The Courier

Some of the things the children have been learning...

The excitement of Christmas has certainly started in Reception! We have all been busy making and creating wonderful Christmas crafts – cards, calendars, Rudolph faces, baubles, trees and gingerbread men! We’ve decorated our tree and the role play area has taken shape as Santa’s workshop with so many helpful eleves!

We have been exploring time in maths. We’ve been linking regular routines to times of the day, made clock faces and used them to read and show o’clock times.

Some of the things the children will be learning next week...

We will be introducing money in Maths. The children will handle coins, learning to recognise 1p, 2p, 5p and 10p coins. The children will count pennies and match amounts to 10p and beyond.

Our work in literacy will continue around the Christmas theme. We will be exploring rhyme in The Reindeer Hokey Cokey, and listen to a variety of Christmas stories. We will be writing letters to Santa and using adjectives to describe decorations.

In phonics we have introduced digraphs and trigraph;

ai as in rain       ee as in feet      igh as in high      oa as in coat

oo as in boot and cook     ar as in car     or as in corn 

ur as in turn

How to help your child at home…

Reinforce digraphs/trigraphs introduced at school. Identify them in words in stories you share.

Practise simple addition in real life contexts - e.g. how many red and blue baubles on the tree?

Talk about the numbers on advent calendars – explore the value of tens and ones in two-digit numbers.

Encourage children to write Christmas cards and gift tags using the cursive letters they know.

What’s coming up/notices/information...

We will be taking our trip to the theatre to see T’was the Night Before Christmas on Thursday. Please remember to send a pocket-sized snack and disposable drink that day.

The children are very excited about our performance of Baarmy Bethlehem on Wednesday morning. The rest of the school are watching the dress rehearsal on Monday.

Our class Christmas party will take place in the afternoon of Friday 16 December. It’s Christmas jumper that day so children do not need to bring a change of clothes. Some party food will be provided in school.

In 1Q this week, we had lots of fun on Christmas arts and crafts day creating beautiful pictures using finger prints, hand prints, cutting, sticking and decorating.

In Maths this week, we enjoyed hiding Freddy (our class teddy bear) to learn about describing positions.

We are also very busy rehearsing for our Nativity play next week having done two dress rehearsals this week. 

Our children have been so excited in making our classroom festive and excelled in following direction and adding their individual designs to the crafts we completed. It was lovely to see some of our parents during Open Corridors and for those who were unable to make it, please click through the images to view our gallery.

In Maths, our two focusses have been measuring and money. We learnt all about centimetres and metres and when you would use each. The children were really interested in learning a little latin, now knowing that ‘centi’ means hundred and did some impressive estimating and measuring.  

In our learning on money, we used an Olympic medal analogy to understand the value of gold, silver and bronze coins relative to each other. We have secured our coin and note recognition and learnt two strategies for adding coins (counting on and applying our 2-digit addition methods). We have enjoyed seeing how many different coin combinations we can find for a set amount of money. It was fascinating to realise, there are lots! 

Our English learning has involved baking and being bossy which is quite a fun combination when you are 6 or 7. We looked at recipes and learnt how to put our ingredients into a list using commas. We then had to write our method using imperative (bossy) verbs – put, mix, bake, stir etc. We practised writing out a recipe focussing on it being clear, concise and easy to follow. No waffle allowed! The eating of cookies was quite good too! 

In Art this week, 2E and 2W have had fun enlarging their wonderful drawings of a character from The Three Little Pigs then painting them with watercolour. Next week, they are going to use poster paint and oil pastels to add depth to their painting.

I can’t wait to see how they turn out.

In science, Class 2E and 2W have been learning about the different stages of human life. The children have been finding out about the needs of a baby and they had a fantastic opportunity to meet a two and half weeks old baby this week.

Mrs Jodie Kelsall brought in baby Albert, accompanied by proud grandmother Mrs Fisher. Mrs Kelsall answered all the questions that the pupils had prepared. Everyone was very excited and so thrilled to meet baby Albert. 

Class 2W had a wonderful Christmas Art Day being creative and just having  a lovely time.

We had lots of hard work and fun and a festive classroom by the end of it all.

Class 2W played a Maths learning game challenging their adding skills and their strategic thinking. There were wonderful examples of mathematical language, explaining their thinking and choices and, of course, some friendly competition!