Reception Class News 17: 03: 23

What a ROOAARRSOME week Reception Class!
We have loved science week and can't wait to show you our active volcano experiment.

Here is a snapshot of our learning...

Understanding the World Development: In science week, we have continued exploring what we know about dinosaurs and how we know to make connections. We know that dinosaurs are extinct, so how do we know so much about them. We learnt about Mary Anning, a British Scientist who found many fossils along the Jurassic coastline. Mary also found the fossil of a dinosaur that is displayed in the British Science Museum. We then explored how the dinosaurs became extinct, some of us thought it was due to a meteorite landing on earth and most of us thought it was a volcano.
We watched a school project to make a volcano and have spent out week, cutting, sticking and painting our two volcanos as part of an experiment where we could mix some ingredients to cause a reaction and make a volcano eruption. Today we tested our volcanos. Our first one didn't work but our second one did. We were very excited!

Personal, Social and Emotional Development and Wellbeing: This week in heart smart we have been learning to listen to each other. We started by talking about why it is important to be a good listener. Next we played a listening game, the children sat in a circle and two children were chosen to sit in the middle with their backs to each other. Each child had the same set of simple objects. The first child chose an object and without turning around described the object they have chosen to the other child. The other child then had to try to pick up the same object. They then turned around to see if they were correct. We discussed if they had listened carefully, did they choose the correct item? We repeated this so that all of the children had a turn.

Boris says, 'Listening carefully to what our friends say is very important.
Bible link 'Everyone must be quick to listen, but slow to speak and slow to become angry.' James 1:19

Expressive arts and Design Development: We started our music session this week by listening to Mars from The Planets by Gustav Holst. We learnt that Gustav Holst was born in England in 1874 and he loved astrology. He wanted to explore the planets so much that he went into space using his imagination. His best known work is The Planets Suite which is a group of individual pieces starting with Mars. We closed our eyes whilst listening to the music and used our own imaginations to imagine that we were in space, we talked together about what we could 'see' whilst we were in space.
Next we found the pulse in lots of different ways, we started by finding it by clapping and thought of lots of different ways to find the pulse, including marching, nodding our heads, tapping our knees and jumping. Finally we were very excited to be able to use the instruments again, we each had a glockenspiel and played it along with some different nursery rhymes, like wheels on the bus, baa baa black sheep and Incy Wincy spider. It was great fun!

Mathematical Development: Our learning focus for this week was exploring number bonds to ten using a ten frame. we began by singing 10 green bottles and at the point when a bottle fell on the floor, we added the sentences for example : there were 8 left on the wall and 2 on the floor, 8 and 2 make 10 altogether. Using the double sided counters we represented all the different number bonds to 10 on a ten frame.

Literacy Development: For our writing activity this week we thought different describing words for the many fossils we looked at as part of science week and wrote them into full sentences.
In our daily 'Read Write Ink' sessions, we have continued to increase our letter sound knowledge. This week all groups have continued learning special friend sounds and applying them in our reading and writing activities. We have also continued with daily handwriting activities this week as we have focused on forming the around letters a d c g and q more accurately.

Communication and Language Development: We have enjoyed sharing dinosaur books from home this week, sharing facts and knowledge, exploring and understanding new vocabulary.

Physical Development: In our warm up, we played the electric car game, where we moved around the hall at different paces depending on the gear we were in, jumping in the air for speed bumps, smiling for the speed cameras, turing in circles for roundabouts and following each other in traffic jams. In our main session, we developed our fine motor skills by playing the dinosaur game, using pegs we had to race in our teams to pick up as many bean bags (dinosaur eggs) as we could in the given time. Cooling down we moved around at different speeds and heights for a range of different animals.

Mrs Ward and the early years team, Mrs Wainwright and Louise