This week, our Living and Learning statement is I make healthy choices. On Monday, we had a visitor from D:side called Dave . He talked staying safe around medicine, healthy foods and brushing teeth. The children listened well and answered lots of questions.
Help at home: What healthy choices do you do at home?
Well done to all the children for showing resilience and determination in their races! We had a wonderful afternoon cheering on our friends. Thank you to everybody who came and supported the children at our Sports Day.
We’ve had a wonderful time today on our trip to Temple Newsam Farm! The children’s behaviour was impeccable and they were a credit to our school.
Literacy
This week, we’ve been reading Clean Up! by Nathan Bryon.
This book has helped us to think about how to look after our oceans, animals and earth. It has helped us to understand that we are responsible for our own litter. The children have extended their vocabulary through the use of: recycle, sanctuary, island and pollution.
We’ve even given our school playgrounds a Clean Up!
Art
We’ve been busy creating our own mobile sculptures based on Alexander Calder’s famous moving mobiles. We used wire, polystyrene 3d shapes and tissue to create our own representations of his work.
Living and Learning
This week, we’ve been recognising our strengths and saying good things about ourselves. I am good at…
FlM – looking after my baby sister.
HFW – building sand hills.
TH – passing a ball.
DD – Numbots.
SB – tidying up.
FiM – football.
ER – gymnastics.
SS – phonics.
AP – quizzes.
HW – tidying my room.
JZ – playing on the slides.
AS – being a good friend.
RY – sports.
We look forward to welcoming you back into classroom for our final learning journey drop in this year. See you all next week!
Literacy and history
This week, we’ve been reading Sharing a Shell by Julia Donaldson. After reading the story, we worked together to sequence the story pictures.
Our word of the week was thoughtful. We talked about what the word means and how it links to our story. All week, we’ve been thinking about how we can be thoughtful at school.
For our writing activity, we thought about who we would share a shell with and why.
Yesterday, we looked at some past and present seaside holiday photographs. We talked about similarities and differences.
Awais – They both have the sea.
Lucas – They both are busy.
Huey – This one has a little boat.
Myla – There’s no umbrellas.
Eleanor – One has an island and the other doesn’t.
We compared other things such as clothing, food and activities.
Help at home: Find a picture of you at the seaside and compare it to one of these photographs. You could even ask an adult at home if they can remember their seaside holidays.
PE
With sports day just around the corner, we’ve been busy practising our races. They showed fantastic determination and teamwork especially when doing the relay and three-legged race. We are super excited for sports day!
Help at home: Practise your races in the garden!
Poetry picnic
This week’s poem is called I Have a Little Frog. Miss Gaunt has been doing an excellent job at looking after our tadpoles and now they have legs! We check on them everyday to see if they’ve changed.
Click here to watch the poem.
Literacy
To help get us thinking about the seaside, we read lots of seaside poems collected by Jill Bennett. For our writing activity, we wrote a sentence about things we might see or do at the seaside.
On Wednesday, we looked at some at a photograph of Scarborough and talked about the things we might see at the seaside that we don’t see in Leeds. We then thought about things they have in common.
You can’t see seaweed in Leeds.
You can’t see the sea in Leeds.
You can’t see a lighthouse in Leeds.
I can’t see a hermit crab in Leeds.
Leeds and the seaside have fish and chips.
You can see some beach huts at the seaside.
You can have ice cream in both places.
You can see hotels in Leeds and at the seaside.
Splish, splash, splosh!
We had lots of fun getting wet (and cooling down) in our very own paddling pool.
PE
This week, in Foot-Tech, we continued to play 4 corner tag. Each group were asked to set up their squares independently – I was so impressed with how well they did this! When playing the game, they were fantastic at negotiating space, changing direction and coming up with their own tactics to trick the tagger.
Jellyfish
One of the chilli challenges this week, was to make a jelly fish. Cutting the material for the tentacles was quite tricky.
Poetry picnic
This week, we’ve been learning the nursery rhyme The Big Ship Sails…
Check out their amazing singing!
Stay safe in the sun!
It looks like the glorious weather is here to stay for a little bit longer. 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.
Reminder
Don’t forget to attend the Reception to Y1 transition parent Zoom on Monday.
This morning, we were very hot after doing LOTS of learning. Therefore, we decided to do a bit of mindfulness drawing to help cool us down. We had lots of fun using our imaginations to create purposeful drawings.
Click here to look at our wonderful drawings.
IMPORTANT REMINDER
Your child must bring a water bottle and named sun hat to school everyday. We will refill your child’s water bottle when needed.
I can’t believe it’s the last half-term. Where has this school year gone?
This week, we’ve dived straight into our new topic, Let’s make a splash! Over the next few weeks, 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.
Literacy
This week, we’ve been reading One is a Snail, Ten is a Crab by Jeff Sayre and April Sayre. Before reading the book, we looked carefully at the front cover and discussed where the story is set.
Have you ever been somewhere like this?
HB – I’ve been to Serbia and there’s a beach there.
HFW – I’ve been to Whitby and there’s lots of house. I have a house there.
JZ – I have been to a lake in the Lake District.
SB – I’ve been to a Spain beach.
FlM – I’ve been to Saltburn and I saw an ice cream shack.
HW – I’ve been to Lanzarote and I went to a flamingo beach.
HM – I’ve been to Robin Hood Bay. I did rock hammering to see if there’s ammonites inside.
LC – I went to a beach in France. I went with my family and lots of cousins.
MB – I built sandcastles. I have a bucket that looks like a real castle.
When reading this book, we found it rather funny! This book also helped us with our maths learning.
Yesterday, I challenged the children to work out how many legs there are ALTOGETHER in our classroom. We counted in 2s all the way up to 66!
Maths
Counting beyond 20 has been an important focus this week. For the children to develop familiarity with the structure and the pattern of counting, we have been practising these key skills:
Help at home: Practise counting things that can’t be moved. Can you use one of the strategies we’ve been using in school? You could use the patterns below, patterns on wrapping paper or draw your own patterns to count.
Poetry picnic
We’ve been practising our prosody skills when reading this week’s poem. Click here to check out our fantastic actions!
Maypole dancing
This week, we’ve been practising our Maypole dance ready for the Summer Fair next month. We are looking forward to opening the fair.
This half-term is very busy! Please make sure you’ve noted down the below events.
Diary dates
19 June – Moving from Reception to Year 1 parent Zoom meeting – 6pm
23 June – PTA non-uniform day
03,04 & 07 July – Learning journey drop ins
06 July – Trip to Temple Newsam Farm
7 July – PTA Summer Fair
13 July – Sports Day
18 July – Sports Day – reserve date
This week, we’ve been learning about the human body. Before introducing our focus called See inside Your Body, I asked the children, “Does anybody know a fact about the human body?”
JQ – The skull protects your brain.
TH – This is your knee bone.
LC – Sometimes when you fall over, your body bleeds.
AP – Your heart beats 1,500 beats a day. My Mummy told me that.
HM – Your heart pumps blood around your body.
FlM – “The longest bone in your body is your leg and the shortest is in your ear.
SL – Whatever you do, your skeleton copies that.
We’ve looked at the human skeleton, drew pictures of our own skeletons and labelled some of the 206 bones we have in our body! The children were amazed that babies have about 300 bones! We also had lots of fun learning the skeleton dance.
We also looked at some x-ray pictures. We talked x-rays are important and why we might have one.
On Wednesday, we learnt about our five senses – hearing, touch, sight, smell and taste. We went on a senses walk around school and drew pictures of things we could hear, touch, see and smell. We talked about the sense we didn’t use and the children drew a picture of something they ate at snack time or for lunch.
PE
On Monday, the children practised their skipping skills. Many children found skipping quite tricky. Miss Gaunt was very impressed with their fantastic determination and perseverance.
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, while building a foundation for further learning in Year 1.
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 all about looking after baby monkeys. Click here to watch us.
Here are some highlights from our last week of Summer 1…
Butterfly news
This afternoon, we released 3 of our butterflies! We got to watch one of the butterflies emerging from its chrysalis.
Reminders
Well, that’s another half-term done and dusted. 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 05 June for your final half-term in Reception.
On Tuesday, we made fruit kebabs. We practised our fine motor skills by cutting the fruit and threading the pieces onto the kebab sticks. Some of the children made their fruit kebab into a repeating pattern.
After making our fruit kebabs, we enjoyed eating them in the sunshine with our friends.
Literacy
We’ve been reading Farmyard Hullabaloo by Gile Andreae.
When reading, the children enjoyed listening carefully and working out the missing rhyming words. After this, we had a go at making our own rhyming strings. For example, munch, crunch, bunch, lunch
Help at home: Can you think of your own rhyming string?
PE
Yesterday afternoon, we enjoyed another Foot—Tech session. We used beanbags and different sized balls to practise our throwing skills. We explored lots of different types of throws: underarm, overarm, two-handed, one-handed, backwards, through our legs.
Poetry Picnic
This week’s poem was called The Fox. When learning this poem, we shared lots of our own experiences about foxes.
Caterpillars
It’s exciting times in Reception… all of our caterpillars have now made a chrysalis (cocoon). Everyday, we’re observing and waiting patiently for the final stage of the cycle. I’m keeping my fingers crossed this happens before before we break up for half-term!
Phonics
This week, we’ve been learning to read and write words ending in:
RemindersIt looks like the weekends going to be a warm one! I hope you all have a happy and healthy one whatever you get up to.