A very warm welcome to the very first blog post of the new school year.  It’s hard to believe that we are already 4 weeks into the new term and what a busy 4 weeks it has been!

We are incredibly proud of how well the children have settled into their new classroom and, for many, their new school.  We have all been busy getting used to the routine, exploring the indoor and outdoor classrooms and making friends.  We even joined the rest of the school for our first whole school assembly earlier today!

In particular, the children have been getting used to sitting on the carpet and demonstrating their speaking, listening and understanding skills.  Last week, our spotlight stories focused on the wonderful Julia Donaldson series of ‘What the Ladybird Heard’.  These stories helped us to think about the key listening skills (known as Phase 1 phonics) that we will need to use when we start our phonics lessons next week.

Images from amazon.co.uk

Have a look on YouTube if you would like to revisit any of these.  This recording shows the pages one by one, so you could turn off the sound and read the story yourself if you would like to:

This week, our Spotlight Stories helped us to think about special things and how we might feel if we lost them.  We especially enjoyed the stories of Dogger by Shirley Hughes and Where Are You Blue Kangaroo by Emma Chichester Clark.

Images from amazon.co.uk

You can revisit these here:

We also read the story of Ruby’s Worry by Tom Percival which helped us to think about how we might feel if we lost something special.  We learnt a new word – anxious – which is another word for worry.

We have made a class book of our special things which we will keep in our prayer corner so we can share these photos with each other whenever we like.

Have a lovely weekend everyone and see you on Monday!

Mrs Mooney and I would like to say a huge thank you to all the parents and children of Oak Class. We are both so thankful to you all, for allowing us to care of your little ones on this first big step into the world that is school. We have learnt so much about them (and ourselves) and feel we know, care and love them as you do! Thank you for all your support and the overwhelming gifts. They are not opened yet but we will look forward to opening and enjoying them over the summer. Enjoy a safe and happy summer; enjoy the children, do some fun things but know that it’s important for them to get bored and work out how to entertain themselves too!  Take photos and precious memories,  as from now the primary school years will fly by.

THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH

Mrs Bibby and Mrs Mooney X

A few photos from this week at school :

I’ve put together a few ideas of activities to try over the holidays – you don’t need to do any of them but if you find a day that you are stuck – try one of the ideas – the children will enjoy it – I promise! 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/14ObfsvdBFRF3TuRlgVlK4UcNGAee5vew3j1872yziWU/edit?usp=sharing

DON’T FORGET THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO DO OVER THE NEXT 5 WEEKS IS READ EVERYDAY !!! – Enable your child to read for 5 or 10 minutes to you and then you read to them. Make sure the book you read to them is too tricky for them to read by themselves. This enables your child to hear new vocabulary, different sentence construction and opens up their literary world! Enjoy sharing reading time with each other.

Hello! Only 3 more school days to go until your little ones move on to Year 1! Despite our extremely disrupted year the children have all made good progress in different areas and so much of it is down to all the time, effort and hard work you put in, especially while we were home schooling.

The children are ready to move on, they met Miss Leutchford this week and had a lovely afternoon getting to know here and her them. I will hand them over with copious notes about each child – including all their little foibles !

This week we have continued working on capacity:

Space …

Always lots and lots of reading …

We have made some beautiful moons and learnt how a spacecraft lands on the moon along with what the surface of the moon is like.

We’ve used our moon rocks from last week to establish the ‘ moon rock’ capacity of various containers…

Sequenced some stories ..

Used our tweezers and fine motor skills to rescue some stars.

A good read is Oliver Jeffers ‘ How to Catch a Star’

Counted/ sorted /added / balanced the chairs..

Carried on out stories with our rocket ship …

Our small world moon surface proved a popular activity …

Some children made their own shop..

We did sooo much writing!

And finally enjoyed a lovely sunny sports day!

For those of you heading off on holiday this weekend, thank you for a fabulous year, especially for all your support – Mrs Mooney and are are very grateful and have really enjoyed looking after your lovely children. Please, please read to your children over the holidays and ask them to read a little bit to you each day. Play lots of board games – snakes and ladders and Uno are fantastic for so many skills the children need and lastly please get your child to write something like a shopping list,  a note or a postcard once a  week. Five weeks is too long with no writing, reading and number practise and it will help them so much if you start Year 1 having done these things over the summer.

Have super summer holidays! I look forward to giving the children a wave when they are in Year 1.

Thanks

Erin XX

BLAST OFF!

This week we have left earth and travelled in a rocket to space! We started the week meeting Fizz’s friend ‘ Ziggy ‘ an alien who lives in space! The children love Ziggy and have spent much of their choosing time making more space aliens to be friends with Ziggy!

To go into space we would all need space helmets and space boots – we made sure we were prepared…

Our small world play was also rocket themed and armed with their space knowledge the children made up some super space stories through their play.

When our rocket reached the moon we collected some moon rocks…

Our number work this week has been Based around capacity – from the capacity of different Shaped bottles to the capacity of a car/ bus/ train…. football stadium even!

Our blast off puzzle was appropriate and popular this week.

We’ve a so practised making words …

designing rockets with the 2D shapes …

Designing our own moon surface…

and working together to achieve an outcome! Great team work Reception!

Our main focus this week has been our assembly. Thank you for learning the words with your children – they did a fabulous job! Usually parents would be invited in to see the assembly but that was not be this year so we have videoed it for you!  One to keep I’m sure!!

The office will be sending the assembly video out with a special password.

Last weeks magic carpets looking great on the wall.

Have a good weekend everybody X

Hello!

Our magic carpets have been flying  all over our world, into space, outer space and into imaginary new worlds. In music this week we used the tambourines and triangles to join in with the song : A Whole New World. the children really enjoyed this song!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeDYx7Tkc7I

Our choosing time activities have included:

Along with RE , The Big Question, ICT , Assembly practice, reading, writing, number, PSHE,  Circle time and Art; once again we’ve had another very busy week!

Our trip to Little Street was a great success. Thank you for all your support and help on this. The children were well prepared and all managed the 40 minute journey and had delicious lunches with them!  They had a super time. General consensus was the dressing-up area was the best part! Here are just a few photos from our trip.

We have started to practice for sports day – however that may look this year – we will find out soon –  and the children are working well in teams together and practising new skills. Skipping is proving the trickiest!  The flat races are the most fun with everyone running this way and that to try and win!

I have sent home a few words for the children to practice saying out loud for our assembly. Please help them to practice at home. ( Clemmie and James I’ve not forgotten you – you are doing a different job!) )

If you have any plastic 1 or 2 litre bottles such as a lemonade bottle please can your child bring it in next week. Thank you, have super weekends.

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!

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!