23rd October 2015
We have had a busy week completing our aspects around the story of The Little Red Hen. This week we investigated how the Little Red Hen changed the corn into flour. We decided to make our own windmills and decorated them. The children then asked to go outside to see if the wind would blow the sails around.
We have explored initial sounds in words and met Fred the Frog who only speaks in 'Fred Talk'. Fred segments each word and then we have to blend them back together for us to understand him. We have learnt a couple more alphabet songs to help us recognise each letter name (Capitals as well as lower case) and practising to recognise the sight words 'I, no, go, into, the, to.'
Meet Fred the frog.
There have been a range of activities for us this week to explore to help number recognition (we especially enjoyed playing number bingo) and we also had a number hunt to find objects to match a given number - eventually we managed to create our own number line with numbers in order and objects underneath to match the numbers.
In literacy we have been working very hard to write our own names clearly and independently and we enjoyed looking at our class book that's shown all our activities to date and helped our recall and discussion about them. We then drew our own favourite activities so far...
Jack -"I like riding on the red car "
Summer -"When I come to school I like to do drawing."
Jadah " I like playing in the sand making sandcastles."
We have also enjoyed free flow activities outside, including discovering what was in the halloween dressing up box.
We have had a brilliant term settling in together as the new Reception Class and look forward to all our new learning next term. The Reception Class team wish all the children a good holiday and look forward to seeing you all ready for our new term.
Please bring in PE bags for our first day back and try to remember to bring your reading book bag in every day too.
16th October 2015
This week we were very excited to welcome a special guest to our class - Mary ( a real Little Red Hen) came to visit to hear us retell the story of the Little Red Hen. Our visitors showed us the stages of growing corn, harvesting it, grinding it into flour and then making it into bread, which we then fed Mary.
Mary the Hen Planting the corn
Introducing ourselves to Mary the Little Red Hen
Looking at 'ears of wheat'
The individual grains of wheat
Grinding the corn by hand to make flour The flour
Feeding Mary the Hen some bread
We found out lots of information about how the farmer looks after their chickens and crops and how the flour is produced from corn. The Little Red Hen was really well behaved and she enjoyed us telling our story to her; along with all our actions.
We also explored what the eggs look like and how they can be changed. We used our observational skills to draw an egg that was complete in its shell, then what the contents looked like when it was cracked and then how it changed once the egg had been boiled. There was lots of discussion and some fantastic observational drawings.
On Wednesday we were very excited to make bread. We used our knowledge to order the instructions to make the bread and then took turns in small groups to mix, knead, shape, prove and bake our own bread rolls - It smelt amazing!
We hope that you enjoyed the bread rolls that we made and sent home to taste together, we really enjoyed making them.
At the beginning of this week Mr Greenwood came to talk to us about the chickens he has. We saw lots of photos of the different chickens, where they lived and we saw how they changed from a small chick to a fully grown hen.
All this information led the children to create their own Little Red Hen houses. They remembered to include a ramp for them to walk up, a roof and door to keep the foxes out and the children worked in small groups to decorate the houses. We even had some wall paper made from bark rubbings to improve the inside for the hen to enjoy!
We also created our own scarecrow for our harvest celebrations. The children worked together to create 'Strawy the Scarecrow' (the children came up with name suggestions and then we had a class vote for the favourite name) and he even had his own friend the Little Red Hen sitting on his shoulder.
We also had cakes to make and decided to Little Red Hen nests, and helped to measure, mix and prepare chocolate nests; we really hope you enjoyed them, the children really enjoyed making them and the posters for our little cake stall.
As well as all of these events, we have been continuing to explore and learn together. We have been exploring rhyming words and initial sounds in our literacy activities and there has a been a big focus upon the letter names for our names and forming the capital letters for the start of our own names. In Maths we have been recognising our numbers up to 20, ordering them correctly, finding the missing numbers and counting on one more than a given number. We have enjoyed the good weather and explored our garden area, sharing toys, learning new skills and working together to help each other as well as developing our own independence skills to be able to put on our own coats, wellies and water proofs.
We are very proud of our corn that has been continuing to grow over the week.....
...We are wondering how tall it is going to grow!
We have been exploring our learning environment inside and out this week. There has been lots of opportunities in the sunny weather to share our ideas through many construction and physical activities. There has been a focus on rhyming and initial sounds in words and lots of listening and talking activities - we got to beat the class 'Beat Babies' too and visit us every morning. The children have been lots of notes written using their mark making skills, and we have had a big focus upon correct pencil grip as well as writing their own names clearly and starting with a capital letter. Write dance is another activity that the children have enjoyed, sharing a story, actions to music for that story and then drawing those actions while listening to the music using both hands, crayons and large sheets of paper - 'The Volcano' is the first dance and story that they have learnt.
One of the most popular groups sessions this week has been making playdough from basic ingredients.
We counted the cups and spoons of all the items and then used lots of muscle power and coordination
to mix the ingredients together before it was cooked. The playdough is going to be the main part of our
new bakery role play area that the children have asked to create over the next week.
Another favourite activity that we enjoyed this week was when we went on an Autumnal walk to collect leaves that had turned brown, orange, yellow and red. We gathered lots of them together and chose our own leaves to make individual crowns.
The crowns were so good we thought we would like to have a class picture to show you them all.
This week we have decided to plant some corn just like the Little Red Hen. First we needed to clear and weed the area of ground, then we planted some corn, before finally watering the corn to help it grow. We had lots of fun strutting around like the hen and exploring the vegetable patch and are looking forward to watching our corn grow and looking after it.
We have been practising and developing our pencil grip and control to help our writing skills and recognising numbers. We enjoyed our PE's session and using the sports hall. The children are working really hard to recognise their name and look after their own items of clothing as well as change independently.
Everyone has also had the chance to create their own clay hedgehogs which are looking fantastic on display in our Autumn creative area. There was a lot of investigating how to manipulate the clay to their desired effect, using finger movements and small tools; matchsticks made great spines and raisins were perfect to use as eyes. We have also created our own Little Red Hen using a variety of materials and made our own class book of the story, colouring scenes and then sequencing them into an order showing the beginning, middle and end of the story.
A favourite part of our week was a walk around our school environment. We were looking and listening to the world around us and trying to find signs of Autumn. The children looked out for things of interest to them and there was a wide range of natural items discovered and lots of discussion.
* Don't forget- We look forward to showing you our learning and photos on Friday mornings 8:45 until 9am.
This week has been a really busy week and the children have been working really hard. We are all getting to know each other and remember each other’s names as well as the expectations within our class and the school.
The children are now starting to retell the story of the Little Red Hen independently and have had good fun using the role play masks to help and create different voices for the characters.
We have also started our sharing books - on Thursdays we will be changing sharing books each week. These books are kept in your child's book bag and provide an opportunity to share books together - talking about the pictures, what do you think will happen next, finding sounds and tricky words they know within the text etc.
Within Maths we have started using Numicon to help us count and represent numbers in different ways and finding he correct number to match a group of objects. We have also explored 2d shapes, looked at their properties, names and even used them to create pictures.
This week was our first PE session and the children coped really well with changing – please make sure all PE kits are named and kept in school for the term and that all clothing (especially jumpers and shoes) are named to help us find the correct owners.
We have named our class hedgehog (made form mixing colours to make brown and then make hand prints) who is called ‘Cookie’ after a class vote on the name and have been creating an Autumnal picture by doing leaf rubbings and printing.
We have now got a class WOW tree that we are going to grow green by all the WOW moments that happen at home. A WOW moment is a chance to celebrate your child’s achievements; such as writing their name, using a computer or tablet confidently, getting dressed independently, enjoying a book together, helping you to cook, helping around the home, earning their swimming badge. Please don’t forget to complete your WOW leaf to help our class tree grow, and help yourself to new WOW leaves in the conservatory whenever you need one.
11th September 2015
This week we have had a really good start to school life in Reception Class.
The children have been exploring all areas of our learning environment both inside and out as well as learning how we look after our resources and tidy away after ourselves. We have now each got a year 6 buddy who helps us at lunchtime and is there to talk to and share books with.
The main theme for our learning this term is centred round the Little Red Hen story and the children are getting good at helping to retell the story. We have also been practising to hold pencils correctly to help write our own name and learning to find our names on our jumpers and water bottles.. We have enjoyed singing lots of counting songs and games to help us recognise our numbers 0 to 20.
Outside we have enjoyed our outdoor area, including the water tray, bikes, sandpit, climbing frame, chunky chalks and PE equipment. We have also got lots of practice putting on wellies and then putting on our shoes – once we’ve recognised out names in them!
We are all really looking forward to out next week of learning.