Class News

Reading Records

Before half term, the last week’s activity was Draw It!

Thank you to all the adults who wrote some fantastic comments in their child’s reading records. Remember – useful comments might include what went well, what they need help with or how many pages they read at home.

This week’s reading activity is ‘Step into their shoes’. This activity is about knowing a character’s thoughts and feelings.

Possible activities:

• Draw a character and it’s thought bubbles – what would they say?
• Write a short diary entry for one of the characters.
• Tell or show the reader all about the character

Autumn, Harvest and Henrí Matisse

There was so much going on in class this week, we thought we’d celebrate even more great learning in Reception! Your second Class News post of the weekend! …

Autumn and Harvest

We’ve been discussing the season of Autumn and learning about the Harvest Festival.

Poppy D- It’s when you get in all the fruit and the vegetables… the farmers.

Max- Crops are chopped up by a machine and the machine is called a combine harvester.

We discussed why collections of food are taken in at churches, schools and community centres.

Lewi- It’s going to hungry people who need it.

We also made some Harvest posters and sang some Harvest songs!

Click here to watch Rainbow Class singing Big, Red, Combine Harvester.

Careful Counting

As well as continuing to learn about the numbers 1,2 and 3, we’ve been helping some toys do careful counting after they made some little mistakes in our Maths lessons!

We made sure we only counted each object once and that the number we identified as how many objects we had altogether, was the same as our stopping number. We said what we were counting after each number, to help us slow down (i.e. “one conker, two conkers, three conkers…”)

We used special tagging ‘wands’ to help us count our objects too.

Henrí Matisse Art Project

This week, Reception explored the art of Henrí Matisse. We focused on his ‘cut out’ artwork in particular. We listened to the story Henrí’s Scissors by Jeanette Winter, to learn about the artist’s life and methods used to create his cut outs.

The children chose their colour, painting a whole page. Next, using a stencil, they drew around the ‘leaf’ shape and cut it out. Together, we created a collaborative piece of art on a large canvas.

We can’t wait for you to see what we have created at our classroom drop-in sessions!

If your child would like to learn more about the artwork of Henrí Matisse, Tate.org.uk have some child-friendly videos and resources you can watch at home. Click here to visit now!

 Diary Dates…

 Tuesday 9 November- Maths in Early Years (Zoom)

Friday 12 November, 3.30-4.00- Classroom Drop-in, Rainbow Class.

Friday 19 November, 3.30-4.00- Classroom Drop-in, Sunshine Class.

Pumpkins and potions

It doesn’t seem like two minutes ago that we were visiting our new children on their door steps and  now we’re writing our final post of the half term! We’ve had a fantastic start to the autumn term and have already seen children making lots of progress with their learning and becoming much more independent.

Here are a few things that we enjoyed in the final week, some of the most popular activities involved exploring pumpkins!  We investigated what was inside them, enjoying putting our hands in the slimy, squelchy flesh and picking out some seeds.  Children also loved decorating and painting them in the creative area and joining in with the ‘Five Little Pumpkins’ counting story in our maths area.

Children enjoyed re-telling the story of ‘Room on the Broom’ and working together to complete jigsaw puzzles of the witch and dragon. The water area was a hive of activity with children working together to share eye balls, spiders and bugs to mix into their potions!

We hope that you all have a lovely, relaxing holiday and we look forward to hearing all about your adventures when we return to Nursery on Monday 01 November. If you have any photographs that you would like to share with us, or if your child achieves something that they’ve been working towards, don’t forget to send us a quick email –  scholesnursery@spherefederation.org

Reminders

• Please ensure that your child’s water bottle only contains water.
• As detailed in our letter, please let us know if you are interested in increasing your child’s sessions in Nursery. We will be welcoming new children in January and may not be able to guarantee extra hours after this point.
• As the weather has most definitely become more autumnal, please ensure your child has a warm, waterproof coat at Nursery (with a hood) every day.

What a Half Term

It has been a fabulous half term in both Sunshine and Rainbow class.   We are so proud of how well all the children have settled in and have begun their learning journey in reception.

This week, we have particularly enjoyed: dressing up in costumes, making patterns with pumpkins and scooping seeds out of pumpkins.

In phonics, we have learnt the new sounds – o, c, k, ck. We have been using our new segmenting and blending skills to write words.

In Maths, we have continued to deepen our understanding of the numbers one, two and three. We created our own number stories.

In PE, we enjoyed using the equipment to climb, balance and hang. This is all great for our core strength.

We have loved using dough to strengthen our fingers. Check out our different moves.

pat

ball

squeeze

roll

two finger dancing

Have a lovely half term break!

Living and Learning : Mental Health (mindfulness)

We have talked about how mindfulness techniques can help us to control our emotions. We are learning how to use different techniques such as ‘bee breathing‘, ‘tree breathing’ and ‘okay breathing’.

Reading journals

Well, half term is upon is and I just wanted to say a big thank you to those children who have been trying super hard with their reading at home. It’s brilliant that so many children are reading frequently and appear to be enjoying a good book. Thank you to adults for signing the journals and listening to children read aloud. Some children have put huge efforts into the weekly tasks – their journals look amazing. Below are a couple of examples that must’ve taken a lot of time and effort to complete. You’ve set the bar very high – well done.

Conkers, conkers, conkers!

1,2B have collected a massive 2711 conkers over the last few weeks. We have used them to count into the hundreds in ones, put them in groups of 10 to count in 10s and to represent 2 digit numbers. It was also a lovely feeling just putting your hands in the box.

Today we went on a muddy welly walk and returned them to nature on the field – for the squirrels to eat or grow into trees. We had a great time throwing them into the bushes!

Autumn days are glorious days.

This week the weather has been very kind to us. Our Autumn walks have seemed rather magical with crystal blue skies and sunshine. The children have been so impressive observing the world around them and making links to their existing knowledge.  We saw aeroplanes, tractors, buses, sheep, horses and much more. We collected conkers, sticks, leaves and stones. The children enjoyed using their maps to locate local landmarks. Our learning has been endless and joyful.

Here are a few quotes from the children:

 Keep holding hands-Esmé

Stay with the grown-ups -Ella F

Up there is Chippy’s Pond – Bea

That’s to remember the soldiers – Reuben

Three aeroplanes! WOW! – Raife

I live there!- Stanley

In Literacy, we have focused on ‘The Everywhere Bear’ by Julia Donaldson. Each child planned their own story of where the bear could go. Our children have been most kind and taken the bear to the seaside, a castle, the zoo, soft play, a hospital or a park.

In Maths, the children have been working on subitising numbers 0-3. This is where we show children a number of items e.g. 3 conkers and they can instantly tell you that there are 3 (without counting them).

In phonics we have introduced the new phonemes m, d, g and the Tricky Word ‘and‘. Please find the new sound strip in your child’s bookbag and add it to the treasury tag of sounds.

Home-Link

Can you find the Tricky Word ‘and’ in your books, home, shops or out and about? If you do so,  please send a photograph to our email address: scholesreception@spherefederation.org Thankyou.

Diary Dates

Monday 18 October- Parent Teacher Meetings.

Wednesday 20 October- Harvest donation collections.

Wednesday 20 October- Parent Teacher Meetings.

Thursday 21 October– School closes for half term

Autumnal art and magnetism

It definitely felt more autumnal this week with the arrival of some windy and cooler weather. Outside, we enjoyed using some of our Autumn treasure to create our own autumnal artwork inspired by the artist, Andy Goldsworthy. Whilst doing this, we also used some of our sorting skills to sort the leaves into different colour piles. Some of them were quite tricky to sort as they were a mixture of colours.

At the end of the week, this little toy duck was the topic of much conversation! Children realised that they could move the duck on the pond by turning a dial but they couldn’t see what made it move. This generated lots of questions about how it worked.

As a result of this curiosity, we talked about magnets and began to explore magnetism around the garden. Children worked together to see what they could find that the magnets would be attracted to, or ‘stick’ to.  They also noticed that some things didn’t ‘stick’.

Do you have anything that’s magnetic at home or any toys that use magnets? Have a look and let us know if you find any.

In the water area, we used large tongs and ladles to collect the apples that were floating. We talked about their size and counted how many we’d collected in our bowls.

Following on from printing a few weeks ago, this week, we printed with leaves. We also discovered that when you paint over a leaf and remove it, it leaves the outline on the paper!

We also enjoyed threading beads onto twigs in our fiddly fingers area which is a great way to develop our pincer grip and fine motor skills.

In group time this week, we enjoyed drawing different patterns on some wellies. We drew horizontal lines, spots and some children created their own patterns including ‘x’ and zig-zags.

Next week…

At this time of year, it’s inevitable that children begin to talk about pumpkins and all things magical! Next week, we’ll read one of our favourite stories, Room on the Broom and lots of our learning will be pumpkin related!

Notices

• If your child doesn’t attend Nursery full time and you would like to increase their sessions, please look out for a letter this week and speak to Mrs Beesley or Mrs Long.
• School (including Nursery) is closed on Friday 22 October for a training day and the following week is half term. Nursery reopens on Monday 01 November.

Living and Learning – Mental Health

We have started talking about mental health this week. If you break your arm or catch a cold, everyone can see you’re poorly. It’s obvious. Mental health problems are much harder to spot because they start inside our heads. They affect how we think, feel, our behaviour and how we cope with things. They can affect anyone at any time.

Mindfulness (we like some of the Go Noodle ones) gives your brain a moment of pause to assess any situation without responding irrationally and full of emotions. Mindfulness means paying attention in the present moment.

Ask your child what their top tips are to keep a healthy mind.