Week 2 – The Very Hungry Caterpillar
We have had a wonderful week in school. Our focus book this week has been ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’. We have been learning more about minibeasts and lifecycles. We went on a minibeast walk around school and discovered some tadpoles in our school pond. We have even got some caterpillars in our classroom to observe.
We have been investigating using different art materials to create caterpillars and butterflies. It was very exciting to see what happened when we painted half of a butterfly and then folded the paper.
Our PE lessons this term are focusing on different ball skills. We have introduced hockey sticks and are working hard on controlling a ball around a track. It is lots of fun!
Our poem this week is all about finding a wiggly worm. I wonder if you could help find a worm in your garden?
I hope you all have a lovely long weekend and we will see you all back on Tuesday.
Mrs Payne
Summer Term 1 – Week 1 The Bad Tempered Ladybird
Welcome back!
We hope you all had a wonderful Easter break and enjoyed the sunny weather! This term our topic focuses on ‘Life on Earth’. Our focus story is all about a ladybird who isn’t very happy but realises that it is much better to share than fight with our friends.
We have enjoyed lots of outdoor learning this week. We had a walk around school to see which mini beasts we could find. We talked about the different places we might find them. We were very excited when we reached the pond area to find lots of tadpoles in there.
We thought about different places bugs might like to live and if they ever go on holiday? We decided to create some bug hotels! We were very excited when Mr Atkins gave us a demonstration on how to safely use hand drills and screwdrivers to create our own bug hotel for outside.
We have been exploring different materials to create some models. We really enjoyed using clay and exploring different ways to create joins.
I bet you have all been wondering how our grass heads are doing. Well over the holidays they all grew hair! It was so exciting to come into class and see our new friends. We decided that they needed a visit to the salon and practised our scissor cutting skills by giving them a hair cut!
Our poem this week was called ‘pitter patter’. We hope you like it.
Week 6 – The Easter Story
We have had a busy week in Reception! Our focus this week has been learning more about The Easter Story. We have learnt more about why this time of year is important to Christians and what things might happen over the Easter period.
We used repeating patterns to decorate eggs and Easter cards. We also used natural materials to create a cross.
In our maths sessions we learnt more about sorting different items. Did you know there are so many ways to sort things. One of our favourite ways was to sort our class by age. We found out that some people in our class are 4 and some people are 5. Some people are a little older than that too!
Our grass heads have started to grow hair! We are very excited to see what they are going to be like when we return from the Easter break.
Our poem this week was also about seeds and growing. We hope you like it.
A huge thank you to our lovely school PTA who organised a very exciting egg hunt for us this afternoon. We loved hunting for rabbit foot prints and our prizes look very yummy!
I would like to thank everyone for their support this term. It has been an exciting term of learning. I hope you all have a wonderful Easter break and fingers crossed the sun will shine for us a little!
Mrs Payne
Week 5 – The tiny seed
We have had a wonderful week this week learning more about growing and the changes that happen through the seasons. Our focus story ‘The tiny seed’ takes us on a journey through the seasons as a tiny seed. We have done some fantastic writing telling others about how to plant seeds and also how a seed changes through the seasons.
In our maths lessons this week we have been learning more about doubles. With the help of the number blocks we spotted patterns. Olly told us” I can see that 8 is double 4 because 4 plus 4 equals 8″. We used everyday objects to create our own doubles.
We have also created some new friends! We have made our own grass heads! We have discussed what the seeds will need and how we can be fantastic gardeners and help them to grow. Keep a look out for regular updates on our class page.
Our poem of the week is called ‘hungry birdies’ We have been working really hard on the actions so we can create birds using our hands. We hope you like it.
As always if you have any questions please do not hesitate to get in touch.
Mrs Payne
Week 4 – Jack and the Beanstalk
This week we have been learning more about the fantastic story ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. We found lots of repeating words in the story and enjoyed joining in.
In provision we created our own beanstalks, made castles and furniture fit for giants and measured different beanstalks using cubes.
We thought about what plants need to grow and decided to see if we could grow our own beanstalks. It was lots of fun getting everything ready and patting the bean into the soil. We learnt that the beans will need light, warmth and water to grow.
All aboard the Hundred Decker Bus!
This week our focus book has been ‘The Hundred Decker Bus’ by Mike Smith. This story takes us on an amazing adventure with a growing bus!
We used our literacy skills to sequence and retell the great story. We discussed how it might feel if we went on an adventure but didn’t know where we were going! In the classroom we created our own towns labelling the different buildings, we created playdough vehicles and labelled double decker buses.
We loved the idea of each deck on the bus been a different place to do things. We decided to create a class decker bus. Thank you grown ups for our cardboard boxes! We all thought about what we wanted our deck to be and then used different materials to create it.
During our Religious Education lesson we learnt more about the Hindu Festival Holi. Holi is a colourful festival, with singing and throwing of powder paint and coloured water. It is a celebration of spring, love and new life. We decided to create our own friend who has taken part in Holi.
This week for poetry basket we used the nursery rhyme ‘Pat a Cake’ we loved creating our own actions. We hope you enjoy watching it!
5,4,3,2,1 blast off!
Our focus story this week has been ‘The Hundred Decker Rocket’ by Mike Smith. This is a fantastic story based on looking after the places we live and creating a huge rocket for everyone to travel on.
In Reception we began thinking about how we could look after the places we live. We had a great discussion about litter and decided to do a litter pick in our school grounds. This also allowed us to go and see if we could spot any signs of Spring!
In maths this week we have been working on our counting skills and spotting patterns when counting. Did you know when we add 1 more to towers they look like stairs! We had great fun taking part in a bean bag challenge.
We created maps of our school to help others find their way around school and even created maps for the Beebots to follow. It was tricky to program the Beebots at first but we soon got used to what we needed to do.
Our poem this week had lots of fun actions! please check it out on the link.
World Book Day
On Thursday we had a wonderful day celebrating reading! Parents and carers joined us for bedtime stories in class and then we had special visitors from year 3 and Mrs Valentine.
All aboard for a new term
I hope you all had a fantastic half term break and are ready to enjoy our new topic ‘let’s go’. This week our focus story was ‘The train ride’ we had lots of different transport activities in our provision areas. We really enjoyed learning more about what trains were like long ago and what they are like today.
We are very excited as we think we have started to spot the first signs of Spring. We have been looking carefully on our journeys and Arthur painted a beautiful daffodil that he had seen on his way to school.
We have been using our phonics skills to build words and sentences. We really enjoyed finding the sound balls and making a word.
Poetry Picnic
We have been popping crazy with our poem this week. We hope you enjoy it too.
On Thursday 2 March it is World Book Day. This year we are not dressing up however we would like invite all families into class to share a story together. Please could you bring a favourite story and teddy with you on Thursday morning.
Mrs Payne
Week 6 – People who help us
It’s hard to believe we are at the end of another busy half term! There has been so much great learning in Reception so thank you to everyone for working so hard!
This week we have been thinking about different jobs and different ways that people help us. We discovered that there are so many different ways to help others! Mr Atkins helped us to develop our building skills and we designed emergency vehicles and uniform for the emergency services.
We had a visit from Wetherby Fire Station on Thursday. It was amazing to see the fire engine and to learn more about what equipment they use and the different jobs the firefighters do.
On Tuesday it was Internet Safety Day. During the day we learnt different ways that we could stay safe online. We read a book called ‘Penguin Pig’ Which helped us to understand that not everything you see and read online is real. We then created our own made up animals so others could see not everything is real.
We love learning new poems and nursery rhymes during our daily poetry picnic sessions. This week we worked in small groups to create our poetry performances.
I hope you are all having a wonderful half term and look forward to seeing you all on Monday 20 February!
Week 5 – Superheroes
What a fantastic week we have had in reception. We have continued with our focus book Supertato but focused more on superheroes.
The children decided that they wanted to build a city for their superhero to live in. They thought carefully about what they wanted their city to have. We saw some amazing bridges!
This week we learnt more about Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. Yayoi is also known as the princess of polka dots as she loves to add dots to her art creations. Yayoi has created sculptures and many different paintings. She has even used people as her canvas! We decided that we wanted to create some artwork inspired by this amazing artist. Check out some of our dotty designs.
There was an emergency in the kitchen this week! Julie came to see us to tell us that all the peas had escaped from the freezer! We thought this must be the work of the evil pea so we thought carefully about what we could do to find him. We decided that we would make some wanted posters so everyone at school could help us to find him.
A huge thank you for everyone who joined us for our funky fingers stay and play session on Friday. We loved sharing our classroom with everyone and hope you did too.
We have parents evening next week on Tuesday and Thursday evening. If you haven’t yet made an appointment please come and speak to me so we can arrange a time.
Mrs Payne