Summer Term 2022
W/C 4th July
William Morris dominated our classroom this week. The children were so inspired by his various arts and crafts that they wanted to have a go at everything he had done. We printed our own nature-inspired wallpaper and wallpapered our outdoor playthouse. This led to a full makeover with a homemade wooden table, a light fitting, making and framing their own pictures and flower-arranging. We used clear PVC sheets to replicate stained glass and painted designs on which look great on our windows when the sun shines through. We wanted to make our own tapestries, so had a go at some basic cross-stitch with some great results.
We introduced a new book in Literacy, 'Izzy Gizmo about a girl who loves to invent new gadgets (not always successfully). This has taught the children a lot about being resilient and inspired them to invent their own weird and wonderful inventions.
PSHE has been about supporting the children with their upcoming move into Year 1. We have been addressing some of their worries and helping them to feel excited about the change. They have met their Year 1 teacher, Mrs Glaves, and are looking forward to exploring their new classroom on 19th July when they will have a transition afternoon.
W/C 20th June
To conclude the work on our rhyming book 'Oi Frog!', this week we have made our very own class rhyming book - filled with animals and rhyming objects - some from the stories we have read and some we have thought of ourselves. Raccoons on moons, bears on stairs, hedgehogs on logs and, my favourite, cheetahs on Peters. The children worked hard to not only write their rhyme, but illustrate it too.
Maths was particularly exciting this week because the children got to try out a piece of equipment that they will be using in Year 1 - Rekenreks. These are counting frames which have 2 rows of 10 beads on. They are brilliant for helping children develop a deep understanding of number. The children have loved experimenting with them and practising getting them ready to use. Rekenreks Ready!
In Topic we have been looking at places that are special to people - churches and mosques in particular. We went on a virtual tour of both and spotted some similarities and differences and learned some of the key features we would find there. We have also been looking at features on maps - understanding what maps are for and what some of the symbols on maps mean. We drew a map of our classroom and practised marking places on the map for Mrs Hughes to go to in order to find the missing cat.
The children have been working hard in continuous provision to make their own maps - drawing roads, buildings and other features and labelling them. Our outsoor area now has its own 3d map - a road system with blocks which feature key landmarks in Sleaford which the children have loved identifying, talking about and driving their toys cars to. The number of blocks increased as the children requested more of their favourite places in Sleaford be added to the map.
More sports day practice in PE this week, in preparation for Wednesday's sports day. This week we practised the sack race. The children found it exhausting but fun. We look forward to seeing some of you there on Wednesday afternoon to watch the races.
W/C 13th June
What a hot and sunny week it's been.
Please continue to send your child in to school with a water bottle and sun hat so we can enjoy our outside area as much as possible. On Friday, we filled our giant trays with water and had a paddle to help keep us cool and we all enjoyed an ice pole in the afternoon, when it was just too hot to do anything else.
At the start of the week we managed to finish off our bee cafe - planting bee-friendly plants and providing some water for the bees to drink. It looks great. Now we just have to wait for the bees to find it.
Our Literacy this week has continued with our rhyming book 'Oi Frog!'. We have had a lot of fun trying to make our own animal/object rhyming combinations - 'a racoon on a spoon' and 'a kangaroo on the loo' were just two of our ideas.
In Maths, we have been consolidating our knowledge of composition of number within 10. We have been ordering our numbers to 10 and filling in missing numbers on our number track using our knowledge of 1 or 2 more and 1 or 2 less. We have been enjoying simple track and board games like snakes and ladders to help us with this.
In the Art area, we have been exploring repeating patterns - gluing and sticking our own repeating patterns of 2,3,4 and even 5 shapes.
In Topic we enjoyed looking at and discussing pictures of some iconic landmarks from around the world - The Eiffel Tower, Sydney Opera House, The Great Wall of China, The Kaaba at Mecca, The Statue of Liberty and the Taj Mahal. We shared where in the World we might like to visit or live when we are older and the ideas ranged from as far afield as Africa, America, Lithuania, Turkey and India to closer to home in London.
W/C 6th June
It was lovely to see everyone back after the half-term break and hear what they have all been up during the holidays - playing in the garden, helping with the shopping, visits to the seaside and even trips abroad.
Maths this week has been all about finding our Number Bonds to 10 - the pairs of numbers that add up to 10. We used the song '10 Fat Sausages' to show that 9 and 1 make 10 as well as 8 and 2.
Literacy this week has focused on the book 'Oi Frog!' in which a frog learns that animals can only sit on objects that rhyme with their name. We have had great fun matching animals to their rhyming objects and our work on rhyme will continue into next week.
London has been our Topic focus this week - we have learned that it is our capital city and have looked at some of the main landmarks - Buckingham Palace, Tower Bridge, the London Eye and Trafalgar Square and its Lions. The children were particularly interested in the famous red, double-decker buses. We looked at Sleaford and how it compared to London - what the differences are between a small town and a big city. We talked about the importance of knowing our own address ready for next week, when we will be writing and posting leters to ourselves.
The children took their knowledge of London landmarks into their construction (indoors and outdoors) - creating their own versions of Tower Bridge and Buckingham Palace.
One of our areas of interest this term is different methods of transport. We used this in our Art area where we painted pictures using the different wheels of toy vehicles - comparing the patterns they made and the different sizes and widths of the wheels. It was great fun to drive the vehicles through the paint and onto the paper.
In anticipation of Sports Day, we have started practising some of the events we will be taking part in. This week we had a go at the egg and spoon race. We found it very tricky but very funny - thank goodness we weren't using real eggs!
W/C 23rd May
What an exciting last week of term.
The children really enjoyed their breakfasts with us this week - yummy bagels all round and they are getting really good at washing up their plates.
Maths this week was all about 3d shapes, We reviewed our 2d shapes and then explored spheres, cubes, cuboids, cylinders, cones and pyramids. We printed pictures using paint and 3d shapes so we could see the 2d shapes they are made of.
We experimented to find out which shapes were better for building towers and which were better at rolling. We tried to make 3d shapes using play dough and cocktail sticks which was tricky but fun. We went on a cube and cuboid hunt around the classroom and used all of our determination and resilience to build our own pyramids from a shape net - cutting, folding and gluing.
As well as printing with 3d shapes, we continued our art outside painting in the style of the Impressionists like Monet.
Literacy this week has been all about the Queen - we read some fantastic books about her - after reading 'The Queen's Knickers', we each designed a special pair of knickers for the Queen to wear for an occasion of our choosing. 'The Queen's Hat' took us on a tour around famous London Landmarks and 'The Queen's Crown' inspired us to design and make our own crowns for our Jubilee celebrations on Friday.
We have learned a lot about the Queen this week in advance of the Jubilee - where she lives, what she does and why we are celebrating the Jubilee. We all made cards to send to the Queen to congratulate her on her 70 years as our Queen and, on Friday, we celebrated the Jubilee by decorating and eating biscuits with red, white and blue icing and by playing party games in our PE session.
Our tadpoles have now become frogs and have left our classroom for life in the pond where they came from and, excitingly, on Friday our first butterfly emerged from its cocoon.
W/C 16th May
This week's Literacy was all about messages in bottles. The children and I received a message in a bottle from Pirate Brownbeard who described where he lived. We pretended that we had been castaway after our ship had sunk and we thought about all the weird and wonderful places we might wake up in - we worked to describe how the different settings might look, sound and feel. We continued our work with these settings by matching adjectives to the right settings - we made some great choices to describe the jungle, space, Africa, under the sea, a fairytale castle and a desert island.
Pirate Brownbeard also sent us a treasure map of our school and we each followed our own map to find some treasure - which was delicious (chocolate coins are definitely the best kind of coins).
In Art, we have been taking inspiration from Monet and other Impressionist artists by taking our painting outside - the children really enjoyed looking at the artists' work and trying to copy their style.
In Topic, we have been looking at fables and morals using 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf' and 'The Tortoise and the Hare' - discussing why we should not lie and that it is better to do something well even if it takes a while, than to just do it quickly.
We have been revisiting our Number Bonds to 5 in Maths, using the '5 little monkeys jumping on the bed' rhyme as our focus. We looked at the different ways to make 5 using a die frame and 10 frame.
P.E. this term is all about travelling in different ways and this week we put together all the skills we have been learning to travel under, across and over different pieces of equipment.
W/C 9th May
We continued reading 'The Night Pirates' this week and worked together to sequence and retell the story.
Our pirate theme continued in the art area where we have been painting amazing portraits of ourselves as pirates - studying our faces in mirrors to ensure we get the details right and mixing the paints to get the colours we need.
Our minibeast topic continued with a focus on learning about why bees are so important and how we can attract them to our garden. We have started to prepare a special bee cafe area by clearing weeds ready to start planting bee-friendly plants next week. Our caterpillars have also got much bigger and hairier and we are excited for when they start making their cocoons.
Our tadpoles have developed back legs this week, so we have been updating our class Tadpole Diary in which the children are recording their observations through drawings and writing.
Number 6 was our focus in Maths this week - making it in different ways - arranging 6 objects in different patterns and trying to describe their arrangement. We also recapped our work on doubles.
P.E. this term is all about travelling in different ways and this week we have been practising our jumping techniques - remembering to bend our knees and use our arms to help us.
W/C 2nd May
Our Pirate theme in Literacy continued this week by the sharing of our new book 'The Night Pirates'.
Using our great pirate knowledge, we made predictions about what might happen in our story and learned that the main character Tom was going to go on an adventure with some rough, tough girl pirates. We are very excited to find our what happens next. In the meantime we learned about all the different parts of a pirate ship and filled out a Pirate Application Form explaining why we would make a good pirate.
Our topic at the moment is minibeasts and this week we introduced the children to our 5 class caterpillars - we will be watching them closely to see how they change. We also met and held the school Tiger Worms which we will be looking after for the rest of the school year.
Maths this week has been all about consolidating our counting skills - the children have been helping our alien friend Zip - teaching him how to count accurately within 20.
P.E. this term is all about travelling in different ways - last week we were moving around using just our feet on the ground but this week we moved using our hands and feet. The children found some very creative ways of moving low to the ground!
W/C 25th April
This week has been all about Pirates!!
Reception gave us a HUGE list of amazing knowledge on Pirates at the start of the week and from then we have done lots of dressing up and role play with our Pirate ship in our outdoor area. We are excited to find out what our new book is next week.
We then got to use Now Press Play.... Where we met a pirate, travelled in a pirate ship and found the TREASURE!
Maths this week has been all about Odds and Evens.
We also have learnt all about celebrating Eid this week.
W/C 20th April
First Day Back at school on Wednesday was a fabulous daytrip out at Bowthorpe Park Farm! The children got to walk around the farm meeting all of the animals, we had a picnic lunch and then got to have a play in the sandpit to finish off a brilliant day with Farmer George. They particularly loved the lambs and the Big Old Oak Tree!
We then wrote all about our day trip out to the farm, as well as drawing our favourite animals and labelling. Trying really hard with our phonics to spell! We also made a big Thank you card for Farmer George.
On Friday, we celebrated Songkran festival in the afternoon, with a water fight on the field with Year one! Lots of fun was had and we loved every moment- Especially when Mr Clay came out and we all got him with our water pistols!
