Reception

Dear Parents,

We hope your children have had a good first week at school. 

We have thoroughly enjoyed meeting the children and working with them. They are a delightful group of young people and we look forward to our adventure, exploring and learning together.

It was a pleasure to meet you all at the curriculum evening on Thursday. We hope we can all work together as a strong school/home team to ensure the children achieve their full potential in all areas of their learning.

Kind regards

Karen Lambert & Sue Loader

This week we have been busy learning so much though our play. We have explored light and dark under the black out cloth, we have made our own shadow puppets and learnt the days of the week through songs and actions.

We have been painting for and dancing in the Harvest festival.

The good weather has meant we have spent lots of time outside being physical. We were using our muscles to balance across planks, dig, build, drag and stack construction equipment outside as well as counting the tyres and planks we could play with.

When we worked together we were using our imagination and learning to listen and share ideas with our friends.

We made a puzzle with Mrs Loader and developed our language when we talked about nursery rhyme characters in the puzzle and the letters of their names.

We tried different ways of writing, with pens and chalks on paper and on the floor outside. We strengthened our fingers by doing this and by painting carefully with a small paintbrush. When we painted we practised our colour mixing and painting techniques.

We explored with water and sand, made sandcastles and counted them.

Phew! We are exhausted but have had a great time. 

We look forward to next week after a good rest.

Learning through PLAY!

On Friday 20th October in the afternoon, Reception class and Year 1 got together to play and share toys, equipment and ideas.

We had a great time together.

We......

•  wrote, with wet paintbrushes, on the floor (Communication & language, writing)
• painted and mixed our own colours (Expressive art and design, art)
• made mud pies and patterns in the mud (Expressive Art and Design,D&T)
• used spades to dig in the mud (Physical development, PE)
• played shops dressed as witches (Communication & Language, Speaking and listening, Maths & numbers)
• built railways (spatial awareness & fine motor skills)
• talked about creatures from the sea (Understanding of the world, science & speaking and listening)
• played with the pirate ship (Being imaginative, communication & sharing)
• drew pictures (Physical development, fine motor skills)
• used scissors to cut shapes (Art and Design,  & maths, shapes)
• wrote stories (Communication and language, writing & fine motor skills)
• made models with Lego and other modelling equipment (maths, shape and space)
• played Bingo with our friends (maths, number recognition to 100)
• read books in the book area (reading)
• played "schools" outside (imaginative role play, making relationships)
• rode bikes and scooters (physical education)
• played with the water tray (science, maths, english)
• named parts of a skeleton (Understanding of the world, science)
• ENJOYED OURSELVES WITH OUR FRIENDS!

Through all our play, we have worked on

1. numbers recognition and adding 
2. measuring
3. patterns
4. letters and sounds
5. improving our hand muscles
6. fine motor skills
7. writing letters and numbers
8. physical development
9. imaginative play
10. expressive art and design
11. collaboration
12. problem solving
13. predicting
14. exploring
15. reading
16. making friends
17. speaking and listening
18. smiling :-))

And relax! 

Enjoy your weekend.

Week beginning 13th November 2017

This week we have been looking at the Creation story and the Annunciation. We used our speaking and listening skills to act out the stories with our friends and practised our pencil control when we retold the story through words and pictures.

We tried really hard to sit peacefully during meditation. Sometimes we find it difficult to sit still but we are trying really hard.

Some children from our school have been bringing in shoe boxes full of nice things for Operation Christmas Child. We have quite a few in the hall.

We looked at 2-d shape and made pictures with shapes we could name.

In PE this week we were lucky to have Mr. Norris helping us and we got out all the climbing apparatus. This exercise helps keep our heart healthy as we are building our muscles and our strength.

We still went outside, read, cycled, ran, jumped, counted, measured, drew pictures, dressed up, used our imaginations, sang songs and wrote stories and sentences as usual too.  

We look forward to next week.

Snow Fun!

Some of us braved the freezing temperatures to explore our surroundings which were covered in snow.

We used lots of interesting vocabulary and found that we could make our footprints in fresh snow. Then some of us noticed different shaped footprints. What could they be? We had suggestions ranging from "winter pixies", "aliens who came to see the snow" to "an animal looking for food" and "a lost baby!"

Some of us went on the Pirate ship and were made to walk the plank, we hid treasure under the slide and we counted all the step on the ladders and totalled them.

Of course, some of us made snowballs. We couldn't thow them at each other, so we threw them at Mrs Loader instead!

We had great fun.

We had a very interesting and informative day in the Museum at Tring. 

Thank you to all the parents who gave up their time to help us on our school trip. The children had a wonderful time and were a credit to you, the parents, and their school.

Mrs Loader was very upset she couldn't join you as she loves school trips!

Reception.

Week commencing 12th March 2018

Reception has had another busy week learning lots of new things.

Fairtrade has been talked about and we brought in our own "Fairtrade" items from home to show. We had a lot of chocolate (yummy!)

We explored ice by touching it and looking at it carefully. We came up with some excellent words and wrote our words on some coloured paper. We are really trying hard with blending our sounds to make words.

Numicon is great fun to work with. It supports us with our maths and it helps us recognise the numbers by the colour and shape of the Numicon.

Working together is really important and we worked together carefully to build some lovely Lego models.

We are all looking forward to a restful weekend. 

We love school.

We have been using IT to work out how to add and subtract, we have been using our muscles to lift, pull, push and build road blocks and ride our bikes.

We used magnifying glasses looking for mini-beasts and looking at fungus. Our mud kitchen was in use today and we made mud tea, mud pies and mud cakes! Our imaginations have been going into overdrive in the Lego area and in the desert sands.

Mrs Loader got a lovely letter too. It said "I love you Mrs Loader. I love you to the moon and back and forever." 

Nice to be appreciated!

Have a lovely, long weekend!

We had fun today working together and co-operating with each other.

We communicated, discussed, decided, agreed and disagreed!

We took turns, manipulated small items and used malleable materials.

We worked our bodies and our minds!

We had a visitor in class today. NATASHA the TARANTULA!

Oisin bought her in for us to look at. She was a very good girl and stayed in her container calmly all morning.  We enjoyed looking at her, asking questions, drawing pictures and doing paintings of her. We found out she likes crickets and her friend Elizabeth the Tarantula also likes crickets. We had to be careful not to bang or shake the container or we would upset her and make her angry. 

We enjoyed all our other learning too, riding bikes, playing royal weddings, designing royal wedding cakes, making wedding parties out of Lego, designing rockets to go to the moon, taking turns, building tracks, collaborating helping each other and working as a team!

We are looking forward to our weekend!

Another busy week! 

We celebrated Pentecost with a fabulous ribbon dance. We continued exploring mini-beasts and we enjoyed playing on our brand new outdoor bikes. 

We practised writing tricky words on the floor with chalk and working with Numicon to help us learn our number bonds to 10. 

Learning about healthy eating and exercise.

Today our parents met with Mrs Dunlop to talk about healthy eating and exercise. After the talk we went out with Year 1 and Year 2 to take part in some games that the Year 6 had organised for us. These included :

Hockey

Tennis

Tag Rugby

Running

Target Golf

Jumping

Throwing

Climbing

and using the bikes.

Afterwards we had a fruit tasting session and some of us tried fruit we had never tried before!  

Thank you Mrs Dunlop for organising this event. We had fun.