

Our writing area has been choc-a-block all week, much to my delight!

The children came up with some fabulous words to match our sounds… here are some examples…

Of course with Bonfire Night being on Thursday of this week we concentrated ourselves with learning about Guy Fawkes. We ‘talked around a picture’ of Guy Fawkes laying a trail of gunpowder underneath the Houses of Parliament. We got some super ideas, thoughts and language from the children including ‘ lurking, camouflaged and looming’ as they described how the picture made them feel, what they could see, what did they think was happening, who did they think it was.

Our activities continued to be based around the same theme with a Discovery lesson discussing a candle. What is it? Where might  you find one? What shape is it? What does it smell like? What does it feel like? What colour is it?  Taking an everyday object or an obscure object and talking about it is a great way to gauge your child’s understanding of the world around them,  which you may be taking for granted that they understand already,  as well as ensuring links are being made, and enabling the children to be exposed to a variety of language they may or may not have used before.  Try it at home – the conversations turn out to be rich with language, and enable any misunderstandings to be ironed out in a safe environment as you are simply discussing an object. Some of the language we gathered from the children included – ‘ We’ve got a candle at home on the table and it’s a rich crimson colour not boring like your white one!’ Fabulous – how often in a day would a child think or need to use such evocative describing words? These little activities turn the children, hopefully by the end of the year, if not during their Year 1 year into creative writers using a wide and rich language.

We played matching games with onomatopoeia firework sound words. Good reading practice and turn taking as well as fun making the sounds!

On Wednesday, instead of afternoon snack and play we visited the Merriman Garden at school. We lit a campfire and enjoyed toasting marshmallows for our snack. ( Those children unable to have gelatine enjoyed some tasty biscuits instead.) I will post the photos next week as they haven’t downloaded from the class ipad successfully at my time of writing this.

The children were able to tell me exactly what I  needed to do to build a fire – the children who have been to a Forest School nursery setting were particularly vocal – talking about pyramids of sticks / paper screwed into balls beneath the pyramid and to stand back from the flames! Lots of health and safety rules covered here!

We had a small world play ‘bonfire making station’ in the classroom this week too… it was received with mixed reviews as ‘ it’s not even real Mrs Bibby!!!’

Our role play area is currently a campfire/ camping area – the children are enjoying putting up tents – gathering around the campfire and telling stories – I’ve enjoyed hearing about lots of your recent family camping adventures!

Various firework pictures were created while we listened and recognised sounds from a firework night. We ended our session listening to Handel’s Music for The Royal Fireworks.

We used 2D shapes to create some firework pictures – this was helpful to teach names/ revise properties of shape.

Following on we sorted shapes too.

Our RE lessons are following a topic: God’s Wonderful World. This week we examined the word ‘ beginning’ and discussed its implications. We read and then watched an animated version of The Creation Story. The children are certainly interested and engaged when we have our quiet prayer time and light our candle. Our ‘ beginning of our world’ discussion enabled a full range of ideas and views to be discussed. The children listen well and understand that there are differences in each others understanding and beliefs. RE is such a key topic to enable the children to celebrate each other’s cultures and learn about the world.

We are getting ready for Remembrance Day in Reception and have learnt about the significance of the poppy and why we wear them at this time of year. Our class need lots of fine motor skills practice so we are sewing a class poppy and have used card to make a poppy display. The children had to rip the card and then stick to make their poppy. They found both of these activities really hard, They persevered but it highlighted how much work we need to do on our fine motor skills to enable their letter formation and then writing to be easy and enjoyable.

These are just some of the weeks activities and highlights. It’s great to be back – we’ve missed the children very much.

Stay well and we can’t wait to continue our learning next week!

Hi Parents and Carers,

I hope everyone remains well and you are all coping at home. Here is a snapshot of our Monday morning last week… these are the activities the children would have been doing for the first part of last week…

The children all made a blue heart for a school rainbow during our Harvest celebration which unfortunately we have missed as it was on Friday. I have added some links,  onto Seesaw,  of a video that was made of Mother Helen and Father Alistair celebrating Harvest with a bubble of children from Key Stage Two. Our blue hearts are visible on the screen! They represented water and the children managed to think of so many ways to thank god for how we depend upon and enjoy using water.

Here is a wall display of our Peepo work from last week. Under each coloured paper is a beautiful drawing of what each child can see from their bedroom window. They have chosen one particular aspect of their picture to have the peep hole showing. They were all very proud of their lovely work.

These two boys were so proud of their amazing building creations on Monday! I couldn’t not include them!

Keep safe and well and we look forward to seeing you back at school on Thursday 22nd October.

Hello! Staying with our baby theme we centred our learning around The Owl Babies by Martin Waddell – a familiar tale for all. We enjoyed the story , all children managed to sequence the story through pictures and match quotations from the story to the correct picture – the very beginning of learning how to do comprehension.

The children enjoyed our Owl Babies themed activities, working together to build nests for the baby owls…

Everybody painted their very own baby owl…

As well as deciding that Owls like to make their nests in big trees , like horse chestnuts … leading us onto finding conkers and using them for some number work – counting and finding out how many conkers would fit into various sized containers.

We had a series of owl pictures ready to cut and stick. The children practised their fine motor cutting skills and placed and arranged some impressive owl designs.

On the writing table the children thought of and wrote owl names … some really fun ones – they ranged from Flappy Flap and Fluffy to more serious owls such as Walter and Reginald! I wonder what stories that family have been reading?!!

As usual a range of construction toys were available for all sorts of wonderful creations. Working together the children manage to feed ideas to and from each other and make some super designs.

Lots of turn taking games enable the children to work together, be patient and build relationships with each other.

We have worked hard with numbers this week: recognising, ordering, counting, matching quantity to numerals, grouping, sorting, counting from a larger group, checking one to one correspondence skills, joining 2 sets of objects and finding the total along with knowing one more/ one less than a given number. We also looked at 2D shape and the children made their own AB pattern.

There were plenty more activities to complete this week including a very tricky pattern puzzle,  following patterns with the compare bears, floating, sinking and balancing with conkers in the water tray and of course more role play in our baby clinic.

More fun was had this week in PE – we cut our changing time by 10 minutes compared with last week – brilliant! We encourage the children to change independently, although of course help with buttons, zips, tights and so on. The children are all doing very well with their self help skills. At home, please encourage your child to get dressed/ undressed independently – start with getting into pyjamas and nighties. The children are all very determined and we praise any self help / dressing/ looking after their belongings highly – even when the children get dressed with all clothes inside out and back to front!  This week we had 1 grey school sock left over. All children were wearing 2 socks at the end of the day, so we were unable to re- unite it with its owner – if you are missing a sock just let me know! Once in PE we are learning about space, speed, direction and various ways to move. All the children are enjoying the lessons and we have some super sportsmen and women in the class.

During playtime all the girls joined in a hoop game – the children are having so much fun at school, and learning lots too! Thank you for all your support. It’s not easy to build relationships with each family, as we usually try to do, in these strange times but I hope your children are coming home exhausted, hungry and happy! They are all doing great things at school and you should all be very proud.  Have a super weekend.

Hello!

This week in Reception we have been ‘ taking a peek’ at the wonderful story Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet and Allan Ahlberg. It’s an old favourite and many of the children were familiar with the story which enables our learning to extend far and wide!

We joined in with the rhyming, spotted all the fairy tale/ nursery rhyme characters as we read. Recalled the nursery rhymes or stories the characters derived from as well as deciding on which character we would like to be in the story and acting / role-playing our favourite parts! Some of our already keen writers took to making name labels for the various characters in our  Each Peach Pear Plum small world play.

The children have been enjoying their new playground doing lots of chalking, climbing, sliding and cycling.

As the children are now mostly settled at school we are assessing them for a starting point for the prime areas of  the Early Years Curriculum – these include: Health and Self Care, Making Relationships, Managing Feelings and Behaviour, Fine and Gross Motor Skills , Speaking , Listening and Understanding, along with awareness of reading/ writing/ number and shape. We do this through observations during choosing time – setting up activities that will encourage and stimulate play covering each of those areas. As well as through teaching / questioning and directed tasks.

This week we have covered lots of number work and fine motor work – finding the right number of pegs to fit the holes in the wooden numbers, threading a certain number of buttons/ beads onto various strings/ pipe cleaners/ ribbons, playing snakes and ladders – a fab game for number recognition/ counting/ turn taking/ making relationships and  managing your feelings! Using tweezers to place the right number of tiny beads into each pot and playing noughts and crosses with a friend

We continue to assess during learning time on the carpet through directed questions such as counting altogether and then finding out 1 more or 1 less than a given number. All the children took part in a directed activity of writing their name and counting how many letters were in their name. We looked at which children had the longest and shortest names and how many people had 4 letters in their name and which number of letters in a name was the most popular in our class.

We started our new number and writing books. All the children took part in a directed writing and two directed number activities.

During circle time we looked at the letter I … we used it to talk about what we liked, what we could do and who we are.

I am …

I like…

I can …

after everyone had had a go at speaking and most importantly listening to our friends, we coloured in our own I.

We started our RE and PE curriculum this week – many apologies for any swopped clothing – it was a stressful afternoon – I hope you have all managed to reunite each others clothes via the WhatsApp group…. particularly the boys and their socks – they were all adamant that although they couldn’t find their socks that none of the left over pairs were theirs!

We learnt our class prayer and had some quiet time as well as some children volunteering to come to the front and lead the class in their own prayer.

Our class prayer  :

Thank you for the world so sweet,

Thank you for the food we eat,

Thank you for the birds that sing,

Thank you God for everything.

Amen

Our book bag system is up and running – as a reminder at the moment, the children will be bringing 4 books home, of their choice,  each week on their book bag day. Please remember to only bring your book bag on the day you change your books.( The day written on the cover of your yellow book.)  Our peg area is very small and we are unable to cope with extra bags or belongings. Please bring the minimum to school each day. A named water bottle and  a named coat appropriate for that days weather,  as best you can determine!

The children  have done lots of looking and peeking this week finding out new things, as well as role play and the usual building both big and small.

Thank you to all who have replenished our junk modelling stocks. We are quarantining each delivery for 72 hours and soon you will be seeing amazing creations coming home from your children!  We now have enough recycling to last us up until about half term 🙂 Thank you.

Next week we will be ‘ taking a peek’ at The Owl Babies by Martin Waddell, hopefully another familiar tales for the children that we can use to stimulate some lovely work.  

Have a lovely weekend. See you all on Monday!

We are all here! Everyone has now started in Reception and we are really proud of each and every one of them.  They have come in willing and ready and tackled each day with gusto and enthusiasm!

It’s been a second busy week settling in and getting started on our reading, writing and numbers!

This term’s topic is called ‘ TAKE A PEEK ‘ We are starting by taking a good look at ourselves…

We have made a birthday wall – showing when our birthdays are in the year…

All the children have managed circle times with our soft toys – Monday Monkey, Tuesday Ted, Wednesday Womble, Thursday Thread Bear and Friday Frog.

 This week has seen the children have a close look at their eyes in a mirror and have a go at drawing them and finding the correct colour for their eyes. The children managed to ask and answer questions regarding their eye drawings:  ‘ What is the most popular eye colour in our class? ‘ ‘ How many children have green eyes?’ and so on.

We have practised name writing everyday and would ask you to practice this at home too if your child is developing name writing skills.

Our portrait wall is complete now this week’s starters have arrived. Everyone painted themselves in their new uniform, chatted about what they liked best about it and all wrote their name for our display.

While one of us is busy working one to one on directed tasks with the children, the rest are busying themselves with the continuous provision activities in the classroom. These times allow the children to play, explore, try something out that we’ve talked about, build, make, paint, cut and best of all learn to share and play with each other. Here are a few photos of some of the children working independently.

Some of the activities on offer this week were:

During the Reception year we are looking for a set of characteristics that enable effective learning. It is true to say they are effective throughout life! They include: Keep on trying, having a go, joining in and concentrating, playing well, having your own ideas, choosing ways to do things, making good links, exploring new ideas, and being proud of your achievements.

I’m looking forward to the fun that will be had next week in Oak Class Reception already,  see you then!