Settling in
All of the children are now in full-time and are continuing to settle in, get to know each other and learn our daily routines. We’ve had lots of fun exploring our learning this week. Take a look at what we’ve been up to:
PE; Foot-Tech
The children really enjoyed their first Foot-Tech PE session.
Each Monday and Friday, Reception will take part in a range of fun activities and games. In Early Years, our PE lessons have a key focus on developing the fundamentals of movement and ensuring that children are continuously engaged and active throughout.
Phonics
We started our Little Wandle phonics lessons this week! The children were introduced to their first four sounds- s,a,t,p
They have learnt how to identify the sounds by their graphemes and how to form the graphemes in their writing. They have practised identifying initial sounds and blending sounds together to say the whole word.
We have introduced new vocabulary linked to our phonics learning:
Phoneme– The sound a letter (grapheme) makes
Grapheme– The letter that represents the sound
Segmenting- Breaking up a word into its phonemes and sounding aloud (ie. cat becomes c-a-t)
Blending- Blending the phonemes together to read the word. (ie. d-o-g becomes dog)
Each week we will be sending a ‘learn at home’ sheet, which recaps the phonics learning from the week. Please look at this with your child and complete the activities.
Help at home; Family photos
Next week, we will be thinking about our families. To help support our discussions, please send in one picture of your family together. We will keep the photograph on display, so please send photos you are happy for us to keep. You can also email photos to the email address below.
Reminders and diary dates
Welcome to Reception
21.09.23 – 6pm – 6.30pm An invitation to this event was emailed to you back in July but here is a reminder. Come into school to find out some basic “need to knows” about life in Reception.
Welcome to Reception!
We’ve started to welcome children into Rainbow and Sunshine Class this week. All of the children are settling in brilliantly and have been superstars! We hope they’ve had lots of exciting news to share with you. We look forward to welcoming the rest of Reception, on Monday.
PE; Days and Swimming
Reception’s PE days are Wednesday and Friday. Please send your child to school in their PE kits on these days, including on days when they will be swimming.
Swimming will begin in week 3. Children swim fortnightly. Please send your child with a swimsuit/swim shorts, a towel and goggles if needed. You do not need to send floatation supports.
Swimming Dates:
Rainbow Class- 20 September, 4 October, 18 October
Sunshine Class- 27 September, 11 October, 25 October
Bookbags, spare clothes and wellies
Please send your child with their bookbag each day. Please also send a pair of wellies and a bag of spare clothes/underwear that can be left at school. We will send this home if it needs washing or replacing.
Please double check that all of your child’s school items are labelled with their name.
Dates for your diary (sent home on your child’s first day)
This year we will be offering various opportunities for you to find out more about Early Years at school. There will be after school meetings with your child’s teacher. There’ll be stay and learn sessions where you can come into school and be part of a lesson and then find out how you can help at home.
Then, opportunities to pop into school to share your child’s learning journey book with them. We hope that you can join us for as many of these sessions as possible.
Welcome to Reception
An invitation to this event was emailed to you back in July but here is a reminder. Come into school to find out some basic “need to knows” about life in Reception. 21.09.23 – 6pm – 6.30pm
Stay and learn sessions
This is an opportunity for you to come into school to find out about the Early Years Curriculum and watch your child learning in school.
Phonics Phase 2 – 12.10.23 – 2.20 – 3.00
Maths – 15.11.23 – 8.50 – 9.30
Phonics Phase 3 – 16.01.24 – 8.50-9.30
Fine Motor Control –06.02.24 – 2.20 – 3.00
World Book Day- 07.03.24 – 8.50- 9.20
Learning Journey Drop In’s
An opportunity to “drop into” school and share your child’s learning journal with them.
Times – 8.45 am-9.15am and 3.15pm-3.45pm (Tuesday and Thursday)
Week beginning 11.12.23
Week beginning 25.03.24
Week beginning 08.07.24
The Finale!
Wow what a fun-filled last week! We’re so impressed with this week’s fantastic learning. We’ve seen children working hard in their maths: counting and comparing the people they could see in some snapshots of the school year. We’ve seen impressive writing, as children wrote about how they’ve grown and changed. We’ve seen so many happy friendships, with children working together to problem solve. We’ve enjoyed designing and building ice-creams in the sensory area, playing ‘teacher’ in the phonics areas and using our fine motor skills to make paper chains. Take a look at some of our learning this week…
Reflecting on the year
At this time of year it is lovely to look back and reflect on everything we’ve done and achieved. During Living and Learning time this week, the children reflected on some of their favourite things during their time in Reception:
I like assembly and I like going outside- Skyla
I liked being the ‘star of the day’- Olivia
I like doing six challenge cubes- Thomas
I like swimming- the races- Alfie
I really liked PE, because we play games- Esmé
I like getting ten stars and getting Monty- Jack
I like ‘wake up shake up’- Ella
Snack time!- Eddy
The beach party!- Henryk
Playing with my friends- Ted
I liked doing writing- Keira
I liked doing yoga- Mollie G
The Beach Party
On Thursday, the weather was kind to us and we had a beautiful beach party. It was so much fun!
The Selfie Station
The children have enjoyed being in charge of taking the photos this week- take a look out our selfie-station snaps!
Professor Myers
Professor Myers visited us on our last day and showed us the cola and Mentos experiment! We loved seeing the cola bubble up into a “volcano!”
A final message
The Reception team would like to thank you all for your partnership and support this year. We’ve had a truly wonderful year and are so proud of all of the children. We wish you all the best as your child moves up to year one and continues their learning journey at Scholes (Elmet) Primary School. Have a happy and healthy Summer and we’ll see you in September!
Being Healthy Week
What a fun-filled, healthy week we have had! Despite the rain, the children enjoyed taking part in their first sports day.
On Tuesday, we took part in a yoga session.
Throughout the week, we have focused on a personal best challenge. This involved timing ourselves while running laps and counting how many star jumps we could do in 1 minute to see if we could improve over time.
Literacy
This week, we read The fish Who Could Wish.
The children thought about their own wishes for year one.
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 Dance.
A huge thank you for sending videos of your child reciting the poem at home.
Poetry Picnic Superstars!
Science
We have continued exploring floating and sinking by making our own boats and testing how many coins they could hold before they sank.
More of our learning this week…
Reminders
Swimming – Rainbow- 19 July
Beach Party – Your child can come to school dressed in their own clothes ( please make sure they are suitable to wear all day) and can bring a special snack and drink.
All children are welcome to bring swim wear and water pistols. A towel to get dried with is essential. The children are also welcome to bring any outdoor play equipment eg: bats, balls, hula hoops, footballs etc.
Please name as many items as possible and don’t send anything too precious.
Carrier Bag – Please send a labelled carrier bag on Thursday in order to send home your child’s books.
Living and Learning (Being Healthy week) : Yoga and mindfulness
Reception, Year 1, Year 2, Year 5 and Year 6 all enjoyed yoga sessions from School of Yoga this week. This helped us learn about the importance of mental wellbeing and wellness, as well as physical health. Time to be mindful is important for our mental health.
Living and Learning (Being Healthy week) : Soggy Sport Roundabout
A big THANK YOU to everyone who came to support our rather wet Sport Roundabout afternoon today.
We all still had fun, despite the rain. The winning team was France – but check out where your team came.
Another THANK YOU for sending children in fantastic coloured clothes to match their country team too.
1st France
2nd England
3rd Nigeria
4th Spain
5th Italy
6th Portugal
7th Germany
8th Colombia
9th Norway
10th Netherlands
11th Argentina
12th Brazil
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.
Maths; composition
This week, we’ve re-visited the composition of 5 in various ways.
We also made matching patterns on butterfly wings and used the symmetrical patterns to explore doubles (as we had added the same amount of shapes on both sides). We worked with a partner to create our own matching pictures and to find the double we had created.
Transition
Thursday 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!
The dancing raisin experiment
Phonics
Summer 2 week 5 has focused on:
root word ending in: –er, –est
longer words
In provision, we’ve been reading words ending in –ed and sorting them by
the sounds that –ed makes:
‘t’ final sound: jumped, helped, screeched etc.
‘id’ final sound: boasted, painted, printed etc.
Help at home; Sentence Substitution Throughout the school year, we’ve suggested lots of practical ways to explore phonics at home with easily made resources and games. There are also some great quality online phonics games. Sentence substitution is a great way to practise both reading and comprehension. The goal is to replace one word in the sentence, whilst ensuring that the sentence still makes sense. This is a free to access game on ‘Phonics Bloom’ Click here to play at home!
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
Help at home; Poetry videos This week, we’d like to mix it up a little. We’d love for you to record your child retelling this poem or another ‘poetry picnic’ poem of their choice at home. We will make a special video of their performances to be featured in next week’s class news post! You can send your videos to the usual email address (below)
More of our learning this week…
Reminders and Dates
Sports Roundabout- Monday 10 July 1.15pm Please remember to come in your sports kit/team colours on Monday and PE kit for the rest of the week. Thank you.
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- 19 July
Sunshine- 12 July
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.
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
Story Trail Event
As part of the Leeds City of Culture, there is a local story trail event taking place. The flyers are below and pdfs to download.
Why not take part with friends or family in this fun event?
