Reception w/b 17th June
Date: 21st Jun 2024 @ 4:35pm
Reception, you have beautifully demonstrated our value ‘community’ this week. The grown-ups working in our class have noticed how helpful and kind you have all been, making them feel very welcome in our class community. We have also been thoroughly impressed with the teamwork skills and good sportsmanship you demonstrated in our EYFS and KS1 sports morning!
We were not able to follow usual guided reading timetable this week, so we very much appreciate your continued support with reading at home. I look forward to reading with our groups next week.
Our literacy focus with Mrs Pulle was rhyming. We thought about what it means to say that two words rhyme and suggested words that rhyme, using our trick of ‘bouncing’ the end sound to check e.g. dog – og- og -og, log -og -og -og. We matched words into rhyming families e.g. cat – mat – sat – bat – hat. We played a game of ‘pass the rhyme’, starting with a word (e.g. dog) and passing it around the circle, with each child taking a turn to saying a rhyming word (e.g. log, frog, jog) until the next player couldn’t think of a rhyming word. This player thinks of a new word and the game can start again! Finally, we played a game of ‘find your partner’. We started with a word and had to find the friend who had a rhyming word. In the provision, we have then been playing rhyming board games and writing rhyming sentences.
In maths, we have been consolidating our knowledge and assessing the following Early Learning Goal: Explore and represent patterns within numbers up to 10, including evens and odds, double facts and how quantities can be distributed equally. We know that, when we can split numbers into 2 groups that each have an equal amount, these 2 equal groups make a double e.g. 2 equal groups of 3…double 3 is 6 altogether. We know double 1 is 2, double 2 is 4, double 3 is 6, double 4 is 8 and double 5 is 10. We have represented these doubles on our fingers, with counters, on a tens frame and on a rekenrek. We also understand that double patterns are even; they have ‘flat tops’ because they are made of 2 equal groups. Odd numbers cannot be split into 2 equal groups; they’re not doubles, they have an ‘odd block’/’odd one out’.
This week, it has been National School Sports Week and we have enjoyed nurturing and celebrating our love of sport in school. On Tuesday morning, Early Years and Key Stage 1 joined together for a carousel of sporting activities. We split into four groups, with each group comprised of Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 children. How wonderful to be working together as a key stage community! Throughout the morning, we enjoyed playing rounders, learning football skills, practising tennis skills and engaging in a variety of athletics events. On Wednesday afternoon, the whole school joined together to watch our annual Year 6 vs school staff rounders event! Wonderful sportsmanship and teamwork was observed and it was a tie for rounders, with school staff narrowly taking the win with fewer outs! It was very exciting to watch. Throughout the week, there have also been sports activities organised at playtimes.
In our athletics lesson with Mrs McLean, our challenge was to race in different ways. Using the track we practised: a flat running race; a beanbag balance race, balancing the beanbag on our head; running and stepping through hula hoops; an egg and spoon race; a hop, skip and jump race. This sounds like superb preparation for Sports Day!
In Forest School, we used clay and other natural materials to create models of minibeasts.
Our music lesson, once again, was inspired by a story and this week was ‘The Tiny Seed’ by Eric Carle. We thought about things that grow, where they come from and what they need to grow; we looked at a selection of seeds and unpotted one of our herb plants to look at the roots. We then pretended to be seeds that grow, acting out starting off like a small seed on the floor and growing until we were stretched up on tiptoes pointing at the sky. We sang the notes C C D D E E F F G G A A B B C using the words Grow-ing grow-ing get-ting tal-ler up and up and up I go. We grew with the upward movement of the notes. Mrs Pulle sang a mixture of high and low sounds/pitches to ‘la’ for the children to copy and identify if they were high/low. Mrs Pulle also played some high and low notes on a glockenspiel and a recorder. We listened to ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ which starts off low (and quiet) and gets high (and loud). At the start, the seed is in the ground, beginning to slowly grow and gradually grows roots, spreading upwards more quickly and waving in the wind. We moved to the music to match the pitch (high/low) and tempo (speed).
To begin our RE lesson, we revisited last week’s discussion about special times, particularly thinking about birthdays. This led us to our focus for the lesson – Pentecost, the birthday of the church. Mrs Pulle helped us to learn about Pentecost, an important festival for Christians that celebrates the time the Holy Spirit descended to the 12 disciples of Jesus. Christians believe that the Holy Spirit blessed them with the ability to speak different languages. This meant they could spread the word of the Lord and managed to baptise 3000 people in one day! This is why it is believed to be the start of the Christian church. In the provision, the children made headbands to represent the tongue of fire, celebrating the gift of the Holy Spirit. The class then headed outside to act out the story.
We have also been historians this week as we begin to think about seaside holidays throughout time. First, we shared our experiences of holidays. We discussed the main school holidays that we have and the seasons in which they take place – Christmas holidays (winter), Easter holidays (spring) and Summer holidays (summer). We learnt that the word holiday comes from the words ‘holy day’ and that a very long time ago, most holidays were based around religious festivals. Today, we have holidays to rest and take a break from working so we can spend time with our families and do the things we enjoy doing. We shared our experiences of the seaside, thinking about features of modern seaside holidays. We then looked at photos of modern seaside holidays and photos of seaside holidays from a long time ago; we identified which photo was which and explained how we knew. We noticed clothes that people were wearing, hairstyles, modes of transport etc. We then looked at several photos to find clues about what seaside holidays were like in the past. We noticed that, in the past, people often wore swimwear that covered most of their body when swimming in the sea. In Victorian times, they could also change in small, rented huts, called bathing machines. We noticed lots of deck chairs in the photographs from the past, rather than lying on towels. We also spotted several donkeys on the beach in the photos from the past. We can’t wait to find out more over the next few weeks.
In our art lesson, we were introduced to our focus artist, Claude Monet. Claude Monet was a French artist, who began to experiment with a new style of art, later named impressionism. He loved to paint nature and felt most inspired when painting outdoors. He used short, quick brush strokes. We enjoyed looking at Claude Monet’s artwork, particularly his ‘series’ paintings, where he would paint the same scene from different viewpoints, in different weather conditions and at different times of day. This week, we studied his series of paintings of bridges. We created artwork inspired by this series, using masking tape to create the shape of a bridge. We have then been painting with our fingers to mimic the impressionist style with short, quick strokes, thinking about the directions and shapes that we were creating with these strokes. Once our paintings are dry, we will look forward to revealing the bridge shapes when we peel the masking tape.
Today, we also had a chat to refresh our memory of appropriate, safe behaviour in the toilets. We used the NSPCC PANTS resources, including Pantosaurus, to aid this discussion: https://www.nspcc.org.uk/keeping-children-safe/support-for-parents/pants-underwear-rule/ .
To end our Friday, we headed to our garden to water our plants ahead of a sunny weekend. We enjoyed a story and a song in the sunshine to end our week.
I hope that you are able to enjoy this sunshine together this weekend. I am very much looking forward to Monday and I know that lots of children will be eager for a caterpillar/chrysalis update on Monday morning!
With many thanks,
Miss Witham
