Reception Class News

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-3.45pm
  Friday 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!

Summer 1: Week 3

This week, we’ve been very busy getting ready for the King’s Coronation this weekend.
This afternoon, we had lots of fun reading The King’s Pants by Nicholas Allan. Throughout the week, we designed a new pants for The King to wear on different occasions.

The King will wear my knickers…

FlM – when he sees a rainbows.
HB – when he goes to a party.
AS – on a school trip.
TH – when he comes to my house.
AM – to a wedding.
AP – at a tea party.
SL – at Christmas
HM – when he’s exploring.
AT – when he’s crowned King Charles.

Today, we enjoyed a picnic style lunch in the hall with our friends.

This afternoon, we thought about different questions we would like to ask King Charles.

SB – Do you watch TV?
HM – Why is it called a Coronation?
AM – Who’s your favourite brother?
TH – What’s your favourite thing to do?
LC – What’s your favourite teddy?

Literacy
This week, we used our imagination to write our own versions of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. They came up with some fantastic ideas!

HM – The Very Hungry Bee
SL – The Very Hungry Ladybug
JQ – The Very Hungry Stag Beetle
AS – The Very Hungry Spider
TH – The Very Hungry Ant

On Wednesday, the children were eager to check on how much the caterpillars had grown.

LN – They are spiky
LC – They are really big now.
AM – They are climbing to the top.
EC – They look might make a chrysalis soon.

Yesterday, we looked at different types of butterflies and talked about what they look like.

JQ – They have wings.
AP – They are symmetrical.
EC – They have lots of colours.
AS – They are beautiful!
LC – They have legs.

Help at home: The life cycle of a butterfly has four stages. Can your child remember the four stages? Draw a picture of the life cycle.
PE
Yesterday afternoon, we had our second Foot—Tech session. We continued to practise the three key skills: push, kick and throw.
Amazing writing!
Every morning, after the children have done their morning jobs, they do a morning activity. Yesterday, Miss Gaunt and I were blown away by their writing! Some of the children wanted us to take a photo of their writing to show you at home.
Help at home: Write a sentence about this picture.
We hope you have a fabulous long weekend with family and friends. See you on Tuesday.

Living and Learning: I know the importance of a healthy diet.

In our living and learning session today, we discussed the importance of a healthy diet.

What do you think we mean by a healthy, balanced diet?

SSK – Diary is part of a balanced diet.
HW – Vitamins are good for you because they make you healthy.
HA – You need 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day.
LN – Milk keeps your bones strong.

What foods do you enjoy?

FlM – Vegetables!
MB – Fruit – we eat it at school for snack.
AP – I eat steak.
TH – I eat fish.

Help at home: Look at the Eatwell Guide again at home. Can you see any foods you include in your diet? Can you tell your adult what food groups they are in?

Summer 1: Week 2

Literacy
This week, we’ve been reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. To help us remember the order of story, we made our own story maps.

Next week, we’ll be getting creative with our writing. We’ll have a go at making our own versions.

Last Friday, we had special delivery…
We were so excited when the caterpillars arrived! We are looking forward to watching the life cycle of a butterfly.

Role-play
Yesterday, the role-play area turned into a bug cafe. From worm and spider spaghetti to slug slime soup, we had lots of fun making lots of disgusting meals!

Help at home: Using your imagination, can you think of a new menu choice to make in our bug cafe? Draw a picture and label it.

Bug hotels
This week, we put sticks, grass, leaves and pine cones into our bug hotels. 

A group of children put the bug hotels around school. Can you spot the bug hotels in our front playground?
We evaluated our bug hotels and wrote sentence about what we enjoyed.

Reminders

• Friday 05 May – Coronation celebrations
  Your child can come to school wearing red, white and blue.
• Reading records need to be returned every Thursday.

Summer 1: Week 1

Welcome back! We hope you all had a happy and healthy break. Thanks to everyone who sent an email about your child’s half-term holiday. We had lots of fun sharing these on Monday.

This half-term our topic is called Life on Earth.  We’ve kicked off our topic by going on  bug hunts. Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be learning more about life cycles. We’ll closely observe caterpillars and tadpoles to help us understand the different stages of a life cycle.  A big thanks to Huey (and Mum) for bringing in some tadpoles!

Help at home: Find out about your favourite insect. Draw a picture of it and write one or two facts about it. Bring it to school next week for us to share.

DT
This week, the creative area turned into a woodwork bench. The children worked in small groups to create bug hotels. They used hand drills, screwdrivers and hammers to create their bug hotels.
Our finished bug hotels…
Next week, we’ll be finding natural objects to put inside our bug hotels.
Help at home: Can you help collect natural objects to put inside our bug hotels?

PE
Yesterday, we really enjoyed our first session with the Foot-Tech coaches. This half-term, we’ll be learning three key skills: push, kick and throw.
Phonics
This week, we’ve started Phase 4. In this phase children will use the phonemes learnt in Phase 2 and Phase 3 to read and spell words with four or more phonemes and words ending in suffixes:
–ing, –ed /t/, –ed /id/ /ed/, –est

Here are some examples:
CVCC words: tent, damp, toast
For example, in the word ‘damp’, d = consonant, a = vowel,  m = consonant,  p = consonant

CCVC words: swim, plum, spoon
For example, in the word ‘plum’, p = consonant, l = consonant, u = vowel, m = consonant

CCVCC words: stamp, crept, twist
For example, in the word ‘stamp’, s = consonant, t = consonant, a = vowel, m = consonant, p = consonant

CCCVC words: strap scrub strong
For example, in the word, ‘strap’, s = consonant, t = consonant, r = consonant, a = vowel, p = consonant

CCCVCC words: strand strict sprint
For example, in the word, ‘sprint’, s = consonant, p = consonant, r = consonant, i = vowel, n = consonant, t = consonant 

They’ll also learn to read and write 18 new tricky words.

Help at home: Practise reading and writing this week’s tricky words:
said, so, have and like.

Poetry Picnic
This week’s poem was called Pitter Patter. 
Help at home: When it rains this weekend, have fun saying this week’s poem together at home.

Have a lovely weekend.

Living and Learning: Personal hygiene

This week, our living and learning session was all about recognising the importance of personal hygiene including handwashing.

What is personal hygiene?

DD – It’s about keeping our clothes clean.
EC – My Mummy puts my clothes in the washing machine.
HM – We need to brush our teeth so they don’t get black.
LC – Every single morning and every single night, I brush here. (teeth)
LN – We brush our teeth so there’s no cavities.
HW – You need to wash your hands when you’ve been to the toilet.

To help us understand the importance of washing our hands, we had a go at a germ experiment.

We used soap, mixed herbs (germs) and water to see how important it is to wash our hands. The children were amazed when they watched the germs (mixed herbs) move away from the soap on their fingers.

Coronation celebration – Themed Menu 05 May 2023

Catering Agency, our school meal provider, will be running a special themed menu for the Coronation Celebration on Friday 05 May 2023. See the menu here.

Please contact the office, in the next few days, if your child would like a school dinner on this day (no action needed if your child normally has a school meal on this day).

Big Walk and Wheel final results

After the two week Sustrans Big Walk and Wheel walking, scooting and cycling challenge, we now have the final results.

In our category of small primary schools, we finished in 24th place out of 514 schools with an average of 91.14% of our journeys to school being active. We achieved the highest national (24th) and Northern England (5th) ranking out of those schools in Leeds taking part.

This is a great achievement and we want to thank families for supporting this challenge.

We hope these active journeys continue as by walking, cycling and scooting to school, you are helping us make a positive change to the school run. With less cars close to the school gates, this is a safer and healthier way to start the day.

Bean update

Hello Reception!

I hope you’re all enjoying the glorious sunshine as much as your beans. Here’s a picture of how your beans are doing.
As you can see, some of them are at the “sprouting” stage. At this stage, the bean is developing a root system to soak up moisture and nutrients from the soil.

Some of them are developing their first leaves which enables them to absorb as much sunlight and energy as possible.

Don’t forget to send me any pictures of what you get up to in the holidays!
moortowneyfs@spherefederation.org