Diamond Class

Spring 2

Spring 2 Week Beginning 7th April

Hopathons, Easter Egg Hunt, Shape Hunt and more!

Spring 2 Week 5 beginning 31st March 2025

Goodbye Chicks, Hello Sunshine!

Another busy week in Reception, with some new experiences, and lots of new learning, as we hurtle towards Easter!

🐣🥚🥚🐣
Understanding the World: This week we spent a lot more time with our baby chicks, handling them safely, stroking them, cleaning them and feeding them. We have learned so much about the life cycle of a chicken, and how to be kind and careful with animals.
They have now gone back to their farm with Living Eggs.

Mrs Garside had a real attachment to the chicks, she will really miss them!

We have also started to learn a lot more about Spring and the cycle of Seasons. We learned a new Seasons song, here is the link if you would like to join in at home!

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=ul4vrM2Uiow&si=ljp9S6kDsJOL_mMr
 

Literacy: This week we drew our favourite chicks and thought up names for them, we used our phonic knowledge to write a sentence about what our chick is called.

RE: We learned about the significance of the Easter Egg in the Christian religion and decorated a template of an egg to celebrate.

Maths: We practised our subitising skills using chicks and ducks, explored how 7 is made up of a different parts, and we started our new unit exploring 3D shape.
We had so much fun identifying the names of 3D shapes and then printing with 3D shapes to find out what 2D shape the faces would make, and we loved experimenting with the shapes to see which would stack, and which would roll. Next week we will be going on a Shape Hunt!

PE: We made the most of the sunshine and we had PE outside this week, continuing our Ball Skill unit, we practised dribbling and striking, and then we had a go at scoring goals against each other. We are getting really good!

One of the highlights of our week was trying out the ‘big yard’ with the Year Five children. They were amazing, playing with all of the Reception children so well, we will be transitioning on to the yard at lunchtimes next week, and we are now really looking forward to it now that we have our buddies to look after us!

We also had time to visit the library this week, if you have any library books hiding at home, please bring them back so that we can exchange them for you.

Remember next week is the last week before we break up for Easter.

As always, we have enjoyed reinforcing our learning by playing indoors and out, playing ‘Teachers’ and exploring our new construction area were favourites this week. This is our most important work in Reception, and the lovely weather has made this even more special this week, we hope it continues.
Have a great weekend, thank you for your continued support,

🐥  Mrs Fearby, Mrs Leightell and the children of Diamond Class 🐥

Spring 2 Week 4 Beginning 23rd March 2025

The Chicks have arrived! 

So much excitement this week as we welcomed ten eggs into our classroom!

Well done to Ava our Class Dojo champion, and Ivy our class star this week, well done!

Understanding the World: We had a special delivery this week, of ten chicken eggs from Living Eggs Farm! We eagerly watched every day and finally on Wednesday we came to school to find two chicks had hatched, then during phonics another two came out! We watched them as they used the hard part of their beaks to pip the eggs, then moved them to their brooder box. We now have eight healthy chicks, 7 boys and 1 girl and we are learning all about the chicken life cycle to help us to look after them. We have them for one more week.

We are also learning about springtime flowers and seasonal change, and we used our art skills to draw and paint seasonal flowers, and explored our new seasonal area with rabbits, chicks and spring plants. 

PE: we have really enjoyed learning basic ball skills in PE this week, it was dribbling and stopping, then moving between cones using our feet. We also enjoyed our warm up, so that we don’t hurt our muscles, and our cool down meditation. We were all really tired and relaxed by the end!

Maths: in maths we have been learning all about doubles, and recording on ten frames, we have also been learning about 5 and a bit in mastering number, as well as creating a ‘staircase’ of numbers with the Numberblocks.

In RE this week we learned more about the story of Easter, we sequences it together, and then we made representations of crosses with junk modelling, we have learned lots about how Jesus died in the story, then came back to life to help us all.

In PSCHE we talked about how we use our body for exercise, and how movement is so good for us. We played the ‘bean’ game outside, and had so much fun!

This week we have also enjoyed making cards and mini flower bouquets for our Mams and the special ladies in our lives. We hope that you have a lovely weekend together.

As well as all of our directed learning, we have enjoyed lots of time to play indoors and outdoors, practising our skills and everything we have learned. 
You may have noticed that our outdoor area has been cleared over the last week or so, keep watching for some exciting additions to our resources outside this coming week, to support our learning, we are so excited!

Thank you for your continued support,

Mrs Fearby, Mrs Leightell and the children of Diamond Class 

Spring 2 Week 3 Beginning 17th March 2025. The Tiny Seed

Well done to Teddy, our Class Dojo champion, and Eseoghene our Class Star of the week for her amazing creativity in her play, both have been amazing role models this week.

Another busy week for Reception this week, as we begin to learn about our focus story

The Tiny Seed, by Eric Carle.

In Literacy, we chose the tiny seed that we were going to plant, we drew and labelled it in small groups, then we drew and labelled what a plant needs to grow. We used our phonic knowledge and our Science knowledge to help us grow our seeds. We spent time carefully choosing from a selection of seeds, and planting them. We have kept them inside for now, as we saw what happened to so many of the seeds in our focus story, so we want to keep them safe and give them their best chance to grow!

In PE we have started to learn about essential ball skills, holding a ball safely, and how to pass it between ourselves and our friends, this will continue for the rest of the Spring Term, as we develop our ball control. Our outdoor learning is improving as we gradually redevelop the Reception outdoor area, we have had so much fun using our resources and clearing the area ready for new things, physical activity is so important to develop our whole body and our learning skills.

In Maths this week we have been learning about more, less and our special maths word ‘compare’. We have also been looking at arrangements of ten, and how ten is made up of different sets of numbers, such as 6 and 4, or 5 and 5. We have also started to learn about our Counting Collections library - more on that next week!

In RE we learned all about the El Salvador Cross, and created some of our own, and in our PSCHE time with Jigsaw Jenie we learned all about why exercise is good for our bodies, we knew that it keeps our body healthy for longer if we exercise, and stops us from being poorly, as well as making us strong. We also talked about what we could do to keep our bodies healthy with exercise.
Our ideas were: riding our bikes, going swimming, playing tennis and lifting heavy things. This led to us looking up who is the World’s Strongest Person, and watching some really strong people pulling trucks and lifting Atlas stones!

In addition to our direct learning, we have spent lots of time learning outdoors this week and making the most of the sunshine, climbing, swinging, and playing in role, which is so important for our development, we even learned the rules of the play tower and the big yard on Friday, ready to join in the fun at lunchtime in the Summer Term!

Thank you for your continued support, Mrs Fearby, Diamond Class and the Early Years Team.

Spring 2 Week 2 Beginning 10th March 2025

This week with Mrs Fearby, Reception have enjoyed exploring the themes of growing and changing, Spring and seasonal changes, and some new concepts in Maths.

We have also enjoyed creating new areas in our classroom, we had a Friday dance party, and we have cleared our outdoor area ready for our new resources, as well as exploring the ‘Big Yard’!

Learning through Play: Play is the most important work we do in Reception, we explore our classroom provision inside and outside, using our whole bodies and our senses to interact with the world around us and explore new opportunities.
This week the children showed an interest in dinosaurs, so we created a new dinosaur world together, talking together, using new vocabulary and created small world and role play. We learned lots about different dinosaurs, built habitats for them, and worked together to create stories about them! We also spent lots of time outside building ramps for the bikes and wheeled trollies, smashing chalk to create vivid colours in the rain, and we explored the big yard ready for us to transition on to there during lunchtimes. 

Literacy: We have started to read our new class story of The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle. We looked at different seeds, and we were inspired to draw, paint, colour and make our own flowers after listening to a some different versions of the story. We will be reading the story and using it to support our reading and writing over the next two weeks.

P.E: We finished our unit on Superhero Dancing this week, ready to start Ball Skills next week. We enjoyed learning about warm up, dancing using our whole bodies, and then meditating to cool down. We worked so hard, we needed lots to drink and a rest afterwards! We used our skills in our Friday Dance Party after assembly, we had so much fun.

Maths: This week in Maths we practised our subitising skills, looked at 9 and 10 in Mastering Number, we also learned about the composition of six and seven, and started to learn what was one more, and how to make one more than a given number. We also met The Big Blue Bug…be careful not to eat him!

RE: This week we started our Easter Story unit, and we learned about Jesus’s triumphal entry on the donkey into Jerusalem, where the people welcomed him with palm leaves, shouting Hosanna! We coloured our own palm leaves for our new RE display, and we learned about the book that is special to Christian’s, called The Bible.
 

PSCHE: This week in PSCHE we spent time with Jigsaw Jenie and learned how to use the chime for quiet time. We are about to start our unit on Healthy Living, next week will be all about using exercise to keep our bodies healthy.

We have such a busy week this week, we probably all needed a good sleep on Friday night! Looking forward to a lot more exciting opportunities for learning and playing next week.

Mrs Fearby and Diamond Class

Week 1

Topic:

This week we looked at growling and changing. In the beginning of the week we played guess who, on the whiteboard were baby pictures of some of our class mates and we had to guess who they were. We noticed that sometimes you couldn’t tell who was who. In the tuff tray we got to make some faces and on the art table we had a go at drawing our friends and the other half of our own faces. For one of our writing jobs of the week we had to look in the mirror and draw ourselves as well as writing a description of ourselves.

Pancake Day:

This week was pancake day! We found out it’s also sometimes called Shrove Tuesday and is a Christian celebration. We wrote ingredient lists, practiced flipping pancakes and even got to decorate our own to eat, they were so yummy!

World Book Day:

This week we celebrated world book day, we had to come dressed as a word. We got to design our own book front covers using our favourite books for inspiration. We also had a story writing area set up where we had to use story cards to help us create our own stories.

Maths:

This week in maths we continued our work on length, height and time. We looked at ordering objects into height order, for this we got to draw around ourselves and put them in order, it was so much fun! We also had to walk around the classroom and find someone smaller, taller and the same height. 

We then started some work on time, we had to see how many times we could clap our hands in 30 seconds and compare it to how many times we could jump, we found we could clap more times in 30 seconds than what we could jump. We had fun playing with the board timer and egg timers too

Spring 1 

Have a look at the attached information to see what Reception will be learning this half term.

Spring Week 7

Topic:

This week we have been looking at Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Our tuff tray has been full of things from the story, we even got to give Goldilocks a hair cut. On the art table we made our very own bear masks, made porridge and created beds and chairs out of junk modelling. After decorating our porridge we got to eat it all up, we used berries and honey to decorate our porridge it was delicious.

Literacy:

This week we did lots of fun literacy tasks! We started the week by making a story map, together we decided what pictures we wanted for each part of the story. After that we stood up and acted out each part of the story to help us remember it. In our books this week we sequenced the story cutting out the scenes and putting them in order. We also wrote a letter pretending we were Goldilocks to Baby Bear to say sorry for breaking their chair. 

We also had a go at hot seat! 4 of us were chosen to play the character of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, the characters had to take questions from the class and answer them how their character would.

Maths:

In maths this week we looked at conceptual subitising, we looked at two parts making up one whole number. At carpet time we worked as a class to find different ways we could make 6, 7 and 8 but we had to try to not count, it was tricky but we worked together and got it done! We then had a go at doing a similar task in our maths books. In the provision some little otters lost their homes, we had to look at how many shells they had each, then how many all together, then sort them into their homes. 

We then started looking at length this week, we played a game where we had to find the longest thing we could see in the classroom, then something that was short. In the provision in the play dough we made some worms and decided which of the worms were long and short.

PE:

In PE this week we thought about how the different characters of Goldilocks and the Three Bears would move, we decided Daddy Bear would move slow and stomp around, Mammy Bear would move a bit faster and Baby Bear crawled on the floor. We thought about how in the beginning of the story Goldilocks would skip through the woods but at the end of the story she would run back through the woods.

Spring Week 6
 

Topic:

This week we were looking at space! Our tuff tray was full of exciting things all week, we made Lego rockets, created our own moon craters and matched moon rocks to rockets. We had a fantastic time in junk modelling creating our very own rockets! In the art area we also created our very own space pictures, we used chalk to create the space background and tinfoil and paint to make our moons. When we were making our tin foil printed moons we recognised that the paint splotches we were making looked like the craters on the moon!

PE:

This week for PE we did space yoga! We got on our mats and pretended to go to the moon. We had to do lots of tricky balancing and stretching.

Literacy:

For literacy this week we first looked at pictures of we the moon we had to describe what we could see. We then got to make our very own space passports, we had to make sure our names were in them and that we coloured in the correct planet we are from. Towards the end of the week we created a list of items an astronaut would need to take into space, we did this as a whole class then had a go at writing our own in our books.

Maths:

This week we continued our work on one more and one less, we hid cubes under a sheet and Miss Catleugh took one away or added one underneath and we had to take turns telling everyone how many cubes we thought were underneath. We also continued our work on the composition of 6, 7 and 8 we used lady bug whiteboards to draw spots showing different ways to create 6, 7 or 8. 

We then started work on making pairs and showing odd and even numbers. We had a giant 10 frame on the carpet and in groups we had to put ourselves into pairs and see who was the odd number, to make the numbers even again we shouted a friend to come and join in to make equal pairs.

Fire Pit:

We also enjoyed a trip to the fire pit this week, we sang our favourite nursery rhymes and each had some toasted marshmallows, they were so yummy!

Spring Week 5

Topic:

Our provision this week was linked to our story Aliens love underpants. On the art table we had so much fun making alien headbands, alien characters, underpants and our junk model rockets! Some of the aliens left a slimy mess and we had to search for the underpants they had lost. We loved looking at the story in continuous provision and using stick puppets to re-create our favourite parts. In the play dough area we were able to design our own aliens.

PE:

PE this week was linked to our topic of Aliens love underpants. To warm up we pretended we were rockets in space and had to dodge asteroids! We then worked in groups and had to mimic how underpants would move on a washing line in the wind, sometimes the wind was so strong a pair of underpants flew away.

PSHE:

This week was children’s mental health week and our theme was inside out. We looked at the different zones of regulation and discussed what emotions you may feel while in each zone. As a class we discussed ideas on ways you might come back into the green zone. 

We looked at the emotions which are in the movie inside out and used them for inspiration to try and design our own emotions.

Literacy:

This week in Literacy we were able to draw and describe our own aliens! We took inspiration from our story Aliens love underpants. In our provision their were writing jobs set up to practice our letter formation and words linked to our story. At the end of the week we worked together as a class to come up with places the aliens would hide so they wouldn’t get caught then wrote a simple sentence in our books describing where our aliens would hide.

Maths:

This week in maths we finished off our unit on mass and capacity by looking at the capacity of some items in our tuff tray, we tested how much rice would fit into them and compared them to other containers. We then moved onto finding 6, 7 and 8 we sorted our numbers as a whole class then had a go at doing it on our maths provision. We also got to use some ten frames to represent that 6, 7 and 8 can be shown as 5 and “a bit”. We also practiced our number formations this week.

Spring Week 4

Topic:

This week we looked at Chinese New Year. We looked at different ways this holiday is celebrated and the differences in how we might celebrate New Year. The home corner and tough tray was full of noodles and we had to use chopsticks to try and pick them up. We made our own Chinese dragon heads for our dance. We even tried writing words and numbers in Chinese!

PE:

During PE this week we used our dragon masks to re-create a Chinese New Year dragon dance. We worked in teams of 5 and practiced the dragon movements as a team. We were bobbing and walking together to create the movement of the dragon.

Literacy:

For one of our jobs this week we had to feel the wiggly noodles and try and describe them! We used our phonics knowledge and cards for help if needed to think of words to describe how they looked and felt. 

Maths:

This week in maths we have explored comparing mass, we compared objects and decided which were heavier and lighter. We noticed that sometimes the scales stayed the same which means they are balanced, this means the objects had equal mass. We used our knowledge of comparing mass to explore the scales in our continuous provision maths area looking at different objects around reception. As well as mass, in our mastering number sessions we have looked at more than, less than and equal too. We worked together as a class to decide which bowls had more and less but sometimes the bowls has equal amounts!

Spring 1 Week 3

The Gingerbread Man 

This week the children have been learning all about the story of 'The Gingerbread Man' in PE the children reinacted the story. We put our headphones on and we were transported into the world of The Gingerbread Man. We had to shout  'run run as you can you can't catch me I'm the gingerbread man!' We had to jump over paths and run away from the cow, horse and old women. 

However that sly fox caught up with us and eventually ate us all up! 

The children throughly enjoyed this lesson as it brought the story to life through a mix of PE and Literacy. 

Inuits and Igloos 

On Friday we learnt all about Inuits and Igloos. We learnt that Inuits live in igloos and they keep them warm from the cold temperatures of the South Pole. We decided to transform the classroom into an igloo. We made it really cosy and make cookies to keep us warm. 
 

The children thoroughly enjoyed themselves!

Winter 

We have loved learning all about winter. The children have thorougly enjoyed making their own snow. We mixed lots of different ingrediants together to see which one made the best snow. 

The children thoroughly enjoyed discussing how it felt and how it smelt! The shaving foam was a big success! 

Welcome back! 

Welcome back Reception after a lovely Christmas break! 

We were welcomed back to ice and snow! We went out and investigated the different sizes of ice as well as the different shapes!

We felt the ice and we could not beliebe how cold it was! Some of the children decided to go into the mud kitchen and make ice tea and ice coffees! 

Come and have a look at what we have been up to.

EYFS Christmas Party

Reception had so much fun at their Christmas party yesterday. We played musical statues, corners and had a competition to see who was the best dancer. 
 

We also had a special visitor from Mrs Clause. She was so kind and brought us presents from the North Pole.

We had so much fun! 
 

The Story of Jesus

This week in reception we are learning all about the story of Jesus. We learnt that he is the saviour of the world and this is the reason why Christians perform a nativity at Christmas time. The children drew a picture of the nativity scene and we talked about why they drew it. The majority of our reception children drew Jesus. They said that he was the most important person in the story. 

Making Four

Today we looked at different ways of making/arranging four. With the help of numberblocks the children were able to understand different ways four is arranged. We now know that 3 and 1 make 4 and 2 and 2 make 4. 

We also used our spacial awareness to describe the different arrangements of four. When we manipulated the cubes we were able to say how many were on the top, bottom and side. 

Well done Reception! 

Oliver's Vegatables 

This week reception are reading 'Oliver's Vegatables.'We read the story and talked about where vegatables come from and which vegatables are our favourite. The children came up with some brilliant answers during group time and discussed that if we eat lots of vegatables our muscles will grow big and strong! 

We drew our favourite vegatables and even tried to write their names! Look at our gorgeous writing! 

We used our magnifying glasses to invesitage the vegatables to see their texture. 

Children In Need 2024

The children had a fantastic day for Children in Need! We talked about what Pudsey does for children and families who need it most! 

We worked on our cutting skills by making Pudsey masks and attempting to draw Pudsey! 

Bedtime Stories Event 2024

We held our annual EYFS Bedtime Stories event. We invited our grown ups down to share our favourite stories and got cosy in our pyjamas. Miss Knowles informed the grown ups about the importance of reading at home and how beneficial it is to share a love of reading. We had so much fun!

Outdoor Classroom Day 2024

Our reception children had so much fun learning outside for Outdoor Classroom Day. It was great to expand their learning beyond the classroom! 

We decided to take phonics outside and practice our letter formations using chalks instead of pencils! 

Some of our children enjoyed exploring our new sand pit and transporting the sand up and down the climbing frame. 

Well done Reception! 

Autumn 2 overview

The Scarecrow's Wedding

Friday 18th October 2024

Today we had our overly anticipated Scarecrow's Wedding!

We had to make sure it was the best wedding ever, the best wedding yet. The wedding that no one would ever forget! 

We have spent the last two weeks learning all about Harry O'Hay and Betty O'Barley's big day, so much so that we made them come to life. We have learnt all about weddings and the people involved in it. The children thoroughly enjoyed stuffing our scarecrows with hay and paper to make them look life like. With the support of the parents and our community we were able to give our scarecrow's wedding attire and a traditional wedding service. 

The children took part in the service by wearing smart clothes and throwing confetti over the happy couple once they were married.  

Well done to Diamond class for being so enthusiastic and respectful during the service.

Friday 11th October

We had so much fun on our balance bikes today! We pretended to be in the jungle and moved around the obstacle course very carefully. We even went over a ramp!

The Little Red Hen

Friday 6th October

This week in reception we have been learning all about ‘The Little Red Hen.’ 
The children mixed all of the ingredients to make some lovely white bread, just like the little red hen in our story! We even put on our best acting skills and acted out the story. 
 

Come and have a look at what we have been doing!

Wednesday 9th October

Reception decided to get creative during wet play time and take part in a tutorial of how to draw a dog. The best part about it was that we decided to draw on our tummies! Come and have a look at our drawings.