Author: Emma Kendrew

Tidy week 2

This was our second week using the book Tidy by Emily Gravett. This week we practised orally retelling the story using actions to help us remember.

Art
This half-term, our featured artist is Alexander Calder. Calder was most well known for his sculptures and mobiles.  We explored photographs of his artwork, discussing the different shapes, colours and how his creations made us feel. Inspired by Calder’s moving mobiles, we designed and made our own using plastic bottles, paint and glitter. They are now hanging from the classroom ceiling for the wind to catch and make them move.

Sports day reminder
Sports Day is on Tuesday at 9.30am. Please ensure your child comes to school wearing PE kit. They should also wear a t-shirt in their team colour. As the weather is expected to be warm, please make sure your child brings a named sun hat and has sun cream applied before they come to school.

Meet your new teacher
On Wednesday morning, the Reception children will spend some time getting to know their new teacher and exploring their new classroom. This is an exciting part of the transition process and helps the children feel more confident and familiar with their new learning environment.

Thank you to all the parents and carers who joined the transition Zoom meeting. We hope you found the session useful. As always, if you have any questions, comments or concerns, please don’t hesitate to speak to me.

Commotion in the Ocean

“There’s a curious commotion

At the bottom of the ocean

I think we ought to go and take a look…….”

So we did!

We thoroughly enjoyed continuing to read this rhyming story this week. We retold the story using props, helping to develop our language and storytelling skills.

We also created our own sea creatures using a large sheet of paper we had to use our observational skills to draw a range of different sea creatures.

In our maths work, we have been exploring the language of capacity in the sand and water areas. We have been learning to describe containers as full, empty, or half full.

‘My water bottle is full. It’s at the top!’

‘My bucket is empty, it’s all gone on the flowers!’

Help at home: Why not encourage your child to practise this at home by filling different containers with water during bath time or helping in the kitchen?

Commotion In the Ocean

This week our story was Commotion in the Ocean by Giles Andreae and illustrated by David Wojtowycz.

It is about lots of different sea creatures- from jiggling jellyfish to snapping sharks. We had a great fun reading about the different animals and finding out where some of them live.

‘Penguins live in the cold, in the snow.’

‘I like the octopus because my mummy tickles me too!’

We will continue our learning with this book next week looking at capacity and things being full or empty.

A school trip to Nell Bank

On Friday, we enjoyed a wonderful trip to Nell Bank. We explored the importance of recycling, went on a bug hunt and helped create homes for baby badgers. The children were enthusiastic, curious, and eager to share their knowledge throughout the day. A big thank you to all our helpers for coming with us on the trip and to Margot’s mummy and Holly’s daddy for coming too.

Mind Mate

This week we had a visit from Mind Mate, they talked about the 6 basic emotions.

We had great vocabulary to talk about them, due to our Feelings First sessions. We could name each of the different feelings felt by Riley in the movie ‘Inside Out’ and we even had some strategies to help her overcome them.

We call the first one starfish breathing and it is something we use a lot in Early Years to help us.

Great job everyone!

The Night Pirates

This week, we’ve started exploring The Night Pirates by Peter Harris.

Using our story map, we’ve enjoyed retelling the story with actions and expression. We’ve heard some fantastic pirate impressions and not forgetting our new pirate names.

Maths
This week, we introduced the children to Rekenreks. We continued to develop our subitising skills by using our “fast eyes” to quickly identify the number of beads shown. Rekenreks help children explore the structure of small numbers and build confidence in recognising quantities without counting.
We learnt that all of the beads should start on the right-hand side. This is known as the ‘ready position’. The children practised using the ‘pause (think), place (one finger), push (the beads)’ method. We always make sure we’re only using one finger when carefully pushing the beads.

Phonics
Now that we’ve reached the final half-term, we’ll be revisiting and consolidating all of our phonics learning in preparation for Year 1.

Have a happy and healthy weekend.

The Train Ride

We have really enjoyed reading our story this week. When we read it we noticed that the rhythm sounds like a train moving down the tracks.

In the paint we looked at the tracks on the wheels of our toy cars. Some of them had very different patterns on them some stripey, some zig zagged. We used them to create printings. This helped to develop our arm strength for writing.

We will be continuing with this book next week and will be looking at what happens when we send our trains down  different types of ramps.

Have a happy and healthy weekend.

Staying Safe

This week, we’ve joined  in with school’s safety themed week. We’ve learnt all about staying safe in lots of different situations.

In school, we explored how we can stay safe in our classroom and outdoor areas. We also set up our very own Forest School area in our garden, Year 5 and 6 came to see us in big Forest school and reminded us how we need to use the equipment to keep ourselves and each other safe. Sarah has been great at making the rules simple enough for us to remember them. Thank you to the big kids for helping us stay safe.

We also talked about the important adults who help to keep us safe, as well as the ways we can help to look after and support each other.

To finish the week, we watched a road safety video and discussed different types of road crossings and how to cross roads safely.

Reminders

We will return for our final term on Monday 01 June.

Mad about Minibeasts

This week our focus book is Mad about Minibeasts by Giles Andreae.

We have looked really closely at spiders this week, we went on a spider hunt and found lots of spiders and some spider webs. We were very careful not to touch and break the webs because they are so delicate.

We talked about spiders and how many legs they have and made some in the playdough area.

“Spiders have 8 legs, they can run so fast.”

“It’s got a big body and so many legs!”

Help at home: Go on a minibeast hunt and see how many spiders you can find? Where do they like to make their webs?