Design and Technology: Sewing Pouches
Over the last couple of weeks, the children have been working hard to design and make their pouches. Resilience has been key! Using a paper template, they’ve cut the correct size material to match the function of their pouch. With neat over-stitch or running stitches, they’ve sewn the material together and used either velcro or buttons as a fastening. There have been some very creative designs.
Here are are couple of excellent examples below. Well done!
At home, why not try some sewing?
Science: wonderful bees
As part of our science topic, we have been looking at the job of pollinators.
Mr Campini visited school today with some bees from his hive. He talked about the roll of bees in nature and how many bees live in each hive. The classroom was abuzz with excitement as we enjoyed trying to spot the queen bee. Children (and teachers) were amazed by the extraordinary facts.
One student said, “This has BEEn the best visitor to school.”
Reception Round-Up: The Penultimate Week
This week, we have been making the most of the sunny weather by learning outdoors in the cooler mornings before continuing our activities inside during the warmer afternoons.
- We revisited our sun safety learning, talking about:
- wearing hats to protect our heads
- applying sun cream
- drinking plenty of water
- finding shade when we get too hot.
- Outside, the children enjoyed creating magical potions, cooling off with water play and making imaginative creations in the mud kitchen.
- We incorporated loose parts such as cardboard tubes into our role play, transforming them into telescopes, robot arms and many other imaginative creations.
Maths
We have been consolidating our automatic recall of number facts within 5 through games, songs and practical activities. The children practised recognising small groups of objects and using what they know about numbers. We revisited the well-known rhyme, Five Speckled Frogs, to help us think about numbers in different ways. For example, if 2 frogs were on the log, the children knew that 3 must be in the pond.
For this week’s maths challenge, the children used a one-minute timer to see how many times they could complete different activities, such as writing their name or doing star jumps. This helped them to understand how long one minute lasts while practising counting and comparing their results.
Phonics
This week, we reviewed our previous learning from Little Wandle Phases 3 and 4, revisiting sounds, tricky words and practising reading and writing words and sentences with increasing confidence.
During our reading challenge, the children searched for tricky words in books and enjoyed spotting and reading familiar words independently.
Reminders
- Please continue to send your child to school every day with a named sun hat and water bottle.
- Rainbow Class will have their final swimming session next week.
- If you still have any school library books at home, we would be very grateful if you could return them next week.
Next week is our final week of the school year. We are looking forward to enjoying our last few days together, reflecting on everything the children have achieved in Reception!
Perfect puppets
This half term we have been learning to sew in Design and Technology. We practised an overstitch (whipstitch) and running stitch. We did this using boards, binka and then finally our puppets.
We have been learning about many different designers such as Peggy Porshen, Emily Roebling and Anya Hindmarch.
When reading about these designers, we noticed something important. All of the designers planned their designs before making them. They then made the design and evaluated it. They checked it was fit for purpose and then made changes or improvements where necessary, so we did the same!
Here are our finished products! Everybody in 1A is super proud of their puppet. Next week we will be sending them home!
Pirates Love Underpants
Our pirate adventure has continued this week, and the children have had a fantastic time! They loved listening to the story “Pirates Love Underpants” and enjoyed retelling the story independently in our story corner. In our creative area, the children have been busy making their own pirate ships from dough, while in the maths area they have been counting gold coins and developing their early number skills. They also used their fantastic mark-making skills to create colourful pirate flags for their ships.
The pirate theme continued outside as the children used treasure maps in the Nursery garden to search for hidden treasure. As they explored, they used lots of positional language to describe where the treasure was hidden. We heard wonderful vocabulary such as next to the sandpit, underneath the bridge, behind the planter and on top of the tyre. It was lovely to see the children working together, following clues and building their language skills.
Our oldest children have also enjoyed visiting their new classrooms in preparation for September. They visited while the classrooms were quiet, accompanied by a member of the Nursery team, and had the opportunity to explore the learning environment, look around and begin getting to know their new teachers. These visits help to build confidence and support a smooth transition into their new class.
Reminders
The weather is expected to remain very warm until the end of term. Please remember to place your child’s sun cream in their group basket each morning. If it is there, we will know that you would like us to apply it at lunchtime.
As we look forward to our final week together, we would like to thank all of our families for your continued support throughout the year.
On your child’s final day in Nursery, please remember to collect:
- Changing bag
- Wellies
- Coat
- Lunchbox (if applicable)
- Water bottle
We look forward to a wonderful final week of fun and learning together!
Reading : The Owl and the Pussycat
We’ve used the Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear as our ‘Poem if the Week’ this week. We’ve used it in some English lessons too – to read with prosody, find rhymes, imagine the characters and wonder about the setting.
Help at home by reading or listening to poems together.
Sports Day
The sun shone down on us last week as we took part in our annual sports day event. Thank you to all the parents that came along to support the children. The children had great fun taking part in races such as, bat and ball, obstacle race, sprint and the long distance. Everyone did a great job of cheering each other on and the resilience and determination that the children showed was fantastic.
Snail and The Whale
Snail and The Whale
This week we have been sharing this much loved Julia Donaldson story. The children have been retelling the story and we have been discussing the rich vocabulary.
Help at home: You could share some other Julia Donaldson stories together or watch the Snail And The Whale animation on BBC iPlayer. Can your child explain the events in the story and why they happen? This helps with comprehension when reading.
Sports Day
A big well done to all Reception children who took part in their very first Sports Roundabout Sports Day. They practised so many key sport skills from throwing and catching, jumping, team work, hand-eye coordination to running. Everyone participated so well – and in front of such a large audience too.
We practise all these skills daily in our outdoor area too…
Transition
The transition into KS1 has started 🙂 Wednesday morning was full of excitement and a few little nerves, as the children visited their year one classrooms and spent some time with their new teachers. When they returned to class, the children were excited to share what they had been doing. Those little nerves had flown away and in their place was a super positivity for the big move in September. Well done Reception superstars! We will visit KS1 a few more times before the end of the year.
Ziggy and Buddy
Ziggy and Buddy are taking their last journeys of the year. They have thoroughly enjoyed visiting the children’s homes and getting up to all sorts of fun. Thank you for engaging with this activity this year – the children value sharing their experiences so much!
Design Technology (food) – 1,2B
We did our summer term DT (food) learning this week. We were making wraps. There was washing, cutting, slicing, arranging and rolling involved! We love these sessions and quite a few children tried ingredients they’d not had before.
Help at home – The recipe was sent home so have a go doing some food preparation at home.
Living & Learning – Health & Relationships Education
This week in L&L we have focused on body image. Body image describes our idea of how our body looks and how we think it is perceived by others.
This can include our thoughts and feelings about our height, weight, shape, skin, colour, and our appearance and attractiveness more broadly.
We looked at how editors often change a person’s image and the original image is often very different to the final image which is published.
We discussed how being surrounded by edited images has the potential to negatively impact our self-esteem. We decided that what is important is how we feel about ourselves – not what we look like.
We shared tips and advice on how to feel good about ourselves and increase self-esteem.
Help at home: watch this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpM499XhMJQ ) and have a discussion about it. Reinforce the idea that not everything we see online is real.