Hundred Decker Bus
This week, we enjoyed reading The Hundred Decker Bus by Mike Smith. In the story, a bus driver who is bored of his everyday routine decides to take his passengers on an unexpected adventure. As more and more passengers hop on board, extra decks have to be built onto the bus, creating a very tall and unusual ride!
Linked to the story, we’ve been learning about the differences and similarities between cities/towns and the countryside. The children have shared their ideas about what life might be like in each place and discussed what they might see, hear and do there.
Our Word of the Week is countryside. We’ve explored what this word means and how it compares to living in a busy town or city.
One of the class challenges was to make and explore ramps. This was a hugely popular challenge with so many interesting conversations.
“My car goes so fast when it goes down the ramp, but I have to push it to go back up.”
“My train crashed, it was too straight up.”
Maths
This week, we explored ordinality – learning the positions of numbers up to 8. We used key language like “more than,” “less than,” and “equal to” to describe relationships between numbers, focusing on each number’s place in the counting sequence.
Help at Home: Play a game of ‘More or Fewer?’
- Make a set of number cards from 1 to 8.
- Gather a collection of small objects (e.g., buttons, toy cars, coins) and arrange them so your child can see them clearly.
- Turn over a number card.
- Ask your child: “Do you have more or fewer [objects] than this number?”
This simple game helps children practise comparing quantities and using the language of more than, fewer than, and equal to in a fun, hands-on way!
World Book Day
We had the best time on Thursday celebrating World Book Day. We started the day with a book themed Stay and Learn that was a very busy session with so many of our grown ups coming.
Then we read the story How to be Lion by Ed Vere a heart warming children’s book about Leonard, a gentle lion who prefers writing poems to chasing ducks. When other lions pressure him to be “fierce,” Leonard and his duck friend, Marianne, prove that being yourself is important. It celebrates kindness and individuality. This was the book chosen by the Reading Ambassadors for the whole school to look at. We made some lions to add to a whole school display and talked about how we are all different and special.
We were also very lucky to welcome our Year 6 Buddies into our classroom to read with us. They were so enthusiastic and the children really enjoyed sharing books together. Thank you, Year 6! One of the other highlights was helping to write a whole school book together, we really enjoyed adding a fun Reception and Nursery spin to the story.
To finish our day, we visited the Reading Café, organised by our fantastic Reading Ambassadors. We enjoyed a biscuit and a cup of hot chocolate while sharing books together – the perfect end to a lovely day.
Throughout the day, there were so many opportunities to celebrate reading and our love of books. It was wonderful to see the children so excited about stories.
Help at home by continuing to celebrate our love of reading!
Reception parent/carer survey
If you’re a parent of a child in Reception, please complete this short survey.
At St James’ Primary, we’re always trying to keep getting better and better. Your views help us to do that. The survey will only take a few minutes to complete and you’ve got until Wednesday 18 March to complete. (If you’d like us to follow-up any of your responses with you, we can only do this if you leave your name.)
We can’t guarantee to meet the needs and wants of every parent / carer, but we do assure you that we consider all the points raised and aim to act on specific points that are raised by many, or a useful idea raised by just a few.
Previously, based on your feedback, for example, we alternated the days Stay and Learns were held – to give all parents an opportunity to attend.
Thank you for taking the time to complete the survey. We’re looking forward to reading your views.
Word Book Day
We’re very excited to be celebrating World Book Day on Thursday in school!
If your child would like to, they can come to school dressed as their favourite book character or in something book-related. Please don’t feel any pressure to go out and buy a costume.
Throughout the day, we’ll be taking part in a range of challenges inspired by different books. One of our creative activities will be making a milk bottle Elmer. To help with this activity, we would really appreciate it if you could send your child in with an empty milk bottle (rinsed out, please!).
Love of Reading Stay & Learn
We also have a love of reading stay and learn in class on Thursday 9.00am-9.30am, you are more than welcome to join us for this session. This is a wonderful opportunity for you to watch one of our daily Poetry Basket sessions and share and enjoy lots of stories with your child.
We look forward to celebrating our love of books together!
This Green Moon
Today was a very special day for our Reception class as we went on our very first school trip to This Green Moon! As soon as we opened the door this morning, the children were buzzing with excitement.
When we arrived at Green Moon, we were warmly greeted by the two leaders, Paul and Matt, who took us on the most amazing adventure.
From the moment we stepped onto the coach to the minute we arrived back at school, the children were exceptional – what a credit they were to our school! Their behaviour, listening skills and enthusiasm were wonderful to see.
We thoroughly enjoyed spending the day outdoors, exploring the natural world around us. The children took part in so many exciting activities: making a fire, creating sculptures using potatoes, designing bracelets with pieces of coloured wool we found in the forest, and even working together to create a giant piece of artwork. It was fantastic to see their creativity and curiosity shining through.
What a fantastic day full of learning, laughter and adventure. Well done, Reception – we’re so proud of you all!
Let’s grow
Lunar New Year
We had a great final week of half term; we loved reading The Magic Paintbrush by Julia Donaldson and we watched some short video clips to find out how people prepare for the Lunar New Year festival and celebrate with their families.
As an early years unit we made a Chinese Dragon and went on our own dragon parade around school, we used musical instruments to help us celebrate.
On Tuesday 10th February it was Safer Internet Day in school. We talked about how important it is to keep safe online. We spoke about always only using a tablet or iPad when a grown up is with you.
Here is a useful website for advice and tips for keeping your child safe on line.
Keeping your under 5 safe online
Learning after half term:
We’ll be reading The Train Ride and beginning our ‘Let’s Go’ theme. If you have a copy of the book at home, please read it together to help familiarise your child with the story. We’ll be going on our first school trip on Wednesday so we have a very exciting first week back.
Great Fairies of the World
This week, we read Great Fairies of the World by Stephanie Moss. This rhyming story introduces fairy characters with jobs that help others, including an architect fairy, a doctor fairy and an engineer fairy, to name just a few!
We really enjoyed retelling the using the story map to our grown ups when they came our Stay and Learn session.
Help at home- Use the story map to tell the story to your grown ups. Don’t forget to do the actions and encourage everyone to join in.
Phonics
Spring 1 week 5 focused on reading longer words, using the ‘chunking method’. When we ‘chunk it up’, we blend longer words one syllable at a time. For example: sunset (s-u-n, sun. Then, read s-e-t, set. Finally, join them together. Sun-set. Sunset.)
Help at home- Ask your child to show you how they ‘chunk-it-up’!
A Visit from the Doctor
Over the past two weeks we have been using the story Great Fairies of the World as our focus book. We have learned to retell the story using a story map and a simplified version of the story.
We have also talked about the different People Who Help Us in the story and on today we welcomed a special visitor to our classroom Doctor Katie (Mrs Kendrew’s sister). She is a Paediatric Doctor and she told us she works with children and babies in a hospital.
She brought in a stethoscope and let us all listen to our own or each others hearts beating and she answered lots of our questions.
“Do you make people better?”
“Do you give injections?”
“Do you work at night time?”
We really enjoyed her visit and continued playing hospitals after she had left. Thank You for visiting us Doctor Katie.
A Visit From Reverend Peat
This half term, we have been doing some RE (Religious Education) learning on Monday afternoons.
Our topic is all about special places. We have been thinking about why a church might be special and who it might be special for.
To help us, Reverend Peat came in to speak to us about what happens inside a church. He started by helping us think about how a church might be different from our homes. We then looked at different features of a church and really enjoyed the photos of the stained glass windows. 
We really enjoyed Reverend Peat’s visit. We asked some questions and told him things we knew about church.
I know that Jesus died on a cross and there are crosses in churches. Layla
Why do you ring the bell? J
I can hear the bell ring from my house. Blossom
Is it nice inside the church? Oria
Help at home: Can your child talk about their special place? They might like to draw or make their special place as we would love to see this!