We continued examining the daily weather this week and decided what our favourite weather was like. Lots of articulate explanations as to why snow would be a favourite weather as well as wind! Snow and wind were the two most popular types of weather in Reception class this week.

We have continue our pattern work and  used shape and / or colour to make new even more complex patterns. The children are all excellent at creating and describing some quite complex patterns.

 

Our stories this week were all from The Elmer series by David McKee. Elmer encounters a different weather type in each story. He also has a patchwork which the children recreated in collage – some children made a pattern for their part of the collage.

 

In our outdoor classroom we changed our painting medium to clingfilm instead of the usual paper – a lot of fun for all  and fabulous for motor skills having to change the mark making pressure to suit the clingfilm surface.

 

We took our weather writing into the world of poetry this week hearing and writing rhyming words and rhyming phrases.  Hearing rhyme is tricky have a go at home with your child – start off easily with cat. mat, rat etc and then move on to trickier words – we did rain, sun and snow. We also chose one of our diagraphs ( two letters making one sound – ie ‘ oo’ and thought of and wrote more rhyming words – moon, soon, spoon, noon and so on.

We added to our weather display and weather centre by creating some snowflakes. This was such a popular activity and very effective as the children had to read instruction, follow the instructions, have the fine motor skills to execute the instructions and of course the patience and management of their feelings if it didn’t  go to plan. It’s really lovely to see how the children have matured so much over the year and now have the capacity to manage their feelings in these types of situations.

 

 

 

As it was all about the weather we quickly made a rain stick each and used it to make a sound pattern – we followed this up by using the instruments to make sound patterns in our music lesson. We did video the children playing and then in their groups performing their sound pattern but I can’t get the videos to attach to the blog – sorry – I  will try and tag the children in them on Seesaw instead so you can see them. They are great – we have some very serious performers in the class!

 

 

Lots of writing and reading practice goes on every day in Reception – here are some very hard working writers!

This week we trialled ‘ mix-up’ which used to be a staple of the Early Years curriculum. We have scheduled ‘ mix-up’ twice a week for this term – a short session where the children in nursery and Reception can ‘ mix-up’ and have a go at the activities available across Nursery, Reception and an outdoor area. Here are some of the children having lots of fun during ‘ mix-up’ :

 

 

 

 

 

 

Before Easter Reception class did a 90 mile ‘ pilgrimage’ replicating part of the Pilgrim’s way from London to Canterbury. We did this as our Lent project where we ask for sponsorship to raise money for the Lunch Bowl project in Kibera,  which provides a lunch for hundreds of children who live in the Kibera slums,  and for Wimbledon Guild, helping people in need nearer to home. To meet our 90 mile target all 30 of us walked 3 miles over the week preceding Easter ( a mile a day for 3 days ) around our school playgrounds and field. If you would like to make a donation to the said charities as sponsorship for your child taking part in the walk, please send in your donation in a sealed enveloped marked ‘ LENT PROJECT’. Thank you very much.

Have a lovely long weekend. I’ve missed my deadline to get the Blog out to you via Mrs Saunders in the office so will post it onto Seesaw so hopefully you will still be able to access it.

Thanks for all your support again. The children are all having a fine time!