Reception Class Blog - Dragonflies and Ladybirds
Anti-Bullying Week
This week we celebrated kindness in Anti-Bullying Week. We talked about how we are different and wore odd socks to show how special that is, we talked about how our differences make us special and we enjoyed decorating odd socks to show this. We also talked about how we can be in kind and how we can spot kindness, both classes enjoyed making a kindness tree which we will be adding to throughout the year, some children shared moments of kindness to add to the tree and it was wonderful to hear how children were able to spot kindness in class. The children also spent time thinking about who they can speak to if they are feeling upset or worried and we discussed the definition on bullying. The children engaged well with our discussions and activities this week and we hope they continue to sped kindness and add to out blossom trees over the year.
We have been busy learning and playing in reception. We have enjoyed writing numbers and meeting our phonics visitors this term. So far we have met an octopus, a sock seller, an elephant, a mouse, a tiger, a snake, goats, ducks and a cat! Mrs Chambers and Miss Khokhar always seem to miss these amazing visitors but we learn new sounds with them everyday. We have learnt many of our phase 2 sounds now and have loved practising these in class. We have learnt how to count and are really enjoying retelling stories like 'Room on the Broom'. Some children were pretending to be characters on the broomstick, Mrs Chambers was impressed at how they could count one more and one less as they were playing! This term we also enjoyed our Teddy Bear Picnic, we decorated biscuits and listened to a story together. We have some lovely photos of parents coming in to read stories with us in class, we hope you enjoy looking back at our learning.
We have been so impressed with how well our reception children have settled into school life at Shirley. The children in Ladybirds and Dragonflies have been busy making friends, learning about life at school and have been learning the Golden Rules.
In Reception our Golden Rules are: We are kind, We look after our property, We listen, We are honest, We work hard and We are gentle. The children have been making excellent choices at school and both classes have had some treat time for filling up their marbles jars full of good choices.
We have enjoyed a busy week at school where the children have had a school tour, they have eaten lunch in the hall and they have amazed us with their great listening skills. This week we have created our own self-portraits and talked about the things that make us special. The children talked about things they like and decorated their photo frames to display their self-portraits.
The children have also been introduced to the new spaces in each classroom. We have 'The Listening Cloud' (carpet), 'The Sea of Sounds' (phonics area), 'Mathematical Mountain' (Maths area), 'The Den of Ideas' (roleplay), 'The Garden of Wonder' (reading area), 'The River of Writing' (writing area), 'The Kingdom of Creativity' (art area). 'The portal of Imagination (small world) and 'The Desert of Discovery (sensory tray). The children have been in awe as they adventured into these magical places and have loved playing and learning together.
Please join us in our classrooms on Friday 22nd September to see what we have been doing in class so far.
Michael Rosen visited Shirley Primary School this week! He came to see the reception classes and performed 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt' for us! We absolutely loved meeting him and listening to him retell one of our favourite stories.
Wishing you all a Happy Half Term! We hope you have a fun and restful time over the next week and we cant wait to see you back at school on Monday 20th February. We will be learning about a new story called 'Handa's Surprise' and will be learning about Africa, food and number. The children will be starting their first PE lesson on Monday so we look forward to seeing them in their PE kits.
This morning we met Sean Rose who is a Paralympic Skier and Adventurer! We learnt some new exercises to keep our bodies fit and healthy and we learnt about the amazing and inspiring sports that Sean has taken part in.
We have had a busy week of learning in reception, the children learnt a new story called 'Aliens Love Underpants'. We created a story map together using pictures and actions and the children worked hard on their speech and language skills to retell the story. We also learnt about capacity this week, the children used words such as: full, empty and half full to describe the capacity of various containers. We had fun at forest school and enjoyed pond dipping, exploring nature, climbing trees and finding sticks.
A real fire engine and firefighters visited our school this week! The reception children loved learning about what firefighters do and learnt about what is inside a fire engine. We all go t a turn to sit inside the fire engine and had fun listening to the firefighters.
It's starting to look a little like Christmas
We had so much fun yesterday, the children received a gift from Santa! he delivered us his special elf who is spending this magical month with us in school. We named him 'Jingle Bells' and he bought us some new Christmas decorations. We put them on the tree together and then realised that the lights were not working. We called Mrs Mitchel to help us and she needed to use her Christmas hat, we shared some Christmas magic dust and suddenly the lights turned on! we celebrated with hot chocolate and cakes and shared Christmas stories together.
Bedtime Stories at Shirley
The children really enjoyed our magical reading session, the children were invited to wear their pjs to school and spent the day reading stories, sharing new books, looking at our wider reading skills such as inference and prediction and ended our fantastic day with a storytelling session with Marion Leeper. The children loved sharing books with their families and friends..
Anti- Bullying Week
During Anti-Bullying week our reception children had a fantastic talk about how to be kind to others. They shared ideas of what they could do to be kind, we shared stories about kindness and what to do if we feel that someone is being unkind. The children created a joint poster about how we should treat our friends and have displayed this in their room.
This Week we have been learning about repeating patterns, we used multilink, bears and colours to create and continue our repeating patterns. The children also learnt some new sounds: b, h, f, and l. we were visited by a flamingo, elephant and a bear! The children loved making potions outside this week and had fun writing about our story 'Room on the Broom'.
ECO Week
Reception have had a brilliant Eco Week! We have spent the week discussing Eco issues inspired by our English text 'Five Little Men', which is all about some outerspace beings who visit earth and are appalled by the damage they see has been done to the Earth's environment!
We were careful with our use of resources, being mindful of water use, electricity and paper, using scrap paper and junk modelling on the creative table.
Eco Day was amazing - the whole school had to turn their lights off! We then did our sponsored walk/run to raise money for planting trees at Shirley. The total raised is still rising - we will notify you all next week once the total has been finalised but it looks like Shirley's forest is going to be growing in the very near future!
Dragonflies' Jubilee Song
Dragonflies were so proud to perform their special song to special guests of Shirley in the school hall. We performed to several members of the school community who had to come to share with some of the classes what life was like in the 1950's, as well as school governors. Dragonflies did so well as they learnt the whole song in just two days! Below is a performance we recorded for families to view. It is the first verse and chorus of the song.
Jubilee Week in Dragonflies and Ladybirds
This week Reception classes have been having a great time celebrating the Queen's Jubilee. We have made flags; decorated (and eaten) biscuits with union jack-coloured icing and learnt a special jubilee celebration song. Today was even more special as we performed our song to some special guests at school. We then gathered on the school field with other year groups to watch Year 6's rock and roll dance performance, followed by a cupcakes and flag waving. Finally, we visited a special Jubilee Museum that had been set up using items from the 50's that had been lent to the school. We had a brilliant time celebrating and we hope you enjoy seeing the pictures.
Diversity Week
This week as part of Diversity week every year group had a different area of focus. In Reception we looked at different religions, countries and languages from around the world that are represented at our school. We learnt about some other cultures and then created a giant world which we surrounding with our handprints. On the handprints we wrote our names, languages and other key parts of our cultural identities.
Photos from the week
Measuring Capacity
Superhero Day in Reception
Christmas in Reception
ELF WATCH! Monday 6th December - Today the cheeky elf was ziplining through the classroom on a candy cane!
ELF WATCH! Friday 3rd December - Today the cheeky elf spilled the counting cubes all over the book corner!
ELF WATCH! Thursday 2nd December - Today the cheeky elf put toilet paper all over our Christmas tree!
Christmas Lights switch on! - Wednesday 1st December
Today Mrs Mitchell, the deputy headteacher at Shirley Primary School, came to help us switch on the Christmas lights! We had to do lots of wishing and use some magic fairy lights to make the lights work. After the lights came on, we listened to some Christmas songs and drank some hot chocolate.
We all put a bauble on our tree this afternoon
