I can’t believe your Reception year has come to an end. Since returning in March, we’ve shared many amazing memories together. You’ve all had a tremendous first year at school and I’m extremely proud of each and every one of you. I love forward to seeing you all in your new Year 1 classroom in September. Have a wonderful summer!
Some highlights since March…
Nell Bank
We had a fantastic day on Wednesday learning about the importance of recycling, hunting for bugs and making houses for the baby badgers. The children’s behaviour was impeccable and their enthusiasm and knowledge was amazing.
Library books
Please return all library books for the end of the school year.
Health week
Next week, is our second themed week of the year. We’ll be taking part in various healthy activities. Your child can come to school in their PE kit all week.
Literacy
This week, we’ve been reading Clean Up! by Nathan Bryon. After reading the book, we thought about how we could look after our oceans, animals and earth. It has helped us to understand that we are responsible for our own litter. We had a go at making some eye-catching posters to help get our important messages across.
To help keep our school tidy, we had a go at litter picking.
Art
Yesterday, we talked about Alexander Calder and had a look at some images of his famous moving mobiles. We talked about the different 3d shapes and had a go at creating our own representations of his work. We’ll continue to create our mobiles next week.
Living and Learning
This week, we’ve been recognising our strengths and saying good things about ourselves. I am good at…
Zo – swimming
Zu – writing
Ha – football
Ar – gymnastics
Geo – basketball
Ay – cricket
Po – being helpful
Je – being a good friend
Learning journey drop in
Your child should have a brought home a learning journey drop in letter. Please make sure your return your sign-up slip by Friday 4th July.
School trip
We’re really looking forward to our school trip to Nell Bank on Wednesday. Your child will need:
Your child does not need their school bag on this day!
Poetry picnic
This week’s poem is called I Have a Little Frog. We had lots of fun using prosody when saying the last line. Click here to watch us perform our poem.
Literacy and history
This week, we’ve been reading Sharing a Shell by Julia Donaldson. Our word of the week was thoughtful. We talked about what the word means and how it links to our story. Yesterday, we looked at some past and present seaside holiday photographs. We talked about similarities and differences.
Role-play
With the weather heating up, we thought it would be a good idea to turn our home corner into an ice cream shop. Throughout the week, we’ve seen some amazing turn taking, communication skills and imaginative play. Some of the children made their own labels and signs to put up in the shop. I’ve definitely had my fair share of ice cream sundaes this week!
Jellyfish
This week’s creative chilli challenge was to make a jellyfish. From rainbow jellyfish to jellyfish with six eyes, we had lots of fun creating them.
Literacy
This week we read lots of seaside poems collected by Jill Bennett. We used the illustrations in the book to help us think about things we might only see at the seaside. We compared two different environments (city and seaside) by looking are various pictures.
Maypole
The Maypole practising has started! For many years, the Reception class have opened the Summer Fair by performing a Maypole dance. We’re super excited to show off our amazing skipping skills on Friday 04 July.
Maths
We’ve been deepening our understanding of mathematical relationships within numbers to 10. We’ve enjoyed using different resources to help demonstrate these key skills:
Zog Day
Yesterday, we watched Julia Donaldson read Zog and Zog and the Flying Doctors. We also got to watch how to draw a loveable dragon by Axel Scheffler. We got our orange pens ready and had a go at drawing our own Zogs!
Poetry Picnic
This week’s poem is called Thunderstorm. We had lots of fun using prosody when reciting this poem.
Reminders
Ahoy, Me Hearties!
This week, we’ve been reading The Night Pirates by Peter Harris. This great book has inspired our learning in the areas of provision. We’ve been building pirate ships in the construction area, making up stories with the pirates, creating pirate hats and collecting treasure at the finger gym table.
Maths
This week, we introduced the Rekenreks to the children. We continued to practise our subitising skills by using our ‘fast eyes’ to subitise the beads on a Rekenrek. A Rekenrek allows the children to further develop their subitising skills as they explore the structure of small numbers.
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 pause (think), place (one finger) and push (the beads) using the ‘one finger push’ method.
Poetry picnic
This week’s poem was called Monkey Babies. We discussed the rhythm of the poem and decided it had a ‘medium’ rhythm. We also could hear lots of rhyming words. See if you can hear the rhyming words when you watch it.
Group 1
Group 2
Super writing!
Every morning, we have a go at writing a caption or a sentence about an interesting picture. We’ve seen some amazing letter formation this week. Here’s some examples…
Help at home: Write a caption or sentence about this picture. You could bring your sentence into school or take a picture of it and send it to moortowneyfs@spherefederation.org
Tennis
Yesterday, the children amazed us with their fantastic listening skills during the tennis session. They were very enthusiastic when playing the heads, shoulders, knees and ball game at the start.
This half-term is super busy! Please make sure you make note of the key events happening in Summer 2.
This week, we’ve been learning about the human body. Before introducing our focus called See inside Your Body, I asked the class if anybody knew any facts about the human body.
Ta – The heartbeat helps us get red blood around our tummies.
Po – Our neck is really important
Ell – Lungs help us breath.
Gur – We have a brain.
Tee – We have to have bones.
We looked at the human skeleton, drew pictures of skeletons and labelled some of the 206 bones we have in our body! We also had lots of fun learning the skeleton dance. We also looked at some x-ray pictures and talked about why we might have one.
Role-play
In the home corner, we’ve had a very busy doctors’ surgery! Many of our children turned into doctors and nurses. They’ve been checking heart beats, putting bandages on and giving medicine to help their patients feel better.
Butterflies
On Monday, we released our butterflies! We enjoyed waving goodbye when watching them fly away.
Poetry Picnic
This week’s poem was called The Fox. When learning this poem, we shared lots of our own experiences about foxes.
Je – I’ve seen three foxes before. When we were in our old house we saw a baby fox.
Tho – I’ve seen a fox through my car window creeping along the edge of the road near a bush.
Poppy – I saw a fox in my garden and it jumped over my fence.
Phonics
This week, we’ve been learning to read and write words ending in:
We also learnt the last two phase 4 tricky words.
Help at home: Practise reading and writing the phase 4 tricky words.
I can’t believe we’ve only got only one half-term left in Reception. Where has this year gone?
I hope you all have a fantastic week off. Don’t forget to send me lots of pictures. See you on Monday 2nd June for your final half-term in Reception.
Literacy
This week, we’ve been learning about tropical rainforests and the animals that live there. In literacy, we’ve been looking at the book Rumble in the Jungle by Giles Andraea and David Wojtowycz. When reading this book, we talked about what a poem is and enjoyed listening out for rhyming words. On Wednesday and Thursday we had a go at writing a dictated sentence about a rainforest animal.
Caterpillars
On Thursday morning, we had a lovely surprise. Two butterflies had nibbled their way out of their chrysalises! We are waiting patiently for the other three.
Maths
This week, we continued to develop our understanding of the composition of numbers to 10 using different representations. To help deepen our understanding about the ‘whole’ being made up of smaller parts, we used practical experiences. We used the counting rhyme, ’10 fat sausages’ to investigate different ways to represent 10. We also used our fingers, 10-frames and Hungarian number patterns to begin to explore ‘5 and a bit’ numbers to 10.
Help at home: Using a frying pan and ten objects to represent the ’10 fat sausages’, sing the song with somebody at home. Each time a sausage goes bang, encourage your child to talk about what they can see. How many sausages are in the pan? How many sausages have gone bang? How many altogether?
Poetry Picnic
This week’s poem is A Little Shell. Click here to watch us perform the poem.
Take a look at some other wonderful learning…
Reminder!
Your child must be reading their e-books on a regular basis. Your children can read previous e-books to help with their fluency skills. When your child has read their e-books, please you write a quick message in their reading records. This allows us to see how they’re getting on at home.
I hope you have a happy and healthy weekend in the sunshine!
Literacy
We’ve been reading Walking Through the Jungle by Julie Lacome.
This repeating story was great for retelling. We talked about what a verb is and looked for them in the story: walking, running, leaping, swinging, creeping and wading.
Help at home: Can you retell the story to an adult or sibling at home?
We had a go at writing our own sentences.
Phonics
This week, we focused on reading and writing longer words and compound words. We learnt 4 new tricky words: were, here, little, says.
Help at home: Go on a tricky word hunt around your house. Ask an adult to write some tricky words on scrap pieces of paper and stick them up around your house. How many tricky words can you find and read?
Maths
This week, we consolidated our understanding of the composition of 5 and practised recalling the parts of 5 when 1 part is not visible. We used our fingers on 1 hand to help with the composition of 5. We looked at how many fingers are ‘up’ and and how many are ‘folded down’. We used a rhyme about 5 kittens jumping ‘down’ from the bed to help us with this.
Help at home: Play a game the kittens game with an adult. You need 5 objects (kittens) and a piece of material or paper (bed) Take turns to hide some kittens under the bed. Use the below stem sentence to explain what you can see.
5 is made up of…
… and … makes 5
Poetry Picnic
This week the poem was the classic nursery rhyme, Sing a song of sixpence. We have been watching this video to help us remember it. Click here to watch us.
Living & Learning
Yesterday, we talked about the importance of a healthy diet. We worked with a partner to design a healthy plate. We thought of lots of different healthy foods.
Diary dates
On Monday morning, a parcel arrived at school…
WE HAVE 5 CATERPILLARS!
On Wednesday, we watched a video about the life cycle of a butterfly and talked about the different stages.
Help at home: Can your child remember the four stages? Draw a picture of the life cycle.
Literacy
This week, we’ve been reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. We had lots of fun drawing story maps.
After reading and retelling the story, we used our imagination to write our own versions of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We changed the main character and the food.
Maths
This week, we continued to develop our subitising skills. We used our understanding of doubles to support our subitising skills when looking at different arrangements. We created arrangements of 6 using different objects. We thought carefully about how we can arrangement the objects so it’s easier to subitise– e.g. 2 groups of 3. We then played a game called Odd One Out. We had to spot an arrangement that was not 6.
Help at home: Make arrangements of 6 using everyday objects. Get your adult to close their eyes and see if they spot if it’s changed.
DT
In the creative area, we’ve been exploring how to use hand drills to make holes in pieces of wood. On Wednesday, we used our skills to build a bug hotel for our outdoor area.
Learning outside
We’ve had a lovely week making the most of the sunny weather. The children have loved building, painting and getting wet in the water tray.
As we enter into the warmer months, please make sure your child comes to school with a hat and a water bottle. Sun cream must be applied before school.