Diamond Class

Welcome to Reception (Diamond Class) 2021 - 2022

Week beginning 18th July 2022 - Our last week in Reception.

Well what can I say - the last week of term has come to an end! What a week it has been.  We have done our first sports day ever, we have danced to a rock band and we have watched our amazing Year 6 leavers assembly.  We have spent 2 days in school in the hottest weather ever eating ice pops and sticking out feet in cold water to cool down.  We have laughed and played and just been amazing!

Reception you are awesome and you have had a year to be proud of.  Keep being you as you move to Year 1 and keep being the amazing little people you are.

Week beginning 11th July - teeth and healthy eating

This week we have focused on being healthy.  We have looked at how we look after our teeth and we have learnt how to brush our teeth.  We also spoke lots about how the dentist is there to help us look after our teeth and how they one of the people who are there to help us.  We all brushed our teeth and took home our own new toothbrush to help us keep our teeth clean.

We then used cornflour and strawberry hair conditioner to make our own play dough and we used this to make our own tooth brushes. It took a really good pincher grip and controlled fine motor skills to pick up the tiny match sticks we used to make the bristles.

Then we used our super writing skills to make some posters to tell everyone in school how often they need to brush their teeth to keep them clean and healthy.

We then learnt about healthy and unhealthy foods and about foods which are good for our teeth and those which aren’t. We learnt though that all foods are good to each just some need to be eaten in moderation. The children were all given some food and they needed to decide if the food would go in a healthy lunch or am unhealthy lunch or if they could fit in both. The children were really good at explaining their throughs and reasoning with their decisions. 

Then we learnt about how some children have to have special diets and we learnt about Celiac disease and that this is a diet without gluten but that the foods are still delicious. We tried lots of gluten free foods over a couple of days and decided if we liked them or not. The unanimous decision for all the foods was that they were slightly different when compared to the food we would usually eat but that they were still delicious. They were all eaten up and enjoyed by everyone!

We read a book about a little girl who needs a gluten free diet to help us understand more. We talked about how sometimes when we have food in class, if someone had a gluten free diet then we might need to give them different food to make sure they don’t get poorly. The children were amazing discussing this. They linked it to things like being allergic to rabbits or nuts and however is different but that is good. Reception are really truly amazing!

We then baked some gluten free chocolate brownies which were a huge success. They were delicious.  Even the teachers pinched some and loved it!

This week someone in Reception also got a very important letter.

Harry had written to the Queen all by himself and told her all about himself and his school wished her a Happy Jubilee and he got his very own reply - his very own letter from the Queen! We were so excited to open it and share it with him. Something special to treasure Harry!

 Look at some of the other things Reception have been up to this week……

Tuesday 5th July - our visit to the beach

Today we went on a school visit with all of Key Stage 1 to South Shields beach.  We have had the best day.  We played in the park.

While we were playing in the park we watched the train go round the park and we waved each time it went past.  It blew steam at us and whistled each time it went past.  The grown ups who were with us surprised us with a ride on the train!  We loved it and the train driver even took us round twice!

We then had a picnic in the park!  Our bags were much lighter after we had eaten our delicious treats. We were complemented by the public for how well we were sitting, how smiley we were and how well behaved we were.  We chatted, shared, giggled and ate our lunches to give us energy for the afternoon.

After lunch it was time for the beach!  We loved playing in the sand - we built sandcastles, dug holes and played football.  We had the best time.  We played together and shared all the equipment really well! We all had our socks and shoes off and we loved the feel of the sand between our toes.

We then all ran down to the sea and paddled in the sea!  It was freezing cold but we loved it! We giggled and squealed and laughed.  We jumped in the water and over the waves and no-one fell in!!!!!!

We ended the day with an ice-cream!  You can't come to the beach without an ice-cream.  Yum yum!!

What a super day we have had.  We have been complemented 3 times on our behaviour and our manners; we have laughed and giggled;  we have played and we have had a train ride; we have dug and we have paddled!  We have made memories with our friends. We have all come home exhausted with lots to tell our grown-ups.

w/b 20th June 2022 - Aliens, Aliens and more Aliens

The children have loved learning about Space so much we continued our topic this week.  The children asked the question 'Are aliens real?' so we decided to investigate. 

We read lots of books which had aliens in them.  We read 'Aliens love underpants' and 'Aliens in underpants save the day' and 'Field trip to the moon'.  We looked at how the aliens were portrayed in each of the stories.  We decided that we think aliens are colourful and look very different to us!  We created our own aliens.

We then wrote sentences independently describing our aliens.  We impressed our teachers with our writing and our phonics and how we could describe our alien using adjectives.

We then made our own aliens using big green balloons.  We loved them and took them home.

We did so many other alien things which developed our cutting and writing skills and also our supportive working to work together and help each other.

In maths we have been learning about odd and even numbers.  We used numicon to help us recognise which numbers always had a partner and which don't.  We then sorted numbers into odd and even.  We are also beginning to be able to say which numbers are odd and even and explain why. We love the Number Blocks episode on odd and even numbers.

We also took part in the Active 5 fitnesses challenges each day to help us realise how important daily exercise is.  

w/b 13.6.22 Space and the moon

This week Reception have been exploring space and the moon.  We have looked at the first space landing and we have explored what the surface of the moon was like.  We looked at how the caters on the moon are made and we exeperimented with flour and our own craters of different sizes to see which would make the biggest and the deepest carters.  We loved it!

We also looked at the space suits the astronauts would wear and how heavy they were.  We spoke about gravity on earth and the effect of no gravity on the moon.  We also looked at what it would be like to work in a space station and we set up our very own space station in the classroom.  We also used rubber gloves to do some the tasks in the environment this week (building a space buggy) to experience how hard some of the jobs would have been for the astronauts on the moon in their spacesuits.

We spoke about Father's day and the signifciance of this and we used this opportunity to discuss how all families are different and days like this are all about saying thank you to the people who are special to us and who care for us.  We made our special people a moon picture and we all wrote a very special message to our grown ups using our phonics.  We think our pictures will be treasured by our special people and we think our special people will be blown away with how much progress we have all made with our writing. 

We explored the moon and space in so many other ways this week. Everyone in Reception has loved it and have been really engaged. The talk and the play and the engagement with learning has been super by everyone.

This week we have been continuing to practise our number skills but we have also been learning about addition and  subtraction using first, then and now.  This was really tricky at first but the children soon began to get the hang of it.

This week we have also been practising all of our phonics sounds in our whole class phonics session before our group phonics starts again next week.  We have blown our teachers away with what we know and can remember - we are even becoming little stars with alternative sounds!  We practised our phonics in all areas of the classroom this week.

Friday has been the hottest day of the year so far - we checked the temperature outside and the thermometer said 24 degrees!!! Mrs Hill and Mrs Woodhall must have knows because we had the best treat ever! An ice-cream van came to school and we could choose and ice cream or a lolly to cool down.  What an amazing treat!! We all remembered our manners too and said 'Thank you'.

Summer 2

W/b 6th June 2022 - What is school like now?

As our new school is betting bigger and bigger and nearer completion we are starting to think about what school life has been like in the current Hetton Primary and also in schools that came before.  Reception was tasked with looking at what school life is like now. We started by looking at school life in the past and comparing it to school now then we thought about all the things we are pleased we have in school now which make our time at school easier, comfortabler and which help us learn better.  We had some super ideas - water bottles, whiteboards, interactive whiteboards, school uniforms which make us all the same and which are comfortable.  We used the i-pads to take pictures of all the things we could think about then we wrote our own sentences.

We were super proud of the sentences we could write ourselves.  We chatted lots about what school is like now and about what our new school will be like.  We are very excited. 

We looked at school uniform and what our uniform looks like now and how this helps with our school identify.  We talked about how this helps us to be the same and to show we belong to school. 

We looked at how artists make pictures of things we want to remember.  We decided to make our own artistic impressions of our school as it is now so we have a lasting memory of Hetton Primary before we go to our new build.

We also continued to look at developing our number skills using first, then and now.

We have also loved playing some good old fashioned games to help develop our number recognition and our number bond skills, our reasoning and problem solving. We loved 'shut the box' and 'connect 4'.  Next week we will have snakes and ladders and ludo.

w/b 23rd May 2022 - The Queen's Jubilee

This week we have been learning even more about The Queen and we have been learning all about her Platinum Jubilee.

We have been learning about money - coins and notes - and we were shocked to see The Queen on lots of our money.  We have also been learning about the post and about sending letters.  We made our own Jubilee cards for our grown ups and we put on our address and we posted them.  Guess who was on the stamps.....The Queen!  The shop keeper watched us post our letters and she was so impressed with our behaviour she came and gave us all a sweet! We hope our grown-ups loved their surprise cards. 

We also learnt all about how people will celebrate The Queen's Platinum Jubilee and we learnt about street parties.  We looked at pictures of street parties and the types of food that might be eaten.  We saw lots of sandwiches so we designed and made our own favourite sandwiches.  We wrote the instructions as a class and then we all followed them to make our own sandwiches.  Spreading and cutting are brilliant activities to develop our fine motor skills and we all opened our own packets of crisps which is brilliant for practising our pincer grip. Our sandwiches were delicious to eat.

We all pretended to be The Queen and see what it was like to sit on the throne! 

We also learnt all about The Queen's Guards and the important jobs they do.  We painted our own Guards and we even made a big one!  He made sure The Queen was safe when she came to wave at us when we went to see her on our very own Red London Bus!

We also danced and sang and celebrated the Queen's Jubilee in style with friends and family.  This is the first time in over 2 years that we have been able to have our families in school to share something special with school.  This made the Queen's jubilee even more special for us. 

Happy Platinum Jubilee Your Majesty - Love from Reception xx

w/b 16th May 2022 - The Queen lives in London.

This week we have continued to learn about The Queen.  We have looked at where she lives and some of the famous landmarks we would see if we went to London to see the Queen.  We have drawn these landmarks, made them out of junk modelling materials and we have made our own versions out of construction.

We also read The Queen's Handbag and The Queen's Hat.  We used The Queen's Hat to look at landmarks in London then we used The Queen's Handbag to look at landmarks in the 4 countries of the United Kingdom which linked nicely with looking at the Union Jack.

We planned and wrote our own stories using these books as our inspiration.

We have also been looking at using 'first, then and now' to introduce us to addition in our maths.  We used a London Bus to help us.  We looked at how many were on the bus first, then how many extra got on and now how many do we have altogether.

We also read The Queen's Knickers. We giggled at the story. We looked at all the knickers the Queen wears.  We designed out own knickers for The Queen.  We loved doing this job.  Our imagination and creativity and discussion were fantastic!

w/b 9th May 2022 All about the Queen

This week we have started to learn all about the Queen in preparation for our work on her Platinum Jubilee. We have looked at the Queen from being a baby to how she is now and we have compared how she looks to how people we know look. We compared her baby picture to our baby pictures - our pictures are not black and white although we thought Mrs Medhurst's and Mrs Watson's would be......heehee!  We also used our knowledge of growing up to sequence pictures of the Queen.  We remembered lots of the terms for growing up from previous work we have done - baby, toddler, teenager, young adult etc.  We were also shock to learn that that Queen became Queen when she was 25 - that is how old some of our mams are!

We have looked closely at pictures of the Queen and learnt that the Queen has had over 160 portraits of her painted.  We decided to create some of our own Queen portraits.  We looked at some of the ones the Queen has had painted and some were amazing and some were rather odd and we wondered what the Queen would have thought of them.  We decided she would have liked our portraits.

We have also looked at some of the toys the Queen would have played with when she was little and compared them to toys we play with today.  They were very different but we did enjoy playing with them.  We decided we were not sure what the Queen would have thought about i-pads when she was little.

We looked closely that the Queen and her crowns and her throne.  We changed our role-play area in the classroom to Windsor Castle with the Queen's throne.  We have have had banquets and got dressed and princes and princesses and we made our own crowns so we could pretend to be the Queen.  We have even practised her wave .

We looked very royal and regal in our crowns. 

This week we also had a visit from our local community Police Officers.  They came to talk to use to tell us all about their work and about how they are there to help and support us.  They said if we saw them out and about they would love a 'Hello' or a high five.  We loved trying on their uniform and it made some of us think about being Police when we grow up.

This week we have also worked on our numbers to 20 and beyond, we have learnt some of our doubles and we have been representing them in the environment with so many different materials.  We also discovered mirrors are excellent to use to learn about doubles.  We have also investigated shapes and patterns. We have practised our ball skills and our climbing, balancing and moving skills and we have done some amazing phonics.  What a busy week we have had!

w/b 3rd May 2022 - Lets build a new school (week 2)

This week Mrs Watson and Mrs Medhurst put on their safety clothes and went and looked inside our new school building.  They came back and told us all about it but they said that at the minute our school is empty.  We decided we needed to tell the Site Manager and the Architect what we needed inside our new school.  We went around our school now with i-pads and we took pictures of all the things we decided we must tell the building team we need in our new school. 

We then each choose the 3 we thought were most important and used our phonics to name each of the things we had chosen.  Mrs Medhurst was so impressed with how we used our phonics to spell some tricky words independently.  We then each wrote a note to the building team to tell them the things they must include in our new school. 

We then decided we must show Mrs Hill our work so she could pass on what we had written to the builders so we could make sure our new school has everything it needs.  Mrs Hill read our sentences, made notes of what our school needs and then she rang Anthony, the Site Manager, to pass on our lists.  We think he is so impressed with our work that he is coming over to talk to us and read each of our requests.  We think our work is going to make our new school just perfect.  We are now so excited to get into our new school next year.

We did lots of other building work this week.  We continued to use our outdoor bricks to build our own buildings and develop ways of making the walls taller and stronger.  We followed plans to make Lego buildings and structures, we used construction materials to make our own buildings and then we started to make our own wheeled vehicles.  We played with the construction site small world using our imagination and subject appropriate vocabulary to act out our play and we experimented with combining our indoor construction to make some fantastic buildings.

This week we have also been continuing to develop our recognition of numbers to 20.  We have been counting to 20 and developing our understanding of numbers to 20.  We have also been developing our ability to quickly identify numbers to 20 when they are in pictorial form.  We have played bingo, snakes and ladders and snap to help us identify our numbers.  We are all working really hard on our numbers to 20.

This week in PE we have been developing our rolling, throwing, bouncing and kicking with large balls. All of the children are really trying to develop their control and their ability to stop and catch a ball.  Mrs Watson and Mrs Medhurst were really impressed with the skills we practised and improved.  There were also really impressed with how we supported and encouraged each other to help all of us improve.  What a super team we are!

Wednesday 27th April - Our Farm Visit

Last half term we learnt about growing and changing and looked a lot at how animals grow and change.  We planned a visit to the farm so children could learn much more about growing and changing and about farms and animals.  The children (and the adults) had the best day.  The children got to meet lots of animals and learn all about how they grow and change and about what they eat and how the farmer looks after them.  The children were well behaved, polite and inquisitive.  Lots of people on our day out commented on their behaviour, their manners, their knowledge and how much they smiled all day.  

We went on a tractor ride to meet some of the animals who live in the paddocks.

We met some geese, a peacock, some hens and roosters and a turkey!  The turkey made us laugh and we were fascinated by the peacock and his amazing feathers.

We fed some sheep, met some naughty larmas who put their ears down when they were going to spit and you and a donkey who had a cold.

Lunch with our friends was just amazing.  We were given compliments by other visitors to the farm for our behaviour, our manners and how tidy we left the area. We even got a sneaky play in the soft play!

We fed some baby lambs.

We held some cute, fluffy rabbits and guinea pigs. 

We also held some lovely, cute chicks.  The lady was so impressed with how much we knew about chicks and their life cycle and how to look after them and hold them safely.

We also fed some goats, milked a cow and met some pigs! 

All day we washed our hands so many times we lost count but we knew how important it was to keep our hands clean and to wash away all the germs. 

We had a lovely visit.  We learnt lots, smiled lots and had lots of fun with our friends. 

Just before home time we even had a sneaky go on the wheeled sledges.  Mrs Watson and Mrs Medhurst had a go too.  We all giggled lots. 

w/b 25th April - Lets build a new school!

This week we started a new topic called 'Lets build a new school.'  We are lucky enough to be getting a new school next year and we can see our new school being built from our school window and we are really interested in what is going on and how the school is getting built and what it will look like.  We started our week looking at schools past, present and future.  We explored our local area to find the schools from the past and we then looked at our school now before exploring our new school from different points in our local area.  We were so shocked at how big and exciting our new school looks for Hetton School field.

We have learnt a lot about safety on the building site because the children were disappointed we couldn't go inside the building site to look. We learnt all about what builders need to do to be safe and then we checked that the builders on our school site were safe.  We can assure everyone they had helmets, books, goggles, gloves, bright jackets, masks and ear defenders if they were working anywhere noisy.  We reported our findings to the site supervisor who was very happy!

We have also been building our own new school in school using our new construction bricks.  We have had some amazing designs and ideas which we will share with our architect.

In class we have used our junk modelling skills to design and make our own buildings, just like the architect and builders are doing with our school.  We had some super creative designs and the children could verbally describe how they would make their designs and the features they would have. 

This week we have also started to count to 20 and learn that numbers past ten are 10 and a little bit more.  We have been counting sets of objects, making numbers to 20 with coloured blocks and identify and writing numbers from pictorial representations.  Numbers to 20 are really tricky so we will be doing lots more work on numbers to 20 over the next couple of weeks and we are all going to practise at home with our grown-ups.

w/b 4th April 2022  - All about Easter

We started this week looking for signs of spring.  We explored our school grounds and found lots of signs of spring we could see, hear, feel and smell. 

We then learnt all about Easter.  We spoke about what the children think about at Easter  - eggs and the Easter Bunny - and we learnt about other symbols of Easter.  We learnt about Jesus, the cross, hot cross buns, chicks, rabbits, sheep and eggs and why they all symbolise Easter.  We listened to the story of Easter too and began to understand how important this story is.  We looked at Palm Sunday in more detail and learnt about how Jesus was loved by so many people and how they showed this on Palm Sunday.  We made our own palm leaves and we acted out Jesus going into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday riding on his donkey while everyone waved palm leaves at him.  

We did lots of other lovely Easter activities and jobs which enabled us to talk lots about Easter and learn all about its symbols and traditions.  We made salt dough egg and chick decorations, we made chocolate nests, we played with out Easter small world and we did some lovely Easter writing to name just a few of the things we did.

We had great fun investigating materials which could protect Humpty from breaking when he fell off the wall.  We were all given our own 'Humpty' in pairs to protect.  We could protect him in any way we wanted so that when we sang Humpty Dumpty and he fell off the wall he was safe and he didn't crack.  The children came up with some amazing ideas to protect Humpty from bird seed to pasta to cotton wool to wrapping him up like a present.  The language and the reasoning the children used to explain their choices was amazing!

The winning Humpty who had to be dropped from the ceiling before he cracked was protected with bird sheet to feed him, cotton wool to wrap him up and pasta because it is hard like a helmet!

This week too we were able to watch out chicks grow even more.  They were collected on Friday to go to Tweddle Farm and we were amazed how much they had changed and grown from the tiny little chicks which hatched out of the eggs,  There were so tall and their feathers had started to grow.  Be had a guess at how tall and big there were going to become.  We were sad to see them go but we know they need much more space to run around now and that their little box in our classroom was much to small for them now.

And to make our Easter week so much better we had a surprise visit from some real Easter Bunnies. They were so cute and so soft to touch.  We loved them so much we all wanted to wear bunny ears all day.

w/b 28th March - Chicks, chicks and more chicks.

This week we have continued our theme of growing and changing.  We have been lucky enough to have ten living eggs in the classroom.  We have been fascinated taking care of them all week.  We have watched the eggs move and crack, we have watched the watched the chicks hatch and we have watched them fluff up and learn to stand.  We have also been able to have a hold and a stroke of them. We have been so good and gentle and caring.

We tried super hard to get pictures of us all holding the chicks but they were super lively at times so we only managed to get some pictures.  We invited all grown-ups into school to look at the chicks and take pictures of their little ones with the chicks so everyone had a picture.  

We have loved coming into the classroom on a morning and seeing what the chicks are up to or how many have hatched.  We have talked lots and lots about the chicks - our description and our sentences have been amazing because we have been so interested. Mrs Medhurst and Mrs Watson have loved just listening to us. Mrs Hill even came for a cuddle and to observe our chicks.

We have used our chicks for all areas of learning this week.  We have written about our chicks, used lots of different medium to draw chicks and we have learnt about the life cycle of our chicks. We have also learnt abut farms and what happens on a farm.  After Easter we are going on a visit to a farm where we are hoping to see some more little chicks as well as lots of other little animals.

We learnt that we needed to wash our hand really well after we have touched the chicks.  We did a lesson to show us why it is so important to wash our hands properly.  We used glitter as germs and bugs which can be on our hands and we looked at how well we needed to wash our hands to make sure all the germs have gone.  We got a shock at how well we needed to wash our hands. 

This week we have also learnt all about 2D and 3D shapes and we have used them to make patterns and prints.  We have built towers with them and we have learnt lots of their names.  We have also worked really hard on our letter formation - especially those letters which need those tricky anti-clockwise movements. 

w/b 21.3.22 Jack and the Beanstalk

Last week the children found some large coins in our outdoor area.  They were convinced they were giant coins.  When they came into school on Monday they found the giant was coming down his beanstalk to find his coins!  The children were so excited.  We read the story of Jack and the Beanstalk and the children have written all about the bean growing using their phonics to write some super sentences. All of the children are now pinching the sounds in the words they speak and writing them down using sounds they know!  Reception you are amazing!

We used Jack and the Beanstalk to develop our growing and changing topic.  We have planted our own beans to see if we can grow a beanstalk as big as the giant. We wonder which will grow tallest - our sunflowers or our beanstalks? We are learnt all about what plants need to grow well and we are looking after our plants to make sure they start to grow well. We also planted some beans in CD cases so we can see what happens to the beans in the soil - we hope we start to see the shoots and the roots soon.  We have put these on our school fence. 

We have loved painting large beanstalks on our mirror and then using our spray bottles to wash them off again and start again.  These has been a super activity to help make the muscles in our hands strong and it has made us giggle lots.

We did so many more beanstalk jobs too.

This week has also been all about maths and developing our subitising and our ability to compare numbers.  We have also continued to learn about the composition of numbers to ten in some really fun ways.  With the sun shining we even managed to do some of our maths outside which was lovely. 

And this Sunday is Mother's day and Reception have made an extra special something for the extra special people  in their lives.  Look away now if you are a Reception Mammy and you haven't been given your gift yet 

w/b 14.3.22 - Science Week and Sponsor a Sunflower.

Our topic for Science Week was The Ocean and looking at how rubbish which ends up in the oceans can harm lots of our sea creatures. We looked at what we can do to stop this happening and why it is important to stop this happening so that our sea life can continue to live in clean and safe environments.

We used this beautiful book to help us with our learning.

We learnt that there is more sea than land on planet earth and that there are 5 oceans.  We loved playing with the globes in the class.  We learnt to name lots of sea creatures we have never seen before.  We also learnt what a diver does and watched some super videos of what a diver can see under the sea.  We then learnt about what happens to this amazing environment and all the sea creatures when rubbish is put in the sea. We made our own STOP posters to make people stop putting rubbish in the oceans. 

We looked at floating and sinking and how some rubbish floats and some sinks.  We were good at making predictions and testing them out in small groups.  We learned that rubbish that floats and rubbish that sinks is bad for sealife.

We did some much more in Science Week too to develop our understanding of the Ocean and of how the environment around the ocean is different to where we live.

This week we also supported  'Sponsor a Sunflower.' The sunflower is the national flower of Ukraine and we wanted to do our little bit to show we care.  We raised over £260 as a school and all the money was sent directly to the Disasters Emergency Committee to help those in Ukraine.

We used the sunflower to develop lots of learning and skills in Reception.  We developed our observational skills by drawing real life sunflowers.  We started to learn all about how plants grow and we were amazed that such tall flowers grown from tiny seeds.  We used the lovely book 'Sunflower House by Eve Bunting' to start to learn about the life cycle of plants.  We also did lots to develop our cutting skills including making our own petal perfume and exploring the beautiful smells from the flowers.. We even all planted our own sunflowers and we are going to have a competition to see who can grow the tallest one!

Look at all the other sunflower things we did.

In maths this week we continued to develop our understanding of the composition of numbers to 10.  We are loving our new Numberblock resources which are really helping us to learn all about number composition.  We even developed our maths by making sunflower number bonds.

Sponsor a Sunflower day was on the same day as Red Nose Day.  Some of Reception wore their Red Nose clothes to school. 

This week was our last Balance Bike session.  We have had 5 sessions and we have loved every one of them.  We have all developed our core balance, our focus and our ability to travel without our feet on the ground.  This week we were all even able to travel over ramps.  We have all been focused and determined and persevered and we all deserve the super certificates we were awarded.

We also had some unexpected visitors to our classroom - 2 tortoises!! We loved watching them move and feeling their shells. They moved much quicker than we thought they would.  They loved exploring our classroom.

w/b 7th March 2022 - THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR

This week we have continued our work on growing and changing using The Very Hungry Caterpillar as our focus.  We have read the book lots of times and we just love it.  We have even started reading the book to our friends. Our story language and the expression we used in our voices was amaxzing!

We welcomed some new members into our classroom too. We have our very own caterpillar who we are watching growing and changing.  We use learning to use the i-pads to record each step of the caterpillars growth so we can see how they change from being a baby to when they are an adult.  Our caterpillars have already grown so much! We can't wait to see what they are like after the weekend.

We used The Hungry Caterpillar and The Wiggly Worm song  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-zQ82yN68I to help us learn about the life cycle of caterpillars and how they grow and change. We can all describe the cycle and use all the correct words - egg. caterpillar, cocoon, butterfly.

We also wrote our over version of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We are all using our phonics so well in our writing now.  Ask at the door when you drop off or pick up and we will show your own writing. 

In The Very Hungry Caterpillar the caterpillar eats so many different foods. We looked at some of the foods he ate and we talked about healthy and unhealthy foods.  We choose some of the healthy foods we would like to try and used these to make fruit kebabs which looked like caterpillars.  We cut the food ourselves and carefully threaded it onto the skewers. Our food caterpillars were super! We were very hungry making them but we decided to take them home and show our grown-ups at home.

This week our maths has all been about 9 and 10.  We have ordered numbers to 10, learned to write the numerals and we have begun to think about the composition of both numbers. School have bought us our very own Numberblocks which we love and even in our play now we are talking about the composition of numbers to 10!

Look at some of the other things we have been up to this week.  

w/b 28.2.22 - Growing and changing, pancake day and world book day.

This week has been a busy week.  We have started to think about things which grow and change ready for all of our work this half term.  We started by looking at ourselves and playing 'Guess Who' with our baby pictures.  We looked closely at our features and our size and talked about what had changed and what is different about what we can do now compared to when we were a baby.  We also looked at the stages we go through as we grow - baby, toddler, child, teenager, adult and elderly person.  We drew our portraits and pictures of our whole bodies and we also made and designed our own body and face art.

We also looked at how animals grow and change and how sometimes we can match baby animals with their adult animal because they look the same and sometimes we can't because they look very different. The children were fascinated. We will use this interest next week to focus their learning.

This week was also pancake day.  We had super fun making and eating pancakes.  We followed the recipe well and chose healthy toppings for our pancakes which we cut up ourselves.  We also read some super books about pancakes which we used to do some writing. Ask to have a look at our writing about Mr Wolf and his pancakes.  You will be super impressed.

We also had super fun throwing pancakes.  This really helped our hand-eye co-ordination and help develop the strength in our hands and arms.

This week was also World Book Day. We had some super costumes and we shared some super amazing stories. The staff shared their favourite stories and we used Aliens Love Underpants to explore texts in our environment. Reception love sharing stories so had the best day.