Hello, we’ve had another busy week in Reception Oak class – continuing with our trains and travelling out and about. We started the week with a survey of how we travel to school and discovered Harry comes in a Bat-mobile! I wasn’t expecting that! We learned how to do a tally to record the numbers of children that came in different ways. The children went on to draw a picture of how they come to school and we now have a pictograph on the wall depicting their varying modes of transport!
The classroom has been a hive of activity – the children had various vehicles with different wheels / tyres and used them to make tracks using paint. Simple but popular, useful for gross and fine motor skills.
Our paint tracks soon became pieces of modern art!!
Being able to sort and explain similarities and difference is a key goal in Reception, whether with colour/ pattern / number – this week we used vehicles.
The children challenged themselves with the task of designing their own vehicle and trying to make it. Two good examples of their work here:
Tricky to see in this photo but all the children have made a helicopter! In our story The Runaway Train by Benedict Blathwayt the hero of the story : Duffy the train driver has to catch up with his runaway train – he tries lorries, horses, bicycles and boats but manages to catch up his train with a helicopter! The children loved the excitement and drama in the story – mostly relayed through the pictures as the text is simple. They were all taken by the helicopters so we decided to make our own!
Our junk modelling work station is always busy – the conversation, sharing, listening, understanding and of course helping each other find the end of the sellotape is all invaluable for the prime areas of our Early Years curriculum. The children used their imaginations to make wonderful creations that they are always so proud of. Please keep filling our brown trunk outside the classroom with your clean recycling!
Our topic continued with not only knowing about vehicles but also how to fix them. This week we have had a bicycle maintenance station. Everybody has become fully involved in the challenge using real spanners to undo all the nuts and bolts on the bicycles. Wheels have been taken off, stabilisers detached and reattached, saddles and handlebars adjusted. The children love the independence of having real objects to use in their work. It’s always great to see how able and independent the children are with real life situations.
In our number work we have been identifying, comparing , understanding bigger and smaller numbers in relation to each other and finding the difference.
In PE we focused on forward rolls to varying degrees of success – we will persevere next week! Re saw the children identifying God’s animals and noticing the differences and similarities: large/ small/ tall/ short/ thin/ fat/ hairy/ furry/ smooth/ with a shell/ slow/ fast/ legs/ no legs and so on. After much discussion the children ‘ designed’ their own animal … this was fun and we got some fantastic pictures for our RE journal!
Te children have had fun learning the short and long oo sounds. Short as in ‘book’ long as in ‘ moon’ along with practising their tricky words. We’ve all had individual reading sessions and group reading sessions.
Thank you to all who managed to bring in a favourite book from home this week – I’m sorry it was such short notice. We had a lovely circle time discussing why we liked our book – talking about characters/ setting/ and how the story ends. The children that had non-fiction books enabled us to see a contents and how to use it to find out information you needed to know or were interested in. We managed to take a picture of each child with their book and photocopy the cover to use for our favourite book display. We interviewed the children and wrote down why they liked their book to add to our display.
Have a great week!