Being Healthy themed week 10 July
Our next whole school themed week, based around Being Healthy, will be taking place from Monday 10th July. This is the second of two themed weeks in the year.
Summer 2: Week 4
Literacy
This week, we’ve been reading Clean Up! by Nathan Bryon.
This book has helped us to think about how to look after our oceans, animals and earth. It has helped us to understand that we are responsible for our own litter. The children have extended their vocabulary through the use of: recycle, sanctuary, island and pollution.
We’ve even given our school playgrounds a Clean Up!
Art
We’ve been busy creating our own mobile sculptures based on Alexander Calder’s famous moving mobiles. We used wire, polystyrene 3d shapes and tissue to create our own representations of his work.
Living and Learning
This week, we’ve been recognising our strengths and saying good things about ourselves. I am good at…
FlM – looking after my baby sister.
HFW – building sand hills.
TH – passing a ball.
DD – Numbots.
SB – tidying up.
FiM – football.
ER – gymnastics.
SS – phonics.
AP – quizzes.
HW – tidying my room.
JZ – playing on the slides.
AS – being a good friend.
RY – sports.
We look forward to welcoming you back into classroom for our final learning journey drop in this year. See you all next week!
Summer 2: Week 3
Literacy and history
This week, we’ve been reading Sharing a Shell by Julia Donaldson. After reading the story, we worked together to sequence the story pictures.
Our word of the week was thoughtful. We talked about what the word means and how it links to our story. All week, we’ve been thinking about how we can be thoughtful at school.
For our writing activity, we thought about who we would share a shell with and why.
Yesterday, we looked at some past and present seaside holiday photographs. We talked about similarities and differences.
Awais – They both have the sea.
Lucas – They both are busy.
Huey – This one has a little boat.
Myla – There’s no umbrellas.
Eleanor – One has an island and the other doesn’t.
We compared other things such as clothing, food and activities.
Help at home: Find a picture of you at the seaside and compare it to one of these photographs. You could even ask an adult at home if they can remember their seaside holidays.
PE
With sports day just around the corner, we’ve been busy practising our races. They showed fantastic determination and teamwork especially when doing the relay and three-legged race. We are super excited for sports day!
Help at home: Practise your races in the garden!
Poetry picnic
This week’s poem is called I Have a Little Frog. Miss Gaunt has been doing an excellent job at looking after our tadpoles and now they have legs! We check on them everyday to see if they’ve changed.
Click here to watch the poem.
Summer 2: Week 2
Literacy
To help get us thinking about the seaside, we read lots of seaside poems collected by Jill Bennett. For our writing activity, we wrote a sentence about things we might see or do at the seaside.
On Wednesday, we looked at some at a photograph of Scarborough and talked about the things we might see at the seaside that we don’t see in Leeds. We then thought about things they have in common.
You can’t see seaweed in Leeds.
You can’t see the sea in Leeds.
You can’t see a lighthouse in Leeds.
I can’t see a hermit crab in Leeds.
Leeds and the seaside have fish and chips.
You can see some beach huts at the seaside.
You can have ice cream in both places.
You can see hotels in Leeds and at the seaside.
Splish, splash, splosh!
We had lots of fun getting wet (and cooling down) in our very own paddling pool.
PE
This week, in Foot-Tech, we continued to play 4 corner tag. Each group were asked to set up their squares independently – I was so impressed with how well they did this! When playing the game, they were fantastic at negotiating space, changing direction and coming up with their own tactics to trick the tagger.
Jellyfish
One of the chilli challenges this week, was to make a jelly fish. Cutting the material for the tentacles was quite tricky.
Poetry picnic
This week, we’ve been learning the nursery rhyme The Big Ship Sails…
Check out their amazing singing!
Stay safe in the sun!
It looks like the glorious weather is here to stay for a little bit longer. Please continue to make sure you apply sun lotion to your child before school. This stops us from missing any learning time. Thank you to everyone that has done that this week.
Reminder
Don’t forget to attend the Reception to Y1 transition parent Zoom on Monday.
Drawing
This morning, we were very hot after doing LOTS of learning. Therefore, we decided to do a bit of mindfulness drawing to help cool us down. We had lots of fun using our imaginations to create purposeful drawings.
Click here to look at our wonderful drawings.
IMPORTANT REMINDER
Your child must bring a water bottle and named sun hat to school everyday. We will refill your child’s water bottle when needed.
Summer 2: Week 1
I can’t believe it’s the last half-term. Where has this school year gone?
This week, we’ve dived straight into our new topic, Let’s make a splash! Over the next few weeks, we’ll be thinking about days at the beach – we even have our own beach! We’ll investigate floating and sinking, locate seaside towns on a map, talk about what we see at the seaside that we don’t see in Leeds and talk about seaside holidays of the past.
Literacy
This week, we’ve been reading One is a Snail, Ten is a Crab by Jeff Sayre and April Sayre. Before reading the book, we looked carefully at the front cover and discussed where the story is set.
Have you ever been somewhere like this?
HB – I’ve been to Serbia and there’s a beach there.
HFW – I’ve been to Whitby and there’s lots of house. I have a house there.
JZ – I have been to a lake in the Lake District.
SB – I’ve been to a Spain beach.
FlM – I’ve been to Saltburn and I saw an ice cream shack.
HW – I’ve been to Lanzarote and I went to a flamingo beach.
HM – I’ve been to Robin Hood Bay. I did rock hammering to see if there’s ammonites inside.
LC – I went to a beach in France. I went with my family and lots of cousins.
MB – I built sandcastles. I have a bucket that looks like a real castle.
When reading this book, we found it rather funny! This book also helped us with our maths learning.
Yesterday, I challenged the children to work out how many legs there are ALTOGETHER in our classroom. We counted in 2s all the way up to 66!
Maths
Counting beyond 20 has been an important focus this week. For the children to develop familiarity with the structure and the pattern of counting, we have been practising these key skills:
- tagging each object in a group of up to 10 objects
- knowing that the last number counted gives the total in the set
- counting movements, such as jumps, hops, sounds, etc.
- developing strategies to keep track of what has and has not been counted when counting larger sets of objects, e.g. rearranging objects into groups and rows
- developing strategies for counting larger amounts that can’t be moved, e.g. using a pen to cross through each object
Help at home: Practise counting things that can’t be moved. Can you use one of the strategies we’ve been using in school? You could use the patterns below, patterns on wrapping paper or draw your own patterns to count.
Poetry picnic
We’ve been practising our prosody skills when reading this week’s poem. Click here to check out our fantastic actions!
Maypole dancing
This week, we’ve been practising our Maypole dance ready for the Summer Fair next month. We are looking forward to opening the fair.
This half-term is very busy! Please make sure you’ve noted down the below events.
Diary dates
19 June – Moving from Reception to Year 1 parent Zoom meeting – 6pm
23 June – PTA non-uniform day
03,04 & 07 July – Learning journey drop ins
06 July – Trip to Temple Newsam Farm
7 July – PTA Summer Fair
13 July – Sports Day
18 July – Sports Day – reserve date
Summer 1: Week 6
This week, we’ve been learning about the human body. Before introducing our focus called See inside Your Body, I asked the children, “Does anybody know a fact about the human body?”
JQ – The skull protects your brain.
TH – This is your knee bone.
LC – Sometimes when you fall over, your body bleeds.
AP – Your heart beats 1,500 beats a day. My Mummy told me that.
HM – Your heart pumps blood around your body.
FlM – “The longest bone in your body is your leg and the shortest is in your ear.
SL – Whatever you do, your skeleton copies that.
We’ve looked at the human skeleton, drew pictures of our own skeletons and labelled some of the 206 bones we have in our body! The children were amazed that babies have about 300 bones! We also had lots of fun learning the skeleton dance.
We also looked at some x-ray pictures. We talked x-rays are important and why we might have one.
On Wednesday, we learnt about our five senses – hearing, touch, sight, smell and taste. We went on a senses walk around school and drew pictures of things we could hear, touch, see and smell. We talked about the sense we didn’t use and the children drew a picture of something they ate at snack time or for lunch.
PE
On Monday, the children practised their skipping skills. Many children found skipping quite tricky. Miss Gaunt was very impressed with their fantastic determination and perseverance.
Maths
This week, we introduced the Rekenreks to the children. We continued to practise our subitising skills by using our ‘fast eyes’ to subitise the beads on a Rekenrek. A Rekenrek allows the children to further develop their subitising skills as they explore the structure of small numbers, while building a foundation for further learning in Year 1.
We know to make sure all the beads are at the right-hand side of the rack. This is called the ‘ready position’. We then pause (think), place (one finger) and push (the beads) using the ‘one finger push’ method.
Poetry picnic
This week’s poem was all about looking after baby monkeys. Click here to watch us.
Here are some highlights from our last week of Summer 1…
Butterfly news
This afternoon, we released 3 of our butterflies! We got to watch one of the butterflies emerging from its chrysalis.
Reminders
- Now the weather’s getting warmer, please remember to apply your child’s sun cream before they come to school! Your child can reapply their sun cream before lunch with adult guidance.
- Please continue to read your e-books and your favourite stories next week.
- Next half-term, PE will continue to be on Monday and Thursday.
- Tuesday 06 June – Class photos
- Monday 19 June -Parent presentation (Zoom): Reception to Y1 transition
Well, that’s another half-term done and dusted. I can’t believe we’ve only got only one half-term left in Reception. Where has this year gone?
I hope you all have a fantastic week off. Don’t forget to send me lots of pictures. See you on Monday 05 June for your final half-term in Reception.
Basketball
City of Leeds Basketball, who provide our after-school basketball clubs, have a range of sessions for children of all ages.
Visit their website to book.
Summer 1: Week 5
On Tuesday, we made fruit kebabs. We practised our fine motor skills by cutting the fruit and threading the pieces onto the kebab sticks. Some of the children made their fruit kebab into a repeating pattern.
After making our fruit kebabs, we enjoyed eating them in the sunshine with our friends.
Literacy
We’ve been reading Farmyard Hullabaloo by Gile Andreae.
When reading, the children enjoyed listening carefully and working out the missing rhyming words. After this, we had a go at making our own rhyming strings. For example, munch, crunch, bunch, lunch
Help at home: Can you think of your own rhyming string?
PE
Yesterday afternoon, we enjoyed another Foot—Tech session. We used beanbags and different sized balls to practise our throwing skills. We explored lots of different types of throws: underarm, overarm, two-handed, one-handed, backwards, through our legs.
Poetry Picnic
This week’s poem was called The Fox. When learning this poem, we shared lots of our own experiences about foxes.
Caterpillars
It’s exciting times in Reception… all of our caterpillars have now made a chrysalis (cocoon). Everyday, we’re observing and waiting patiently for the final stage of the cycle. I’m keeping my fingers crossed this happens before before we break up for half-term!
Phonics
This week, we’ve been learning to read and write words ending in:
- – ing
For example, squelching, twisting - – ed =/t/
For example, bumped, cracked - -ed = /id/
For example, grunted, trusted - -est
For example, plumpest, freshestWe also learnt the last two phase 4 tricky words.
Help at home: Practise reading and writing the phase 4 tricky words.~
Reminders
- As the weather gets warmer, it’s so important we keep hydrated. Please send your child to school with a water bottle and a named sun hat.
- Library books need to be returned every Friday.
It looks like the weekends going to be a warm one! I hope you all have a happy and healthy one whatever you get up to.
Summer 1: Week 4
This week, we’ve been learning about tropical rainforests. We’ve been painting animal patterns, finding the Amazon Rainforest on Google Maps, making jungles in the playdough area and writing sentences about our favourite animals.
Literacy
We’ve been reading Walking Through the Jungle by Julie Lacome.
This repeating story was great for retelling. We talked about what a verb is and looked for them in the story: walking, running, leaping, swinging, creeping and wading. Click here to watch us act out the story!
Help at home: Can you hear the verbs? Can you think of a new verb to describe an action?
In our writing, we’ve been re-writing parts of the story in our own words.
Phonics
This week, we focused on reading and writing longer words and compound words. We learnt 4 new tricky words: there, when, what, one.
Help at home: Do the weekly home learning phonics sheets. You’re child will have two sheets in their bookbag.
Maths
This week, we continued to develop our understanding of the composition of numbers to 10 using different representations. We investigated different ways to represent 10 sausages from the counting rhyme, ‘10 Fat Sausages’. We also use our fingers, 10-frames and Hungarian number patterns to begin to explore ‘5 and a bit’ numbers to 10.
We used butterbeans to represent the sausages. We put 10 sausages into a cup and pretended to sizzle them. We tipped the 10 sausages onto a plate and checked how many were burnt and how many were not burnt.
Help at home: Use a frying pan/saucepan and double-sided objects (you could make your own counters out of card) to represent 10 fat sausages. Sing the song and drop your objects into the pan. How many ‘sausages’ are burnt? How many are not burnt? How many altogether?
Here’s an example
Poetry Picnic
This week’s poem was called A Little Shell. We hope you enjoy it!
Diary dates
- Monday 15 May – School closed: training day
- Monday 29 May – Friday 02 June – Half-term holiday
- NEW Learning journey drop in dates
Monday 03 July – 9am – 9.30am
Tuesday 04 July – 9am – 9.30am & 3.15pm-3.45pmFriday 07 July – 9am – 9.30am
Have a fantastic weekend. Don’t forget to email your pictures from home…
moortowneyfs@spherefederation.org
See you on Tuesday!
