Our Learning > Our Classes

Hello everyone, it has been a wonderful week in Reception.

This week

This week in Talk for writing the children continued to create their own adapted versions of the story We’re going on a bear hunt. We began retelling these stories as a Helicopter Story with the rest of the class. A helicopter story involves adults scribing stories from the children and then supporting them to act out the narrative. We place masking tape on the floor and this becomes our stage. It is a fantastic way to encourage story acting and story-telling.

This week we learnt about Mexico, New Zealand, France and Spain. We were lucky to have two visitors comes and share with the children lots of fantastic information about Spain and France. The children applied their learning through their provision including creating a collage of a kiwi bird, making a flamenco box guitar, drawing a self-portrait inspired by Mexican artist Frida Kahlo and created mosaic snail art inspired by French artist Henri Matisse. On Friday we enjoyed our tortilla wraps that we had purchased from our shopping trip to Waitrose.

We also enjoyed learning all about the festival of Valentine’s Day. We started by learning about the origins of Valentine’s Day and discovered that it began in the Roman era and we heard the story of Saint Valentine. We learnt that he was a priest who helped people married in Secret when the emperor Claudius banned people from getting married so that they would join the army.

In Maths, the children learnt vocabulary to compare height and length and also started to learn about the days of the week as a sequence for telling the time. To help us learn the days of the week we heard the story of Jasper’s Beanstalk by Nick Butterworth. In the story Jasper plants a bean. He waits for it to grow into a bean stalk all week. How long will he have to wait before he can start looking for giants?

In Phonics this week we learnt the new sounds ee (Green Froggy) and ur. As part of our learning the children enjoyed listening to the monster phonics version of sleeping beauty, as well as the green frog ee song and the black cat ur song. Great job Reception!

This week at school has been Feeling Good Week. The children were given the opportunity to undertake some new activities at school. Reception took part enthusiastically in their Street Dance session where the children learnt some new dance moves. They also had the chance to take part in Yoga and a Zumba class where we learnt dance moves whilst getting active. Many thanks to Mrs Hull for arranging these sessions.

Next Half Term

• Next half term we will use our new theme of Space to further develop our Understanding of the World.

Supporting your child at home

• Read three times this week and record this in your child’s reading record.
• To support your child’s understanding of the days of the week why not help them to keep a simple diary of what they do during half term. Encourage them to draw a picture and write a caption to go with it. Remember to think of what you want to say, say it aloud, listen to the sounds and then write the sounds down. Make sure to read it back to check it makes sense.
• Ask the children about the countries we have learnt about this half term. Encourage your children to talk about the similarities and differences, for example, ask them what the weather is like in different places.

Any other information

• WORLD BOOK DAY – This year, World Book Day will be taking place on Thursday the 3rd of March, you should have received information about this. We look in forward to seeing the children come to school in their cosiest pyjamas along with their most enjoyed bedtime story.
• RECEPTION, YEAR 2 & YEAR 6 PARENTS EVENING – Wednesday 9th March 5-8pm and Thursday 10th March 4-7pm. Information about booking will be sent soon, so please put the date in your diary.

We just wanted to say thank you for your support this half term. The children have benefited so much from all of the parents that have come in and talked to us about their occupations and experiences of different countries. We wouldn’t be able to go on our local visits without our parent helpers. The children loved watching recordings of their parents’ reading books on tapestry and we had a super turn out for our reading update sessions. We look forward to continuing to work in partnership with you next half term.

We hope you have a lovely half term break.

Mrs Fisher and Mr French
Willow and Lilac Class Teachers