Hello and welcome to this weeks Oak Class Reception blog.

It’s been a busy week with all the usual bits and pieces – this weeks sounds were ‘ g’ ‘o’ ‘c’ ‘k’ and ‘ck’! Hopefully your child has been showing you the action we learn for each sound to help us remember it! Along with counting, recognising and matching numbers to amounts and finding missing numbers.

In PE we are currently practising, negotiating space, while on the move, skipping, hop-scotch, hopping, side-stepping, balancing and throwing and catching. Our RE topic this term looks at what is special in our world. What is special to us individually, what is  special to all of us and how we should look after firstly our special things, moving on to our immediate environment and then our local community area and ultimately our world.  The children are very thoughtful and contribute some insightful ideas for us all to think about and understand.

We have been busy welcoming many visitors to our class this week! We have been jolly lucky.

Dr Jarman, one of our lovely mummies, came to visit us. She brought along her very important black medical bag,  told us all about her medical instruments and what she does while she is at work. With some live demonstrations – I had my blood pressure measured- and was relieved to find it was within the realms of ‘ normal’, while poor Mrs Mooney found she’d hurt both arms with one being bandaged and the other placed in a sling!

All the children got to hold and examine all of Dr Jarman’s very special medical  equipment. Question time was rather,  a catalogue of recounts,  of each child’s last visit to a GP!!

Following Dr Jarman we were also visited by Brian the Firefighter. Brian really enjoyed his visit to our class – he explained carefully what he did while he was at work and how he helps people. He reminded us all about having a smoke alarm in our house and to test the batteries once a week. The children enjoyed his funny stories of rescuing cats from trees and being nipped by a pet chinchilla while he was rescuing it from a house fire!  He also brought a large black bag with him. His bag contained his uniform. He invited the children to try it on – they commented how hot it was to wear and just how heavy the boots and helmet were. Brian explained when the fire alarm sounds in the fire station he has to be fully dressed in his uniform and on the fire engine in less than 1 minute!

 

Our third visitor was Mrs McCall , an Occupational Health Professional and also a St. Matthew’s mummy. She wore her special uniform and told the children all about how she helps people get moving!  She explained, how through using everyday activities she helps people develop, recover, improve, as well as maintain the skills needed for daily living and working.

Our final visit of the week was from Mrs Rainey’s husband: PC Rainey!  He explained the role of a police constable and how the police help us in our communities. The children have enjoyed all our visitors this week, with fingers crossed more to come next week!

The rest of the week has seen Oak class refining their fine motor skills, investigating sizes, healthy eating and taking turns.  All the activities based around fruits, vegetables and herbs.

The children enjoyed squeezing citrus fruits into the water – fantastic to work those muscles for holding a pencil ! ( Incidentally this has made the classroom smell wonderful all week! – We might do this again ! )

They have used spoons to dig out seeds and flesh from tomatoes, kiwi’s peppers, cucumbers and the like. Again another great activity to improve muscle development in little hands.

A fun activity was to try and write with a carrot dipped in paint – everyone had a go with varying degrees of success!

We have sorted foods into healthy, unhealthy and ‘ not too bad’ ! We have understood it’s good to eat lots of fruit and vegetables and less sweets and chocolate!

Looking at sizes we all had a go at ordering our fruits and vegetables from smallest to largest.

The Shopping game proved a hit this week, with excellent turn taking in action.

Jacket potatoes, cocktail sticks and chopped up fruits were an excellent staring point for designing our very own Mr Potato Heads. All the children had fun making their own version!

Anytime we’ve had left this week has been taken up with preparing for Harvest Festival next Friday 18th October. Please do come along to St Matthew’s church to join in our school Harvest celebrations.

If you examine our photographs below, I wonder if you can guess which bible story Reception will be depicting during our service…

The clues are : Pairs of animals and a beautiful rainbow!

As an answer to a question to the Blog,  ( thank you for all the positive comments by the way !) our class representatives on the School Council are Izabella and Teo, voted by their class friends. They will attend meetings a few times a term to find out any changes or ideas the school has. They will report back the information to the class and then represent our feelings/ new ideas back to the school council. The School Council is run by our head boy and girl – Sam and Henrietta in Year 6.

Hope you are managing a good weekend, despite the rain!

Check back next week to see what Oak Class Reception have been up to.