Blog week ending 21st May

Well, it has been a really special week for our Reception children.  The utter joy on their faces as Pears and Plums have played together on the field at playtime and lunchtime has been such a wonderful sight to see.  Old friendships have been rekindled and new friendships have begun to blossom.  Children doing exactly what children should be doing!  The sunshine made it feel even more special I think!

In the classroom, the children have been going writing crazy!  It’s a wonderful time of year when the children realise that they have all the tools they need to be independent writers.  We celebrate each and every success - whether the children have written a whole sentence, a word or even just a few letters.  It’s all important and it’s all progress.  

Our caterpillars have begun their metamorphosis and we await our butterflies emerging from their cocoons.  We know that they are going to be painted lady butterflies and we have looked at pictures of these and painted our own.  Maybe you could look up these butterflies at the weekend and talk about the colours and look at the symmetry. 

We’ve continued to think about minibeasts and we have introduced the word ‘classify’ as we sorted the minibeasts into groups - those with legs, those with shells, those with wings etc. 

We then learnt another new word, ‘habitat’ as we discovered the places that different minibeasts call their home.  We thought about reasons why these habitats suited the different creatures. We have a minibeast hotel within our school grounds but it was looking decidedly 2* in its current state so we’ve collected some materials from our school field and engaged in some renovations and improvements which have rocketed it to 5* luxury!

In our mathematical work, we’ve continued to make and tell subtraction stories.  In addition to this, as part of our National Numeracy Day celebrations, we received a challenge from our friend the Numberblock 10.  He challenged us to learn how to count in 2s and we rose to this brilliantly!  Can you do some counting in 2s this weekend?  Maybe you could find pairs of socks or 2p coins to do this with.  The children need to see the practical importance of this skill in everyday life.  Following on from Numeracy Day, we are excited to say that next week we’ll be in touch with details of an online number platform that our children will be able to enjoy at home.  It will reinforce the teaching that the children have experienced in their Reception year and will be ideal for you as parents and carers to see how our maths comes to life!  Our children in Year 1 and 2 use this platform at the moment so it’ll be a great addition to our transition programme.

We have also had a fabulous time programming the Beebots  and moving them around the pond like in the story 'What the Ladybird Heard'. The children were so excited and it seems we may have some coding experts among us is in the future!

Hoping that everyone has a happy weekend. See you on Monday!

*Well done to 

Mrs Horne-Smith

Minibeast classifying!
Beebots!
Exploring Time!