Transition to Reception
Over the last few weeks, as part of their transition to Reception, our oldest children have enjoyed visiting their new classrooms to play. For their first visit, they visited when the classrooms were empty. They had a look around with a member of Nursery staff and enjoyed a story time. This week, they’ve been visiting with a few friends and getting to know their Reception teachers.
Living and Learning : Being Healthy week launch
We launched our Being Healthy themed week today with a whole school assembly. We talked about physical and mental health. We also did some mindfulness (belly breathing).
We’re looking forward to a happy and healthy week next week.
Living and Learning
Our Living and Learning statement this week is ‘I know that people I see in the media don’t always reflect real life’.
In KS1 our Learning Objective is ‘I understand ways in which we are different from each other.’ For our activity, we placed a smiley face on one side of the room and a not so smiley face on the other side of the room. We asked the children to stand in an imaginary line somewhere between the two faces depending, on how much they liked an activity such as swimming, gymnastics or karate. During the session, children moved frequently. We then discussed how everybody is different and we each have different interests. Some children like martial arts whereas some children have never tried it. Some children dislike playing football whilst others love it.
We know that:
- We enjoy different things.
- We each have different opinions.
We then talked in small groups about what we appreciate about one another. Each child had a turn telling somebody in the class what they like about them.
Design Technology: construction
We have continued to construct our cars this week. Groups have been working so hard, looking at their diagrams and putting their illustrations into reality. The aim of the week was to measure and cut the pieces of dowel for the frame of their cars. Then came the tricky part of attaching them onto the base of the vehicle. The children decided small nails would be the strongest method for their designs. This involved lots of hammering and holding tightly to very small nails. I think I nearly lost a few fingers!
The children will continue to construct their designs next week. Then comes the exciting part where we test our vehicles!
Science – sorting food into groups
In our Science lesson today, 2C have been sorting food into different groups.
The first idea we had was to sort food into liquids and solids. We had some great discussions about why some foods can be seen as a solid or a liquid depending on their state or consistency. For example single cream is a liquid, but whipped cream is a solid. We have drinkable yoghurts, and yoghurts that require a spoon.
We also sorted the food into green and non-green foods.
Other ideas we had about how to sort food was splitting them into healthy and unhealthy foods or fruit/vegetables and ‘other’. We are really looking forward to continuing our investigations. Next week we will be focussing on the types of food we should eat and different food groups.
Living and Learning – Body Image
In Living and Learning this fortnight, we have been discussing self-image and in particular, body image. This has included recognising our own positive attributes and also understanding that the way things appear in the media does not always reflect reality.
Help at home by asking your child what message they’ve taken from these sessions. BBC Bitesize also has some great resources should you wish to explore this further (these range in age group suitability so just need adult discretion). https://www.bbc.com/ownit/curations/your-online-identity
Children continue to enjoy our ‘under the water’ theme and this week, we enjoyed listening to ‘Commotion in the Ocean’ and finding out about different sea creatures.
We’ve been strengthening our finger muscles in the fiddly fingers area by squeezing pegs and adding them onto some jellyfish to make tentacles. It was a bit tricky at first and sometimes the pegs snapped but we persevered.
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In maths, we’ve been learning about capacity. We’ve been talking about when something is ‘full’ or ’empty’.
Help at home: Use these words together at home when you’re playing, in the bath or cooking. Is it full or empty? How do you know?
Not only did we find that one of our tadpoles had turned into a froglet this week, but we also found a tiny frog outside at the bottom of the garden. We enjoyed watching it hop around for a while and were surprised at how camouflaged it was in the grass.
Seaside photographs
Thank you to everyone that has sent in a seaside photograph so far. It’s not too late if you’d like to email us one photograph of your child at the seaside – we’ll look at them during snack time and talk about our favourite things to do at the seaside.
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.
In our writing, we retold parts or all of the story in our own words.
The book also had some great messages about looking after our environment. Linked to this, our word of the week was pollution.
Maths
This week’s focus has been on deepening our understanding of how to compare quantities. We have explored this skill in a range of ways: comparing groups of objects, comparing by looking, then by counting, creating groups with equal amounts and using our sense of magnitude, e.g., knowing 8 is a lot more than 2 but 4 is only a little but more than 2.
10 is more than 5.
4 is fewer than 5.
4 is only a little fewer than 5.
5 and 5 is equal.
I have more because 10 is more than 7.
I have fewer. 5 is fewer than 6.
You have more and I have fewer.
10 is a lot more than 5.
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!
Art
Using our decorated 3d shapes and cut out 2d shapes, we created mobiles inspired by Alexander Calder.
We discussed how we can recycle some plastic, glass or paper packaging or re-use it in imaginative ways, such as our mobile.
More of our learning this week…
Reminders and Dates
Baby photos – Please send in or email (scholesf2@spherefederation.org) a baby picture of your child to support their learning. We will be discussing how they have grown and changed.
Transition Morning- Thurs 6 July Drop off and collect your child from their usual Reception classroom on this day. We will send a slip home with your child on this day, confirming which class they will be in from September.
Learning journey drop-ins- Week commencing 10 July
An opportunity to “drop into” school and share your child’s learning journal with them. We would like to welcome you into the classroom on one of the following sessions:
9.00 – 9.30 Monday 10 July
9.00 – 9.30 Tuesday 11 July
3.30 – 4.00 Thursday 13 July
Swimming
Rainbow- 5 July, 19 July
Sunshine- 12 July
3,4 A Class News – Topic
In this half-term’s Design Technology topic, the children are really enjoying building go-kart prototypes using TechCard. We discussed the design brief and criteria before drawing our own designs and starting to build in groups, using different components. Here’s how a couple of them are coming along!
Year 2 Phonics
This half term we have been focussing on spelling tricky words. ‘Tricky words’ are words that are spelt differently to how they are spoken. For example ‘was’ is a tricky word because it sounds like it should be spelt ‘woz’.
During daily phonics and reading sessions we practise saying our tricky words and spelling them. We also put the words into different types of sentences such as statements, questions, commands and exclamatives.
In today’s session, we focussed on Phase 5 tricky words, (set 4). See some of our sentences below!
Help at home: by practising spellings at home. Tricky Words