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Week 3. 24.09.21

The weather has been really kind to us this week and we have managed to do lots of working outside. We have had story time in our outdoor area and we have been using the playground for some extra space.

This week we have introduced a Daily Dashboard and Busy Bees to the children. The Daily Dashboard is a combination of a calendar and science: which creates lots and lots of discussion. We have learnt a new song – “Days of the Week” to the tune of the Adam’s Family. We have been discussing seasons and the daily weather. Busy Bees are two children everyday who help around the classroom with the housekeeping tasks, collecting the fruit and milk, taking the letters to the office and being the line leaders. The children are really enjoying taking responsibility for the jobs around the classroom and for the Busy Bee stickers!

We have been singing the alphabet song, ordering the alphabet in a human line and we had an object for every letter of the alphabet and had to guess which object represented which letter. For handwriting we have started Exercising for Handwriting, where we have been working on strengthening our core muscles. The children have been writing lots and lots and lots! They have found the writing shed a real attraction – and we have had some lovely notes and drawings and I am sure you have had lots sent home too.

For number time we have started to look at the correct formation of numbers. We are really taking our time to make sure we are accurate with the formation. The children have enjoyed using different equipment and resources to form numbers 0 -10.

Mrs. Barnett taught the first PE session this week. The children were on the field and were the children played a game ‘Witches and Wizards’, where they followed instructions and moved safely in a space.

We have started to think about the world around us and we looked at three different bulbs. As a class we made predictions on what the bulb could be and what they may grow into. The children thought of nut, seed, onion, dinosaur tooth/bone, radish, rock. We then drew the bulbs and cut them in half to explore the insides and then finally, we planted the bulbs in our outdoor area. Fingers crossed in the spring we have a lovely display of flowers.

The highlight for the adults this week has been seeing the self-portraits the children have created. We have discussed how we are all unique and everyone looks different and that is what makes us special. The paintings and drawings the children have created are fabulous! The attention to detail for eye colour, eyebrows, hair colour and hair accessories has been inspiring. The children have then chosen to free paint themselves again later in the week. Mrs. Pugh and Mrs. Medlicott even had their portraits painted by one child. 😊

Tuesday 28th September.

The children will have both PE and their first Outdoor Adventures. On this day please send the children in PE clothing, they do not need school shoes on a Tuesday. For Outdoor Adventures please send a named bag containing named waterproofs and named wellingtons. Please send the wellingtons in an extra named carrier bag, as we will then keep the wellingtons at school. At the end of the day the children will be sent home in their waterproofs and trainers/pumps.

Mrs. Welsh and I look forward to welcoming you to the Curriculum meeting at 2pm on Tuesday 28th September. I will open the gate at 1.50pm ready for a prompt 2pm start. Please be aware that the school will be operational and PE sessions, Outdoor Adventures will be happening around the grounds. Please could you indicate if you are able to attend to allow for seating to be arranged.

Have a lovely weekend everyone. Any queries please let us know.

Week 1 – 10th September 2021.

WOW! What a fabulous start to school. Mrs. Pugh, Mrs. Barnett and I have had the best week getting to know all the children. We have spent time talking to the children, working our way around the classroom to explore their new environment and generally settling into school life! The children have had lots of firsts this week, with new adults, new environment, new routines, new rules but they have all been wonderful. Having small groups in has helped with a smooth and calm transition. We appreciate your patience for this.

We have been making mud pies in the mud kitchen, colouring in dinosaur pictures, feeding the babies in the home corner, making sandcastles in the sand area, riding the train to Dino land, singing (oh yes, I said there would be lots of singing!) nursery rhymes and other favourite songs, making our rainbows for the Rainbow Room, exploring the science equipment, observing the classroom fish and generally being really busy working at school!

From Monday we will collect and drop the children from the gate at the Community Hall. The lunch board will be there for you to select your child’s lunch. 30 children are all in on Monday, so the area will be busy.

We hope you all have a fabulous weekend. Get some rest children!

This week in Superhero Reception, we have been doing lots of fantastic work.

Welly Tuesday- On Welly Tuesday, we went down to forest school, we had lots of fun using our imagination, some children were roasting mud marshmallows on their own fire pits they had created, some children were making chocolate milkshakes, some children were building bridges and stepping stones to get over the very muddy puddles and some children pretended to be kolas swinging from the trees.

Writing- Everyone got to create superhero healthy fruit skewers to make us big and strong superheroes. To be able to make these skewers children wrote labels for each fruit independently, I was so impressed with children’s growth mindset and willingness to achieve. We ate them all up in snack time and they were ever so yummy.

Maths- This week we have been looking at doubles up to 10. We know that double is the same number twice. We have used doubling machines all week to help us. We have played lots of fun games such as matching pairs, dominos, paint printing and dice rolling.

Phonics- This week we spent our last week working on phase 3, we have been working hard learning our last few digraphs and trigraph, looking at ow, ear, oi, air. We are really working hard to remember all of our phonemes and writing our graphemes.

RE- This week we were able to go and visit a special place, a special place close to home for Tardebigge First School. We went and visited St Bartholomew's church, looking at the special things within the church that we had previously labelled in our writing, like the font, the crosses and the Bible. Then we celebrated our special achievements from the week in Tardebigge’s special place and had celebration assembly in the church.

Lets have another amazing week as superheroes, 

Miss Machin

We have done so much this week!

In Writing this week we have all tried very hard with our handwriting, improving our sweeps and flicks. In our first writing piece, we became real life superheroes and created drawings for a loneliness campaign in Redditch, we wrote our kind words and drew a picture to make someone smile. These were so lovely, and the children worked so hard.
Next, we focused on developing our handwriting for our names, using our cards to practice sweeps and flicks.
On Wednesday we wrote about our own real-life superheroes’ qualities and what makes them so amazing. Its so brilliant to see that lots of the children’s superheroes are Moms, Dads and Nannies. They all love you to pieces.

In Maths this week, they have blown my socks off with how incredibly quickly they have picked up their number bonds. Each day we have looked at a new number bond, playing lots of games to help to support and cement this knowledge. We have worked towards creating a number bonds rainbow with a new sum on each colour. Everyone tried their hardest. Reception you have impressed me with how amazingly you got on and tried your best.

In topic this week, we have started to grow some cress, we are experimenting to see if cress seeds need soil to grow. The children have made hypotheses about which materials will help it to grow the best. Let’s wait and see to find out what happens.

1. This week, we have looked at special places for Muslims, as this week marks the end of Ramadan and the celebration of Eid. We have been lucky enough to find out first-hand from someone in our class about what happens at an Eid celebration. We have then also taken a 3D tour of a Mosque and looked at special objects and places that you might find in there.

We are continuing on our quest to be the best superheroes in world next week, I can’t wait to see which adventures we get up to.

Have a fantastic weekend,

Miss Machin

I can’t believe how quickly this week has gone!

This week has been a blast, we have had such an adventure being Vets and Doctors. We have been so lucky, Mrs Pugh has been so kind and brought in her animals, we even stroked ‘Checkers’ the snake and bathed ‘Bruce and Aurtoise’ the tortoises. We have also learned about their habitats and interesting facts about these animals. Did you know that tortoises don’t drink through their mouths they drink through their tails.

In maths this week we have looked at patterns, we have loved playing the pattern games in our lessons so much the children requested the game in independent play. We have also created our own patterns using blocks and pegboards, some children even created tricky patterns with 5 different colours.

Welly Tuesday, because it was raining and windy this week we decided to go on a welly walk. It was so lovely to see all the leaves and blossom on the trees, although it was very cold to start and after a lot of running around / playing tag, we warmed up and loved the adventure.

Within topic this week we have looked at the scientist and musician, Brian Cox. Looking at his hit song in the band ‘D ream’ and looked at how it relates to the pandemic and how with a positive attitude ‘things can only get better’. We additionally looked at his science work about space.

To top the week off we have had three children who turned 5 this week!! We had to celebrate in style and have a birthday party. We played birthday games and pass the parcel and even got a slice of cake too.

We have had a fantastic week in Reception,

Have a lovely weekend.

Miss Machin

This week we have been police officers and detectives.

We have been on an exciting mission to find clues and track down the culprit of the toy stealing mystery. Our three suspects were Mrs Marmalade-Custard, Mrs Raspberry and Mrs Curly-Wurly-Twirly. The children used their fantastic questioning skills to understand the suspects’ alibis as well as their intuitive clue spotting skills, knowledge of lengths and patterns to distinguish between footprints and fingerprints. Safe to say you are in good hands with detectives from Reception on the case.

In Maths this week we have been working on subtraction of single-digit numbers. We are now brilliant at using our tens frames and we understand spoken maths problems. The children were even able to create their own maths problem scenarios. We especially liked maths problems about donut shops.

Phonics - This week we have started to look at some Phase 5 graphemes. These are alternative Graphemes to ones which we have previously learned - ay (ai) ea (ee) ie (igh) ou (ow), we have recapped these and played lots of fun games to help us remember the new sounds. As detectives, we have also been searching through tricky word clues, which has been such a popular activity.

In music with Miss Walker and Mrs Pugh the children were able to choose their musical instruments and sing to familiar songs they know and love, such as Sticks Sticks Sticks by Hey Duggee. The children thoroughly enjoyed experimenting with new instruments and noises.

RE - This term we are learning about special places. We have discussed what makes places special to us and where our own special places are. This week we learned about special places for Christians, especially why a Christian’s special place may be a Church and when they might visit one.

I cannot wait to hear all your fantastic stories about what you got up to over the Bank Holiday weekend.

Miss Machin

What a week back after half term, we have started our new topic, Reception to the rescue. Each week we are learning about different community superheroes. This week we looked at Firefighters!

To kick start off our topic this week, we got to interview a firefighter called Rob. He was ever so amazing at answering all our questions. Rob was impressed with our questions and our listening. We learnt about what they wear, their job and what it takes to be a firefighter. We loved it so much that we have all applied to become Reception firefighters, we have sent off our applications and we are waiting to hear back from the fire station on Monday, fingers crossed.

Phonics- This is the last week we are going to be recapping our Phase 3 sounds, we have been looking at the digraphs oi and er and trigraphs ear, air and ure. Lots of great segmenting and blending. We have also been looking at our tricky words in both phases 3 and 4. Singing our tricky word songs is a great way to help recognise them in our reading.

Maths- This week we have been looking at our place value in numbers up to 20. We know that one number can go in the ten column and in the ones column as the numbers don’t like to squeeze in one column together.  

ICT- With Mrs Pugh and Miss Walker we have been learning about Beebots, we were firefighters and had to get the beebot to the fire to save everyone. We used the commands to navigate the beebots to the fire, some children were able to plan where they needed to go next and use more than one command at a time.

Next week we are going to need to become critical thinkers and problem-solvers as we become police officers and detectives.

Have a lovely weekend in the sunshine,  

Miss Machin

This week has flown by,

Phonics- This week we have been recapping our phase 3 phonemes, we have been working hard in phonics, even writing our tricky words in the sentences we read. Lots of children are writing and blending CVCC words.

Maths- This week has been all about 3D shapes, Cubes, Cuboids, Cones, Cylinders and Spheres. On Friday the children coloured in their own party hats (cone shape) which had lots of different 3D shapes on them. We have also been looking around the classroom finding these shapes in our everyday lives. What 3D shapes do you have in your home?

Welly Tuesday- This week we went on a beautiful spring walk, what a lovely time of the year! Everybody had a tick list of spring things that we kept an eye out for, such as, daffodils, birds, flower buds and more. We even saw something to add to our list. This was an animal that is white and fluffy and says baa, can you guess what it is? Yes, we saw baby lambs. Reception and I were so excited to see lambs, the farmer had only just brought them into the field. They were ever so tiny, what a fantastic sign to see.

Whole class reading- This week we have been looking at Handa’s surprise, from this we have talked about asking questions, we wrote our own questions to Akeyo.

RE- We have been looking at Easter (Good Friday and Easter Sunday), we learnt that on Easter Sunday Christians commemorate Jesus’ resurrection. We learnt about lots of Easter traditions, we looked closely at flower crosses where Christians decorate a cross with flowers. As a class, we decorated the school cross with flowers ready for Easter Sunday.

What another fantastic week of hard work!

Phonics- In phonics this week we have been recapping over our phase 3 sounds and trying really hard to hear all of the sounds, we have looked at the graphemes sh, ch, th, oa, oo (poo at the zoo) igh and ee while also segmenting and blending CVCC words too.

Maths- This week we have been looking at weight volume and measurement. On Tuesday we had a very exciting maths lesson about capacity, we had to make sure we had the correct amount in each glass for the science experiment to work. We looked at empty, nearly empty, half full, nearly full and full amounts in the glass. All the mixtures reacted and made the potion rise up and over its full capacity and spill out over the top. They loved the awe and wonder. The children also had the chance to weigh items using scales (not snake scales), their challenge was to find things that were 10g heavy, this was harder than they thought. You could try and see if you can do this at home on scales.

Welly Tuesday- In forest school we had lots of fun because it’s nearly spring, I asked the children to make dens and habitats for animals. Lots of children made all sorts of dens for all kinds of creatures, we had snake dens, rabbits’ dens, worm homes and even dinosaur dens. We also were given frogspawn, which we are now looking after in our school pond and we looked at the lifecycle of frogs.

Whole class reading- Throughout this week we have been looking at a book called Dinosaurs in our School, these are disruptive dinosaurs just like the dinosaurs the children made at home. The dinosaurs created chaos in the classroom, painting the tables, throwing books around and making a terrible mess. From this book, all the children have created their own disruptive dinosaur pages. They have been up to all sorts; clogging toilets, breaking toys and gobbling up our bread and spread. I will be sharing the finished results of our published book with the children on Monday. I’m so excited to see their faces! Everyone has worked so incredibly hard to produce their sentences, we have been so impressed.

Well done reception, keep up the good work for next week,

Miss Machin