Reception Class News 15:10:21

Thank you for another fantastic week Reception Class.
I cannot believe we have already completed seven weeks of school together.
It is wonderful to watch you blossom into eager and keen learners.

Let us share our learning for this week...

In our Personal, Social and Emotional Development, we talked about the things we love and described how they made us feel. First, we recapped on our Boris story from last week and especially to the part of the story where Boris' heart was filling up. Together we explored what we thought was causing this to happen, that knowing the children loved him was filling his heart with love. We then discussed that when our hearts are full of things and people we love, our hearts are full and happy too. Using a heart shaped piece of paper, we decorated the inside of the heart, so it was full of things we love. We then brought them all together on the carpet in one big love heart to share with friends.
Boris says, 'When I am with my family and friends my heart feels full.'
Which links to the Bible quote: I thank God every time I remember you. Philippians 1:3

In our wellbeing time, we met up with our year 6 buddies on the field to enjoy playing in the glorious afternoon sunshine.

In our Expressive Arts and Design Development, we listened to 'Our House' by Madness, we really enjoyed listening to this song and dancing along. Following a group discussion, we decided that it was about a house that the singers lived in. Listening carefully, we were able to hear drums, piano and trumpet. For our singing we carried on with our nursery rhymes using our own names in some of the songs. We were able to find the pulse of the songs and kept it using our hands or by pretending to be animals.

In our Physical Development, we focused on developing a new skill of galloping. We warmed up our bodies using the Mister Man game with Mrs Tall, Mr floppy and many other characters. We learnt how to gallop and manipulate objects whilst moving using beanbags. We played many different games incorporating our new skill of galloping, whilst evading the bean bags at first and then using the beanbags to transfer around our waists whilst moving. To finish off our lesson we played the swamp game, moving through the swamp to feed the frogs with our beanbags. This week we added in the ogres who tried to get us out of the game with their beanbag bugs.

Each week, we continue to discuss why it is important to look after our bodies and exercise as well as make healthy food choices. These discussions have helped us to make good snack choices at snack time and try different fruits, as well as drink water or milk to help our teeth and bones develop and grow.

In our Mathematical Development, we built upon our learning from last week of comparing groups of identical objects to comparing groups of non-identical objects using our new mathematical vocabulary, more, fewer or the same. This has helped us to understand the misconception that objects must be the same to compare them. We began by checking we could count groups of objects accurately and remembered a tip from last week, to line objects up to help us.
We then applied our counting skills into setting up each other's snack tables, by counting the number of children seated there and accurately counting out the number of plates, cups, pieces of fruit and milk cartons needed. If you need any help at home families with setting the table, we are very skilled at this now!
When looking at images of different objects, we used different coloured cubes to represent certain objects which allowed sort and match non identical objects into two groups to make accurate comparisons to determine which group had more, fewer or the same.

In our Understanding of the World Development, we explored the concepts of floating and sinking. Firstly, we looked at a range of different objects, made from different materials and made a prediction whether they would sink or float. We then tested our predictions by putting each object into the water and found that some of our predictions were true. We spoke about the properties of the objects and why they had sunk or floated. We found that plastic was the best material to float and that nearly all the plastic materials floated. We also found that the heavier objects sank to the bottom and the lighter items floated. Although, we did discover one exception in our group of objects, which was a counter. We were not sure why it sank as it was light and plastic.
We then started to link the lesson to Mr Gumpy's and what material would be best to make him a boat from. We had great fun making a paper boat to race in the water tray. We found that paper floated when it was made into a boat but not when it was laid flat on top of the water.

In our Literacy Development, we have continued with our daily Read Write Inc phonics sessions and are very proud that we can now accurately read words using 'Fred in our Head.' Fred our wonderful phonics frog is also amazed how quickly we can hear the sounds he says to tell him the word he is trying to sound out. As we like to say, we are FANTASTIC!

For our writing activity this week we have written up our choices of materials to make Mr Gumpy a boat after our floating and sinking experiment. We used the tricky word 'I' to begin our sentence and ensured we had a new space for each new word we needed to write, using our finger space ace. For each word we sounded out how many sounds we could hear and wrote down each sound, thinking about how we form the letters practiced in our phonics sessions. Once our sentence was complete, we checked it had a full stop.

In our Language and Communication Development, we have continued to enjoy sharing books and poems daily and encounter new vocabulary which we like to explore the meaning of. One of our favourite stories this week was 'The Blue Balloon by Mick Inkpen. In the story the little boy is taken up into the sky and lands on a planet. This provoked great interest in what planet it could be, so we got up a picture of the solar system on the BBC website. We guessed the names of some of the planets like earth and Saturn, and then practiced saying the names of the planets unfamiliar to us. We knew the boy hadn't landed on the sun as this is a star and is like a big ball of fire. We guessed that the boy had probably landed on the moon as that was nearest to us on the solar map and looked similar to the picture. We have some great space experts in class who have shared their knowledge and it was great for us to explore some new words: rotate and orbit. To help us understand them in the context of our planet earth, we created a sun and then orbited around it and then once we had mastered this safely, we began to slowly rotate as we orbited to show night and day.

In continuous provision we have followed our interests and drawn pictures of planets from a solar map, drawn hearts with things that make us feel loved, constructed trim trails in the garden, playing musical instruments to nursery rhymes, sold and bought fruit and vegetables in the mini shop, constructing tall towers with Duplo, practicing letter formation and making crafts.

Have a glorious weekend
See you next week for our last week of this half term.
Mrs Ward and Miss Alex