Spring 2: Week 4
It’s been another busy and exciting week in Reception, and we’ve made the most of the lovely sunny spring weather.
We’ve been reading the traditional tale Jack and the Beanstalk. The children have really enjoyed getting to know the story, learning new vocabulary, and exploring prosody—especially when performing the Giant’s famous line:
“Fee fi fo fum!”
To help us become confident storytellers, we’ve been using a story map to support us in retelling the story in our own words.
On Tuesday, we planted our very own (magic!) beans. We discussed what plants need in order to grow, including water, sunlight, and care. Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be observing our beans closely and recording any changes in our bean diaries.
We’re excited to watch them grow!
Art
We’ve been learning about this half-term’s featured artist, Michael Craig-Martin. He’s an artist who likes to draw everyday objects such as cups, chairs and shoes. The children explored how he uses bright colours and clear, bold lines to make his artwork stand out and look fun. We looked at lots of examples of his work and talked about what we could see and what we liked.
Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be creating our own artwork inspired by Michael Craig-Martin, using tissue paper, tracing paper and black pens.
Learning journey drop ins
Thank you to everyone who has signed up for one of the learning journey drop-in sessions next week. We’re looking forward to welcoming you into the classroom to look through your child’s books and share the fantastic progress they’ve made during their second term at school.
Help at home:
Celebrating your child’s reading: eBooks
We hope that you’re enjoying listening to your child read their eBook at home and that your child is enjoying celebrating their super reading skills!
At school, your child reads a physical book four times a week – with a focus on teaching phonics skills. This is then sent home as an eBook. The purpose of the eBook at home is to celebrate your child’s success (in phonics skills). Your child should be able to read most of this book confidently and really feel like a reader.
We’ve chosen to use eBooks at home for many benefits. Allocating eBooks frees up about two hours of teacher or TA time changing books – now spent teaching reading!
Here’s some information on how to access eBooks but if you’re having any problems please speak to your child’s class teacher.
Happy reading!
Poetry Basket: Pat-a-cake
This week our poem is well-known nursery rhyme, Pat-a-cake.
Two of the words we’ve been focussing on are to prick and plenty.
Spring 2: Week 3
This week, we continued exploring our transport theme by reading The Hundred Decker Bus by Mike Smith. After enjoying the story, we let our imaginations run wild and designed our very own Moortown bus!
Our ideas were fantastic: one deck had a dessert and a brownie bakery, another featured a deep swimming pool, and we even created a calm deck in case you wanted some quiet time.
Click here to see our amazing bus! We look forward to showing you our bus when you attend the next Learning Journey drop-ins.
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!
Home learning challenge
Recycled materials needed!
If you have any clean recycled materials at home, please consider sending them in for the children to use in our creative area.
Items that would be great include: cardboard boxes, cereal boxes, kitchen roll tubes, yoghurt pots, egg boxes, and other small packaging materials.
Please ensure all items are clean and safe for children to use.
Reminder
- Learning Journey Drop In’s
Tuesday 24th & Thursday 26th March – 3.15pm – 3.45pm
Reminder: Reception parent/carer survey
If you haven’t already and you’re a parent of a child in Reception, please complete this short survey. Thank you to those of you who have already completed the survey.
At Moortown 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.
Poetry Basket: Popcorn
This week’s poem is called Popcorn.
Two of the words we’ve been focussing on are sizzling and shake.
Spring 2: Week 2
We’ve had a wonderful day we’ve had celebrating World Book Day. Our classroom was full of wonderful book characters. Here’s some photos of the children enjoying the World Book Day challenges.
Thank you to all the parents/carers who came to our stay and learn session this afternoon. It was lovely to see our classroom so busy!
This week, we continued exploring our topic ‘Let Go’ and read the story The Hundred Decker Rocket. The story is about a girl called Ivy who sets off on a mission to space and meets some very messy aliens along the way. When her rocket breaks down, the aliens work together to fix it and each add their own deck.
The children enjoyed using their imaginations to design their own rocket decks and write a sentence about their creation.
Phonics
This week, the children have reviewed air, er and longer words that contain double letters.
Write these words on paper and ask your child to underline the double letters before reading.
hammer shimmer cannot chatter muffin
Help at home: Tricky words are really tricky! We’ve previously introduced a few fun games you can play at home to practice tricky words. Here’s another you could try.
Tricky word password
Write different tricky words on paper and stick them next to different doors around the house. Each time your child enters or leaves a room they must press and say the tricky word password.
RE
This we’ve been learning about the Hindu festival of Holi, the festival of colours. We explored four special colours and what they represent: yellow for knowledge and learning, blue to represent the gods, red for love, and green for nature and the start of spring. The children had lots of fun celebrating by getting messy and using their hands to create a bright, colourful piece of art.
Maths
This week, the children continued to develop their counting skills and their understanding that counting helps us find out how many there are. They practised the counting sequence and revisited the idea that the last number counted tells the total. The children also worked on counting out a set number of objects from a larger group and explored counting beyond 20, noticing the repeating number patterns. They reinforced the correct order of numbers to 10 and learned that each number is one more than the one before.
Yesterday, the children were challenged to work with a partner to create a staircase pattern using 11 towers of 5, thinking carefully about ‘5 and a bit’ when building their staircase.
Reception parent/carer survey
If you’re a parent of a child in Reception, please complete this short survey.
At Moortown 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.
Poetry Basket: Pancakes
This week’s poem is called Pancakes.
How do you like your pancakes? When I was 5, my mum used to make pancakes with mince and gravy for me and my brother on pancake day! Fortunately, we had lemon and sugar pancakes for pudding.
Two of the words we’ve been focussing on this week are toss and fry.
World Book Day
We’re very excited to be celebrating World Book Day next 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
At 2:45pm, you are more than welcome to join us for our Love of Reading Stay & Learn 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!