It has been a busy couple of weeks in Reception with rehearsals for the Christmas show now in full swing! We are very much looking forward to performing for you and we hope everyone has now received their tickets. Despite being busy with rehearsals, we have still found plenty of time for lots of wonderful learning through play both indoors and outside. In particular, there has been lots of work on our construction sites resulting in some rather impressive creations – you might even recognise one or two of these!
We have especially loved playing with the marble run this week and it has encouraged us all to work together and listen carefully to each other’s ideas. Listening to each other is not always easy but, thankfully, we are all so kind and friendly in Reception, that we understand how important it is to do this. We now have a kindness tree in our prayer corner and whenever someone is kind to us, we can add a leaf onto the tree for them. We already have several leaves on our tree of course!
Our kindness tree isn’t the only place in the classroom where green leaves have been appearing! It has been with great excitement that we have watched our beanstalks start to grow, with tiny shoots peeping up through the soil at first, followed by long green stalks and lots of leaves. We used a ruler to measure them and some of them are already 15cm tall! More photos to follow…
Our growing beanstalks inspired some of our maths work: we ordered numbered beanstalks and then added the correct number of leaves to each. We had to do lots of careful counting and checking, being sure to stop at the ‘stopping number’ each time. Peeling the sticker leaves off the sheet was also great practise for our fine motor skills!
We also worked with our carpet partners to match numerals to quantities on our fingers and asked questions such as, what is the quickest way to show 5? Show me 4 – can you show me another way to show me 4? Use your fingers to show me 2! Remember, do not count, show me the amount!
We have also been developing our understanding of the concepts of ‘more than’ and ‘fewer than’ with a little help from Stanley and Gruffy (our class puppets) who can often be found arguing over the sweetie jar!
In our phonics lessons, we have been busy learning more of the set 1 sounds. We now know all of these sounds:
https://studylib.net/
The sounds g, o, c, k, u and b are all bouncy sounds. The picture prompts help us to remember both the sounds that these letters make and how to write them.
https://victoriadockschool.org.uk/
And we have been practising our Fred-talk; blending and segmenting the sounds in CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words. We have been listening carefully for the initial, middle and final sounds.
We hope everyone is having a lovely weekend, see you on Monday!
When we arrived at school on Monday morning, we noticed something rather unusual – a beanstalk had grown in the classroom over the weekend and it had grown so much that it had started to grow through the ceiling tiles. Not only that, but there was a very large shoe dangling through the ceiling at the top of the beanstalk!
We wondered how on earth the shoe had got there and who it might belong to?
We thought it might belong to Mr Quinn or Mr Norris or even one of our dads.
But we all agreed this was unlikely as none of these people had been in school over the weekend – as far as we know!
We decided to read a story about a boy called Jack (and a beanstalk) to see if this might give us any clues…The version we read was by Nick Sharratt and you can re-read it here:
The next day, Mrs Saunders came to tell us that a parcel had arrived for us from Amazon and, inside, there was a letter and a bag of magic beans!
Photo of letter to follow…
We set to work planting our magic beans and, thanks to the song we learnt for our Harvest festival, we already know what a seed (or bean) needs in order for it to grow successfully (sunshine and water).
We weren’t entirely sure how long it might take for our beanstalks to grow – here are some of our guesses!
In the end, we watched this time lapse recording and discovered that it might take around 25 days for our beans to grow:
In our maths lessons, we learnt that it is not only objects that can be counted but also sounds and actions. We used a small drum to count beats and we tried really hard to ‘do not count, hear the amount’ when doing so. By coincidence, we also had a music lesson with a visiting teacher who taught us how to play a djembe; a type of drum originally from West Africa. The teacher taught us how to play a four-beat rhythm, hitting the drum on the first beat and counting the next three. We loved this lesson and we were so impressed by the children’s musical skills! We didn’t manage to get a video of the drumming as Mrs Mooney and I had our hands full joining in, but we did get a video of the children learning the rhythm by walking and clapping it, just before we had a go on the drums (have a look on Seesaw for this).
In our phonics lesson, we learnt the sounds t, i and n. Do remember when practising these sounds that it is not tuh or nuh!
The picture prompt for t is t-t-tower and t is a bouncy sound. The handwriting prompt is ‘down the tower, across the tower’.
The picture prompt for i is i-i-insect and i is also a bouncy sound. The handwriting prompt is ‘down the insect’s body, dot for its head’.
The picture prompt for n is nnnnnnet and n is a stretchy sound. The handwriting prompt is ‘down Nobby, up and over the net’.
Have a lovely weekend everyone and see you on Monday!
Welcome back to the second half of the Autumn term. We hope everyone had a lovely half term holiday and a huge thank you for coming along to support us at our Harvest Festival just before the break. We were so proud of the children for standing up and singing their song in front of the whole school and all the parents – weren’t they brave? Here is the song we sang, just in case you would like to a repeat performance at home!
Back in school, we have been busy learning about the festival Diwali which is celebrated by Hindus all around the world over five days. This year, the celebrations took place during the half term break.
Our Spotlight Story this week was the story of Rama and Sita which tells the tale of how goodness and truth triumphs over evil. In the story, Rama and Sita triumph over Ravana, the ten-headed demon. We took this opportunity to talk about whether demons and monsters are real or not and we all agreed that they are just something we find in stories or in movies and not something that we need to be scared of – please do reinforce this at home if you feel it necessary.
You can revisit the story of Rama and Sita on the CBeebies website. We also found out how this festival of light is celebrated; with diya lamps, special clothes, Mendhi patterns, Rangoli patterns, Diwali cards and lots of sweets! And we met Jessica who explained how she celebrates Diwali with her family.
During Diwali, Rangoli patterns are placed on the ground outside homes to welcome the Goddess Lakshmi. She is the goddess of wealth and she is thought to bring good luck.
Lots of different 2D shapes are used in rangoli patterns and we learnt about the names and the properties (i.e. the number of sides) of the most common ones: circles, triangles, squares and rectangles. Can you spot any of these shapes in the rangoli patterns below?
We discovered that there are shapes all around us; in the classroom, in the playground and even walking down the street! Why not go on a shape hunt around your house or in the park? Can you find any of the shapes we have learnt? Here is a powerpoint to help you support your child with their learning of these shapes – please do go over this together if you feel they are unsure – thank you!
This was also a very important and exciting week because we started our phonics lessons! We learnt the sounds that the letters m, a, s and d make. We will be learning new sounds every week, so please do make sure you practise these at home with your child. If you are unsure about how to say any of these sounds, please do check this video below. One of the main things to remember is not to drop your jaw when say a sound like m – say mmmmmm, instead of muh. I hope that makes sense!
Ruth Miskin Training
Whenever we learn a new sound, we learn 3 things: the sound itself, a picture prompt which helps us to put the sound into context and a handwriting saying (linked to the picture prompt) which helps us to remember how to form the letter correctly when writing.
The Read Write Inc flashcards that we use have the letter on one side and the picture prompt on the other. When the children see the letter side, they say the sound. When they see the picture side, they say the picture prompt, e.g. Maisie, mountain, mountain.
This video explains this further and also shows how we use the picture prompt to form the letter correctly. Please note, the picture prompt and handwriting prompt for the letter m is the same.
For the sound a, the picture prompt is ‘a – a – apple’ and the handwriting prompt is ’round the apple, down the leaf’. The sound a is a bouncy sound, while m is a stretchy sound.
For the letter s, the picture prompt is ‘ssssss-snake’ and the handwriting prompt is ‘slither down the snake’. The sound s is a stretchy sound.
For the letter d, the picture prompt is ‘d-d-dinosaur’ and the handwriting prompt is ’round the dinosaur’s bottom, up and down its neck’. The d sound is bouncy.
To help your child practise the sounds, you could play a simple game of memory: use 16 pieces of paper and write the letters on each so you have 4 cards with m on them, 4 with a on them, 4 with s and 4 with d on them. Place them face down on a table and muddle them up. Take turns to turn over two cards at a time. What are the sounds? Are they the same? Keep them if they are the same, turn them back over if not. Carry on until all the cards have been picked up. The winner is the one with the most cards.
Or you could play a sound hunt game – how many things can you find in the house that start with m…or a…or s. If you are in the car, remember ‘I spy’ is always a brilliant way to practice hearing and distinguishing initial sounds in words.
If you have bath crayons, try writing these on the tiles at bath-time and give your child a spray bottle to spray the sounds as they say them. This is also fun in a driveway or on the pavement with chalks.
If your child is already recognising these sounds confidently, why not have a go at writing them correctly.
We hope everyone is having a lovely weekend – if you are out and about enjoying Bonfire Night and firework displays, please stay safe – we had a good chat about how to do this yesterday (listen carefully to your grown-ups, stay well away from bonfires and fireworks, only grown-ups can light fireworks, keep pets indoors, wear gloves if you hold a sparkler and keep it away from your face). Have fun and see you on Monday!
This week, we have been continuing to think about our feelings and read another Tom Percival story; Tilda Tries Again. This story helped us to think about how we might feel and what to do when things feel difficult and you can revisit it here:
We also talked about how important it is to think about other peoples’ feelings and not just our own. It is not always easy to know what someone else is feeling and we may have to look carefully for clues such as facial expressions or body language (for example, what does it mean if someone has their hands over their ears?).
We read the story of Be Gentle by Virginia L. Miller and looked very closely for clues that showed us how the little black kitten felt. There does not seem to be a video of this story on youtube but it is one of the stories I recorded for our storytime blog (please scroll down to the Jan 15, 2021 post).
We have also been working hard in our maths lessons to practise our subitising skills. This is when you look at a group of objects and say how many there are without counting. This is a very useful mathematical skill and it helps us to begin to understand how numbers are made up. If you would like to know more about subitising, please have a look here – please note, you do not need to download this app – I just thought the explanation of subitising was useful!
Welcome to the very first blog post of the new school year. The aim of the blog is to keep you up-to-date with all the exciting learning that takes place in our Reception class each week. Do check the blog regularly to find out which Spotlight Stories we have been reading, which letter sounds we have learnt and which maths concepts we have mastered!
We have been so impressed with how well the children have settled into their new classroom. In particular, they have been getting used to using their listening skills when on sitting on the carpet. To help us think about our listening skills, our Spotlight Stories have included the wonderful ‘What the Ladybird Heard’ series by Julia Donaldson. There are four books in the series and, of course, we had to read each one!
You can revisit the stories in these youtube clips:
And we read several of the Tom Percival stories which deal with a range of emotions. I would highly recommend this series. We read Ruby’s Worry, Ravi’s Roar and Milo’s Monster which deal with worries, anger and jealously respectively. You can re-read these in the videos below. We also read a lovely new one called ‘The River’, also by Tom Percival, which uses the changing flow of a river as a metaphor for our changing emotions. I couldn’t find a video of this book, but here is a picture of the front cover:
This week, we have immersed ourselves in the magical world of mermaids! First, we read an old favourite; The Singing Mermaid, by Julia Donaldson, which you can revisit here:
You can also listen to Cerrie Burnell talk about her mermaid book, along with several other of her recommendations for books about kindness and empathy here:
This one was by far our favourite of the three and I was so impressed by how captivated the children were by the ideas within this story. It was also the longest of the three stories and their engagement in it, along with their understanding of the concepts, showed me just how ready the children are for Year 1!
The following day, after we had read the story, I made a rather startling discovery in the water tray when I arrived at school in the morning. A plastic bottle had been left there with what appeared to be a scrunched up piece of paper inside. “It’s a message in a bottle!” several of the children cried and, indeed, that’s exactly what it was. “Pirates use messages in bottles because they don’t have postboxes” and “they put the paper in a bottle so it doesn’t break in the water and the bottle floats”.
We carefully pulled the message out of the bottle and here is what it said:
We were all very concerned about Freya and many of us set to work writing messages to the pirates to give the mermaid back! We found several bottles and put our messages in them and then left the bottles in the water tray over night. The following morning, they had disappeared and in their place was another bottle with another message:
After much discussion (including suggestions to build a submarine, drill a hole into the bottom of the pirate ship to sneak on board at night and leave chocolate coins instead of real gold coins!), we have decided we will hunt for treasure next week and hopefully manage to find 100 coins to give to the pirates. Watch this space to find out what happens next!
Towards the end of the school year, each class at St. Matthew’s shares their learning from across the year by putting together a class assembly. The whole school is invited to watch the assembly along with the parents and carers from that class.
Our class assembly took place on Friday 17th June and we could not have been prouder of the children. They pulled off a really wonderful assembly! Each and every child took their turn to stand up and say their line in front of the audience, showing just how brave they are, and remembered to use big, but not shouting, voices. Parents, thank you so much for preparing the children at home and for helping them to learn their lines.
And thank you for coming along on the day to support us – we absolutely loved sharing all of our learning with you – and here are the reviews you gave us, apparently!
After the excitement of our class assembly, we returned to our learning in the classroom and have been busy reading some wonderful Spotlight Stories.
In our Picture News lesson, we learnt about the search engine ‘Google’ and how it can be used to help us find pictures on the internet. We found out that not everybody feels represented by the pictures that appear in Google searches and that the company wants to make some changes to make sure everyone feels included.
We talked about what it means to be included, how it feels to be left out and the sort of words we can use everyday to make sure everyone feels included.
We read the story ‘My World, Your World’ by Melanie Walsh to help us understand that even though we do not all look the same, we can always find things that we have in common.
On Wednesday 22nd June, it was Windrush Day and we learnt about Dame Floella Benjamin who was not treated very nicely, and did not feel included, because of the colour of her skin when she moved to England in 1960. We listened to this CBeebies Bedtime Story to find out more about her early life:
We also returned to our Splish, Splash, Splosh topic, reading the delightful story of ‘Wee Granny and The Magic Bag and The Pirates” by Elizabeth McKay and Maria Bogade. The only video I could find of this story was on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=603739453564477) – so, my apologies to anyone not on Facebook! I actually borrowed this book from Raynes Park library, and will return it shortly, so do go and borrow it if your child particularly enjoyed it!
In the story, Wee Granny has a magical tartan bag that solves each and every problem they encounter. When they miss the ferry, Wee Granny pulls a rowing boat out of her tartan bag and when they meet some pirates searching for their buried treasure, she produces a metal detector from the depths of her bag!
amazon.co.uk
I brought in an old tartan bag to show the children, so they could better understand what tartan looks like. As the bag is so old, I hadn’t looked inside it for several years and half expected to find an old train ticket or two or perhaps a bit of change. But, instead, I reached deep down inside and pulled out an adult-sized metal detector! We couldn’t believe our eyes or work out how the metal detector could have been inside the bag! The only explanation we could come up with was that this bag must be magic too! The magic didn’t stop there: next I pulled out a pirate treasure chest, filled with treasure and pirate clothes, and a pirate ship complete with steering wheel and pirate flag! Ever since then, the classroom has been overrun with pirates; sailing the high seas and searching for treasure. Let’s hope they are friendly pirates!
We hope everyone is having a lovely weekend, see you on Monday!
What a wonderful week we have had! It was Languages Week here at St. Matthew’s and each class chose a language to learn more about. In Reception, we decided to learn about the hindi language. Although hindi is spoken all around the world, it is one of the main languages spoken in India so we set out to find out more about this amazing country; where it is, the animals that live there, a famous building there and of course, some of the delicious food that is eaten there!
Of course, we just had to take a trip on our magic carpet to find out what India looks like but, as we soon discovered, it is a country of very different landscapes! We also realised that if we were to take a trip to India at this time of year, we might very well arrive in the middle of a rainstorm, as it is monsoon season!
We read the delightful story, ‘Desert Girl, Monsoon Boy’ by Tara Dairman to help us find out more.
We loved the ending of the story where the boy and girl meet and dance around the fire together (and many of us predicted that this might happen!). We wanted the children to experience the hindi language a little more and what better way to do so than through music and dance…
First, we rewatched one of our favourite dances of Gene Kelly ‘Singing in the Rain’ in the 1952 movie…
I explained that this film was made in the USA in a place called Hollywood. We then watched a clip from a famous Bollywood film with, you guessed it, people singing and dancing in the (monsoon) rain! The children absolutely loved it and asked for it to be played over and over again! Here is the track we watched:
Next, we watched a video that taught us some of the dance steps:
And then, we had a go ourselves! Here is a screenshot of a video of us dancing – you can find the full video on Seesaw – isn’t our dancing amazing?
Finally, we worked together to make a poster which we shared with the rest of the school at an assembly on Friday.
We hope everyone is having a lovely weekend, see you on Monday. Namaste.
Our spotlight story this week was another ‘Splish, Splash, Splosh’ adventure: the delightful story of Mr Gumpy’s Outing by John Burningham which you can revisit here:
There are 12 characters in the story, so we used a large, empty egg box (with spaces for 12 eggs) as Mr Gumpy’s boat to help us retell the story. As we went through the story, we put each of the characters into the empty spaces, thinking about how many spaces had been filled and how many were left. You might like to have a go at home – don’t worry if you don’t have all the different toy animals – you could use bottle tops or buttons or anything else you have that will easily fit into the egg sections. The best part of the story is when the boat tips into the water and, of course, this is a fun part to retell with your egg box and its contents.
Next, we wondered if we could have a go at retelling the story in the water tray. I asked the children if they thought an egg box would make a good boat and several were quick to point out that cardboard is probably not the best material to use for a boat as it “breaks in water”. We decided this is because cardboard is not waterproof and absorbs water. We had a think about the sort of materials that are waterproof and decided that plastic and metal might be better. And indeed, Mrs Mooney told us about travelling to Ireland on a car ferry that was made of metal.
https://www.irishferries.com/
We don’t have any metal in our junk modelling area, but we do have plenty of plastic, so we set ourselves the challenge of designing and making our own boats thinking carefully about the different 3D shapes we could use to bring our designs to life.
We then headed into the outdoor classroom to test out our designs in the water tray. The children used all sorts of impressive scientific vocabulary (e.g. float, sink, test, absorb) and questions (I wonder if, what if I, how can I get it to…) as their boats set sail. And, of course, they had to check their prediction that cardboard breaks in water – surprising themselves with just how quickly it does so. They were also fascinated with how difficult it is to create a submarine…
We also learnt another ‘special friends’ sound: ‘oo’ as in zoo, moo and, of course, poo! Here is the picture prompt and saying that goes with this sound:
We hope everyone is having a lovely weekend, see you on Monday!
This week, we read the story of The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister which helped us to think about what it really means to be a good friend. After much discussion, we decided that it is important to think about what other people are feeling and not just to think about ourselves. We also decided that the Rainbow Fish was happy at the end of the story because he made the other fish happy and, when you make others happy, this can actually make you feel happy too!
Mr Quinn reminded us in his assembly this week that, at St. Matthew’s, we always remember to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Matthew 7:12, Luke 6:31).
You can revisit the story of The Rainbow Fish here:
Next, we read the story of Grumpy Duck by Joyce Dunbar. This story also helped us to think about friendships and, in this case, the sort of words we should and should not use when others want to play with us:
Churchill County Library
At the end of the story, when all the animals play in the rain together, a beautiful rainbow appears overhead. The illustration inspired us to have a go at painting our own rainbows. There was, however, a small problem as Miss Cronin could only find red, yellow and blue paint! Fortunately, we have some expert colour mixers in Reception who were able to explain that we could mix these three colours, which are known as primary colours, in different combinations to create the missing (secondary) colours we needed! We were amazed to discover that if you mix the two primary colours nearest each other on a rainbow, you can create the missing colour in between!
We even tried mixing the colours straight onto the paper which helped us to see the missing colours appearing…
In our phonics lessons, we learnt two new special friends. The first was ‘igh’ which is actually a trigraph or, in other words, a single sound represented by three letters. The sound is pronounced in the same was as the word I, as in I am and you find it in words such as night, light, bright, knight, etc. The saying that goes with this sound is ‘igh, fly high’:
The next sound we learnt is also a special friends sound – this time, another digraph. It is ‘ow’ and is pronounced in the same way that you would say ‘oh’ when surprised. It can be found in words such as blow, slow, snow. Please note, although ‘ow’ can also be pronounced as the sound you might make when hurt in words such as clown, brown and down, we have not learnt this yet. For the time being, we are just focusing on the ‘oh’ version which was very helpful this week when we wanted to write the word ‘rainbow’ in our retelling of the Rainbow Fish story!
Here is the saying for the ‘ow’ sound:
We hope everyone is having a lovely weekend and see you on Monday!
