Hello and welcome to Oak Class Reception’s blog.

Each week I will post a few photos of the children learning and playing. I will focus on the weekly themes, sounds, letters, numbers and stories.

This week we have all been settling in to the new school routine, as well as getting to know our friends.

All the children have managed to paint a self portrait of themselves, have a go at writing their name independently, admired and spoken about their new uniform, and managed to tell us a little about their summer’s.

Mrs Rainey has set up a ‘ cafe’ in our outdoor classroom and the children have been busy making salt dough food, creating signage and organising, chairs/ plates/ cups/ waiters and the like.  Creating fantastic opportunities to collaborate and get to know each other.

Our stories this week have all been starting school stories: 

More to follow next week as we have the final 5 children staring on Monday.

The children have been busy in the classroom playing schools in the role play area, building with lego and the big community blocks outside, riding the school bicycles,  and investigating all the activities on offer in the classroom.

The children have attended their first assembly and managed beautifully to sit and listen in the big assembly hall. They were also lucky enough to have a tennis session with coaches from The All England Tennis Club. Each year the AELTC vist our school, play some balance games and ball skill games with our children and ‘ talent spot’. If they spot an emerging talent ( a child with fantastic body awareness and control, with great hand eye coordination ) they invite the children to free tennis coaching at the club ‘ for life’ ! This is a scheme to find and train up the next generation of tennis players for England. Over the years many children from our school have been selected and enjoyed the free weekly tennis coaching. We are still waiting to spot a St Matthew’s alumni at Wimbledon though ! We will obviously let you know if your child was spotted by the coaches! They usually pick one or two from the whole school – we will see!

For information – our Reception Class meeting will take place on Wednesday 25th September – a chance for you to ask questions and hear how we are going to teach the children to read, write and develop number fluency. Please check your emails for the time of this meeting.

General class logistics:

• Please line up in front of the shed in the morning and say good bye to your children in the line.
• Please bring any recycling and fill up our big brown trug outside our outdoor classroom – we fly through cereal boxes and the like!
• Please put a named pair of wellies for your child in the other big brown trug outside the outdoor classroom.
• Your children know to place their water bottles on their named water bottle spot on the window sill and their PE bag stays on their peg until half term.
• Please only bring your book bag in on the day named on the front of your yellow book. NOT EVERYDAY. 
• Book bags go in the boxes on top of the trays. There is an in box and out box! Please don’t forget to take your book bag home when it has been changed. The children are currently bringing 4 books of their choice home a week. As term progresses we will add ‘ reading books’ into the bag for them to read to you.
• Please contribute crackers/ breadsticks/ biscuits/ chedders etc to our class snack scheme every so often. This means there is NO NEED TO BRING A SEPARATE SNACK EACH DAY. 
• Any letters or bits and pieces the children have completed and want to bring home will either be in their tray or book bag. We also have the green going home box for larger items. Please check your child’s tray and the going home box daily! Please feel free to use the trays for party invitations and thank you letters too.

Sorry for all these logistics – once in place – the year runs very smoothly!

Thanks so much for your support – please pass on the details of this blog to all the parents/ carers in the class. Also I will post a weekly overview above the book bag boxes each week outlining the main activities /objectives of the week. Please can someone take a picture of it and put it on the class whatsapp group as some parents won’t be dropping off and picking up and might miss it.

Enjoy this super sunny weekend!

Looking forward to next week already!

Mrs Bibby 🙂