28/06/24

Hi Reception,

Happy Friday!!!!!!

This week we have continued looking at the story 'Surprising Sharks'. We read the story as a whole class and looked at the different types of sharks there are and what they eat, their habitats etc. We also looked at how we can protect sharks and why they are important in our eco system. This then reflects what the children have been doing in their topic/literacy books this week. They wrote why they think sharks are important and what we can do in our everyday lives to help protect them. 

In our 'Understanding of the world' lesson this week we looked at sinking and floating. We asked the children to hypotehsize their ideas about whether or not certain objects would sink or float. As a class we used objects such as rocks, toy cars, glue sticks etc. and put them in a container of water and watched whether or not the object sank or floated. The children then wrote in their books whether or not they thought a piece of lego would sink or float.

In Maths we focused on similarities and differences in sets of objects found in the classroom. The children sorted objects into two groups based on size, colour and shape. They discovered that groups can be sorted in different ways and into more than two groups.  

In RE this week we have looked at the story of 'The Good Samaritan'. We read the bible story and discussed the importance of forgiveness and how we as members of the church and community can be Good Samaritan's. In their books the children drew a picture of 'The Good Samaritan' and wrote what it means to be a 'Good Samaritan', and something that they can do to be a 'Good Samaritan'. 

We hope you all have a lovely weekend!!!!

14/6/24

Hello!

What a wonderful week we have had. We continued learning about Africa through our book 'The Leopard's Drum' and children have loved exploring maps of the world, looking at Africa as a continent, the traditions of Africa and African art with it's beautiful colours and patterns. We made our own African masks by cutting out 2D shapes and using vibrant and bold colours, just like Asroboa wore in the book.  In Maths we have been looking at properties of 2D shapes and have incorporated our shape knowledge into African pattern work. 

We also wrote our very own African animal fact files in Literacy and children have loved teaching each other the facts about their chosen animal. 

To end our African topic, we were very lucky to have a parent come into our school and teach us all about Gambia traditions and culture. We got to explore artefacts, watch a mini video of the landscape and wildlife. We even got to taste traditional African juice and bread! We LOVED IT!

As we approach the end of year, we have started to think about transitioning to Year 1. Today we were very cheeky and explored the Year 1 classrooms whilst Year 1 were out having PE. We had a good look around the classrooms, became familiar with where the toilets were, the lockers and we even sat at the desks!

Have a lovely weekend!

24/05/24

Hi Reception,

Happy Friday!!!!!!

This week we have continued looking at the story 'The Naughty Bus'. We read the story as a whole class and looked at the different places the Naughty Bus goes to throughout the book and all the mischief he gets up to. As a class we then created a story map ordering the events that happen in the story. This then reflects what the children have been doing in their topic/literacy books this week. They drew their own story map of The Naughty Bus and wrote down the events of the story using arrows to show the flow of the story. 

In Maths we have continued looking at halving and sharing focusing on halving quantities by sharing into two equal groups. They will make links to the fact that halving is the opposite, or inverse, of doubling

In RE this week we have looked at the importance of the church and how we celebrate Jesus and God in church by going to mass, sing special hymns and what priests do in church. The children have been having discussions and writing in their RE books why church is a very special and important place.

We hope you all have a lovely half term break!!!!

17/05/24

Happy Friday!!!

What a great week we have had. We loved learning about the Naughty Bus' book and the journey it took! We created our very own books, retelling the story, creating a story map of the Naughty bus and retelling the story using the tuff tray and materials to re create the story in real life. As a class we re wrote the story looking at capital letters at the start of a sentence, full stops at the end of a sentence and using expression when we see a exclamation mark. The children have also been really busy with creating the role play area and pretending their on a bus journey taking in turns at being the passengers and the driver.

In math's this week we have been looking at using sharing to find a half. We opened up our half bakery where the children were only allowed to sell items that were half. 

In RE this week we looked at Jesus' ascencion and how the holy spirt helps us in our daily lives.

We hope you have a lovely weekend!!!!

10/05/24

Hi Reception,

Happy Friday!!!!!!

This week we have continued looking at the story 'Emma Jane's Aeroplane'. We have been looking at the different cities that she travels to throughout the book and how long it would take for her to get there. We compared the difference between each cities and how that compares to London.  We have also looked at postcards what they are, what we need to include in them, and where we can write them from. The children have been busy creating their own postcards and writing a message on them as if they were on a holiday.  They continued creating their own story map from 'Emma Jane's Aeroplane', by writing their rememberd events from the story using their drawn story maps from the previous week.

In maths, we have been exploring and representing patterns within numbers up to 10, including evens and odds, double facts and how quantities can be distributed equally. 

In RE this week we have looked at the story of Pentecost which commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles and other followers of Jesus Christ while they were in Jerusalem celebrating the Feast of Weeks. We had discussions about how we can spread important messages that Jesus wanted his disciples to spread to everyone around the world.

A big congratulations to Joshua class for their amazing class liturgy they did such an amazing job!!!!

We hope you all have a lovely weekend!!!!

03/05/24

Hi Reception,

Happy Friday!!!!!!

This week we started looking at the story 'Emma Jane's Aeroplane'. We read the story as a whole class and looked at the different places and cities she visits throughout the book. As a class we then created a story map ordering the cities and the events that happen in the story. This then reflects what the children have been doing in their topic/literacy books this week. They drew their own story map of Emma Jane's Aeroplace using arrows to show the flow of the story. 

In maths we have been looking at numbers to 20 and looking at counting back to 0, identify one more and one less, and compare and represent numbers. 

In RE this week we have looked at Mother Mary, as we have entered the month of May and how can we celebrate Mother Mary by going to mass, sing special hymns and lay flowers to bring nature into the church. The children have been having discussions and writing in their RE books why they lover their mummy and how is their mummy like Mother Mary.

A big congratulations to Ruth class for their amazing class liturgy they did such an amazing job!!!!

Reminder: Joshua class have their class liturgy on Friday the 10th of May!!!!

We hope you all have a lovely long weekend!!!!

26.4.24

Hello,

We have continued looking at The Train Ride book, sequenced the story (using time connectives) and re-wrote parts to the story. Using the language pattern of this text and our knowledge of how to write descriptive sentences, we then wrote our own page to add to a class book about a little boat going on  a journey. Our class book is AMAZING! The children are really starting to show independence when writing their sentences and developing their own ideas. We are very proud of them!

We looked at counting back, subtraction, from a given number. Although this is a tricky concept, the children loved playing practical games that helped them understand the process of this. Well done Reception!

Earth day was a huge success. The children LOVED having the lights off in school and learning about the small changes we can do to help protect our planet and all God’s creatures. We shared several stories about how we can protect our planet and looked at non-fiction books to support our understanding. The children showed such high levels of interest in this and so we continued to look at Earth Day all week! They loved the hands on sensory earth tuff tray and loved ‘cleaning’ our ‘polluted’ water tray of plastic for the sea creatures.

Reminder: Ruth Class liturgy will be held on Wednesday 1st May at 9am, in the school hall -  see you there!

19/4/24

Hello!

For this week only, please see Dojo for home learning, we had trouble uploading this onto the webpage. Thank you.

 
This week we started our new topic on journeys with reading The Train Ride. As a class we used our creative skills to make a train  and tracks and used our phonic skills to write signs to transform our home corner into a train station. In our writing, we have been focusing on sentence work independently, trying our best to use a capital letter at the start of a sentence, a full stop at the end and finger spaces. We are doing great! We also tried to make our sentences more interesting by adding in adjectives to describe pages of the book. We will continue this book through next week and will focus on sequencing and creating a story map of the train’s journey. 
In Maths we looked at counting on a number when starting at any number on a number track. Next week we will subtract a given number. 

We also had Joshua Class liturgy, they interacted beautifully and were very engaged. Thank you to all that came and got involved with the reflective activity. The children loved it! both classes loved listening to the mystery of Easter Sunday when Jesus rose. They rewrote the story in their RE books and I am so impressed with how well they understood this special time. 

On Monday we will mark World Earth Day by turning off all electricity in the school. We have spoken to the children about this and they are aware, but please remind them on Monday morning as the school may seem darker than usual, especially the toilets, corridors etc. I’m sure the children will find this very exciting, but if you feel your child might need a little more reassuring, please let us know.
We hope you have a lovely weekend! 
 

22/03/24

Hi Reception,

Happy Friday!!!!!!

This week we continued looking at the story 'Yucky worms'. We looked at their habitat and discussed where would be good places to find worms. We also looked at different minibeasts and their habitats such as ladybugs, spiders, ants, bees, and snails. We have been preparing for our school trip that is happening next week where we will get the chance to look at different minibeasts and their local habitats.

We have also continued learning about repeating patterns in Math's and looking at different types of patterns we can create by using more than two colors and objects. 

In RE this week we have continued looking at the Easter story, the children have had some great discussions about what they have learned and how Jesus is a very important part of Easter. We firstly recapped on Palm Sunday and the significance of the palms before learning more about Good Friday. The children made crosses and placed a painted handprint over the cross to symbolize how Jesus died on the cross for us and how he gave his life for us so that we could be forgiven for our sins.

We hope you all have a lovely weekend!!!!

Thank you!

15/03/24

Hi Reception,

Happy Friday!!!!!!

This week we looked at the story 'Yucky worms', to explore this further we explored the features of a worm, where they live, what they eat, and what they are good for. We spoke about the different types of worms and looked at how they live in our earth. The children have been able to learn about worm farming and being a wormologist. As a whole class we went worm farming in our outdoor area and safely looked for worms by digging holes and gently looking through the mud to see how many worms we could find and we found so many!!!!!! We added these worms into a large container filled with sand, soil, and food for the worms and over the next week the children will be documenting what they can see and how the worms live in our class worm farm.

Throughout the week the children participated in music lessons where they looked at the keys D and G on a glockenspiel. In ICT we spoke about what an algorithm is and debugged a set of instructions for washing hands. In art we looked at the artist Van Gogh and his famous sunflower painting, the children had the opportunity to mirror his painting by using colored pencils and shading to recreate his sunflower picture.

We have been learning repeating patterns this week and looking at different types of patterns we can create by using more than two colors and objects. 

In RE this week we have continued looking at the Easter story, the children have had some great discussions about what they have learned and how Jesus is a very important part of Easter. This week we focused on Palm Sunday and the journey Jesus took as he arrived in Jerusalem, the children made their own palms to welcome Jesus into Jerusalem. 

We hope you all have a lovely weekend!!!!

Thank you!

08/03/24

Hi Reception,

Happy Friday!!!!!!

This week our story of the week is the 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar', to explore this further we have started exploring the lifecycle of a butterfly. We spoke about the different stages in a butterfly's life and looking at the transition from a caterpillar into a butterfly. The children have been able to recreate their own lifecycle and label the different stages. We have received a small container containing some caterpillars and over the next month we will be able to watch them grow, turn into a chrysalis and then into a butterfly the children will be documenting each stage as it happens and feed the butterfly's before releasing them into nature. 

To celebrate World Book Day, the children were given the opportunity to create a book cover design of their favourite book, create their own book re telling the story of the hungry caterpillar and read many stories throughout the week. All the children looked terrific and had amazing costumes and came up with really unique words to represent their costume!

We have been learning subtraction using a ten frame and number bonds and children are becoming more and more confident with this. Next week we will be looking at repeating patterns.

In RE this week we have been looking at the Easter story, the children have had some great discussions about what they have learned and how Jesus is a very important part of Easter. We will continue learning more about this leading up to Easter looking more in depth about Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Easter Saturday, Easter Sunday etc.

The children have been extremely busy making their mother's day cards ready for Sunday. We hope all the Mother's have a lovely and relaxing weekend being spoilt by your loved ones!

Thank you!

1/3/24

We have had a fantastic week continuing on our learning about gardens and growing… and have learnt all about sunflowers this week! We started the week looking at what a plant needs to grow and are carrying out an experiment by taking an element away from potted sunflower seed. We will monitor this over time. We are wondering whether the seed without water, the seed without soil or the seed without sunlight will grow the same as the seed that has everything it needs. As we have been looking after our very own individual sunflower seeds and we have been so excited watching  them grow during the week… most of our seeds now have shoots! We are keeping a weekly diary of how our plant grows and changes each week. We also looked at the lifecycle of a sunflower and learn some interesting facts about sunflowers.

During ICT, we learnt the importance of following a set of instructions and spoke about what might happen if one step is missed out… things might get muddled up and go wrong! During our creative learning, we looked closely at spring flowers and their colours. We learnt how to mix primary colours into secondary colours and, using our knowledge of shades, how to then use white to create a shade that best matched our daffodils and tulips. We also loved using mud to practise shading using large scale strokes within the natural paintbrushes we made last week. We realised the more water we added to the mud, the lighter the shade became observational painting were beautiful! We are becoming more and more confident with number bonds to 10 and enjoyed learning the number bond song by Jack Hartmann https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD9tjBUiXs0.

23^rd February

This week we have explored gardens and read Erol’s Garden. We spoke about what a garden is, the role of  gardener and what gardens mean to each of us. We planted our on sunflower seeds and will watch them grow. We even wrote a set of instructions on how to plant a seed!

We made our own natural paintbrushes using foliage and sticks. We used our fine motor skills to tie them together using twine. We have been learning about how to create different shades of a colour, and focused on yellow shades when painting daffodils.

We have been learning number bonds to ten using a ten frame and children are becoming more and more confident with this. We will continue this next week.

9th February 

Dear Parents,

We started the week learning the importance of oral health and learnt how many teeth we have and how to keep them clean and healthy. We learnt how the dentist helps us with this and what might happen if we don’t brush our teeth properly on a regular basis. We then had great fun learning about the role of a firefighter and police officer and looked closely at how they help us in our community. We hosed down the ’fire’ (paint) on our tuff trays, engaged in role play and small world play and even made 3D firefighters (focusing on what their uniform looks like). On Thursday, we came into school only to discover CCTV had captured an ‘intruder’ that was in disguise (Miss Whittaker). The whole day was spent investigating, looking for fingerprints and clues and writing wanted posters! On Friday we had a lovely morning of Mardi Gras celebrations and the children were busy decorating their masks for our Mount Carmel parade!

For our maths focus this week, the children experimented with heavy and light objects and then compared and ordered them from heaviest to lightest. They took this new knowledge and put it into practise in our home corners and to our mud kitchen when weighing fruit and veg for our imaginative recipes.

When we return from the half term holiday, we will carry out a phonics assessment on every child. At the end of the first week, we will send home any sounds your child may need to work on further. From now until Easter will we review previously taught sounds and continue to practise our blending skills.

We have had such a fantastic half term and it has flown by. We hope you all have a restful half term and look forward to our Spring 2 term!

As it is half term, we will not set any home learning. Please continue to read with your child daily.

Have a lovely half term!

2nd February 

Dear Parents/Carers,

This week we have explored the role of doctors and nurses and how they are very important jobs. We started the week thinking of what our dream job might be and listened to how Dr Ranj treats his outpatients. The children loved our role play doctor surgery and were busy discussing symptoms and treatments, writing appointment cards, prescriptions and health checks! We even got a video call from a real life doctor! Dr Verma explained what was in her doctor's bag and how she used her equipment to check her patients.

The children were busy using their fine motor skills at wrapping bandages and peeling/putting on plasters on each other. They also used their scizzor skills to cut and create their very own doctor's bag with all the equipment in. We looked closely at x-rays and matched real life x-ray images to the correct body parts... We also loved reading 'Funny Bones' and working out which bones are connected together. We loved piecing ‘bones’ together to create a skeleton using cotton buds.

In Maths we went outside into our natural environment and collected leaves, sticks and cones to compare the length of the object to our body parts. Some of our feet were longer than two leaves! During creative arts we have learnt and practice how we join junk materials and thick card together and we will continue this next week. When logging onto the computers this half term, we have been practicing how to control a computer mouse (dragging, left click and selecting colours/shapes)  and this week we drew our dream job using the Paint programme. We are getting better and better at this skill!

Thank you Ruth Class parents for attending their liturgy, the children performed brilliantly and explained how we unite, just like Jesus, superbly.

Have a lovely weekend!

26th January 

Dear Parents/Carers,

This week we have been sharing our favourite books and exploring contemporary tales by Julia Donaldson. The children have really enjoyed exploring the different characters and plots. We looked closely at our own opinions, our thoughts about the characters and what we enjoyed most about a book. The children loved writing their own reviews!

In Maths, we have been using stories to support understanding of part, part, whole. ‘First there were three bears on the rug. Then four more came along. Now there are seven bears sitting on the rug.’ Can your child come up with their own maths story?

Ruth Class will be having their liturgy on Wednesday 31st January at 2:45pm, in Ruth Class. Ruth Class parents, please arrive via the school’s main office. Your child’s lines have been given out today. Please help your child learn their line.

Have a lovely weekend,

Miss Demiray and Mrs M