OUTDOOR PLAY

Outdoor play is definitely a priority in Reception and with the improving weather we have experienced over the recent weeks, we have been able to steadily introduce lots of new activities and exploration areas for the children to enjoy. We thought we would show you some pictures of the fantastic as well as 'messy' things the children have been doing over the past few weeks!!
We are sure you will agree the children have been having lots of fun whilst learning.

The Reception team.

Last day treat!

As our last day reward this term all pupils will be taking part in an amazing Easter Egg Hunt – pupils will follow clues around the school, solving riddles to find an egg-citing treat!

Make sure you’re here on Friday to join in this egg-tra-ordinary event!

Week commencing 28th March

What fantastic weather we had last week, we had an amazing time in our outdoor area pictures to follow.... Here is this weeks line up and our last week of this half term before we break up for the first block of holidays. It will be summer term before we know it! Numeracy We will be continuing with doubles learning our new song 'the doubling machine' which we will try and upload for you to listen too at home!! The children will be representing doubles through ladybird pictures and the children will have a go at writing the number sentence to match 5+5 = 10. Literacy and Topic We will be reading the traditional tale of Jack and The Beanstalk, this week the children will retell the story through music. Using the instruments to create the sounds of the characters and then we will video our final version and try and upload it for you to see, so watch this space. The story links well to our growing topic and the children will be conducting a growing conditions experiment to see what plants need to grow as well as planting their own beans and writing a daily bean diary of what they see. Phonics This week we will be learning the long vowel sound 'oa' and taking the children on a visual journey to help them remember the sound and how it is formed. Outdoors This week we have set up some 'messy play' with porridge oats to explore texture, a garden center to buy and sell flowers, wrap them and price them. We will be setting up tents and tunnels to explore the world underground. We will be vegetable printing creating patterns and pictures of plants. We will be locating various plants around the school. We have set-up a stage area, with a boom box and instruments for the children to create their own shows. Lots of water play so It will be very busy and exciting in our outdoor area. As we are outside a lot this time of year can the children come prepared with a warm, waterproof coat as well as a sun hat for those warmer days. Thankyou The Reception Team

Summer Dresses

I have been asked this week about Lilac Summer dresses and where to get them....I know they are hard to find. There is of course the two stalls on Castleford indoor market...but if you are wanted something a bit different, I've done a little research and you can buy them online at Woolworths, John Lewis and BHS!! Woolworths seems good value 2 for £10!! :)

Hope this helps!!

With a little bit of this.....

The Birdie Song!!!! Make yourself comfortable!!

Athens Class Assembly

Well what a fab day!!! Athens class.....you were brilliant this morning - you should be proud!!! Having only done 3 quick practices - you were very professional - I think you amazed the rest of school!! I loved the speaking, the singing and the dancing!!! For those of you that couldn't make it.....here is a little taster....the Spring Chicken Song - brilliant!!! Well done once again!!! Let us know what you thought!! :)

Mrs Foster and Miss Fotopoulou :)

PS. Quite proud of myself uploading a video!!! No stopping me now...watch this space!!!

Weekly overview week commencing 21st March

Topic/Literacy
We will be starting a new topic all about growing. The children will discuss different living things that grow i.e animals and plants. We will be reading the story Meg's veg and looking at how they planted and looked after their seeds. The children will be investigating what plants need to grow, labeling parts of a plant and looking around the school at what is growing drawing and identifying different varieties of plants. We will be setting up a Garden center for the children to plant their own seeds.

Numeracy
This week we will be continuing with our calculating strand and looking at doubling and learning a new doubles song... ask your child to sing it to you!! The children will be using objects to double and their fingers to support them.

Phonics
We will be revisiting all the phase 2 sounds and concentrating on the 'oo' sound from phase 3. The children will be learning the new keyword they and consolidating all the sight words learned so far

We are nearing the end of spring term and it will be sad to come in tomorrow morning and not see our chicks, but they will be coming back for a visit soon so watch this space....

The Reception Team

Open Day

It was great to see so many of you there today enjoying our open day - everybody looked like they were having fun - and that's not just the children!!

Your feedback is always welcome - so please feel free to leave a comment!! :)

I would also like to thank all the Reception staff (including Miss Gott and Miss Blacksell!!) for all their hard work getting things organised and ready for today - a great team I thought!!

Thank You

Mrs Foster

Athens Class Assembly Thursday 24th March

Athens class will be holding our Class assembly at 10:30am on Thursday 24th March. You are all invited to join us in the hall - we will be sharing with you some of the learning we have undertaken so far and sharing a song or two - if I'm brave enough to sing without music!!!

Hope to see you there!
Thank you Mrs Foster and Miss Fotopoulou!

Red Nose Day

We will obviously be raising money for Comic Relief on Friday - as we have said you child should come to school wearing their Pyjamas on Friday - if they could bring a contribution of a £1 for doing so that would great!! We still have some red noses left - so there is still chance to get one!!

Open Day Friday 18th March (Red Nose Day too!)

As you will be aware it is our open day this Friday - please choose from either a morning or an afternoon session.

Morning session will be from 8:50 until 11:20 (this will allows to get the children ready for lunch!)

Afternoon session will be from 1:00 until 3:30

It is not necessary for somebody to attend both sessions with your child - we do a morning and afternoon session as space is limited in the classroom and 58 children each with a parent would be 116 people. Your child will be fine on their own during the session that you are not attending - as there will be lots for them to do! Thank you for your cooperation with this.

Open Day is also Red Nose Day - the whole school is taking part with lots of activities throughout the day. We have been asked to wear something 'funny' on the day. We have decided that we are all going to come in our Pyjamas for the day - dressing gowns welcome too! If you would like to join us in your pyjamas the kids would love that!

Thank you
The Reception Team

Week Commencing 14th March

We would like to say a huge thank-you to those of you who attended our recent curriculum evenings last week, it was lovely to see you all and we hope that you found the information shared useful. If you need any help or want to ask any questions then we are available most evenings after school, alternatively you can make an appointment if you want to discuss things further; so please come and approach us I assure you we don't bite!!!

This week we will be gearing ourselves up for Red Nose day on Friday 18th March, which is also our next open day. We have placed some sign-up sheets on the noticeboard for you all to sign up for which session you wish to attend be it either the AM or PM session on this day.

Topic/Literacy

Over the weekend Mrs Russell took our chicks home to look after them and make sure they are safe and warm. I am sure they have been well looked after and are much bigger than when they left us on Friday and soon will be out growing the brooder box. As it is science week this week we will be conducting some experiments such as "Can an egg float?", the children will be updating their Chicken diaries all week, as well as continuing to look at the story of Chicken Licken.

Numeracy

We are finishing off our block of work on 3D shape, making nets of these shapes and then finally moving onto looking at symmetry by the end of the week. We will be investigating what shapes are symmetrical and creating some symmetry pictures using mirrors to help us investigate.

Phonics

Continuing with Phase three we will be recapping our new sounds we introduced last week ar, oo (oo) and going back over igh, ee, or and ai. The children will be playing noisy sounds outside, listening to the phonics songs, reading captions with these sounds in and writing words and sentences.

We cannot believe it is week three already and summer term is fast approaching. Sadly this is the last week the chicks will be with us so please feel free to wander in any classrooms in the morning where the chicks will be stationed. They will be in Mrs Fosters class on Monday morning.

See you all on Monday

The Reception Team

Science Week!!

Next Week is science week....this is a whole school focus! We would like the children to complete a little homework over the weekend of which the best 3 will be entered into a competion and the chance to win an exciting prize!!

Reception- Year 2
Next week is National Science and Engineering Week! Your special Science week homework is to use your imagination to design a poster with your creative invention for ‘How do you solve a problem like…?’ You can choose one of the following options:

-communicate under water
-prevent hand ache from too much writing
-prevent injury in sport
-speak to animals

You should include an exciting illustration and labelled parts. Your parents can help you to include some notes about the problem it solves and how it works. We will be choosing 3 winners from each class to enter the national competition where you could win a Nintendo DS and game and a science show for your class! Please hand your homework to your teacher by Wednesday 16th March.

Good luck everyone!! :)
The Reception Team

Some Chick Pictures....

How it all began!!
A beak working hard!!

Happy Birthday!! Just needs to dry out now!!

What are you looking at?

A first hold!!

Methley Messenger

Last week Henry Oulton from New York Class won a 100% attendance award from the Methley Messenger, he was lucky enough to be selected from the many applicants from Methley Primary School and today was presented with two tickets to go Bowling and had his name published in last weeks edition.

We would like to say a huge congratulations to Henry and we hope you enjoy your night out!!

Weekly Overview Week commencing 7th march

Well its that time again!! (This year seems to be going so fast). We have the first of this weeks curriculum evenings tomorrow Monday 7th March at 4-5pm, so hope to see some of you then.

Topic

This week is going to be really exciting as we are expecting some special visitors, have you guessed yet? Yes, we are having some chicks delivered in incubators for our topic about Spring in the morning. The children will actually have the opportunity to see them hatch sometime this week... I think the Reception Team are even more excited than the children about meeting our new additions. The chicks will be located in Mrs Fosters classroom until they hatch and then can be moved in a feeder box. The children will be fascinated I am sure and watching them hatch will be truly enlightening. So watch this space for pictures....

Literacy

Linked to our Chicks topic we will be looking at the traditional tale Chicken Licken and watching clips of the original Walt Disney version of Chicken Little from 1943. If anyone has the new version of Chicken Little would it be possible for us to borrow to watch with the children as we will be learning how to dance just like him in our outdoor area.

Numeracy

This week we will be continuing to learn all about the names and properties of 2D and 3D shapes. The children will be creating shape pictures, going on shape hunts and looking at using 2D shapes to create 3D shapes in the form of nets. We will be looking at everyday objects in the home that are 3D shapes (cylinder, sphere, cube, cuboid). If you have anything in your kitchen cupboards, children's bedrooms or around the home that are any of these shapes such as tins, toblerone tubes, kitchen foil holders, boxes of tea bags etc.. that you do not need or mind letting us look at; could you bring it in for our shape investigation table's that would be fantastic!!!

Phonics

We will be continuing with phase 3 this week, which will be the focus of our curriculum meetings this week. we will have the opportunity to show and explain what the children are learning and how you can help support them at home. The next set of long vowels we will be looking at is oa, oo, ar and recapping ai,ee,or,igh. The children are tackling some tricky vocabulary now and hopefully it is coming through in their reading.

PANCAKE DAY

Also its Shrove Tuesday this week, on the 8th March and we will be wearing our Chefs hats as we cook up a storm for the children. I will be challenging Mrs Foster to try and toss a pancake without dropping it of course, I hope she has a steadier hand then me lol??

See you all in the morning bright eyed and bushy tailed, we hope you all had a lovely weekend? It was nice to get some sunshine at last.

The Reception Team

Chick Chick Chick Chick Chicken....

Watch this space.....

World Book Day photos!

What a GREAT looking bunch!!!!! Thanks to all the parents who came in this afternoon!!! :)

Curriculum Evenings next week!!

Just to clarify we are holding our second round of curriculum evenings next week. There will be two sessions. (Both the same - so you can choose which day/time suits you best!)

The first will be on:

Monday 7th March between 4pm and 5pm

and the second is on:

Thursday 10th March between 5pm and 6pm.

The focus will be Phase 3 Phonics - so we can bring you up to speed with where we are up to and where we are going!

We are going to put up two sheets in the cloakroom tomorrow so you can sign up for a session - this is just to give us an idea of numbers! For those of you that don't come into cloakroom you can us know via email or ladybirds if thats easier?

fosterrl04@leedslearning.net

We understand that many of you will be attending parents evening for your older children on those days, but we don't mind you popping in and out if thats suits you best! As last time the meeting will not be appropriate for your children to attend.

We hope to see you there!
The Reception Team :)