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.