The Snail and the Whale
The Snail and The Whale
We’ve been reading The Snail and The Whale, another book by one of our favourite authors, Julia Donaldson
We’ve been retelling the story in our own words and writing special blackboard messages, just like the snail trail messages in the story!
The book had some fantastic adventurous words to describe landscapes and actions. Our word of the week was humongous. We discussed the meaning of lots of other words too.
Can your child tell you what each of these words mean? They could use the images to remind them.
Transition
On Wednesday, the Reception children had a wonderful visit to their new Year 1 classroom. It was a delightful experience for the children as they met their new teacher and explored their future learning environment.
The children were excited and engaged, participating in fun activities to make them feel welcome and at ease. This visit was a positive step in helping the children transition smoothly into Year 1. They left with big smiles and lots of enthusiasm!
Phonics
Summer 2 week 5 has focused on root word ending in: –er, –est.
Poetry Picnic
Each week we will be learning a new poem. We will recite this poem each day. By saying the poem out loud, we can focus on the sounds and rhythm of each word or line. We talk to the children about how this can help us become better readers.
This week’s poem is Sliced Bread
Nell Bank
On Thursday, we set off on our trip to Nell Bank. We began by listening to a story about Pete who liked to be TIDY but maybe a little bit too much.
We worked together safely to clear up a big mess! During this activity, we explored ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle, and discussed what would happen to litter if it was left.
Afterwards, the children had the opportunity to go on a mini-beast hunt to help Pete find lots of worms. Following this, it was time to help Pete make a new home in the woods. One of their favourite parts of the day (outside of lunch, of course) was the water play area.
Design and Technology
We are currently in the process of creating our own moving vehicles in design technology to keep Eggy the egg safe. The design criteria for our product was that the cars needed to be durable, safe and movable. The children had great fun drawing annotated diagrams of their designs and then calculating the dimensions. The children are using wooden dowel, axles and wooden wheels to build their cars. The children have used hack saws and G-clamps to cut the dowel to the appropriate lengths. They have built the bases of their cars so far and are now building the frames. The children are constantly thinking about safety features to ensure that Eggy survives if he/she had a collision.
We built some chairs!
This week, 2C have been busy building chairs this week for baby bear to sit on. We had a practice last week using paper however we realised this material was not strong enough. This week we used cardboard. This was a much stronger material.
We used card, masking tape and paper straws to build our chairs.
What a busy week!
We enjoyed sharing our story What the Ladybird Heard at the Seaside, there were lots of conversations in Nursery about the differences between the seaside and the countryside.
“There is sand at the seaside”
“I can see fields in the countryside”
” That’s the sea or the ocean”
The children enjoyed developing their cutting skills this week, snipping paper in the creative area and making long snakes to snip in the dough. We talked about using scissors carefully.
Outside the children were very busy using their imagination and creativity, gathering all the natural resources they needed to create their own dinosaur worlds.
Finding the ingredients they needed for potions and stirring them carefully.
Creating amazing tracks using ramps, crates, tyres and stands. What great team work!
More tracks were devised using shapes with the children balancing carefully along.
This week our Story of the week
Commotion in the Ocean
Our Nursery Rhyme of the week
1,2,3,4,5 Once I caught a fish alive
During maths group times this week, we’re learning about positional language.
Help at home: Try to use positional language in your day to day conversations and during play. For example -Can you put your teddy underneath the box? The car is behind the garage. The monkey is on top of the tree. Put your shoes next to the cupboard. As you look at illustrations in a story, ask questions such as ‘Where is the cat hiding?’ or ‘What can you see in front of the fence?’
Reminders
Please ensure that your child has a complete change of clothes at Nursery every day ( including socks)
If your child is returning to Nursery in September can you please ensure that your child’s returners paperwork is handed into the school office by Monday 30th June.
Clean Up!
Clean Up!
This week, our story took us on a journey… all the way to Jamaica!
We discussed key words from the story: sanctuary and island.
The book had some great messages about looking after our environment. Linked to this, our word of the week was pollution.
In our writing, we’ve been writing about where our rubbish should go and what will happen to our seas and oceans if we litter.
Artist focus; Alexander Calder
We’ve been looking at Alexander Calder’s mobiles in art this week.
Using Calder’s art as inspiration, we drew around shapes, or created our own shapes, and cut them out of paper.
Later in the week, we used twigs and string to make our own mobile.
Maths
This week we’ve been revisiting careful counting to 20 and beyond- look at our collections of 20!
In provision, we’ve been playing a game of roll and build- subitising the total amount rolled on 2 dice, building that number in a tower and matching to the correct numeral!
Releasing our butterflies!
We released our butterflies on Thursday! It has been magical to see them grow from caterpillars, turning into chrysalis and then emerging as beautiful butterflies. They were keen to start their lives in the great outdoors but one or two of them said a quick goodbye before flying away!
PE; Sports Day
We’ve been practising some different events we will be taking part in on Sports Day!
Phonics
Summer 2 week 3 has focused on words ending in the suffix -ed but sounding like ‘t’,’ id’ or ‘d’ such as helped, floated and stormed.
Please continue to use the Little Wandle sheets, sent home with your child each week.
Poetry Picnic
Each week we will be learning a new poem. We will recite this poem each day. By saying the poem out loud, we can focus on the sounds and rhythm of each word or line. We talk to the children about how this can help us become better readers.
This week’s poem is Five Little Peas.
Click below to watch Reception recite this week’s poem!
More of our learning this week…
Reminders, Messages and Dates
Baby photos – Please send in or email (scholesreception@spherefederation.org) a baby picture of your child to support their learning. We will be discussing how they have grown and changed.
Wednesday 2 July, 10.00-11.30am- Meet your new teacher. Your child will visit their new teacher this morning.
Thursday 03 July- Class trip to Nell Bank.
Friday 04 July, 3.15-4.15pm- Rec/KS1 FOSP summer disco.
Tuesday 08 and Thursday 10 July – 8.35am or 3.15pm – Learning journey drop-in.
Friday 11 July, 9.15-10.30am- Sports Day.
Swimming
Rainbow- 09 July
Sunshine- 02 July
Butterfly release
Over the past 3 weeks, KS1 have each had some caterpillar friends in their classrooms. The caterpillars soon tripled in size., before going into their cocoon for a week or so.
Yesterday morning, we came into school to find lots of beautiful butterflies had hatched.
We had a lovely time releasing them into our flower garden in the afternoon.
Help at home by talking to children about the importance of wildlife and how we can protect it.
Hot and Cold Countries
Following on from our discussions about journeys and holidays, we looked at some photographs of hot and cold countries. We talked about the weather and thought about which animals live in hot places and which live in colder areas. The children enjoyed using the small world area to sort the animals.
In the creative area we used the “hot colours” red, orange and yellow to create our art work.
Children loved using the remote controlled cars this week and were able to move them backwards and forwards between the obstacles. It was lots of fun!
Our Maths focus this week has been capacity. We have been using the mathematical vocabulary of capacity full, empty, half-full.
In group time we filled our cups with pasta, making sure they were half-full was tricky.
We also practised our skills in the sensory area, pouring the sand carefully into the tubes and bottles. We had to concentrate really hard.
Help at home
Can you use the language of capacity at home ? Is the cup half-full yet? My cup is full ? Can you empty the box?
Next week our story of the week is
Our Nursery rhyme of the week is
A Sailor went to Sea.
Junior Warrior
Year 6 had an exciting afternoon on Friday as they took part in Junior Warrior. It was a scorching hot day which made the challenge even trickier. Junior Warrior is a huge 3km obstacle course where you scale walls, carry logs and crawl through tunnels. This is made even harder by the fact that everything is covered in mud! You could hear screams and giggles as the children made their way around this slippery course! As the children made their way to the finish line, they faced a huge water slide. This did however clean them up a bit! Thanks to all the parents that came along to support the children. I hope you managed to get the children and their clothes clean again!
Trip to Temple Newsam
We’ve had a fabulous day as Temple Newsam supporting our Design and Technology learning.
We met Katie the pig who was mum to 9 piglets and decided which shapes would be strong and stable to make a shelter for her.
We made some great structures. We also met lots of other animals (mainly mammal but some birds too) where we talked about the names of offspring and how mammals feed their young with milk from their body.
Eating our packed lunch was also a highlight of the day!
Temple Newsam-1A
Wow, what a spectacular day for a trip to the farm! We have had many cooling down breaks under trees today. Our Science topic came to life as we have been focusing on ‘Growing Up’, life cycles and baby mammals. We saw plenty of mammals and their offspring today. Our ‘Three Little Pigs’ Design Technology workshop was inside a cool stone building. We enjoyed making structures to hide a little pig in.
A HUGE thankyou to the many adults who volunteered to join us for the day. We hope you had as much fun as we did.
