Happy New Year and welcome back to school for the Spring term. I hope everyone enjoyed a peaceful Christmas time and managed a few pyjama days! Once again thank you all very much indeed for the very generous and amazing array of Christmas gifts for the teachers!  We were overwhelmed with your thoughtfulness, kindness and generosity. Thank you all very much.

Back to school business and out topic for the term is OUT AND ABOUT. We are starting by looking at seasons and the weather. Our first look is at WINTER. We have begun by each making a snowflake… following instructions, folding, cutting, unfolding all easier said than done, so we were very proud of the snowflakes everyone produced.

Our small world play took us to the snowy arctic where the children used their imaginations to make up some wonderful snowy stories and even an igloo- a particular mention to Iris here who very much enjoyed our frozen world.

Fine motor skills and counting were combined as the children challenged themselves to see how much snowy Lego they could fill the snowman with using the tweezers with a time limit. They then counted their results.

Our creative task encourage everyone to make a polar bear face for our wintry display …

Fun and fine motor had the children painting ice-cubes! Again easier said than done – no hands allowed to help – just the pant brush – ice is even more slippery than you think!

More number work – deciding on number bonds – choosing a piece of numicon, recognising its number value and then finding two more pieces that will match its size exactly. Now you know which two numbers can be used to make a certain bigger number! This numicon play builds to help the children understand value of number and adittion.

We have found out a little about the Inuit people who live in snowy, cold lands in the polar regions. We have learnt that the Inuits are nomadic people living across Greenland, Alaska and Siberia. We have watched a short video clip of an Inuit family building their igloo to protect them from a forthcoming storm.  Thank you to all who have provided a 4 pint,  clean, milk carton – our igloo building began with gusto but came to a halt when we ran out of special glue! We will resume building next week! We are happy to receive any more clean,  4 pint milk cartons! Thank you.

More snowy activities have included salty snowflakes which have a lovely rough texture and reflect the light – all will be added to our Winter display.

We have had stories about weather from Sam Usher – Snow. Rain and Sun and are continuing next week with more snowy stories.

Our role play area – including our igloo building has also been full of hats, gloves, scarves, ear-muffs and mittens to enable us to wrap up as we build our own igloo. The children thoroughly enjoy getting themselves all wrapped up !

This weeks sounds have been J V W X Y. All the children have practised saying, reading and writing our new sounds. Our new writing focus is an activity called Traffic Light Sentences, where the children choose a red, amber or green sentence to read and then copy. This enables them to understand as they write, that  they need to think of a sentence as a whole and that it is split into a series of words.

From this week everyone has a  ‘ reading book’   in their book bag. If your not sure which book it is please check the inside back cover of the yellow reading journal. This book is for the children to try and read to you.  It won’t be easy and will be time consuming. Please only embark on it when you have time to sit down and focus on this. If you are stressed or your child isn’t interested please don’t do it! It will put them off before they’ve even started. Even if they sound out one or two words in the book this is a start – you read the rest to them. They will find CVC words easiest – such as pig or bin. However frustrating the learning to read process is – please give lots of praise for any interest and willingness to have a go!   GOOD LUCK parents and carers!

That’s all for this week. Enjoy the weekend

The last week of your little ones’ first term at school ! Well done – you’ve all been brilliant. The children have settled, got to know each other, been learning how to manage their feelings, worked hard and played hard.

Our fairy story of the week was Hansel and Gretal… the children made pathways in various guises – sparkly water poured through amazing marble run constructions and stepping stone pathways back to Hansel and Gretal’s little cottage. The children have really enjoyed our fairy tales and understand that each has good and bad characters and that ultimately the good characters live …’happily ever after.’

Our number work has seen us pretend the gym mat trolley was a bus. We’ve counted the people on and off the bus – added 1 more passenger, a passenger has got off to make it one less and travelled far and wide on our bus from Wimbledon and Kingston all the way to the beach and South Africa. The children all enjoyed waiting at the various ‘stops’ and counting the children on and off the bus.  We’ve also consolidated our sorting focus – looking at groups of shapes, numbers and colour – mixing them up and re- grouping all of them by colour,  number or shape.

We have used numicon which are plastic pieces that represent numbers ( see the photo below) – they have the same amount of holes as the number they represent. The are colour coded too. The children learn numbers quickly using the numicon as its such a visual tool. This week we used it to add beads or seeds into each hole with tweezers mixing some fine motor work with numbers.

As usual our writing table was busy all week with Christmas card writing. We also wrote Christmas lists … Father Christmas’ sleigh needs to be big this year!

More maths combined some matching  skills and  fine motor skill s pairing socks! This helpful skill might come in handy when you are doing the washing! It’s really not easy for little ones but they all had a go. Our class member who persevered the most at this was Nate ! Well done Nate!

Our daily reading and writing has been complimented by some word puzzles and a fill in the missing sound activity. This is a great way to understand how the children are segmenting and remembering their sounds.

Thank you to Mio for her amazing number of the week – Number 8. A really fun and interactive Number Bag!

Of course we hadn’t forgotten it was the week before Christmas – our production lines have been in full swing making Christmas cards, tree decorations and snow globes,  which all the children have all worked really hard on.

Thank you for all of your very generous contributions to the Christmas party. The children looked fabulous and had a super time playing musical statues, the hokey cokey, musical islands and so on.

Mrs Mooney, Mrs Rainey and I have had a lovely term getting to know your children and are overwhelmed with the number of gifts you have dropped off at school! Thank you so much for all your support this term and your very generous gifts. We are looking forward to opening them and no doubt eating, drinking and smelling them! Thank you all very much indeed.

Wishing you all a very Happy Christmas and a peaceful ( and exciting) New Year.

Despite the title of this weeks blog, we have  focused on The Ugly Duckling!  Our activities included ‘ Hook a Duck ‘ recording  the duck numbers and small world play to re-tell The Ugly Duckling story. This story evoked some strong emotions in the children during circle time, they all felt sad for the ugly duckling and tried to think of ways to help or make him feel better.

At last we found time to finish off our gingerbread men – mixing, stirring, kneading, wrapping, rolling, cutting, baking and decorating… Oh and not forgetting eating – all in a days work for Reception!

We borrowed the super duper oven in the school kitchen to bake our gingerbread… and luckily none of our 30 gingerbread men ran away!

All the children then decorated their own gingerbread man with raisins.

And last but not least all got to enjoy our very own gingerbread man at snack time!

This week we have been learning the days of the week. We have learnt a song to help us remember them, read the days of the week and ordered them in our challenge books. I’ve been asking the children questions such as what is the day:  today/ tomorrow/ yesterday?  Thinking about the end of the week – the ‘ weekend’ and what different things we do on Saturday and Sunday to the rest of the week. The children often refer to a day as: ‘ oh it’s swimming day today’ or ‘ the roast dinner day’ – do name the day they are referring to for them,  to aid their understanding of time and sequencing.

Other activities have included timed number activities :

more pattern making …

The outdoor stage with it’s snowman backdrop has caused a surge of would be  West End stars to come up, choose an instrument and sing all of our Christmas show tunes!

As term is coming to an end the class PE skills have developed considerably with excellent listening, understanding, hand/ eye coordination, controlled gross motor skills and a growing ability to play in teams.

Christmas card writing – this has been fabulous with the children choosing to write hundreds of recycled Christmas cards to friends and family. The cards have really inspired everybody to get writing!

All this Christmas card writing has gone hand-in hand with our new Post Office role play area. The children have helped decide what we need in our role play and described many of the roles that can be played out in a post office! They are writing letters and cards, buying stamps, posting their letters, collecting, sorting and delivering them!

I forgot to send the tricky words sheets home on Friday – many apologies – they will come home on Monday. Here’s a copy if you are keen! Some of them duplicate what you already have in the pot but there are some new words. Please take a look at them over Christmas – play snap, a memory game or matching game.

Our Rapunzel towers are up and looking good as a back drop to our class Christmas tree .

We have our class Christmas party on Wednesday and school breaks up for Christmas on Friday at 2pm!

Wow what a week in Reception Oak Class! Our star studded snow- people put in 3 brilliant performances on Monday for the school and Tuesday and Wednesday for parents. We were very proud of how well our little ones handled sitting so smartly waiting for their turn and joining in all the songs. There were lots of words and actions to remember. Our little ‘ snow piece’ went off well, thank you to all who provided the FABULOUS costumes and came along to support our snow- people! We couldn’t have done it without you.

With much of the week taken up with the Christmas show in the hall, the children enjoyed getting back to some familiar territory with activities in the classroom. Our fairy tales continue with The Gingerbread Man, The Elves and the Shoemaker and some adapted tales which made the children laugh.

Our classroom activities followed on from our stories : Everyone enjoyed using the playdough to decorate the gingerbread men for our fine motor work.

In our number work we were rescuing elves from deep water and checking the amount we had rescued, then recording our findings on the clipboard…

More fine motor work and shape recognition carefully cutting out the shapes to use to match to the shapes shown on the gingerbread people. The children are very good at shape work – we are extending the depth of their knowledge asking ‘ How do you know?’ questions.

‘Yes the front door is a rectangle, but how do you know this?’  The children need to be able to explain : ‘ ..because it’s got 4 sides and I  know it’s not a square because the sides on squares are the same length, rectangles have two long and two short sides.’  Number and maths work at school is very much geared to not just how much you know but how or why you know it !  The greater depth knowledge enables the children to be really confident  with their numbers or shapes enabling them to use them in a range of contexts. Do quiz your children every now and then!

Our literacy work is still very much immersed in understanding story: predominantly how stories are made up. We are concentrating on various elements: Fairy tales all begin with : Once upon a time.. and end with happily ever after. The beginning, middle and end of story – introducing characters, a problem and a solution. The children are really enjoying re-telling stories they know well and making their own story maps, boards and identifying the various story elements –  the characters/ the problem/ the solution and so on.

In this activity the children had to work together trying to find out the missing parts of the story – they really enjoyed this activity and many of them finished the activity and then headed straight over to the writing tale to  make more cards for the missing parts of the story. Fantastic independent learning.

Storyboards for The Gingerbread Man

With all this story writing we mustn’t forget our sounds and reading work : The children have been re-capping phase 2 sounds in various guises and learning more and more tricky words … I will give out some more tricky words for the pots before Christmas (Happy Christmas!!!)  – I hope the children are having a look at them from time to time and playing snap or a memory game with them.

As a tenuous link from The Elves and the Shoemaker we have all been learning how to tie our laces this week… this is easier said than done. We’ve all had lots of go’s with varying degrees of success! On a similar note, we are encouraging all the children to be able to do their coats up independently. The added element of gloves and hats in recent weeks has added a good 5 minutes onto each end of each playtime and it would be great if the children could do their own coats up.:-)

Our Rapunzel towers have been fun to make with the children carefully drawing bricks all around their towers before cutting and sticking what they needed to make Rapunzel and her hair!

Creativity has continued with the start of gingerbread men making! Due to not quite enough time last week, this will continue into next week. The children are measuring, mixing, stirring, kneading, rolling and cutting. Look out for the results in the next weeks blog!

We were treated to a performance of Japanese music lead by Hiromi and Anna’s mummy this week. We saw and heard a Japanese flute, a Japanese guitar and heard a variety of Japanese music styles. It was fantastic. A huge thank you to the Japanese families in our school who provided us with this lovely treat.

Of course it was the start of advent – we have an advent calendar at school – a different child is chosen each day to find the right numbered pocket. We have a beautiful advent candle that we are burning during story time each day and the children were so knowledgeable explaining:   ‘ Advent is when you are waiting for Christmas’ ‘ It’s 25 days and that day is Christmas.’ ‘ Advent is when everybody gets ready for Christmas – writes their cards, puts up a tree and decorations and writes a letter to Father Christmas.  They all had a really good understanding of what advent represented.

Our weekly number bag is still proving a popular part of the week!

Exhausted after the end of 3 performances – this was the best we could do picture wise of our snow class!! Have a good week!

Hello, the weekend is here at last!

Here is a flavour of what’s been happening in Reception Oak Class this week. We are still immersed in fairy tales and now have the whole class joining in with our mantras:  ‘ Once upon a time..’ and …’ happily ever after!’  Our beds for the Princess and Pea are looking good on display. Each child made their own bed for the princess and chose how many mattresses to add to her bed.

We have started learning about Rapunzel this week, we’ve been building her tower and practising plaiting her hair! – not an easy task!

The porridge making for the 3 bears continues  in different guises – using varying sized spoons and bowls. Counting how many scoops we need and following instructions.

The children really enjoyed Jack and the Beanstalk – we read three or four different versions and they enjoyed all the variation. At choosing time they went off to re- tell their own version of the story using the small world Jack and the Beanstalk.

Our maths beanstalk was a big hit !

Our number work continued with the children using post it’s to number the pages of our fairy tale books. They all had a go and worked carefully and methodically, numbering each post it and sticking their page numbers in the correct order! Great number writing and ordering of number practice.

A real highlight for me this week was listening and watching the children play  ‘ Who am I ?’ with fairy tale characters. They thought of brilliant questions, they listened to their friends carefully and deduced the fairy tale character their friend had thought of. I was really proud at how grown- up they all were: taking turns, waiting patiently, listening, asking appropriate questions! A definite game to play at home or on car journeys with any category – not just fairy tale characters!  Some of the great questions were:

Does your character eat grass?   ( the thinking behind this was it could have been the cow from Jack and the Bean stalk )

Is your character lonely? ( Rapunzel in her tower)

Does your character like eating porridge? ( Goldilocks)

Not only have we been immersing ourselves in fairy tales we have been busy writing letters of invitation to home, inviting families to come along to our Christmas Show. Thank you to everyone for bringing in the stamped addressed envelope. Here is a picture of the children at the postbox today,  ready to post their letters.   As luck would have it the postman came along to empty the box while the children were  there! Fingers crossed you will receive your invitation on Saturday or early next week!

Have a great weekend all – the Christmas fun is about to begin!

Once upon a time…

Oak Class learnt all  about Fairy Tales! This week we have started with Goldilocks and The Princess and the Pea.

Our role play has miraculously turned into the three bears cottage – 3 of everything !

Lots of table laying, sitting on various sized chairs and resting in three different size beds!

The three different sized wellie boots have proved a big hit for budding members of the bear family!

The water area has been a hive of activity all week with porridge making. Too hot, too salty, too cold, too runny, too lumpy and so on !

Everyone has had a go at constructing a lego 3 bears cottage …

and written their own story map for Goldilocks and the Three Bears. A story map , tells the story through a series of pictures. Oak class made some truly magnificent story maps with so much detail!

Here’s an example story map and an idea of the children’s work below…

Our number work has been all about 1 more or 1 less than a given number, with a tad of estimating thrown in too.

The writing table has been busy with character colouring and story map writing.

We have all made a bed for the princess from the story : The Princess and the Pea and counted our mattresses carefully.

Our outside classroom has changed to a garden centre which has proved very popular. Our tricky words this week were ‘ to’ and ‘into’ … the rest of the week was spent on The Big Question, circle time, RE – special members of our family-  and we started practising for our Christmas Show!! Please, please have a go at singing the words that went home on Tuesday with the children…I can’t wait to hear all the children singing loudly on Monday!

Have a great weekend.

Hello!

This week we marked Remembrance Day. Our assembly taught us about Armistice Day. We learned that the peace treaty to end World War One was signed on the 11th hour, on the 11 day of the 11th month in 1918. We understood that people buy and wear poppies to remember those soldiers who died or have been injured during war times. We also learnt how poppies grew in abundance in the fields where the soldiers had been battling and had since become a symbol to remember the soldiers. Each class made a poppy wreath to bring to our prayer table in the hall during assembly. Our class listened carefully and respectfully during our assembly.

At 11am our school stopped for the two minute silence to remember those who died or were injured. Reception class watched the following video, which is exactly two minutes long, during the silence.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/watch/poppies

The rest of the week concentrated on fire!

The children enjoyed making the firework pictures so much last week that we continued this week…

We thought back to our visits from Firefighter Brian and Blue Watch from New Malden Fire Station. We did circle time to discuss how brave, strong, fit and healthy you would have to be to be a fire fighter. Most of the children decided they would be able to take on the role and responsibility!

We used our problem solving skills to build our own bonfires …

We dangerously dug around in tissue paper flames ‘ saving’ and ‘ rescuing’ numbers – once rescued we checked which numbers we had saved from the flames…

and we  practised our fine motor skills putting out roaring flames in the water area…

We carried on with our shape work – using 2D shapes to make symmetrical patterns and choosing the right shapes to make pictures…

The children really enjoyed making and following patterns using the multi- link too.

This week we learnt tricky words:

‘so’ ‘no’ and ‘go’  and we sang our tricky word song:

The children have been playing lots of games to help with their reading. Recognising the letters and blending the sounds to make words. They loved digging about in the sand finding real and alien words; along with an interactive whiteboard game matching pictures to the given word.

It was lovely to see you all at Parent’s Evening last week. Parent’s Evening is always a rush so please do ask any other questions you have. Many parents asked who their children played with and this picture below is a super example of how small children all play together ; they play with the other children playing what they would like to have a go at too – boys and girls together – having great fun!

A lovely picture of some Oak Class members working and playing together. They are apparently all bundled into a car off on holiday!

As a final note,  we had one letter left on the carpet regarding our Christmas Show,  and we can’t work out who it belonged to.  Just to confirm for the parent without the letter – Reception class are all going to be snowmen. Please don’t go to any unnecessary expense. White t-shirt, white leggings, a hat and a scarf are perfect. To be brought into school during the week of 25th November in a named bag please.

That’s all for now, thank you so much for coming to parents evening and being so supportive. It really was lovely to chat to you away from the melee of the morning rush!

Hello !

This week has been all about colours, patterns, black history and solving our class mystery.

We learnt about the Festival of Diwali,listening to the story of Rama and Sita defeating the ten headed demon. The children watched a video clip of a Hindu family celebrating Diwali and learnt about the importance of light during the festival. Rama and Sita were guided home to safety by rows of lamps and the lights are used to worship Lord Ganesh and Goddess Lakshmi to bring wealth, prosperity, wisdom and good health. The children enjoyed colouring their own rangoli patterns and trying to make them with the coloured sand.

The children went on to create this wonderful paper chain Diwali lamp – they shared the knowledge they had learnt to make this colourful wall display.

We continued from the beautiful Rangoli patterns to a shape pattern game on our interactive whiteboard and a shape / pattern puzzle. Nearly everybody completed both games successfully and we were so impressed with all the children’s 2D shape knowledge. We rolled our pattern work into fireworks and learnt about Guy Fawkes and made some super firework pictures too.

The children enjoyed sorting the shapes floating in the water tray and sorting shapes to find what they needed for the shape faces.

An unexpected highlight of the week was the children working in a big team together to create this ‘ pathway’ from one end of the classroom to the other. They collaborated, took turns, helped and made a super team. Well done Oak class – teamwork isn’t easy!

This week our tricky words were ‘ we’ ‘be’ and ‘me’. We learnt ‘b’ ‘h’ ‘f’ and ‘ff’ for our sounds and practised blending the sounds we have learnt previously.

A large part of the week was taken up with learning about Mary Seacole  – a black lady who travelled from Jamaica to England,  to volunteer with the nurses to help the soldiers in the Crimean war. At that time, Mary Seacole was turned away from joining the white  nurses. She made up her mind to help anyway and took a tent and medical supplies by herself to Crimea and nursed the sick and injured soldiers. An inspiring story that we have all enjoyed learning about. Look out for our Mary Seacole portrait  at parent’s evening in the hall next week! We are all so proud of our hard, careful work creating her amazing portrait.

Last but not least we solved our fingerprint mystery! Having gathered the fingerprints from adults found in our school we used our magnifying glass to discover if their prints were whorl, arch or loop prints. We narrowed down our suspects to the loop fingerprint and our detectives worked out that the mystery fingerprints either belonged to Mrs Morgan from the school office or our headteacher Mr Quinn…

Mrs Morgan was called to our class to explain herself – she did so, included alibis and was believed by our class detectives, without the need to call her solicitor!! Thankfully she was then allowed to go home! Mr Quinn wasn’t available defend himself so was convicted in his absence. Since our mystery has been solved Mr Quinn has been interrogated by most of class as and when they have seen him around the school! He won’t live this down in a hurry!

Have a great week, look forward to seeing you next week at parents evening.

Hello!

I’m writing this just after England’s defeat to South Africa in the rugby world cup final.  Commiserations to any of the English supporters and congratulations to any South African supporters!

Back to what’s important (!) and this week Oak Class have had to become detectives, since there has been a mystery to solve. Luckily enough our role play area changed into a police station over half term  and the children have embraced their duties, particularly enjoying using the torches and magnifying glasses to help solve the mystery.

Mystery fingerprints have been discovered in numerous locations around our classroom – on the door, the walls and even the computer. Teams of Oak Class detectives have been out and about around the school, with Mrs Mooney,  collecting fingerprints from adults in our school. We have all recorded our own finger prints – working out whether we have whorl, arch or loop. We are going to use our magnifying glasses to match our mystery prints to those we collect. Once we’ve narrowed down some suspects, the interviews will begin!

Oak Class Police Station

Our sounds this week have included ‘u’ ‘e’ and ‘r’. The children are ALL working so hard to recognise, write and remember each sound. This week you should also have received a tricky word pot. This is full of those words that just won’t sound out – such as ‘ to’ ‘ no’ ‘ he’ ‘she’ and so on. Unfortunately these words just have to be learnt so any exposure is great exposure! Choose a tricky word from the pot and ask your child to spot it while your reading to them. Play snap or a memory game with the words in your pot. Tricky words are usually occur quite often in text and will need to be able to be recognised and by the end of the year, hopefully written.

Investigating a tricky word problem…

The classroom has been a hive of activity as usual including a small world police town from which some excellent stories have evolved.

To assist our number work we have had locks and keys … matching a numbered lock to a key with an amount of spots on has proved a popular yet tricky way to discover that particular amounts match particular numbers…

Disguising the baddies has also been a popular choice!

The Oak Class Detectives ready to start their police work.

And of course another successful number bag of the week

I hope you all had a good half term. The children have returned raring to go and are loving learning through their play! Next week we are concentrating on black history, along with getting ready for Remembrance Day.

Signing off with the mystery print – all to be revealed next week once investigations have come to a conclusion!  Have a great week!

The last week before our first half term!

Mrs Warner popped in to speak about her role as the Deputy Head of our school, she explained to the children her daily tasks and they were particularly interested on how long she spends chatting on the phone!

This week we have continued on from our healthy fruit and vegetables to looking at The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

The children had a range of activities to support the story. The writing table was busy all week with children practising forming their letters and other Hungry Caterpillar themed activities.

We are still encouraging all with fine motor skills, as ultimately we are striving for comfortable, firm, effective pencil grips to ensure each child is able to form their letters with ease. Playdough work, to hole punching leaves ( just as if the hungry caterpillar has nibbled through them!) all help to develop the flexibility and muscles in the children’s fingers.

Our Shape Space and Measure work concentrated on pattern making – repeating patterns. We tried 2/ 3 and 4 colour pattern work.

The whole class creative task this week was to make a hungry caterpillar name. Everyone enjoyed the cutting / sticking and writing the sounds for their name. We are very nearly there with all being confident name writers now. Well done all – keep practising at  home too please!

The definite highlight of the week ( well for the staff anyway! ) was a visit from Blue Watch from New Malden fire station. The children enjoyed hearing all about the day to day tasks involved in being a firefighter; from going to the gym together, daily training, community visits and being first on the scene at emergencies.  They kindly allowed us all to sit in their fire engine and examine lots of the equipment they carry from torches to masks and special protective clothing.  They even let the children put the siren on !

Thank you so much for all your pasta donations for our Harvest celebrations. All the pasta donated was taken to the Wimbledon Guild to support local homeless people. We were very touched with all your support both via your donations and support at St Matthew’s Church. A big thank you to the mummies that helped us walking down to church. The children were all exhausted and a walk to the church and the Harvest Festival was a tall order at the end of the half term. Well done to all involved.

Wishing you all a restful and safe half term break. See you next week!