St Margaret'sC of E Primary School

The children helped to plan a 'Fairy Tale Ball' as the culmination of our work on traditional tales. We all had a fabulous time dancing with our partners and with our grown ups. Thankfully no dresses turned to rags when the clock chimed!

Our Reception children had fun designing their own Easter Eggs. On the last day of our Spring Term, RJ and RB met up with some of their grown ups and their Year 6 Buddies, and headed off in the lovely Spring sunshine to Horsforth Hall Park. The challenge was to find their Easter Eggs hidden in the trees, and spot any bunnies on the way!!! A lovely afternoon's activity and a great time was had by all.

We were very excited for our Fairy Tale Ball! We turned our 'Movement Play' area into a pretend ballroom so we could practise our dancing skills in preparation for the big event! Our video of the actual ball will be coming soon so keep checking back on our page. Whilst it is being prepared have a look at our amazing dancers perfecting their ballroom dancing!

On Tuesday 21st April we had a very busy day at the Farm meeting lots of different animals.

On the 11th and 12th March we invited our families to come into school to 'Stay and Play'. We enjoyed showing our grown-ups all the things that we learn about in Reception. We hope you had fun!

We used musical instruments to create sound effects while Mrs Shakespeak told the story of Jack and the Bean stalk.

We retold the story through musical instruments. Our music teacher Mrs Shakespeare narrated the story and we added the sound effects. Listen for the magic beans!

On Friday 13th we invited our Mummies into listen to our Mother's Day song! Happy Mother's Day, we hope you all have a lovely day on Sunday.

We love to count in all areas of our classroom! One of a favourite counting games is using the Lycra to bounce balls and balloons on. We count together in unison on each successful bounce!

On the last day of term we enjoyed our walk to Horsforth Hall park which had a maths focus. The children had half a heart with a number on. They had to find the matching half in the park with their Year 6 buddies. The children had to count the hearts on the 'half' which was somewhere in the the park. There were 3 'bonus' hearts which were hidden in the park too!

In the run up to Shrove Tuesday we have been thinking about 'pancakes'. We learnt and performed the pancake song you can hear on this video to our grown ups. We also read the story of 'The Big Pancake'. You will see us trying to flip our pancake in a pan. Count how many times the children managed to do this!

We used our reading skills to read the instructions on how to make a bird cake. We read the sentences step by step and followed the instructions. We got our hands a little bit messy! We have hung some up in the outdoor area and we have also taken one home to put up somewhere at home for the birds to enjoy!

As part of our work on 'traditional tales' we read the story of Little Red Riding Hood. We though about our own grandparents and how special they are to us. We invited our grandparents into school to spend some time in our classes. We had a great time as you can see in our photo story.

We enjoyed wrapping up warm and getting busy in the snow on Wednesday 21st January! We changed the colour of the snow. We enjoyed writing in the snow. We used paint brushes in the snow. We looked at our foot prints in the snow... ... and of course we built snowmen! We had lots of fun!

The children are experimenting with the sounds that can be made by tapping the pans on our musical fence! We have a weekly drumming lesson in the Autumn term and you can see how the children are transfering the skills they have learnt in the indoor drumming session into their own play! Miss Cooper supported the children by modelling tapping out a rhythm. The children kept coming back to the pans throughout the session to continue their music making in their own way!

On Thursday this week we came back to school at 6 o'clock in our pyjamas to listen to some bed time stories. We snuggled up to our grown ups with a hot chocolate and a biscuit and listened to a story. The children enjoyed joining in with the second story 'We're Going On A Bear Hunt'. We couldn't believe we found a Bear on our hunt in the School Gym!

Each Reception classroom has a 'finger gym'. We like to exercise our fingers so we get better at developing our fine motor control in preperation for holding a pencil and developing our early writing skills. In this activity we had to thread pipe cleaners through a colander and create a web for the spiders! It was really fun to create such a colourful web!

The Finger Gym!

In Reception we use the 'learning line' to help us talk about our learning. When we learn something new we know it might be hard at first. Sometimes when we learn new things we can fall into the 'pit' and feel confused and worried! The learning line helps us cope with these feelings and to help us get out of the pit and start to climb up the learning line to achieve our goal! The characters from 'Frozen' help us to visualise these feelings and empower us to accept the challenge of new learning. We are getting really good at showing where we are on the learning line by using our 'left hand of learning and pointing to where we are. Have you ever fallen in the pit? We often fall into it but we don't feel afraid when we do now because we know what to do to get better and reach the top!

What is the Learning Line?

We had a fantastic afternoon up at church celebrating Moses and Sienna's wedding! Family and friends arrived in their finest attire! A big thank you to Nigel for a lovely ceremony. This was then followed by a Reception where we enjoyed wedding cake and juice! Thank you to all the family and friends who came to join the celebrations.

Our celebrations topic is going very well. We are all excited about the upcoming Weddings. We have been busy making flowers for the special day. In the video Moses explains how we made the flowers. The trickiest part was peeling apart the petals but the children concentrated so well and used their fine motor skills to carefully separate each piece of tissue paper.

Fine Motor Skills are the coordinated muscle movements we make using our hands. Fine motor skills develop as the child's whole body gains mobility, stability, cognitive, and emotional/social development. In both Reception classes we have a 'Finger Gym'provision area where the children can access different fine motor activities, to help strengthen hand and finger muscle movements. These activities help children gain the strength needed for holding a pencil in preparation for early mark making and writing.

As part of our work on 'Autumn' we read the story 'Pumpkin Soup' by Helen Cooper. We were inspired by the story to try and make our own soup. We thought about how the characters in the story all had to work together in order to make the soup taste just right! We used a knife to carefully chop the vegetables and a real vegetable peeler to peel the carrots! Just like in the story we had to remember the pinch of salt!

We had lots of fun at our first drumming lesson! We will have music every Tuesday morning! More photos and videos will be added as we learn how to play them.

Our 1st Music Lesson, Fun on the Drums!

We are delighted with our new mud kitchen! We are very grateful to Hunter's granddad for creating and fitting such a wonderful resource for us! We will upload new photographs of the children getting creative in the kitchen each week.

The Mud Kitchen!

We enjoyed getting the big apparatus out in our P.E session. The children devised ways of travelling over, under and on the apparatus.

Fun with the Apparatus in P.E

We have been practising the skill of sending the ball with our hands. We have learnt about a chest pass!

PE on the field

Molly and George are the Proud parents of baby Archie. We were delighted to attend the Christening at St Margarets Church on 12th December. Katie, Finlay and James were the proud God parents.

Baby Archies Christening

We understand the importance of each child's physical development and we are committed to improving our children's physical skills. Our Reception staff have now all had 'Movement Play' training and we provide movement play through our continuos provision in the classroom. This means our children can access this area whenever they feel the need to.The children can explore 'tipping', 'tilting' and 'spinning' in their own way through play. We also plan specific adult led movement sessions each week that target specific skills and individual needs. We know our children love movement play and our parents are keen to learn more so we will update this section of the website regularly so you can see more of the activities we do to develop our children's physical skills.

Movement Play in Reception!

We went to Pudsey Civic Hall to see the Tea Dance. We watched people dancing and then we joined in. We went to watch the dancing so we could get some ideas and tips for our 'Fairy Tale Ball'.

Our trip to the 'Tea Dance' at Pudsey Civic Hall!

We had great fun at our stay and play showing the grown ups around our classrooms!

Stay and Play!

This week we have been reading the story of Little Red Ridinghood. We invited our granparents into school to 'stay and play' so we could show them all the things we do in Reception.

Grandparents Day!

As part of our weekly Music sessions the children enjoy singing and learning to play the Violin.

Watch our Reception children play our phonics game 'what's in my box?' They are segmenting the objects into individual phonemes and then blending the phonemes together to hear the word.