Reception Class News

Next week

Posted on Friday 01 July 2022 by Mrs Wood

Sports day
Tuesday 05 June at 9.15am
Your child needs to come to school in their PE kit and wearing suitable footwear.
Please could you ensure your child has a named water bottle and a cap/hat at school; it would also be useful if you could apply sun cream before your child comes to school.

Tropical World
Wednesday 06 June
Your child needs to come to school in their school uniform.
They’ll need a packed lunch and named water bottle.

PE
Thursday 07 June
Your child needs to come to school in their PE kit.

This week’s bible story

Posted on Monday 27 June 2022 by Mr Roundtree

Daniel and the Lions Den: Daniel 6 (Omit verse 24 for younger or sensitive children)

Read the story of Daniel (omit verse 24 for younger or sensitive children)

Daniel was captured, along with many more of God’s people, and taken to live in a foreign country. In this country, they had different traditions and customs and it was not acceptable to worship God. But Daniel chose to continue serving God. Even though it meant that he was risking death, Daniel knelt down and honoured God by praying three times a day.

When the king discovered that Daniel was breaking the law by praying to God, he had Daniel thrown into a den of hungry lions. God stood by Daniel and rewarded his unwavering commitment to righteousness by protecting him from being eaten by the lions.

 

Reflection:

We’re going to have a little think about this story now and what we could learn from it about telling the truth.

Have a think about these questions:
Why did the other servants not like Daniel?

Why didn’t Daniel bow down and worship the king instead of worshipping God?

What do you think you would have done if you had been Daniel?

Can you think of a time when you have stood up for the truth in a difficult situation?

Is it ever OK to tell a lie?

Daniel believed in something so strongly that he was willing to risk everything – even his life – to stand up for that truth. In the story, God honoured him for his truthfulness and saved him from the lions. This sets us a good example to try to stand up for the truth on all occasions and (if appropriate) to know that God will be with us in that decision to tell the truth. It might be easier to tell a little lie on occasions, but one lie often leads to another and this can often mean that lots of people get hurt in the process. It would be good to aim to be like Daniel and to tell the truth on all occasions!

 

Prayer
Dear Lord,
Thank you for the example of Daniel.
Please help us to be brave enough to tell the truth on all occasions and help us to know that you will be with us when we find that hard to do.
Amen.

Ahoy there!

Posted on Friday 24 June 2022 by Mrs Wood

Our focus book has been ‘The Night Pirates’ by Peter Harris. On Monday, we found a note at the back of the book. The note said:

Look carefully outside and you will find…

We looked outside and found a bottle buried in our sandpit with a letter inside. 

We talked about the skills/qualities we would need to join Tom on an adventure. Here are some of the skills/qualities that the children came up with:

  • brave
  • good listener
  • strong
  • clever
  • perseverance
  • quick
  • sneaky

We then had a go at writing our letters to Tom. We talked about using  ‘Dear’ or ‘To’ at the beginning of our letters.

We’ve also been super busy completing this week’s chilli challenges.

We created our own treasure maps.

We cleaned the ocean of plastic to help look after our sea creatures.

We investigated magnetic and non-magnetic materials.

In maths, we have deepened our understanding of the counting system and recapped some key skills:

  • tagging each object when counting groups of objects
  • knowing number names and their order
  • knowing that the last number counted gives us the total in the set
  • counting body movements
  • using different strategies to keep track of we’ve counted and not counted
  • counting beyond 20

Every morning, we write a sentence about a picture. We’re super proud of our writing skills!

Thank you!
Finally, thank you to all the parents/carers that came to one of our learning journey drop ins. It was lovely to welcome you all into the classroom. We hope you enjoyed looking through your child’s books and talking to your child about everything they have enjoyed/achieved during their first year at school.

Home-Link Challenge

This week’s bible story

Posted on Monday 20 June 2022 by Mr Roundtree

Adam and Eve: Genesis 2.15—3.14

Do you know the names of the very first people in the Bible: Adam and Eve. In Hebrew (the language the story was written in) names tell you about who the person is, what they’re like. The names Adam and Eve mean ‘the first people ever’.

In the story God made a special garden for Adam and Eve to live in, and we know from the Bible that it was set in modern day Iran, next to Iraq in the Middle East.

Adam and Eve had been told that they could eat anything they wanted, except the tree that grew in the middle of the garden, which was called ‘the tree of the knowledge of good and evil’. What do you think that name means?

Read the story of Adam and Eve

What do you do when you know you’ve done something wrong? What is the best thing to do when you’ve done something wrong?

In the story, God sent Adam and Eve away, out of the lovely garden, and they learned to be farmers, to grow their own food, and to work on the land.

But what might have happened if they’d been honest and owned up (’fessed up!); if they’d taken responsibility for their actions instead of blaming someone else? We don’t know. Perhaps we’d still all live in that garden, not having to work …

But this story is still told as an example of how, when we aren’t honest, it affects many more people than just us. We don’t know what might have happened in the story if Adam and Eve had been honest. But we can be honest about ourselves, and then we know that whatever we’ve done, it’s easier to make it right again if we take the blame, apologize and acknowledge our part.

 

Reflection

Think for a few moments about the story of Adam and Eve:

how they did what they knew was wrong;

how they blamed someone else for what they’d done;

and how often we do that too.

 

Prayer

Dear God,

Help us to be honest when we do something wrong.

Help us not to blame other people, but acknowledge our mistakes,

and apologize and so learn and move on.

Amen.

Fun in the sun!

Posted on Friday 17 June 2022 by Mrs Wood

Last Friday, ZS’s Dad came to help us spruce up our outdoor planters.

In RE, we talked people who are special to us and why some people are particularly special to us.
In Literacy, we used a map to locate seaside towns. We looked at some photographs of Scarborough and talked about the things we might see at the seaside that we don’t see in Leeds.

FH – The seaside town has a lighthouse but Leeds doesn’t.
OR – We don’t have boats but the seaside does. We have boats to travel on the sea.
DA – The seaside has little beach huts.
LS – The beach might have jellyfish.
LW- The beach has water but Wetherby and Leeds don’t have water.

The glorious weather has enabled us to spend lots of time learning outside. Please continue to make sure you apply sun lotion to your child before school. This stops us from missing any learning time. Thank you to everyone that has done that this week.
Click here to watch us learning outside.
Home-Link Challenge

 

 

Welcome back!

Posted on Friday 10 June 2022 by Mrs Wood

I can’t believe it’s the last half-term. Where has this school year gone?
We’ve dived straight into our new topic, Let’s make a splash!

This half-term, we’ll be thinking about days at the beach – we even have our own beach! We’ll investigate floating and sinking, locate seaside towns on a map, talk about what we see at the seaside that we don’t see in Leeds and talk about seaside holidays of the past.

This week, we’ve been reading Sharing a Shell by Julia Donaldson. The children were great at sequencing the key events from the story.

We used adjectives to describe what our favourite character looks like.

In Maths, we’ve been using the rekenreks to help us with our perceptual and conceptual subitising skills. We know to make sure all the beads are at the right-hand side of the rack. This is called the ‘ready position’. We then get ready, set and push using the ‘one finger push’ method.

With sports day just around the corner, we thought we should start practising.

This week’s chilli challenges have been very successful. Lots of children worked really hard to complete all of the challenges.

We drew sea creatures with wax crayons and watched what happened when we painted over it with a blue wash.

Exploring in our new role-play area.
We made signs to put up in our beach.

We used our observational skills to draw shelfs.

Diary dates
20, 21 & 24 June – Learning journey drop ins
23 June – Moving from Reception to Year 1 parent meeting
5 July – Sports Morning
6 July – Trip to Tropical World – look out for the letter!
7 July – Reserve Sports Morning
8 July – PTA Summer Fair
This half-term is very busy!
Please make sure you’ve noted down the events.

Reminder!
Please don’t forget to sign up to one of our learning journey drop ins. A letter went out on Wednesday.

Home-Link Challenge

 

This week’s bible story

Posted on Monday 06 June 2022 by Mr Roundtree

Jesus is friends with Zacchaeus: Luke 19: 1-10

 

Have you ever heard the story of Burglar Bill – Bill goes out every night. Getting into houses through open windows and taking things. Until one night, Bill found a baby, and that changed his whole life …
There is a Bible story about a man who stole from other people. He took extra money when he gave them their tax bills and became very rich on all the money that he stole. Zacchaeus was a little man and that small people can’t see in crowds. Read the story of Zacchaeus to find out what happened to him.

 

Reflection:

Jesus loved everyone when he lived on the earth. It didn’t matter how bad people were, Jesus was always there for those who needed him. This is true for us too – no one is so bad that God doesn’t love them. And the more time we spend with God – praying, thinking about him, finding out about him, the more we want to be like Jesus; kind, helpful and good. Just like Zacchaeus, Burglar Bill changed his ways and tried to be more like Jesus by loving those around him. Even though Burglar Bill and Zacchaeus made the wrong choice, God forgave them and continued loving them.

 

Prayer:

Dear God,

Thank you that Jesus loved Zacchaeus even when he wasn’t making the right choices. Help us to love all of those around us and be honest about our actions.

Amen

Our school community working together to commemorate the Queen’s Jubilee.

Posted on Friday 27 May 2022 by Mrs Freeman

As part of a Wetherby community group, our school has entered a Jubilee craft cake  for the Royal Church and Community Fete and Queen’s Jubilee Cake Festival at St James’ Church, Wetherby.

The whole school contributed to this creation and they all thoroughly enjoyed making it.

 

Reception – Beefeaters

Year 1/2 – stamp rubbings and crowns

Year 3 – clay corgi dogs

Year 4 – clay postage stamps

Year 5/6 – Hama Beads flags

We are all very proud to have been part of this and if you would like to attend the festival, it takes place on Friday 3rd June, 10am till 2pm at St. James Church in Wetherby.

Jubilee and butterflies

Posted on Friday 27 May 2022 by Mrs Wood

This week, it’s been a fun filled Jubilee themed week!

In literacy, there was a lot of laughter when reading The Queen’s Knickers. The children designed a new pair of knickers for the Queen to wear on different occasions.

The Queen will wear these knickers…

MC – when she goes on holiday
HD – wherever she wants to go
DA – when  she goes to the park
OR – when she goes to the United Kingdom
Florence – when she sees a rainbow
JD – when she walks her dogs
SF – when she goes to a birthday party
HN – when she goes to the beach
RF – when she goes to Burger King

Take a look at their super designs!

At the creative table, the children enjoyed making the Queen’s Guards.

On Tuesday, we learnt that the Queen has had her portrait painted over 130 times! So we thought we would add to this collection and draw our own portraits.

Throughout the week, we’ve been practising the National Anthem ready to sing at our Jubilee party. Click here to watch us.

Butterflies
Over the past few weeks we’ve been closely observing the life cycle of our caterpillars. From Monday, our butterflies finally started to emerge! Today, we had fun releasing them.

Jubilee party
Finally…
I hope you all have a happy and healthy half-term with family and friends. Don’t forget to send us photographs of what you get up to. See yo all on Monday 06 June for your final half-term in Reception.

 

This week’s bible story

Posted on Monday 23 May 2022 by Mr Roundtree

Jesus Gives Us Peace: John 14:27–31

 

In John 14, Jesus is talking to His disciples shortly before He is crucified. He knows they will be scared, but He promises them a spirit of peace. Even though He will leave them, He promises them “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give you . . . Do not let your hearts be troubled.”

He doesn’t promise His disciples a peaceful, easy life when they will always relax and never experience conflict or fear. But He does promise that ultimately, they will live together again in peace when Jesus returns. That means that no matter what they face, the disciples’ future is secure because of Jesus. This gives them true peace, not a peace based on their situation. We can share in that same peace when we believe in Jesus!

 

Memory Verse: Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. John 14:27

 

Prayer:

Dear God,

Help us to remember that you are always there for us. Help us to feel the peace that you have given us when we are in times of uncertainty.

Amen