Linking to our animal topic, the children have been learning about produce from farms. We watched where wool came from and then made our own felt.
We had instructions to read and follow. First we needed a sheet of bubble wrap. Lilia said, “It is pop bag! ”Nancy thought,”Popla.” We said the word bubble wrap and thought where the name came from. Then we had to stretch out the wool fibres. “It soft,” said Jacob. “It’s so so very squishy,“ said Jessica. The children stretched all the different colours and carefully layered them up and the bubble wrap. Hope said,” It is all rainbow now!” Next the children carefully covered the wool with net and wet it. It needed rubbing and then rolling up and squeezing out. Everybody helped. When it was dry Arthur was amazed, “It just looks real!” Who do we think they are?
Sienna said, “They come to collect peoples cos they might steal something off you.” Millie added, “They take people away if they are bad.” Connor exclaimed, “Police Officers!” What do you think they do? Sienna said, “They get people in jail.” Parajika added, “Police are here to protect us.” Patryk said, “If someone tries to break in a house you go to get them.” Louis said, “Police come when bad guys are stealing your gold.” PC Jones explained, “Our job is to look after people and keep them safe. If you were to get lost you can come and speak to us and we can help you. The police are not scary.” We learned that police officers can have different jobs and different transport. PC Banks told us, “Police can travel in cars, vans, helicopters, motorbikes and horses.” The children noticed that the police officers were wearing a special uniform. PC Jones said, “We have a vest to protect us and keep us safe.” Violet added, “The pattern helps them to be seen in the dark.” They discussed the different equipment they use such as the baton, radio and handcuffs. The children tried on the vests and hats. Emily sighed, “This is heavy!” The children enjoyed going outside and seeing the police car. The noticed the flashing lights and listened to the sirens. Why do you think they have sirens? Parajika said, “To tell everybody that the police are hear.” The children learnt that the police have lots of different jobs but the most important job they have is to keep us safe. The children were shocked to discover that some children do not receive the opportunity to go to school and instead they go to work.
Half of the children were given jobs to do whilst the other half got to go about their normal, school routines. As Emily was cleaning the tables she said, “This isn’t fair!” Demi added, “I am sad. I want to play like the others.” The children all decided that they were very lucky to be able to come to school where they get to learn and play with lots of nice resources. They all felt sad at the thought of some children missing out. The children compared clean and dirty water. They voted to see which they would prefer to drink. The majority of children decided the clean water would be best. The children could not believe that some people have to drink dirty water.
Sam said, “I would not want to drink that dirty water. It looks disgusting! It will make you poorly.” The children watched a video. They discovered that not everyone has access to clean running water like we do. They saw people walking a long way, carrying their water in buckets. To try and understand how that would make them feel, they went on to the playground and carried water in buckets to fill the water tray. Bess said, “I am tired now.” Lilee added, “My arms are aching!” Jacob said, “I would not want to have to do this every day!”
A fun filled afternoon was had by all in Reception on Friday. It was the first Stay and Play Session. During the afternoon parents joined in with active learning including counting to twenty with Jack Hartman and Squiggle while you wiggle. The children loved sharing activities in the classroom with their parents and displaying their newly learned skills. There was some very competitive splatting of numbers, super painting in repeating patterns to make fish and word building with balls in the sand amongst many other activities. All the feedback from parents was extremely positive including: “I really enjoyed seeing the different ways of teaching sounds and numbers. My son has learnt so much and we can now try new games at home.” We are looking forward to the next Stay and Play in the Spring Term. To begin the new topic ‘Commotion in the Ocean’ Foundation Stage had great fun exploring sea creatures using the blue lycra fabric. Everyone had to hold on tight and stretch the lycra at first, then we explored and named different creatures that moved around on the fabric as if in the sea. Next some children crawled under the fabric to search for creatures. Finally we pulled it really tight and then let go! Lots of great fun that everyone could join in.
On Tuesday morning the sun was shining ready for a very successful autumn walk, exploring The Denes. All staff and many volunteers commented on the excellent behaviour of the children.
During the walk we searched for signs of autumn, including conkers, leaves and acorns. Some children were shocked to find animals in the park; one child thought that she had seen a snake! Luckily it was a mini-beast – a very long worm! We also saw a snail and a very large slug! Throughout the walk we followed clues until eventually we found a bear in the play area of the Tennis Dene. Much excitement followed when we saw him. On return to school the children voted on a name. Welcome to Ruby our new class bear. When exploring our collection of objects back at school the children described their findings, “I found a leaf – it changed colours. It’s yellow. It was on the ground.” Ella “It is a conker, the shell it is so prickly!” Louis “The bear was hiding in a tree, the clues were there. We found it!” Emily L Children in the Foundation Stage were very enthusiastic to learn how to skip in preparation for National skipping Day 2020. First of all they learned how to hold the rope, then practised lifting it over their head and finally jumping over. Lots of extra skills were included to develop skipping including jumping using a ladder rope and in and out of a hoop. Everybody persevered!
Jacob, “It so hard and my arms is hurting but I nearly did one!” Rosie, “My arms go right round now and before the rope got stuck!” All these skills help to develop arm and shoulder muscles ready for writing too. A great action packed afternoon. We found a bear! We wanted to name the bear and knew that it needed to be fair; we voted for the best name for our new bear.
The children thought of various names first and then every child had one vote. Ruby is the name of our bear with nineteen votes. After listening to the stories ‘Oliver’s Fruit Salad’ and ‘Handa’s Surprise’, the children were exited to learn that they were making their own fruit salad. They learned the names of a variety of fruit, discussed where fruits grow and had the opportunity to taste nectarine and water melon. Most children thought the fruits were delicious!
Before making the fruit salad the children washed their hands. Frankie said, “We don’t want germs going on our food or we will be sick.” Next the children thought about how to stay safe whilst using tools such as a knives and peelers. Stephen said, “They’re sharp.” Bess added, “We don’t want to cut ourselves so we have to use them carefully.” The children could not wait to share their fruit salad with their grown-ups! The children discussed why it is important to wash our hands.
Jacob said, “You get germs on your hands if you do not wash them and then you will be poorly.” The children then thought about when we need to wash our hands. Emily said, “After you have been to the toilet.” Sofia said, “Before you have your snack.” Sam said, “After we have touched animals.” We discussed not being able to see germs on our hands. The children then practised washing their hands using soap. We also practised using the antibacterial hand gel. The children listened carefully to the story of Supertato. They enjoyed designing and making their very own ‘Supertato’ character. They decided he needed a superhero house - they used their careful counting skills to count the blocks as they built. The children discovered ‘Supertato’ began with our new ‘s’ sound and loved practising to write ‘s’ in mashed potato. They then got messy in the paint as they explored printing patterns with potatoes.
The children were excited to welcome Denise into school. She came to talk about how to stay safe when crossing the road. The children shared their ideas on how to keep safe. George – “Walk on the path not the road.” Scarlet – “Hold a grown up’s hand.” Jacob – “Cross at the traffic lights. You need to wait for the green man.” The children practised crossing the road using a lollipop person as well as traffic lights. The children learned to stop, look, listen and think before crossing. We are very lucky we get to keep the equipment for a week so that we can keep practising.
The children enjoyed going on a coach to Newham Grange Farm. They had lots of fun following maps to locate and visit different farm animals. They had the opportunity to go in the Discovery Barn and pet some smaller animals too. We finished the visit with a play in the park, mini - golf and getting lost in the maze. A fantastic day was had by all. During this term Reception children have loved developing skills with ‘Boomwhackers’. Now we can play them in time, follow instructions and follow simple notation. The children can identify the high sounds from the short instruments and the low sounds from the long instruments. It is great fun for all and because there are so many ‘Boomwhackers’ everyone has a turn at the same time.
The children pretended to be robots and gave each other directions to get from one place to another. They quickly realised that they needed to use the correct vocabulary or people would crash! They focused on the words: direction, forwards, backwards, left, right, turn, and sideways. They thought carefully and estimated the amount of steps they would need to take to get to the end place.
Next, the children worked as a team and used their knowledge to explore the programmable toys making them move to different places around the hall. A Chinese teacher came to visit on Thursday; she is called Pei Tingting. We called her Miss Pei. We played a game with a panda toy – when we had hold of the panda we had to say,”Ni hao Miss Pei.”
Then Miss Pei showed us how to use chopsticks. Steven said,”It was really hard!” In China there are twelve zodiac signs; Miss Pei shared the story of how they became. Amelia-Grace remembered, ”The mouse, cat and ox worked together.” Rachel remembered that the pig was last. We used a chart to find our signs from when we were born. After that we learned to count to 5 in Chinese; there are hand signals too. “It is ling, er, san,” said Ned. Miss Pei stayed for the afternoon and joined in fun in our Chinese restaurant role play, making panda masks, practising writing Chinese symbols and a little Tai Chi. We had a super afternoon developing our knowledge of China. Reception enjoyed a visit to the local church to learn more about the Easter Story. They loved singing and dancing and making Easter Crafts. What great fun they had.
Which house was the best and why?
Reception decided to test straw, sticks and bricks to find out which material is the best. What do we already know? Tabitha – “Straw would blow down when it is windy.” Sonny – “Straw is too soft too and rain came down you would get wet!” Steven – “The straw is too thin.” Charlie – “Sticks are wood and they need to be stuck together and put bricks on the walls to make em stronger.” Macie – “You will get wet and soaking with sticks.” Mally-Ray – “Rain could slide through he sticks.” Bethany - “Bricks is strong!” April – “If the roof was made out of something like bricks the wolf can’t blow it down.” How can we test it? Elsie – “The wolf huffed and puffed smoke came out.” April – “His oxygen blew the house down.” Lacey K – “His breath not smoke blew it down.” Charlie - “When you breathe it comes out of your mouth.” Lacey M – “Breath is like wind.” Steven – “We could all blow together?” Dylan “At home Mummy dries her hair with a hairdryer and it dries quick so it is strong we could use one?” We decided to try both ideas The straw blew away, the sticks stood still and the bricks did too! Amelia – Grace – “It gone everywhere the straw.” Dylan – “The sticks were just a bit wobbly.” Elsie – “The bricks were strong and didn’t move at all.” Reception children listened to the story ‘The Great Race’ and how the Chinese New Year began, involving so many different animals. We looked at this year’s animal (pig) and also the animal that was celebrated the year the children were born.
The children had great fun retelling the story ‘The Great Race’ through drama and using props of each animal and the Jade Emperor. The children were great at representing the different ways the animals travelled from one side of the river to the other side of the river. The children were then shown a video clip of people celebrating Chinese New Year which then prompted us all to dress up as a dragon (a large dragon mask and a very long sheet), moving gracefully around the hall as one large long dragon! After fun in the hall, the children had the opportunity to decorate Chinese flags, cut and make Chinese lanterns and even their very own mini puppet dragons. The children found some dinosaur footprints on the floor of the classroom when they returned after lunch.
They met a palaeontologist called Paul. They followed Paul and the footprints to the big garden – where they made an exciting discovery. On Thursday 25th October, Foundation Stage went on their first school trip. They walked to the Denes Park and enjoyed spotting signs of autumn. The children found many different signs of autumn including: leaves, conkers, acorns and squirrels!
In the park, there were clues attached to the trees. The children helped to read the clues and followed them. At the end of the clues, they found a bear! We had fantastic fun bear hunting! The children enjoyed a play in the park before returning to school. Once back at school, the children explored the items they had collected and voted to name the bear! Our first topic in Reception has been “All about me!” During this topic, the children have spoken about their family, learned body parts and how to keep our bodies and minds healthy. Some of the children’s favourite stories throughout this topic have been: Funnybones, Oliver’s Vegetables, The Large Family and We are Going on a Bear Hunt! As a finale for our topic, the children sorted healthy food and food we should only have as a treat. They then decided which healthy filling they would like to put in a sandwich. They then used tools carefully to spread and cut to make their sandwich. What great fun they had sharing them with their favourite Teddy during our Teddy Bear Picnic.
Twenty parents were invited to spend the morning with their child and explore the learning opportunities that they receive within school. The classroom and gardens were set up with numeracy, literacy and creative activities. The children enjoyed showing their parents what they do at school and how they learn through purposeful play. The morning began with our gross motor exercises ’Squiggle While You Wiggle’ which helps the children prepare for writing. The children then explored the areas of the classroom and gardens and finished off by showing the adults how well they tidy up at the end of a session. We came back together to do another exercise routine ‘Jump Start Jonny’. Parents then enjoyed a biscuit and a drink and left very positive feedback from their morning.
A road safety officer visited school to talk about staying safe whilst crossing the road. The children learned the importance of being with a grown up; staying away from the kerb; using crossings and not being silly or playing near the road. They practised saying, “Stop, Look, Listen and Think!” to remind them what to do before crossing the road. The children really enjoyed dressing up as ‘Lollipop People’ and using the traffic lights to practise crossing the road safely.
|