Wow what a week in Reception Oak Class! Our star studded snow- people put in 3 brilliant performances on Monday for the school and Tuesday and Wednesday for parents. We were very proud of how well our little ones handled sitting so smartly waiting for their turn and joining in all the songs. There were lots of words and actions to remember. Our little ‘ snow piece’ went off well, thank you to all who provided the FABULOUS costumes and came along to support our snow- people! We couldn’t have done it without you.

With much of the week taken up with the Christmas show in the hall, the children enjoyed getting back to some familiar territory with activities in the classroom. Our fairy tales continue with The Gingerbread Man, The Elves and the Shoemaker and some adapted tales which made the children laugh.

Our classroom activities followed on from our stories : Everyone enjoyed using the playdough to decorate the gingerbread men for our fine motor work.

 

In our number work we were rescuing elves from deep water and checking the amount we had rescued, then recording our findings on the clipboard…

More fine motor work and shape recognition carefully cutting out the shapes to use to match to the shapes shown on the gingerbread people. The children are very good at shape work – we are extending the depth of their knowledge asking ‘ How do you know?’ questions.

‘Yes the front door is a rectangle, but how do you know this?’  The children need to be able to explain : ‘ ..because it’s got 4 sides and I  know it’s not a square because the sides on squares are the same length, rectangles have two long and two short sides.’  Number and maths work at school is very much geared to not just how much you know but how or why you know it !  The greater depth knowledge enables the children to be really confident  with their numbers or shapes enabling them to use them in a range of contexts. Do quiz your children every now and then!

Our literacy work is still very much immersed in understanding story: predominantly how stories are made up. We are concentrating on various elements: Fairy tales all begin with : Once upon a time.. and end with happily ever after. The beginning, middle and end of story – introducing characters, a problem and a solution. The children are really enjoying re-telling stories they know well and making their own story maps, boards and identifying the various story elements –  the characters/ the problem/ the solution and so on.

In this activity the children had to work together trying to find out the missing parts of the story – they really enjoyed this activity and many of them finished the activity and then headed straight over to the writing tale to  make more cards for the missing parts of the story. Fantastic independent learning.

Storyboards for The Gingerbread Man

With all this story writing we mustn’t forget our sounds and reading work : The children have been re-capping phase 2 sounds in various guises and learning more and more tricky words … I will give out some more tricky words for the pots before Christmas (Happy Christmas!!!)  – I hope the children are having a look at them from time to time and playing snap or a memory game with them.

As a tenuous link from The Elves and the Shoemaker we have all been learning how to tie our laces this week… this is easier said than done. We’ve all had lots of go’s with varying degrees of success! On a similar note, we are encouraging all the children to be able to do their coats up independently. The added element of gloves and hats in recent weeks has added a good 5 minutes onto each end of each playtime and it would be great if the children could do their own coats up.:-)

 

 

 

Our Rapunzel towers have been fun to make with the children carefully drawing bricks all around their towers before cutting and sticking what they needed to make Rapunzel and her hair!

Creativity has continued with the start of gingerbread men making! Due to not quite enough time last week, this will continue into next week. The children are measuring, mixing, stirring, kneading, rolling and cutting. Look out for the results in the next weeks blog!

We were treated to a performance of Japanese music lead by Hiromi and Anna’s mummy this week. We saw and heard a Japanese flute, a Japanese guitar and heard a variety of Japanese music styles. It was fantastic. A huge thank you to the Japanese families in our school who provided us with this lovely treat.

Of course it was the start of advent – we have an advent calendar at school – a different child is chosen each day to find the right numbered pocket. We have a beautiful advent candle that we are burning during story time each day and the children were so knowledgeable explaining:   ‘ Advent is when you are waiting for Christmas’ ‘ It’s 25 days and that day is Christmas.’ ‘ Advent is when everybody gets ready for Christmas – writes their cards, puts up a tree and decorations and writes a letter to Father Christmas.  They all had a really good understanding of what advent represented.

Our weekly number bag is still proving a popular part of the week!

Exhausted after the end of 3 performances – this was the best we could do picture wise of our snow class!! Have a good week!