FRIENDSHIP AND VALENTINE'S DAY

Reception class has been very busy over the last week and a half.
We talked about friendship and how to be a good friend; we made heart leaves to decorate our school friendship tree during our Valentine's day celebration.

Decorating the tree with messages of friendship and love.

We read several stories about friendship including Iris and Isaac the polar bears and Lost and Found.







Click below to enjoy the stories again.

IRIS AND ISAAC

LOST AND FOUND



We studied the story about the boy and the penguin in detail: thinking about how each felt and talking about our friends.
We also talked about the South Pole and imagined what it would be like to be part of a penguin colony. Here are some of our penguin pictures.

We used a variety of techniques to make these pictures including torn paper and finger painting.

We have also been improving our writing, here are some sentences we have written in response to the story.

In maths we have been working on finding 'one more than' a given number.

Outside, the rise in temperature has meant that finally had snow soft enough to build not just one snowman but an entire snow family.

And when the snow melted a giant river appeared in the middle of the playground and we watched it turn into a rainbow river when Miss Lucie added some food colouring to the water!

Click here to see Mr Andre's film of our rainbow river.

RAINBOW RIVER VIDEO

HOMEWORK

LISTEN and LOOK at some of the clips below. Draw a picture or write a fact to show Miss Lucie after the holidays.

PENGUIN SONG

BABY PENGUINS

EMPEROR PENGUINS

POLAR BEARS

ARCTIC FOX


Books and worksheets are in your child's folders.

Most of all HAVE A LOVELY HOLIDAY!!!!!

POLAR EXPLORERS

This week we have been using our imaginations, as well as finding out facts to go on a Polar Expedition.

We began the week by finding out about animals that live where it's really cold and snowy for most of the year. We found photographs and had a go at painting pictures of different animals.

This is a picture lemming, which many of the children are mistakenly calling a lemon!

You have to look very carefully to see this beatuiful Arctic Fox.

We learned that some animals can live in either the South or the North Pole but that some live in either the Arctic OR the Antarctic and that in nature Polar Bears and Penguins NEVER MEET!
We looked at an atlas and used the internet to help us do this Arctic and Antarctic animals sorting activity.

We talked about the kinds of things explorers might need to take on an exhibition and wrote out lists for the trip. As you can see everyone is at a different stage of writing in Reception, but we are all making really good progress from our individual starting points.

Very cold weather has kept us inside for a couple of days this week, so we've used the time to gather our kit lists and head to the gym for some Polar Expedition role play. We took it in turns to be huskys, explorers, polar bears and lemmings; we pitched a tent in the snow and fished in ice holes.

We also played some grat parachute games, click below to see Mr. Andre's film of us playing popcorn!

Parachute Popcorn

AND we built a police station for small world role play!

In maths we have been making sure we can match quatity to numerals. We are fantastic at using the number fans and really enjoy playing Miss Lucie's number dance dice game!

In phonics we have learned the sounds f/h/b as well as the high frequency words go and no.

HOMEWORK

Please read and return the book in your folder and have a go at the handwriting sheets.

Also have a look at some of the links below.

POLAR HABITATS

Andy's Wild Adventures Polar Bears

Mother Bear and Cubs

ART WEEK

Art Week began with the children working on three large scale art projects with three different teachers! In the Reception classroom we used finger painting to make this busy picture of London's skyline. Each child chose their own colour, you can see the colour key at the bottom of the picture.

For the rest of the week Reecption focused on the work of Gustav Klimt. We looked at two of his most famous paintings, THE KISS and THE TREE OF LIFE. The children looked really closely at the patterns and colours in the pictures.

We used coloured wool in water to investigate making our own swirls. 

We used pipe cleaners to make spirals for our own trees.

Careful spiral work, gold on black.

We investigated how different shapes fit together to make patterns.

We got an enormous piece of paper and listened to different types of music. As we listened to the music we thought about the colours and shapes we could see in our minds and we drew them on the paper.

HOMEWORK

Please find Reading books and worksheets for u and r in your child's folder.

Have a look at any pictures you have at home and see which colours, patterns and shapes you can find.

Also please don't forget to use BUSYTHINGS and TEACHYOURMONSTERTOREAD websites.

CHINESE NEW YEAR

It's Chinese New Year this weekend and we have been learning a little bit about the traditional New Year story and how it is celebrated.
We used handprints to make a colourful tail for our Rooster, COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!!!

Please follow the link below to find out how children in England celebrate.
Chinese New Year

We used paper plates to make Chinese drums.

Avrora brought in all sorts of interesting Chinese things, can you guess who's here?

We also made an enormous Chinese Dragon and paraded him around the school. We banged drums and rang bells to let everyone know that we were coming!

We also did some exciting investigations in the water tray with food colouring baking soda and vinegar!

HOMEWORK

Please find homework sheets and reading book in your child's folder.

PLEASE REMEMBER to return folders NO LATER than TUESDAY each week

Also, have a listen to our poem that we have been learning, called "A Little White Snowman"!

A Little White Snowman

DO YOU WANT TO BUILD A SNOWMAN?

This week we have taken The Snowman by Raymond Briggs as our insipiration for learning.

We have read the book and also watched the film and noticed the differences between the two. There are no words in wither the book or the film, so we have been imagining what James and The Snowman might be saying.

We also thought about how James might be feeling during different parts of the story and tried to imagine how we might feel if we ever woke up in the middle of the night and went on a flying adventure with a magical snowman!

We used sequencing pictures and emotions cards to help us with our discussions.

Putting the story together in the correct sequence.

Matching feelings cards to the different parts of the story.

In the story, James takes The Snowman to the kitchen and he tries on different noses from the fruit bowl. We worked with a partner trying on fruit noses while the other person held the mirror.

 

Afterwards we chopped the fruit up to make kebabs for our snack!

We used the large space in the gym to listen to the music and role play the story, flying was particulalry good fun, as was riding on the motorbike ...

and there were some very sad faces when the snowmen melted.....

There has been some fantastic writing in Reception this week, what we need to build a snowman and drawing different parts of the story and writing about them,

There has also been some fantastic painting...

Working together in maths to add two numbers together and find the new total.

We have also looked at footage of the Northern Lights and have made collages to represent them.

All in all a VERY busy week in Reception!

HOMEWORK
I have sent home reading books to those children who have returned them.
Also there are sheets for handwriting and phonics.
You can click here to watch The Snowman
The Snowman

and here to watch The Snowman and the Snowdog
The Snowman and the Snowdog

LET IT SNOW!

Happy New Year and welcome back to school!

A special welcome to our new teaching assistant Mr Ilya!

Thank you so much for the generous Christmas presents you gave us. 
We hope you all had a lovely holiday and a good rest.

This week we have been talking a lot about snow and Winter, which has lead us into discussing the 4 seasons and thinking about which time of year we each have our Birthdays. We are learning a months of the year song.
MONTHS OF THE YEAR SONG

We have thought about how the seasons affect our world and used mixed media to make season trees.

Which materials would you use?

In phonics we have been revising the letters and sounds that we have learned so far. We have also learned a rhyme with lots of the 's' sound and the homophone sea/see do you know the difference?

A SAILOR WENT TO SEA

We have been practising our maths and fine motor skills, as well as our maths counting and sorting skills with our magical snow tray.

Homework

Please listen to the songs and rhyme for this week.

Please practise hndwriting at home, paying attention to correct letter formation, remember to use lower case letters apart from at the start of proper names.

Pencil Control Worksheet 1

Handwriting Activity Sheet 1