Kidsgrove Primary School
Empowering Learners...Growing Minds
Week 38. Week commencing 4th July 2022
This week we thought about the same story that we thought about at the beginning of the year- Super Duper Me. We looked in our floor book from the very first page and we thought about what we learned this time last year for transition into Reception. We thought about what things we were good at and we created portraits of ourselves.
We had a wonderful conversation about this transition and the transition into Year One. We talked about our worries and concerns about going into year one and we thought about what would be similar and different.
We are all going together- so that's the same, our friends- Sebby
I'm going to a different school so that's very different and I'm a bit nervous-Sienna
You aren't coming Miss Newbon- that's so sad but we have a new teacher and she is lovely- Grace
We don't get to go outside whenever we like- but we have a break time where we can eat out snack outside! That's good fun!- Brayden
We ironed out any fears but we talked about these fears are completely normal and if we feel sad or worried, we can go to a grown up or a friend and they can help...
We then thought about how much we had changed. We did new portraits for our new teacher and compared them to those from September- we have got SO much better at drawing, using our observational drawing techniques and we can talk about what is different and what is the same.
Next week we have some shuffle up mornings and we cannot wait to meet Miss Thorley, Mrs Williams and Mrs Brough!
Rabbits xx
Week 37. Week commencing 27.6.2022
This week we had a huge interest in the seaside. Lots of us have started to talk about holidays with our loved ones that we have planned and so Miss Newbon thought it would be nice to learn about holiday and the holidays that people used to have in the past. We looked at pictures and watched videos and we compared them, thinking of the similarities and the differences then and now. (UTW)
We thought about Punch and Judy. We watched lots of clips about Punch and Judy shows on the beach and we will be performing our very own next week!
Take a look at our beach art work...where we used lots of different artistic medias and materials to create a textured piece for art. We used sand in our paint to create the sand, we used forks and sponges, different kinds of brushes and shapes to create the sea with different shades of blue and green. (EAD)
In maths we have been thinking of odd and even numbers...we want to be as super speedy as we are with subitising, counting on and back and finding doubles! We will keep practising but we know now that even numbers can be shared fairly and to find them easily we can think of when we count in twos.
In writing this week, we are starting to get ready for year one with a sit down and write approach, practising using the support materials to help us and being as independent as can be. We wrote about what we could see on a picture stimulus- using colour semantics to help us retain the sentence we needed to write. An excellent skill that we have learned this year in Reception.
We had a surprise visitor.....take a look....we LOVED it!
Another jam packed week- as we start to think about transition, into year one, Miss Newbon is talking lots to us and we have already been to see our new teacher Miss Thorley, just to say hello :) Miss Newbon has said we will be just fine and we are going to do lots of work over the next few weeks to make sure that we feel good and not mixed up like the Colour Monster :)
See you next week
Rabbits x
Week 35. Week commencing 20th June 2022
This week we have celebrated National Sports Week.
We all came in our PE kits every day to access, enjoy and learn about new sports that we may not have had a turn doing before. We loves new experiences in Reception but even more so, we love to learn about new things. This week we learned about disabilities and people with disabilities who play sports. We think that these people are amazing!
We explored ‘blind football’ by wearing masks and listening to a bell in a ball and trying to score goals. We could not believe how difficult it was! We really appreciate how wonderful disabled people are.
We learned that to have a disability is ok and that we need to be kind and to help disabled people. We learned that just because someone is disabled, does not mean that they cannot do the things that able bodied people can do! It’s all about determination- one of our Acorn values.
We also had our sports day! We had an absolute blast! We tried our hardest in all the races and talked about position. We linked it to when we thought of position and direction in our maths sessions, and we followed instructions so well. Our grown ups were so proud of us! Photos are attached at the bottom of this weeks blog.
In other news this week, we have been thinking of how to keep our bodies fit and healthy. We thought of the ways exercise keeps us fit and what our bodies need to stay healthy. We learned about fruits and our story was ‘Kitchen Disco’. We linked this to our learning of Handa’s Surprise last week, but we talked this week about vitamins and minerals and what fruits can offer us to keep our bodies at their best.
We made a fruit salad and then wrote instructions to help others make one too! We tasted different kinds of fruits and used adjectives independently.
We talked about sun safety. We were really grown up putting on our sun cream and we talked about the dangers of burning. We know that the sun can really harm our skin if we do not look after ourselves and this will not help to keep us fit and healthy. We know that our bodies need extra water in the sun and so we have made sure our water bottles go everywhere with us whilst the temperatures are higher.
Another super week with lots of new vocab and learning
See you next week….4 weeks to go until we become Key Stage One. Miss Newbon is super sad to see us go, but next week we will be talking about the transition and she knows we will be so happy in our new class with Miss Thorley.
Rabbits x
Week 35. Week commencing 13th June 2022
This week we continued our learning around Handa's Suprise and Africa. We have really enjoyed learning the Geography around Africa and the Savanna.
We have thought about the different environments and cultures. Look at our floor book. The QR code will show you our amazing African music and singing .
This week Miss Newbon has been busy with our end of year data. She is so proud of us.
This week we have learned about the history of Fathers Day.
We thought of ways to show our Dads/Grandads/Uncles/Father figures just how much they mean to us.
In maths we learned how to use Beebots. They are mini bee robots that we can programme to move. We learned new vocabulary such as programming and we refreshed our memories of past learning around maps. We used the scene mats to programme our robots to move to different buildings and used characters to
make a mini world. We used lots of vocabulary to describe where the beebots were such as behind, next to, left and right.
We celebrated Fathers Day together. Take a look at the photos below.
Have a wonderful week. Please remember sun cream and hats! We are promised some absolutely beautiful weather but as always...safety first :)
Rabbits x
Week 34. Week commencing 5th June 2022
This week we started to learn about the story Handa's surprise. This is story can be seen in the link at the bottom of this blog. It is a wonderful story that allows us to explore Africa and what makes it special. We thought about the similarities and differences in the country, the culture of the country, the music, art, and what we might see there.
In Handa's surprise we had to opportunity to really think about unfamiliar animals, fruits and to think about the wonderful colours and scenes that we might see in Africa. We had a wonderful time.
We thought about the location of Africa and what the homes were like in the story, with lots of comparing and contrasting to our homes.
We used our knowledge of maps and we learned to draw a map of the village that Handa came from.
We sequenced the story and thought about some wonderful vocabulary such as guava, gazelle, passion fruit.
The best part was the taste test with Miss Shields-we got to taste the wonderful tropical fruits that we had never tasted before.
In maths we learned about weight and length in greater depth than before. We compared weights of fruits and thought about how long Handas journey to her friends village was.
We explored the sound of African drums and we thought about tempo and rhythm. We had a go at making up our own beats and rhythms, using different speed and we had a really good time working together as a team.
Another amazing week in Reception, we cannot believe there is only 6 weeks to go!
Take a look at our wonderful learning
Rabbits
x
Week 33. Week commencing 23.5.2022
What an amazing week we have had in Reception Rabbits this week.
We have learned about an extra special person from our country...The Queen, Elizabeth. (Oceana)
We have focused on the domains this week of History- The past and life during the reign of our Queen. We know that she has been Queen for 70 years! Longer than any other King or Queen! She is so special. Her father was the King and he died so she become Queen at 25! (Sebby) UTW-History
History means- in the past! (Ellie Mae)
Our story of the week is Paddington goes to the Palace- We love Paddington and how he goes on his travels. We learned so much information about the Queens Park-St. James Park. Did you know there are pelicans there and you cant step on the grass!
We have looked at photographs of the Queen in her life, at the very beginning when she was little the photos were black at white! We know that that means its an old photograph-it doesn't look like a photo from now, she looks different! (Joshua)
In Geography (that means the whole world- Felicia) we have been thinking about our Capital City-London and why it is special.
We have thought of the most amazing Landmarks in London and about the transport- how do people travel around the busiest city in the Country?
In construction we are learning to deepen our knowledge of design. We have designed our own train track and added in the famous landmarks of London and members of the Queens family- not forgetting her wonderful Corgi's!
We have watched a fantastic video that we have attached at the bottom of the page.
We had a super focus on our observational drawings! This week we learned the skill of following a step by step instruction and then had a go independently. We loved it- so much so that a lot of us went home to have a go without the instructions...even our parents had a go!
In literacy we have been continuing our learning in being resilient and being independent writers. We know the phonics and apply it so well! but we are using our remember, retain and recall- counting our words and writing them to build up our confidence to write on our own! WE CAN DO IT!
Take a look at our independent maths learning- we can now partition to find quickly how to make teen numbers. Ten plus 4 is fourteen-Emmie
Ten plus six is sixteen-Roxy.
Excellent quick maths this week- Miss Newbon is amazed at our fluency!
In large construction- we had the best time designing and building a carriage for the queen :)
In our role play learning (EAD,CLL)- we put on a show fit for the Queen! We continue to expand and deepen our vocabulary- to impress our year one teacher in September and to allow for We bought tickets, popcorn and scored our friends with our very own made score cards! We thought of songs that we have learned during the year like the colour monster and we performed them! We also practised our macarena dance for our Jubilee party on Friday!
Take a look at our other independent provision this week
Rabbits x
Have the most amazing, relaxing week next week- we are not in school until Tuesday 6th June. Be safe. Stay with someone you trust at all times and enjoy yourselves.
Week 32 Week commencing 16th May 2022
This week we continue our learning of traditional tale ‘The Three Little Pigs’. Our Talk4writing got better and better ready for our performance. See QR code to watch it 😊
We continued our journey of writing by practising and building on our memory skills as it is so important to remember what it is we want to write, so we can retain and write independently.
This week was all about ADJECTIVES. We learned that when using adjectives, we are ‘describing’ something. We are making our writing more interesting by telling the reader what someone looks like, or acts like. We thought of that ‘big bad wolf’ and exactly how we could describe him. Children came up with some brilliant words…’cheeky, nasty,evil!’ and we really used our phonics to write them how they sound!
We used colour semantics to help retain our sentence. We remember who, what and where, count our words and write them. Miss Newbon is super impressed with our writing progress this week.
In maths we have been thinking about teen numbers and our number formation. We are super quick at our subitising and number bonds. We have been thinking of how to show our working out.
We thought about materials and where they came from- UTW
We used our PRIME skills to share resources and to play a game with rules (PSED, CLL, EAD)- We needed to use a dice correctly to manouver around the game board, collecting pieces to build houses! If we landed on a wolf we could choose to take a piece away from our friend!)
Next week we are super excited to learn about our wonderful Queen, where she comes from and what makes it special. We have been busy learning our ‘dance of the decade’ and have been thinking about of dressing up for the Friday ‘Street Party’-if you need any support with this, please let me know.
See you next week :)
Rabbits x
Week 31 week commencing 9th May 2022
This week we started a new Traditional Tale 'The Three Little Pigs' but before we talk about that...we would like to show you some extended learning that we completed through child interest.
In our bakery role play area, we were using play dough and we asked if we could use the correct ingredients to
make our very own. And of course Miss Newbon said 'yes!'. So she bought us what we needed....flour, salt, oil and we measured the correct amounts out following research from Google.(UTW,M,PSED,CLL)-Sebby
We all had a go independently, sharing resources, working in pairs and we did just that! We made our very own playdough (which we pretended was gingerbread and even added spice!)
Then we transported our homemade dough to our bakery to make our very own gingerbread, decorated them and put them in the 'oven!' Please take a look, we learned so much and just loved it.
Moving forward this week, we continue to think about the past and how things may have looked when the traditional tales were written. We started to draw a story board and to learn actions for the Three Little Pigs.
We absolutely love this story!
We are well on our way to knowing it inside out, back to front, upside down and all around like we our other stories from our year in Reception.
We designed our very own houses, thinking about materials and what would make it nice and strong, and we made a large construction house in a group with Mrs Matthews in the outdoor area, building on our ideas and
talking about the time we made a large fire engine in Autumn 2! We sorted materials on an interactive game, talking about what things are made of and whether they are man made or natural to our world. (UTW-Sc, CLL)
In maths we have really wowed our teachers with our ability to quickly recall our doubles and to also show our working out when asked. We are super speedy at doubles which is preparing us for year one!
We continue to work on number bonds to 10, now we are so good at 1-5...we really are smashing our
maths in Rabbit class.
In phonics and literacy we are continuing to build on the skill of CVCC CCVC words. We are really familiar and independent in reading them but Miss Newbon wants us to apply this to a book not just flashcards and to also write
them. So our very modelled and guided Literacy lessons this week were slower but thorough and we were really proud of our work.
We looked at a picture stimulus, found CVCC,CCVC words and wrote them....then we applied
this to a simple sentence-which is an Early Learning Goal.
A very busy but really super week, with lots of designing and building in our provision, and as always...independence! We made houses of straw, sticks and bricks and used newly learned vocabulary in our learning.
See you next week-where we will be deepening our learning of the Three Little Pigs and really talking about the similarities and differences from the past to present day. We will be making our very own stick puppets to use in our recall of the story! We just cannot wait.
Rabbits x
Week 30. Week commencing 2nd May 2022
Firstly a huge thankyou to those parents, carers who attended parent consultations. The attitude to your children's learning is simply brilliant and you are so eager for them to succeed. Our Reception Rabbits are a delight to teach and their outstanding is extraordinary. Thank you for your continued support. If you did not attend, please see me to arrange a slot. It is only for 5 minutes to discuss where we are and where we need to be :) Miss Newbon
This week we continued our learning on The Gingerbread Man through Talk4Writing. We now know the story SO well. You can see it attached at the bottom of this section. We can talk it through in the correct order, use role play to act out the story and we had a go at changing the ending of the story in our writing! Some of us also had a go at independently writing the story, using our story map to help us to retain, recall and write! Miss Newbon has told us that a story map is super to help our working memory! Our brains are getting super strong now and they are ticking away remembering all of the information from September onwards so that we can impress our Year One teacher in September!
Take a look at our gingerbread man learning this week!
Our observational Gingerbread Man drawings
In maths we have been thinking about the numbers 11-20.
We know what come next means ‘one more’ and we have used our prior knowledge of 0-10 to find patterns so that 11-20 is super easy! -Angelo
We know that we put a one at the beginning because that means we have TEN! SO 11 is just 10+1 and we can easily work out that 17 means 10+7! -Grace
We love numbers and Patterns!-Orla
We have been practising our role play skills in our Gingerbread Bakery role play. We have been using dough to make our own gingerbread and using fine motor tools to mould, cut, and decorate.
This week we had Monday off school and Miss Newbon made us make up for this in our reading. We learned CCVC words during phonics and applied them in reading words and sentences that include HRS words....
The man can jump in the park.
You can sit at my desk.
Can you hear the band?
Next week we will be thinking about a new traditional tale-The three little pigs, as we continue our journey thinking about the past and classic stories from the past.
Rabbits
x
Our certificate winners this week…
Week 29. Week commencing 25th April 2022
This half term we are starting to prepare for key stage one. This means our learning is about to become a little more structured. Our secret classroom has had an upgrade with more tables to sit at to complete our learning and our writing and maths is a little different.
Reading now is to become more frequent. Not only will we read at home, and with Miss Newbon or Mrs Matthews, we have welcomed back Miss Carr-who will read with some children daily too.
In phonics we are learning to read CVCC and CCVC words
Writing will be personalised to each of us, our very own next steps will be focussed on every time we write. We have also introduced colour semantics as explained last half term, there is now a station to allow us to apply this skill to our independent writing in the provision.
This week we also started ‘Talk4Writing' just as year one do. This is a technique which helps us to use repetition and rehearsal to ‘remember' and recall a story or a text. Then we write the text that we have stored in our memory. This week and next we will learn 'The Gingerbread Man’. Have a look at some of our learning this week.
Our story board (L)
Our independent cottage painting (EAD)
Our gingerbread men puppet show (L, CLL,PSED, EAD)
Our story recall (CLL, L-R)
Our story sequencing. We used our much-improved cutting skills to sequence the story to help us with our verbal recall. (PD,PSED,CLL,L-E)
Our speech bubble writing where we thought of what each character might think and say-a very different way of writing to what we are used to. We did a super job.
In other news, we have done some super learning on our iPads this week- take a look at some of our learning.
We have designed and constructed boats and bridges using large construction, and nuts and bolts to screw.(PD, CLL, PSED, EAD)
We have been thinking of number composition to 10 as we really start to have a deeper understanding of number (M, CLL)
Next week we will continue to learn the story inside out, upside down, and back to front and all around. We will be recording the story and rewriting it! We will also have a brand new role play area....watch this space....
Rabbits x
Welcome back our little beauties and welcome to Summer 1. That's right we have now entered our last school term....we cannot believe how quickly it has gone so far. BUT its not over yet. We have 12 weeks to really work our little socks off to reach those Early Learning Goals and to achieve our Good Level of Development (GLD). You ALL know what your strengths are, those skills that you can really do independently and confidently and you all know where to go next, personally. We know that whatever our next steps are, its ok! It does not matter about our friends or the person who sits in front of you...you have all achieved amazing things already this year and your progress is outstanding. So lets give it that final push.
Parents, carers and loved ones we will be having our termly parent consultations next week...if you have any questions on how you can support your child through their next steps please ask then. Remember we have an open door here in Reception, anything you need, please just ask and we will do our best to assist...as of course, we all have one thing in common and that is ensuring that our beautiful children succeed to the best of THEIR OWN ability.
See you all with your wonderful smiling faces and your amazing stories of the Easter break
Miss Newbon and Mrs Matthews
xx
Week commencing 4th April. Week 28
This week was all about Easter. We learned about the Christian Church and the reasons why Christians go to Church. We did observational drawings of a church and learned the special features and how they differ from other places of worship. (UTW,CLL)
The Easter story is a wonderful story of Jesus. We read the story and watched a video on YouTube, which explained what happened in the story. We thought about how Jesus felt and we sequenced the story. (CLL, L, UTW)
We also drew Jesus on the cross independently in our provision.
Today, we celebrate Easter in many ways. In school, we decorated Easter bonnets and had a bonnet parade with our friends. We also decorated an egg. Some of our creations were just amazing and we thank our parents and carers for their support in this. We know that we eat eggs as a sign of celebrating new life, just as Jesus died and then rose again. (EAD,CLL,UTW)
We had an Egg hunt! We searched high and low to find the eggs in our outdoor area! (PD, CLL, PSED)
It was also our class assembly this week. We performed in front of loved ones and the rest of the school! Our assembly was about the ‘Life Cycle of a frog’ and we were amazing.
Please enjoy the pictures of our Easter week.
Another full, fun packed week. We will be away for the Easter holidays for the next two weeks. Have fun, eat lots of Easter eggs! And think of the reasons behind Easter for what Christians believe...but above all, stay safe and if you need anything at all, Miss Newbon will check Class Dojo during the week. We cant wait to start Summer 1 term on TUESDAY 26TH APRIL.
Rabbits x
Week commencing 29th March. Week 27
This week was ASSESSMENT WEEK. Miss Newbon and Mrs Matthews have spent time tying together all of the assessments that are done on a daily basis in Reception. Every day is a progress day and every day we show our grown ups just how fantastic we are with our knowledge and skills and this week is a time to reflect and to pull this all together to see just how fabulous we are and they are amazed!
We are starting to think about being ready for Year One. With independence as our main aim, we are really trying to think hard about making choices, having independent snack and thinking of our own captions and sentences to write.
Meanwhile this week, we have been thinking about minibeasts. With Mrs Matthews holding the fort for 3 days this week, we really started to get creative when thinking about the life cycle of a frog.
We created frogs using egg cartons. We thought about frogspawn and what it looked like. We thought it looked like eyeballs and jelly! So that’s exactly how we made it. We also learned all about symmetry in the art area! Such a busy fun filled week!
We made fantastic use of our minibeast café role play area. We are really starting to take on a role now and use our imaginations to pretend we are someone else. We thought about money to pay and we thought about the creatures inside the role play area.
We continued our work on patterns, bees are yellow, black, yellow black! We also remembered the creatures that can camouflage to protect themselves from predators!-Sebby
We went on our own minibeast hunt independently following our time in the forest schools area last week. I found a ladybird and it had the same spots each side!
This sparked an interest in doubles! So Mrs Matthews taught us all about doubles. We did doubles everywhere! Using Numicon, ladybirds and on the interactive whiteboard. Most of us in Reception Rabbits can now double up to five really quickly!
This week Miss Newbon introduced a new way of writing. Colour Semantics. It so much fun. Lots of us have already started to love it. Its all about colour….orange is WHO, yellow is WHAT AND BLUE IS WHERE. We made up funny sentences like ‘The tiger….is jumping….in the classroom’. It really helps us to say, remember, hold and write our sentences in a really fun way.
Take a look at some of our independent writing ...
We are going to do a display of our learning which we will pop on here for you to see when its ready…and of course take a look at our wonderful floor book.
Rabbits xx
A huge well done to our beautiful rabbits who won the Primary Entry in the British Science Week competition. The theme was GROWTH and we were up against ALL of the classes in ALL of the primary schools in the Shaw Trust...that's a lot of classes!
WE WON!
It is such an achievement and we are so proud!
We chose the topic of Life Cycles of a hen- and the growth of the chick from an egg to an adult. We learned about the cycle of life and how it goes around and around. We learned new vocabulary and we turned it into a wonderful poster (with a little help from Mrs Matthews artistic skills)
WELL DONE RABBITS
We won a beautiful certificate and Easter Egg
Week 26 Week commencing 21st March 2022
This week was all about ‘What's special…in the garden’.
The text of the week was ‘Superworm’ but this week our literacy focussed on Non fiction texts and information sharing.
We have learned all about plants… (UTW/CLL/PD/PSED)
Plants need roots to soak up the water from the watering can or the rain, the roots take it up the stem and to there leaves and flower! -Roxy
Plants need sun and water and soil to grow- Maddison
We did observational drawings of plants and labelled each part- Sebby
And minibeasts… (UTW/CLL/PSED/PD)
We went into our forest school area to do a minibeast hunt and we found SO many!
We learned about the different habitats of the creatures and what conditions they like to live in-Grace
We learned the new word- predators, it means bad guys! -James W
A predator wants to eat the insects. Birds are a predator to the insects- Sienna
We learned what jobs the insects do, bees make us honey and helps the plants- Ellie Mae
Ants work together and live together in a big group of ants- Brayden
(CLL, L)
In maths- we did minibeast patterns! Ladybirds are symmetrical-that means they have the same amount of spots each side!- Angelo (M-Shape)
We made our own bug hotels! (UTW CLL PD PSED)
Take a look at our floorbook and writing this week
We also learned a song for our Mothers Day Pamper Morning (EAD) 😊 Catch up pending with photos and news about how well we spoilt our lovely ladies below our blog this week. We had the most amazing morning from painting nails, hand massages, decorating a biscuit, reading, small world play, mindfulness calm colouring. The picture slides below don't do it justice. We love our loved ones coming to school! HAPPY MOTHERS DAY TO ALL OF THE MUMS, AUNTIES, NANAS, CARERS, FRIENDS. You are so special.
Rabbits x
We cannot wait to welcome Spring into our classroom! The birds are singing, the bees are buzzing, the flowers are growing and new life is on its way. Happy Spring to you all. The days get longer and the sun is starting to shine. We are happy little bunny rabbits. Have a wonderful week, we look forward to showing you our Spring learning and welcoming our lovely ladies in our life to our Mother Day pamper morning on Friday :)
Week 26. Week commencing 14th March
This week we have continued our learning about life cycles and have learned about ‘The Farm; and what makes it special.
We talked about the farm at our INDEPEDENT SNACK TABLE. No more snack time for us! Sienna
Farms are so special- we have learned that our food in the shops come from the farm. The farmers grow the crops in the field like carrots, potatoes. They have to be harvested.- Sebby
Farms can have animals, crops or both! The animals need lots of looking after-Josh
The farmer has to grown the plants-he makes sure they get loads of water so they can grow-Amarnie
The farmer plants the seeds and fruits in the Spring. When they are ready in Summer or Autumn he harvests them with his hands or a machine.-Roxy
Farmers they have to milk the cows- Then the milk gets cleaned before it goers to the shops-Maddie
The farmer has loads of jobs. He has to get up super early. He has to grow food for us. He looks after the animals, makes sure they are clean and warm, feeds them to make them healthy-James W
The farmer feeds the cows grass and hay-Joshua
The farmers shave the sheep to make wool-Freddie
The farmer makes flour by getting the wheat from the fields, he collects it in the sack, takes it to the windmill and grinds it to make flour to make bread!-Cadie
The farmer collects the eggs and puts them in a box-Heidi
Just some of the texts we used to learn this week!
We have been learning about Oliver's Vegetables. We learned our days of the week too. Every day Oliver tries a new vegetable from the vegetable patch at Grandads house. He only thinks he likes chips! Grace
We worked as a team this week as our key skill! We made a tractor, following on from our large construction building of a fire engine bac in the Autumn, but this time we chatted together to form a plan first! We planned what we would need and what we could use! We used traffic cones as the hay on the back of our tractor! We love building in Reception but now we are using our skills to plan and design.
We have continued our learning of observational drawing. Miss Newbon is so impressed with our attention to detail. We love to think and copy and add finer details and not forgetting using the correct colours to decorate!
We have loved learning about the farm and what makes it so special.
We ordered numbers this week and we used chicks to do it! Some of us ordered to 5, to 10 and even to 20! Our number work is getting more fluent now and we are getting to know the numbers 1-6 really in depth.
We also practised our number pairs to 10! It was lovely to see our loved ones from home come in to share our active maths session with us during SEEING IS BELIEVING!
This week Miss Newbon has been talking to us about 'what we are super at’. We all know our next steps but not many of us could talk about what we could already do in our literacy learning. Next week we are going to talk about what we already know in maths because as you know our motto is ‘know more, remember more!’
This week was Comic Relief 2022! We had the best day completing super activities such as nose and spoon races, colouring noses and superhero badges, thinking what our special super powers would be, super hero yoga and find the nose! Take a look at our pictures below.
Have a super weekend, stay safe and smile
Rabbits x
Week 24. Week commencing 7th March
This week in Rabbit class we have been learning about Life Cycles.
Texts of the week- Chester the chick, Rosies Walk
Pupil Voice (PSED,CLL)
Ellie Mae- ‘A life cycle is where animals grow.’
Grace-‘It keeps going round and round because when the baby is born, it grows into an adult and then they have babies’.
‘Its British Science Week, and we’ve been learning about growing and we are making a poster to show off our learning’- Orla
We have learned about growing before- baby Matilda came to see us and we learned about babies growing up into grown up and then having babies when they are big enough’- Amarnie
We know more and remember more-the baby grew into a toddler’ -Josh
In the past we learned about the life cycle of people!- Sebby
The life cycle of a chicken- our teamwork
This week we read Chester the Chick- a story about a chick and what happens on his journey from an egg to a chicken. (L-R)
We wrote our very own life cycle journey
We designed our own life cycle using different artistic medias, we made it 3D for our display and made a British Science Week poster. (UTW, CLL, PD,EAD)
We have also been continuing our learning around observational drawings. We have done polar bears, penguins, tigers and now we have copied chicks :) (PD,CLL,L-Wr)
In other news this week. We perfected out subitising skills to 5, we have also learned to sequence the days of the week with 'Mother Hen'-practising them daily on our walk to and from the hall! (M, CLL). This week we started to think about position and positional vocabulary. We read Rosies Walk- We have attached the video to talk about at home- have a think about the different directions of Rosie and retell the story if you can!
Take a look at our independent learning in the environment and enjoy your weekend :)
Rabbits xx
Week 23. Week commencing 28th February.
Welcome back after half term Who can believe we are half way through our school year! We hope you all had a wonderful week with families, friends and loved ones. It is so nice to hear all of your adventures, especially as we are learning how to really
stretch our vocabulary!
This week we started to think about Spring and all that it brings. Warmer weather, new animals, new flowers, new life!. We all completed a Spring 3D homework and here it is…amazing. Thank you for your continued support.
This week we celebrate Pancake Day! We learned about the meaning of this day (other than it just being super yum!) The reasons that Christians celebrate this day, the day before Lent begins.
Pupil voice
Roxy- We eat pancakes because Jesus gave up food in the desert for 40days and 40nights. The day before Christians use up all their food in their cupboards and make pancakes’ (UTW)
Josh-Its before Easter, some people called Christians they go to Church and they don’t eat something that they like for forty days and nights, because of Jesus, he’s not a baby Jesus now’. (UTW, CLL)
Cadie-We eat all the food in the cupboards before we don’t eat something that we like. Its Lent tomorrow. (UTW,CLL)
Our text this week was a story called Rabbits Pancake Picnic (Lit, CLL). A fiction text with a non-fiction twist-a recipe. We explored the story about the ‘Rabbit who wanted to follow her recipe book to make pancakes all bny herself, but she lost it! So her friends had to help when she made a mess of the mix’-Grace
We learned about recipes and they help us to make things! (CLL, Lit) - Oceana
We used our cutting skills to design our own pancakes (PD)- Felicia
We pretended to make pancakes- by really it was playdough! We learned how to make playdough using a recipe so we can do it at home as well! We pout cinnamon in to make it smell nice! Then practised rolling them flat and tossing them in a pan. (EAD, CLL, PD) - Ellie Mae
We had the best day-we even tasted pancakes and wrote our own recipes!- Sienna (Lit-Wr, PD-FM) This week in maths we are consolidating and becoming more fluent with our number pairs. We also completed a tally chart of our favourite toppings for our pancakes (Maths)
World Book Day!
Thursday was World Book Day. We had an incredible day. We completed a range of activities such as book reviews, orally, written or via video! We all bought a book into school and shared it with our friends. We listened to bed time stories with hot chocolate and marsh mellows in our pyjamas! We drew our very favourite part of the story and talked about the title page! We even completed a quiz 'Guess the title from the picture clues!' Our winner was Grace :)
Have a look at our pictures this week. We thought about the quote 'Reading gives you somewhere to go when you have to stay where you are'. We love this quote in Reception as we know how MEGA important vocabulary and imagination are to make us super readers and writers.
A super busy week again! We have had the best time, see the weekly independent learning photos. There is just TOO much to talk about- Miss Newbon says our progress is amazing
Rabbits xx
Week 22. Week commencing 14th February
Love was in the air this week in the Reception Rabbits class. On Monday we had a lovely day, decorating love hearts, talking about our loved one and learning about the history of Valentines day and why we celebrate our loved ones today. Have a look at our wonderful floor book. We made cards and we talked about Saint Valentine who is a famous figure from the PAST, who was locked away for allowing men to marry their true loves in secret, because the emperor banned it!
In other news this week, we have been thinking a little more about the past. We have been thinking about life when our Grandparents and Great Grandparents were at school, they toys they would have played with and the differences in photographs from then and now. We were lucky enough to look through an old box of old fashioned toys and to compare them to our toys and gadgets that we are lucky enough to have today.
Some pupil voice;
‘’Toys were handmade then, made of wood, a person would have to make them so it took ages to make, there was no factories.’’- Ellie Mae
‘’Toys are made of plastic now, lots of toys were made of wood or tin. ‘’ Angelo
‘’There was no electricity so long ago, so there were no iPads’’-Amarnie
‘’Toys didn’t need batteries’’- Sienna
The photos are black and white, that’s my Nanna she drove a car, it doesn’t look like Daddys car’’-Logan
‘’My Nan still has a wind up radio today!’’ – Sebby
Writing- We wrote about old and new toys, following our circle time discussion-We can really use our phonics now when writing using our own personal next steps, initial sounds, CVC words, captions, sentences and independent learning with finger spaces and full stops!
Maths- This week in maths we have been thinking about adding two groups (combining) together. We are super at this now and we move to subtraction and combining two shapes together too after half term :)
We love learning about the past, the history of the world and the reasons ‘why’ we celebrate things today!
Take a look at our wonderful independent learning this week.
Rabbits xx
Week 21 week commencing 7th February 2022
This week we have been thinking about Mental Health Week 2022. The text that we chose was ‘The Colour Monster’. Mental health is so important, especially in children. We learned that mental health thinks about being healthy and happy in our minds and what we can do if we feel ‘mixed up’. Miss Newbon is SO proud of us, our levels of thinking and our wonderful discussions and learning this week. Have a look at the amazing tasks and wonderful things we have been getting up to.
We learned to retell the story, we understood that each colour meant a different feeling or ‘emotion’. We thought about and wrote examples of when we might feel each of the ‘colours’ and exactly what we can do to ‘sort’ ourselves out. We came up with; ask a friend to help (like in the story) write it down or draw a picture, ask a grown up who we trust (parent, carer, friend, family member, teacher.) (Literacy, CLL, PSED)
We mixed colours and learned how to mix two primary colours to make a secondary colour. (EAD)
We used a colour parachute, we were each a different emotion and we learned to move in different ways, thinking of how we might move when we feel our different feelings. (PD)
We ‘sorted’ different colours and shapes into jars, just as the colour monster ‘sorted’ his emotions. (Maths)
We listened to the colour monster song….some of us went home to independently learn it…making our teachers cry with pride with their performances-Sienna even showed huge courage (one of our values) when she went to sing in front of her big Sisters class, to show them how grown up we had been learning about our emotions and knowing its absolutely ok to feel mixed up sometimes, as long as we know what to do to make things better. Video attached at the end :)
We have a fantastic colour monster display in our classroom to remind us and to 'know more and remember more'. We have also filled our wonderful floor book to remind us just how much we loved our text of the week. Our communication and language has been amazing this week. Please ask us all about it at home, because we have a lot to share on this important aspect of growing together.
Thank you to our parents and carers who came in for our 'Seeing is believing' in phonics. We hope it gave an insight on how we are learning to read in Reception. I'm sure you agree we are wonderful at phonics- this week we have had a recap of the trigraphs that we found a little tricky and now we continue to work on fluency and applying our phonics into our reading and our writing :)
Rabbits :)
Take a look at some independent learning
Week 20. Week commencing 31st January 2022
What a crazy but amazing week. This week we learned all about Chinese New Year; a complete opposite to the polar regions we had been thinking about the week before, which meant a week of comparisons and high-level thinking for the Rabbits.
We thoroughly enjoyed learning about the culture of China. We found it on the globe, in relation to the United Kingdom and the polar regions. We are really starting to understand just how BIG the world really is! Miss Newbon says it would take 10 hours to get to there on an aeroplane! In Literacy, we chose a different kind of text this week other than a book. We watched a puppet video on YouTube, a fiction, mythical story of the Zodiac and the reason behind the names of the Chinese Years. We then wrote about this in our literacy books, using our personal next steps.
We also practised our role play skills by using masks to retell the story of the race. We can all identify the winner of the story, the order of the animals in the race and the characteristics of each animal.
Miss Newbon has now introduced the correct terms for our Understanding of the World area of the curriculum. We have been learning about the past for a long time and now we know that this is called ‘History’. We have learned about so many countries in the world already, with many more to come-and the similarities and differences in their environments and we now know this is called ‘Geography!’ Some more vocabulary for us to know and to remember. We have got to identify when we are now being taught Science, Geography and History, just as we would Literacy and Maths.
We enjoyed tasting our very own Chinese food in our celebration. We know that Chinese people clean their homes before their festival and so we had a deep clean of our classroom too! Look at the pictures…
This week…a little later than anticipated due to COVID and other commitments, the POLICE came to see us , to talk about being safe and to talk about the police being a trusted stranger, and to help us to understand that police are good people who do so much more than catch baddies! It is so important to understand that we should go the police if we need help in our community and not be scared of them! This was supposed to be for our ‘Who can help us, what makes them special’ topic but Miss Newbon is quite pleased they came a little later, because it certainly helped with our ‘know more, remember more’ motto. It recapped what we had learned and jogged our memories. We had a look at our floor book and we remembered lots of information!
In other news this week, we celebrated NSPCC Number Day 2022. We focused on identifying numbers and putting them for a wonderful Charity. We came in non-uniform with numbers on 😊 and raised money for the NSPCC to help children who need it.
As always, have a fabulous weekend and we can’t wait to see you next week. Remember our ‘Seeing is believing’ sessions on Tuesday and Thursday at 9.00am and our parent consultations. A fantastic opportunity to showcase your child’s learning and to see their progression, experiences and next steps.
Take a look at our independent successes this week
Rabbits x
Week 20 Week commencing 24th January 2022
This week we have been hit by the dreaded COVID in Reception. We had a few home learners who have wowed us with their home learning (for those that are well enough) and their superstar attitude, even though they have bee taken out of their regular routine.
Take a look at some of our amazing home learning!
In school though, there was 14 of us left out of a class of 22! We have been doing our best to stay nice and clean and to get lots of fresh air.
We have been following the White Rose Maths programme for a while now in maths and we love it. This week we have been thinking about weight. We have used new vocabulary such as heavier and lighter, mass and balance. We have used ‘scales’ to observe what happens when we add objects and talked about comparing and what would happen if we added and took away.
In our floor book we have had a circle time about the learning we have done in maths since September. We know all about numbers 1-7, number pairs, subitising, odd one out, matching, sorting, number formation. We have thought about 2D shapes, 3D shapes, pattern, weight and capacity. This week we were free to explore any concept in maths that we have learned, as long as learning was INDEPENDENT.
In Literacy Miss Newbon has been simply WOWED this week. The progress we have made since Christmas has been excellent. Some of us wrote our weekend news, some of us wrote captions and some of us played ISpy to find objects and to write them down as a CVC list and some of wrote the initial sounds. Every single one of us made progress this week and have developed, no matter what our starting point. Take a look…
During facilitation and child led learning, we have had a brand new role play area again! Because we love our shop so much in our secret classroom, and we are going to be learning about ‘Toys in the past’ we now have a toy shop! The ‘weight’ area of maths will go into our Grocery Shop provision to enhance the area and to allow for independent learning in the provision based on what we have learned this week, and the money area of learning will move into our toy shop, to show that our learning can be applied in a different way and in a different area of the room. Miss Newbon says that this makes our leaning so grown up!
In other news, we have been playing teachers, using the working walls appropriately to practise independent phonics, making our own rhythms and tunes with the musical instruments and cutting and sticking. We are learning to cut around intricate pictures now, not sure large squares and circles.
What do you think?
Join us next week to see just what new things we are going to learn...we can wait to think about the lives of our grown ups when they were our age.
Rabbits x
Week 18 week commencing 17th January 2022
Eighteen weeks together in Reception, these weeks are flying by! This week we have had a focus on Non-fiction texts based on the similarities and differences of the Arctic and Antarctic. We know that this year ‘famous figures’ from the present and from the past are a focus for our Understanding of the World curriculum. So Miss Newbon introduced us to her favourite famous figure of the present day….David Attenborough. She told us that he knows by far more than anyone else in the world about our planet and the animals in it. We know that no one can live in the Antarctic but he has been there because he is an explorer, naturalist and a genius in what he does!
We know that David Attenborough provides us with real life information…called facts and that although stories are so wonderful for our imaginations, facts are what tell us what we need to know about the world we live in. The world is SO much bigger than Kidsgrove and England and it is so different! Amazing. Have a look at our learning from our floor book this week. We have learned about the differences in the animals that live in the different polar regions and what they have done to ‘adapt’ to their environment.
New vocabulary- adapt, environment, polar regions, fact, non-fiction,
Our ‘SAVE THE PENGUINS’ Ice melting science experiment. We thought about what ice was, what melting is and how we could save the penguins by changing the state of ice from a solid to a liquid. We had some super ideas from using a hairdryer to hot water and warm hands. We understood that to melt something it needs to be warmer than a frozen 0 degrees.
New vocabulary- experiment, science, melting, freezing,
Physical development this week
We had the pleasure of a treat from our Bee Active friend Lorenzo. We used listening skills to follow instructions and used up lots of our energy in the hall with different games and activities. We learned a new word called ‘apparatus’ and we know that means equipment used. We loved the driving game where we drove using a ring as our steering wheel and PE cones as traffic cones. We then practised our throwing and catching, manouvering around obstacles and balance along a rope.
In maths this week we learned about capacity. We tipped water into a jug and spoke about full and empty vocabulary. Some of us learned another new word ‘prediction’. We had to have a good guess and which container held and thought how many cups would fill from the full jug. We also learned that capacity was not just how much water or liquid and next week in our provision we will have a go at being independent with this skill.
Another week flies by. Lets all keep each other safe by washing our hands and keeping as clean as we can, not going to close to our friends and sharing our germs 😊
Love Rabbits xxx
Week 17 week commencing 10th January 2022
So….Miss Newbon happened to mention that penguins do NOT live with polar bears…This amazed us as we thought they all loved snow and ice and all lived together somewhere really icy!
This sparked so much WONDER in Reception, so Miss Newbon completely changed what we were supposed to be learning about and off we went…
Introducing….’POLES APART’ by Jeanne Willis and Jarvis.
We are learning to know more and remember more-our favourite quote in Reception. So our aim this week is to remember the story, to retell it (L-reading) and to rewrite (PD-fine motor and L-writing) our favourite part! (see below for the youtube story)
This story tells us the story of a family of penguins who follow the map incorrectly and get to North Pole instead of the South Pole! They meet a polar bear for the very first time. This recapped our learning from Autumn 2 about maps and following direction! It also helped us to learn new vocabulary such as explore and Arctic and Antarctic.
The story also takes the penguins on adventure around the world which led to a super discussion about countries such as England, Italy, India, Australia and America! Miss Newbon said that we are going to learn lots more about the similarities and differences in countries later on in the year!
In Maths this week, we have learned a new concept. A new way to look at number and a new way to use number. A TENS FRAME. Mrs Matthews told us that this is a very 'Year one' way of learning and she taught us to do subtraction using the frames. We absolutely loved this practical way to solve our very own number problems. Subtraction means to get smaller, to take away, to count back.
Have a look at the pictures of us having a go. We used modelled and guided learning and some of us completed our own independent learning.
For our physical development, gross motor. We had a super time with the nursery completing 'Sticky kids'. If you go onto YouTube and type sticky kids dancing, you will be able to try at home too ;). Have a look at the pictures.
Don't forget to check our class dojo class page too.
Our environment can be seen on our class provision page.
This weeks star learners
Have a good weekend and we look forward to catching up with you and showcasing our amazing, adult led and child initiated learning next week- be sure to see lots of independence now.
Rabbits xxx
Welcome back to you all.
We hope you had a wonderful Christmas break. It has been SO lovely to hear all about the children's celebrations. They had a wonderful time and they were missed so much. Already this week we have been talking about what we remember learning about last half term. We want to become mature and curious learners who know more and remember more :) The things we came up with were;
Florence Nightingale- 'the Nurse from the past who cleaned up the hospitals and made nursing better for poorly people' Roxy Ann
Guy Fawkes- 'The man who nearly blew up London, in the past. He didn't and now we have Fire works on Bonfire Night'- Grace
People who help us. The fireman came to see us and he showed us the hose to put the fire out-Amarnie
The firemen help us get out of a car if we have a car crash- Emmie
Poppy Day-We remember the soldiers from the past who were our heroes in the past.
The Nativity- we learned about Baby Jesus being born
Christmas all around the world- everyone doesnt celebrate Christmas but those who dp celebrate it in different ways. Some people give ornaments, some people put up a tree but some dont'-Orla
This week we have already learned so much. We have started to learn about a change in season to Winter. We are going to be looking into lots of 'wonder' next week as we wonder 'WHY POLAR BEARS DONT LIVE WITH PENGUINS'. Miss Newbon says we are going to be learning lots of new vocabulary like Arctic and Antarctic, polar regions, adapting and habitats'. We cant wait!
We were being busy and minding our own business we we looked outside...''MISS NEWBON ITS SNOWING''. So of course we had to stop EVERYTHING and get our coats, scarves and wellies on to go and catch some snowflakes. Every moment is a learning opportunity. We learned that just like our finger prints (Autumn 1 learning remembered :) ) each tiny snowflake is UNIQUE.
There was so much more after this...but by the time we came to go outside after our lunch, the rain had washed it away :(
Number formation is a huge focus this week as we have really got into the wonder of maths and number in everyday life. We have a new maths role play 'Fruit and Veg shop' and we are changing the way we record our maths, because we are super duper independent now. We are so clued up in numbers 1-6 and this half term we learn all about 7-10 but formation is going to get better and better.
We have already been thinking about weighing our fruits and veg and thinking about comparing heavy and light-but to do this we need to be able to record our digits! Keep an eye out for photos to show you our progress :)
In Literacy, Miss Newbon has been telling us the importance of reading, not just at school but at home. She has reshowed us how to use Oxford Owl to read online as she send us lots of reading books, for fluency and for our newly taught digraphs, here we can practise our blending. This week though, we have read every day, our phonics in school hard copies. We are making sure that we know or Harder to Read and Spell words and our VC words (it, an is, on, up, as) so that we can just read them without sounding them out. Fluency is key to be ready for year one. We love reading and we are due to change our Flowerpot Books too so we are excited about that :)
We are super at reading independently and with our partners, using our lollipop sticks to guide us through each letter, each word and each sentence. We are doing so well with our reading. Miss Newbon is super proud :)
Lots of learning and progression for a three day week. Lots of communication and language skills used to discuss and to question...a really high level skill. We are such a curious class who just wants to learn learn learn. Catch up with us next week, where we are going to be learning about another very famous figure in the world 'Sir David Attenborough', who knows EVERYTHING there is to know about nature. We cant wait to compare the polar regions to where we live and to each other.
See you next week
Rabbits x
Weeks 14 and 15 week commencing 6th December and 13th December
Wow we were almost too busy to update you! The past two weeks we have been all wonderful and festive. We have been learning all about how different countries around the world celebrate Christmas. We know lots of different ways, from carving vegetables into different shapes! To decorating Christmas trees and decorating the streets! Wonderful, just wonderful.
We have been making sure our maths learning is independent by using a Christmas themed post office! We have been counting, subitising and matching numeral to amount. We also used Numicon and dice to count together two groups-this is called addition. But we had to make sure our learning was INDEPENDENT.
Miss Newbon has collected our data and our grownups are SO impressed at our progress. Each and everyone of us has made progress this term and we are so excited to see what next term brings.
Week 15 saw lots of exciting Christmas activities. We had Christmas Dinner with our teachers. We made our own party hats and placemats.
It was our very own Nativity! There was not a dry eye in the house. We sang our little hearts out and our actors and narrators were just amazing! We loved our Makaton actions to ‘It was on a Stary Night’.
Take a look at our lovely learning over the past few weeks….it really does say it all.
Rabbits x
Week 13 week commencing 29th November 2021
This week we have continued to practise for our Christmas Nativity. We are really enjoying using our role play skills that we have been learning in Reception, to use clear, loud voices and excellent acting skills. If we do not have an individual acting part, we are still very involved throughout as you will see when you come to watch the show! We have really got our teeth into the songs too. We are practising our volume and remembering not to RUSH! We really are stars.
Linking to this, our text of the week has been a very special text. We have been learning about the Christian story, to introduce us to our Christmas learning. We now understand that some people believe that Christmas is the story of the baby Jesus being born, the Son of God… our text being the Nativity Story from the Bible.
We have learned the story, linked it to our Christmas production to really embed the story. We have thought about the importance of the different names we hear in the story and have sequenced the story. We are super at ordering, and we have even had a small world Nativity scene to re-enact the story using real small world people.
We have been copying labels and writing our own and have been drawing our own nativity scenes.
Sequencing and retelling the story
We made our own stables for Baby Jesus
In maths we have been thinking about 3d shape. Not only learning the names of the shapes and coparing the differences to 2d shapes, but in fact we have been linking 2d and 3d shapes by finding the correct ‘faces’ on our 3d shapes. We know that 2d means flat and 3d means ‘fat’ or ‘solid’- new vocabulary for us in Reception.
In other news. We have practised crossing the road, as we know how important road safety is…especially now the roads become icy and we need to be more aware of our safety always. We know to look left, right and left again, which way oncoming traffic comes and the importance of crossing the road with a grown up, and using the traffic lights and pedestrian crossings.
As always, phonics and reading are vital and are fundamental to our learning in all areas. We now have our Essential Letters and Sounds and our home reading in full swing. We have lots of reading books to read at home, with our fluency texts (Miss Newbon always sends a few for extra practise ssshhh) which are at a level below where we are learning in class, to ensure we are gaining confidence in reading with pace and using those HRS words that we practise in phonics. We also have a txt (or two) that are well matched to the phonics being taught in class. This week the books sent home are ai,ee,igh and oa digraphs. We also learned ‘igh’ isn’t a digraph, but a trigraph because its got THREE letters that make ONE sound! Not just two!
We can read words like wait, rain, meet, teeth, light, night and boat! Or even captions such as a goat in a boat, the light at night, wait in the rain!
Practising our ball skills...
WoW Writing this week include...
Busy busy rabbits again! We cant wait to show you our Natvity. There is currently no limit on the amount of guests but we ask for a small gold coin donation…which will of course be well spent on resources for the children.
Thank you and Happy December, we really do think it’s the MOST wonderful time of the year 😊
Rabbits xx
Week 12 Week commencing 22th November
This week was a super exciting week in Reception and for all of Kidsgrove Primary. A time to get all Christmassy as we sent out words to the Nativity script, decorated our classroom and began to think about all of the wonderful festive activities that Miss Newbon has in store.
Our Nativity ‘We’re going on a Star Hunt’ is fabulous and we have been trying super hard to practise our songs. Links have been sent out on Class Dojo for two of the songs but please do feel free to practise Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer and Jingle Bells too 😊. You too, parents….as we will be really happy to hear you join in with us all.
This week we have been learning lots but our main focus was independence! Independent writing in the environment. In our Doctors role play area we have been writing prescriptions and messages to the doctor, along side our fabulous acting skills! We have taken on roles and inputted every area of learning, with friendships and communication skills, sharing resources and using our new vocabulary of Florence Nightingale and the hospitals from the past (UTW).
In phonics we have been learning, ‘ai’ and ‘ee’. Some independent writing was outstanding…see below! Miss Newbon has been wowed at us this week. We have really blossomed in our reading and writing and our independence.
We have started to do paired reading and we know that we need to get into our groups straight from phonics for our phonics into reading session. We can be independent to read our fluency books with out partners. Our aim is to be super speedy readers and we are really on our way! We use phase 3 strategy books to practise blending our new phonemes of the week with our lollypop sticks and we have phase 2 books for our fluency. We know that our HRS words just need to be read, which speeds up our reading too.
Phonemes this week- ng, nk, ai, ee
HRS words- he,she,we,me,be
In maths we have moved on to the number 6. Number formation is still a huge focus for us! But we keep on going! In shape, 3d shapes are new learning this week. We have been learning about cubes and spheres and have been independent in finding those in our environment!
We love our secret classroom for maths, in our environment we have been learning about money! Using our counting and number skills
Remember to wrap up warm now for school! Its getting so cold! We will look after each other as always and stay nice and warm. There are lots of coughs and colds around and its so important that we are washing our hands at home as well as school. Keeping clean is key.
So as we get all festive and enjoy our nativity practising in between our areas of learning and adult led sessions, we will catch up with you next week. Enjoy the Christmas song practising and always we thank you for your amazing continued support. It means the world 😊
Rabbits x
Week 11 week commencing 15th November 2021
This week is week 11. We have NO IDEA where that time has flown to, but we are having the BEST time. This week again, was super busy with not one but TWO very special days that we needed to learn about! The first was ‘antibullying week’. The theme was ‘one kind word’ so we had a circle time and said one kind word to one of our friends.
We discussed bullying and learned that it’s not just ‘being unkind one time’ or hitting someone or saying an unkind word. That is not nice and not the right choice to make BUT its not bullying. We know that bullying is when we repeat the same behaviours to the same person (or to others) even though we know its unkind, and that we are hurting someone else. It a repeated behaviour, even if you’ve been told its not the right thing to do, you keep on doing it. We also said that there were NO bullies in our class and that we would always stop bullying if we should witness it! We know that we are all very kind friends and only kind words, hands and feet will be accepted in Rabbit class! New vocab includes respect, bullying, witness, accept.
The next special day was on Friday. Children in Need. We have been thinking about people who help us for a few weeks now and now we were the helpers! On Friday we bought in money to raise money for Children in Need, children who might not as fortunate as ourselves and children who need our help! We wore spots, Pudsey bear clothes, yellow or non-uniform! And we did some super activities!
Take a look...
In other learning this week we have been learning about another superhero, a person who REALLY helped us but in the past! Florence Nightingale. We have been comparing hospitals in the past with the hospitals today. We now understand that Florence Nightingale was the first lady to clean up hospitals and to insist that doctors and nurses were trained to help sick or inured people. In hospitals over a hundred years ago people used to have to sleep on the floor, there were rats, no lighting and not good food! Florence Nightingale changed ALL of this as a start to getting hospitals, doctors and nurses to the excellent standard that they are today. We have a lot to thank her for! She also nursed the sick and poorly soldiers, which linked in wonderfully from Remembrance Day last week! We helped Miss Newbon change our role play fire station to a doctors surgery :) we love it!
In maths we are consolidating our learning of number pairs to 5, ready to move on to 6-10 and 3d shape next week. In phonics we are going from strength to strength. Miss Newbon is SO proud of our phonics, reading AND writing! She says that we are simply amazing and now we need to focus on being super speedy readers, having pace and reading those CVC words and captions with fluency. This week we have been learning the 'ch' and 'sh' sounds. We know how to read and write chip chop and some of us have even wrote the caption chop the chip in the pan!
Take a look at some of our wonderful learning this week.
Lots of love
Rabbits xx
Week 10 Week commencing 8th November
This week we have been continuing to think about those people who help us but with a twist. We have already learned that the past is super important, learning about ourselves in the past as babies and learning about the famous figure of the past and the reason behind us celebrating special events such as Bonfire night; Guy Fawkes. So this week, we combined the two; the past and people who help us.
We recognised and learned all about Remembrance Day. This very special day helps us to remember the soldiers, the heroes, who were in the war, who fought to make our country what is is today. We also thought out the role of the ladies during the war and some very important animals in the war too. This has a very common thread, that has helped us to link the people who helped us in the past and the people who help us today...bravery.
We have thought about what it means to be brave and to have courage, one of our very own school values. Take a look at some of our wonderful learning around Remembrance Day. We had a two minute silence to show respect-another one of our values- to all of the heroes that lived and served during this time.
INPUT PHOTOS
Also this week, we have continued on our phonics journey, ensuring we are really embedding those new phonemes and their corresponding grapheme, blending to read words matched to our phonics ability and also now segmenting to spell CVC words or even captions! We are working our way through each letter to really build up a bank of quick words, to ensure our reading becomes super fluent ready for year one.
In maths, we are thinking hard about the number pairs, ensuring we are so quick at saying them to allow us to move on to 6-10. We have learned that numbers are just patterns, so that when we know our numbers 1-10 inside out, back to front and upside down...any other number will follow the same pattern!
Look- 6+1=7
16+1=17
so....66+1 must be 67!
We learned that no matter how big the numbers get....you follow the same pattern! We love maths in Reception. We like to be super quick and speedy and we love to answer mental maths questions when lining up, on the carpet or even just randomly during our learning time!
Next week, we are continuing our journey of learning about those super people who can help us. We know so much about the fire brigade now! And we have leaned about the people in the past who helped us to live in the world that we do today. Next week we are linking the two by learning all about doctors and nurses of today, who can we call upon if we are unwell? What can they do to help us? And also we are using our comparison skills to compare the nurses of today, to the nurses during the war and in particular a famous figure called Florence Nightingale. A lovely lead on from this weeks learning.
Catch you next week :)
Rabbits x
Week 9 week commencing 1st November- Autumn 2 :)
This week we raced into school to tell our teachers all about our holiday news! We LOVED learning all about the history of Halloween and how people around the world celebrate it. We couldn’t wait to tell Miss Newbon how we celebrated it with our loved ones over half term.
This week though we move onto our new Understanding of the world focus. Now that we have thought about those people in our immediate world, ourselves, our home, our family and our school (and why all of those things are SO special) we are now going to branch out into our community and to think about those people who are there to lend a helping hand if we should need to. We had a little think of who those People could be and a little sneaky clue was in our role play area when we returned to school…a fire station! We absolutely LOVE IT.
It gave us a super duper idea to go outdoors and make our very own fire engine.
We worked as a team and all had our own individual ideas that we worked together on to construct the perfect masterpiece! This shows that we are developing our skills to work as a team and to listen to others. W e really bounce off everyone's ideas in Rabbits class and we don't always stick to our very own friendship groups.
This has really helped to link us into a wonderful celebration that happens this week to…BONFIRE NIGHT! Our absolutely favourite celebration. We learned about the very famous historical figure ‘Guy Fawkes’ and exactly why and how we celebrate the 5th of November. Have a look at our wonderful learning this week and watch our video 😊.
PD-Fine motor- Threading pipe cleaners through cullinders, paintbrush and paint art in mouldable foam
Literacy-reading-blending to read fire work sounds ‘pop’ ‘bang’ ‘woosh’ ‘red’ ‘shine’, phonics daily
L-writing- some of us had a go at writing our very own captions about bonfire night
Maths- firework patterns using colour, daily maths
EAD- bonfire art-independence in our work
UTW-the history of Bonfire night, the celebrations around the world. Senses, Fire safety, People who can help us stay safe.
CLL- Communication and Language is ALWAYS at the forefront of our learning. Our teachers constantly talk to, using mature vocabulary and are always there to explain new words to us. This week we learned lots of new vocabulary to ‘describe’ fireworks. They are called ’adjectives’.
PSED- tying new things, confidence to be independent. Role play in our new area-teamwork to build a fire engine as a group.
Our classrooms are ALWAYS rich in all areas of our learning. Every move we make is a learning move! We are just having far too much fun to realise it :) .
Towards the end of the week our teachers gave us a HUGE surprise. To expose us to the ‘real life’, give us opportunity and to really feel like a fire fighter! We had a visit from Sandyford Fire Station. It really was special. The fire fighters taught us how to use a hose, showed us their fire engine and showed us the sirens! They were so loud, but we know they are used to get around very fast in an emergency. We learned some of the other jobs that firemen do, as well as putting out fires. They are so important and we learned how to rung for a fire engine in an emergency. It was a really special day for us, we have never been so close to a real fire engine!
As well as Bonfire Night, there is another special celebration in the Autumn for people who are the practise the Religion called 'Hinduism'. We learned about Diwali which tied in lovely with Fireworks as we learned about the 'celebration of light' and good overtaking bad. We learned the history of the celebration and we decorated traditional 'Diya lamps' and made our own Rangoli patterns! Lots of new vocabulary this week!
Before we go, take a look at some of our wonderful 'INDEPENDENT writing' this week'
Another super packed week with lots of laughs, learning and new opportunities to show off our amazing talents. Our teachers said that they reviewed our progress over half term, and we are simply ‘amazing’. Every one of us have shone not only in our learning but in our attitudes, our personalities, and our progress as well. We are very proud of ourselves, and we are told every day how proud our teachers are of us. That makes us very happy. Come back next week to see us really get into our next quest...People around us who can help (and what makes them special).
Rabbits x
Week 8. Week commencing 18th October 2021
This week we have been learning all about Halloween! As we continue to learn about Autumn, we have been thinking about the different celebrations during this season. We have had a super time with so many fun activities. We made our very own potions in the slime tuff spot and learned new adjectives to describe the texture!
Also we have done lots of observational drawings of pumpkins! We saw pumpkins of different shapes and sizes, colours and textures.
We have been witches and wizards and dressed up in different costumes in each area! The writing scientist was our favourite!
We also used prewriting shapes to design a pumpkin and some of us even learned how to write CVC words and captions! Our phonics application is getting better and better throughout the day! At the beginning of the week Miss Newbon completed our phonics assessments and she was SO proud of us. Most of us know ALL of our phase 2 phonemes and we are so good at matching the phoneme to its grapheme and its letter name!
We have been in Reception now for 8 weeks and we have learned so much. We had a circle time to talk about our very favourite new learning, what we didn’t know before that we do now! We think the most popular new learning was maps! We learned that maps show us the way to go, who might use a map and where we might see a map. We made our very own maps of the school and learned where we live, our street name and the area of our school!
photo of floor book
This week we had a visit to the library in school. We learned yet more new vocabulary such as 'fiction' and 'nonfiction'. We will be learning much more about these soon but we know that our favourite stories that are in our 'class flower pot' are fiction books-made up, stories with characters and not a real life factual, information text. We found the 'blurb' and the page numbers. We talked briefly about the author and the illustrator. We can identify these in our very own books in our very own Reception reading 'secret garden'.
Our maths learning. This week our grown ups watched our independent learning of numbers 1-5, ordering, counting, one more and subitising in the environment. We are very independent in using maths in our environment in all of the areas of the provision.
All that's left to say is, have the BEST Halloween and the BEST half term holiday. Rest, relax and enjoy time with loved ones. I have sent on Dojo some wonderful activities and games you can access on your iPads :)
Stay safe
Love Rabbits x
Week 7. Week commencing 11th October 2021
This week we have been learning about Autumn.
Our classroom has changed into an Autumn sensation and every area of learning has been covered thoroughly as we learned so much about the change in season.
In PE this week we have been learning how to follow a range of instructions. Every colour of the beautiful Autumn leaves that have been collected was a different instruction. If Miss Newbon shouted RED it meant we had to stop, GOLDEN YELLOW was run and BROWN was run! GREEN was roll and ORANGE was jump. We also followed instructions to get into a certain number of children per group when asked. So if Miss Newbon shouted 4, we had to find 3 friends to hold hands with an act like a leaf or a hedgehog in hibernation!
We have been sequencing the seasons in Maths and for our circle time this week. We wanted to learn which season came next and 'before' other seasons. We also thought of the characteristics of each season and how they were similar and different to each other.
Some of us refined our cutting skills by learning about the job of a scarecrow and we had a go at designing our own...
This week we also did lots of Autumn art. We learned all about the changes in Autumn! We learned WHY the leaves change and fall to the ground and we had a look at the different colours! We had a go at using different textures to create our very own Autumn leaves for our floor book.
We had lots of fun in our Autumn sensory tuff spot, and Mrs Matthews bought us some wonderful little pumpkins called 'ALIEN EGGS'! from when she took her children pumpkin picking!
We have learned so much new vocabulary this week such as ALIEN EGGS, HARVEST, HIBERNATION, MIGRATION. We have had lots of Understanding of the World around us and have had the opportunity to learn new words and information that we did not know before!
Lots of Green Dojos this week for super duper listening. Our knowledge is now excellent and there's not much we cant tell you about hibernation! Our favourite is about the squirrels who find lots of acorns and nuts to bury so that they don't get hungry over the Winter, and the hedgehogs who eat and eat and eat, prepare their hibernation shelters with leaves and twigs. We read 'Don't Hog the Hedge'. Its all about a hedgehog who is preparing his home for the Winter but lots of other hibernating animals such as the Queen bee and the dormice really want to share it! So we made some new hibernation homes for the animals using junk modelling!
We have learned so much about the seasons and the changes in the Autumn. Take a look at some of our wonderful learning including some WOW work!
Have a super week! See you next week for a super spooky catch up!
Love from Rabbits xx
Week 6 week commencing 4th October 2021
Week 6 already! We cant believe how quickly the time is flying by!
This week we have had a gift. We have had our very own class mascot delivered to us by a special visitor in school. Please welcome 'Peter Rabbit!' Peter is an old rabbit and it is very important that we take good care of him. In return he will watch out for us showing the school values, especially showing respect and kindness not just to our friends, but to our teachers and our classroom too!
We have drawn some pictures of Peter :) We will look after and love you Peter :)
We have had lots of fun this week, giving Miss Newbon our interests and ideas for Autumn and for Halloween. The next two weeks of learning are going to be amazing as always and we cant wait. Its so nice when we get to plan with Miss Newbon!
This week we have been practising our prewriting shapes and our cutting skills. It is so important to get our fingers moving and strong. We played Eye Spy to look for objects and to use our vocabulary. We listened hard for initial sounds and if we could....we wrote them for our Literacy journeys! Some of us have even been writing CVC words this week!
We transferred the skill of finding and saying initial sounds to our independent learning in the classroom...
In maths we have been going deeper with number. We now know all about the number 4 and can subtise all of the way to number 5. We know that subitise means we can just say how many there are without counting. A very grown up skill. We can find the number pairs to four as well which is impressing Miss Newbon lots! We have learned the number rhyme to write the numeral....''down and across and down once more, that's the way we make a four!'. We know that it is super important to know ALL about a number because numbers are patterns and it will help us lots when we are older!
On Friday it was 'Hello Yellow!' a day to raise awareness of young peoples mental health. We dressed up in yellow and In Reception we used the film 'Inside Out' to talk about our emotions and to understand that its ok to have different feelings and emotions. Its ok to not always be happy and to feel scared, angry or sad is very normal sometimes. We thought of ways to help make us feel better and we know that that is the most important thing. There is always someone we can talk to who can make us feel better. Mrs Cartwright then gave us a wonderful session of relaxation and self regulation. We smelled lavender, practised yoga and we learned some self regulation movements for when we were not feeling quite ourselves. A lovely, calming afternoon, all together with our friends in Mice class.
We finished the afternoon feeling, 'calm, relaxed and in a lovely mood'. We know that if we ever feel sad, cross or worried-we always have someone to tell. After all, a problem shared is a problem halved.
Lots of love
Rabbits xx
Week 5 Week commencing 27.9.2021
Another super week for the Rabbits!
This week we have had a super focus on oral hygiene! We have been learning all about how important it is to brush our teeth twice a day for two minutes, morning and night. There were lots of fabulous activities in our classroom and we even made a display.
We have been learning all about the number 4! We can count out four, find one more, one less, subitise to 4 and we know the different ways of making the number four! Thats 1,2,3 and 4 now :) we are getting super good now.
As always we have been practising our phonics as every given opportunity. During phonics sessions, twice a day, in the corridors, waiting to go for lunch, at storytime...any second we can do phonics we do phonics! We are progressing SO well in our phonics. Most of us are now orally blending and segmenting. We are ALL holding our pencil correctly and most of us can write our names. Miss Newbon and Mrs Matthews are so proud of our phonics and pencil control they said we might be able to get a prize from the prize box soon!
That is us practising Dough Disco. We absolutely love it! It is helping our finger muscles become nice and strong for writing :)
See you next week!
Rabbits
Week 4. Week commencing 20.09.2021
This week we have had a blast in Reception. We really are getting to know each other and getting to know what we enjoy.
Miss Newbon has changed our role play area to a birthday party because we love birthdays! We have had a couple of birthdays in our class during September and we just love to celebrate.
We have been writing birthday invitations and cards to our friends and designing our own birthday cakes! As well as throwing and catching balloons and wrapping presents- which Miss Newbon has said is super for making our hands nice and strong for writing!
In other news this week we have really been consolidating our maths learning of numbers 1,2,3. We can now use what we have learned with our teachers independently (on our own-new vocabulary in Reception this week!) and we have used it with the 'little family' sorting objects to match numeral to quantity and to find one more! We even used our learning of 1,2,3 to find shapes with 1 and 3 sides! We found circles and triangles everywhere!
We have explored instruments. Learning new words such as pace, tempo, pitch, rhythm and beat. We used our instruments fast and slow, high and low and loud and soft.
As part of our topic this week and now we have told all of our friends all about ourselves and what makes us special, we now have started to talk about our families and how much they mean. We have discussed that all families are not the same (or how boring would that be?!) and that its just perfect to live with the people that we do! No matter who that is. We were very grown up and discussed similarities and differences and its what makes us who we are.
On top of all of this we continue with daily phonics, maths and fine motor skills! (Our names are coming on a treat!) In phonics we are really super now at blending and segmenting and you will find lots of us are going to be coming home with a phonics book this week that we can start to use to blend to read with our phase 2 phonemes or we can discuss the initial sounds :) Miss Newbon is VERY proud.
We told you it was a very busy week! and it was finished off with a super duper surprise visitor (Miss Newbon didn't even know). Matilda -Miss Newbons baby came into school to see us! We were super with her, very calm and she loved us! It sparked a fantastic conversation about siblings and we asked lots of brilliant questions that we wrote in our floor book. It was so lovely to have Matilda with us for a few minutes. Everything we do in Reception is a fun learning opportunity!
Catch you next week!
Rabbits x
Week 3. Week commencing 13.09.21
So, our baseline is complete! Our grown ups know what we already know and have so much planned to ensure we are busy little Rabbits and constantly progressing. We have been embedding our routines and now we even orally segment and blend when we walk to lunch!
In maths, we are learning all about the numbers 1,2,3. We need to know EVERYTHING there is to know about these numbers before we move on. We have learned a new word 'SUBITISE' which means to 'just know' how many there are without counting. We can count out from a larger group and we can even find ways to make each number.
We have been making our fingers really strong by completing lots fine motor activities :) Threading was our favourite this week.
Making different kinds of houses in the construction area
and being imaginative indoors and out!
We helped to set up our new small world area! Down on the Farm!
and we visited out Forest schools area for the first time! Take a look at the attached document below!
Thanks for checking in! See you next week
Rabbits xx
Week two. Week commencing 6.9.2021
Our first full week in Reception! This week we introduced our very first topic of 'Who am I? What makes me special?'. We asked children to bring in photographs of themselves and their family as a discussion point for later on in the half term. We were so excited to talk about our Summer holidays and all about ourselves. Miss Newbon spoke about her baby Matilda and the children were so intrigued and interested.
This week we also got to know our environments. We have a wonderful bright, vibrant classroom with rainbows galore! and we have a secret classroom (Sshhh, don't tell!) Whilst one classroom has every area of learning, our secret classroom focuses on the Literacy, Reading, Fine motor and Writing, Maths and Communication and Language areas of learning, as a more focused, calming classroom for adult led activities. We LOVE our secret classroom that we believe no one knows about!! We walk there very quietly so no one hears us!
Phonics started up this week straight away! We have started to learn our phonemes and are orally blending at every opportunity! This week we learned s,a,t,p and we use our working walls really well already! Very grown up!
Have a look at some of our learning. We have been super busy thinking about baseline. Our teachers are busy bees working hard to find our all of our wonderful prior knowledge!
Reading in our Reading Area :)
Practising our mark making and even writing our buzz words!
This week we had a super special time. We invited our families into school for National Read a Book Day. We shared stories together and we enjoyed a story from our very own Mrs Cartwright! Have a look at the pictures. Making memories with our parents from the very beginning :)
See you next week for more adventures :)
Week one. Week commencing 1.9.2021
Our very first week together (well two super fast and jam packed days!) AND Miss Newbons very first day at Kidsgrove Primary School!
We took these days to just get to know each other super well and to embed our wonderful routines and boundaries. We know that these are not to be strict but to keep us happy, healthy and safe. They also ensure our day is fast paced and organised to make the very most of every second!
What a wonderful, beautiful class. We have discussed our concerns and worries (mainly missing Mrs Cartwright) but don't worry, we will be doing lots of joint learning with our little Mice! We are super excited to start our year. We know that as long as we follow our school values, we will do just fine!
Take a look at some of our superstar moments this week!
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See you next week :)
Rabbits x