St Margaret'sC of E Primary School

This week we are reading the story of 'The Three Billy Goats Gruff'. We will be building our own bridges for the goats to cross, both inside and outdoors, and using them to retell the story. In math's we are continuing our learning from last week on the numbers 1,2 and 3 and thinking about the composition of each number. We are also learning about Remembrance Day and we have been making our own poppys to decorate the classroom.

9.11.20 The Three Billy Goats Gruff

This week we are reading the story 'Not a Stick' by Antoniette Portis. We will be using our imaginations to make our own 'Not a Stick' creations! 

WB 2.11.20 Not a Stick

This weeks key text is Aaaarrgghh Spider by Lydia Monks. The poor spider thinks he would make a great pet for the family but every time the spider shows off his talents the family scream “aaaarrgghh spider!” Expect to see lots of spider themed provision and also some reading of spells to practise our phonics skills. The perfect theme for this time of year 🕷🕸

WB 19.10.20 Aargh Spider

This week our theme is driven by the book Pumpkin Soup by Helen Cooper. Through the story the children have been learning about working as a team and valuing each other’s skills. The duck, the cat and the squirrel make the most delicious soup - each animal has a job to do. But one day the duck wants to try stirring the soup instead of adding the salt . We find out what happens when the animals don’t let the duck try. We love this story as it allows to explore friendship and sharing. We also love the enhancements to our continuous provision (though I don’t think the cleaning staff are as thrilled🙈) Latter on in the week we will read ‘A Pipkin of Pepper’ also by Helen Cooper,

WB 12.10.20 Pumpkin Soup!

This week our focus text is 'The Little Red Hen'. Our focus is on story telling and we have provided a range of opportunities within the classroom provision for the children to retell the story and make up their own. We will also be making a story map to help us retell the story as a class. We also have set the children a challenge to collect some autumn treasures when they were out and about over the weekend and we will be using them to create some transient art!

WB 5.10.20 The Little Red Hen

This week our theme is ‘Peely Wally” by Kali Stileman. The story is about a small bird called Peely Wally who lives high up in a tree and the adventure of her egg. There are lots of animals in the story and they work together and help each other to return the egg to Peely Wally when it gets lost. In class we have planned lots of ‘Peely Wally’ provision for the children to access this week. We are also exploring shape and encouraging the children to use their shape vocabulary when building in the construction area, making pictures with the collage shapes and making pictures on the light box.

WB 28.9.20 Peely Wally

This week our theme is ‘The Dot” by Peter H Reynolds. The character in the story is a girl called Vashti who doesn’t want to draw because she thinks she no good at drawing. She eventually makes a single dot on her paper. The teacher says “sign your name and you will be an artist!” Encouraged by seeing her dot artwork displayed in the classroom in a frame, Vashti then sees herself as an artist! We have planned lots of resources and ‘dotty’ provision for the children to access this week. We are encouraging the children to sign their name on their work, even a mark or a squiggle so we all know who the artist is.

WB 21.9.20 The Dot

On a cold and crisp Valentine morning Reception walked to Hall Park with parents , carers and grandparents in search of the other half of the love heart. We had to count the tiny hearts very carefully to find a match! We were very lucky that the PCSO s came with us to help us cross the roads and keep us safe. We had a great time taking our mathematical learning out of the classroom and into the community !

Valentine Number Hunt in Hall Park

PCSO Jackie came to visit us today. We learnt all about the job of a police officer and Jackie talked to us about how the police keep us a lot safe. We were so inspired we decided to set up our own olive station in our classroom!

PCSO Jackie comes to visit!

This week we have been learning about the story of Little Red Riding Hood. We just had to invite our own grandparents into school to share the fun and learning that we do. You will be pleased to know here were no wolves waiting to ambush our grandparents!

Grandparents Stay and Play

This half term we have been learning about Picasso and his artwork. We talked about his 'Weeping Woman' piece. How it made us feel and what we could see and understand from it. Full of inspiration we created our own portraits in the style of Picasso. We cut out facial features from magazines and arranged them on a face. We had a lot of fun creating our portraits and think they look fantastic !

Picasso Inspired Portraits

We have used the buttons on the gingerbread man to help us learn about the parts that make the whole of ten.

Gingerbread Man Maths!

After our exploration of materials in the water tray we discovered what would happen to the gingerbread man if he got wet and fell into the water . The children talked about the biscuit 'dissolving' and that he would disappear. Our discussions led on to us constructing an experiment to see whether materials really do disappear when they dissolve . We added salt to a bowl of water and left it in our classroom. We observed the bowl of water over the coming days. We found out that the salt did not disappear - it was still there we just couldn't see it!

We are Scientists!

This week we have had the challenge to design and make a boat to help the gingerbread man sail away to safety from the fox. We had to plan and design a boat and then construct it from the junk modelling materials. We then tested our designs in he water tray. We have learnt that plastic is a good material and is 'waterproof'. We have also learnt that cardboard floats at first but when it gets wet it goes soggy and soft. We have learnt a lot about materials and floating and sinking this week .

Help the Gingerbread Man Sail to Safety !

We are now learning about traditional tales. We have read the story of the gingerbread man. We have baked our own gingerbread man and planned and designed how we wanted to decorate it.

The Gingerbread Man

We were so excited to learn about Chinese New Year. We listened to the story of how each year came to be named after an animal . We found out how families all around the world celebrate the new year today. We also received a luck red wallet with a chocolate coin inside. In our own play we reenacted the animal race in the small world tray. We also made our own wallets with the red dough and added gold coins . To thank our special visitor we also practised some Chinese writing to say thank you for coming and telling us all about this special celebration !

Learning about Chinese New Year

Even in the cold weather we can tend to out garden! We have planted some hardy beans that will sprout over the cold winter months and if we are lucky will yield some early crops! The children dig over the soil and carefully plated the beans in rows. We will be watching the vegetable patch over the coming winter months . We

Week commencing 11th November 2019 - Planting beans

We have explored this Autumnal book this week. Where will the Leafman go? What will Leafman change into as he blows across the fields and rivers and vegetable patches?

Week Commencing 4th November 2019- Leafman

In Reception we are learning about smaller numbers in greater depth . Their means we spend time learning about the composition of numbers to 10. We love learning about the Numberblocks. This week we have been introduced to super 7. We especially like number 7 because this Numberblocks is rainbow coloured! We printed our own number 7 block. We also explored the parts that make 7.

Week commencing 14th October 2019- Numberblocks make learning about numbers fun!

Of course it is not a stick ! We know sticks can be all kinds of wonderful things. We brought sticks into school and used our imaginations to pretend they were something else .....

Week Commencing 5th November 2019 -Not a Stick!

This week we have read the story Aargh Spider ! The poor spider only wanted a family of his own but everyone in the family was scared of him. Luckily we are not scared of spiders! We used tweezers to pick out the tiny spiders from the giant spider's web!

Week commencing 21st October - Aarghh Spider!

This week we have read Pumpkin Soup by Helen Cooper . We have had lots of provision to support our learning and understanding of Autumn.

Pumpkin Soup

Today we welcomed our parents into Reception to share an afternoon or morning session with their child. The children took great pride in showing their parents around the classroom and outside area and of course showing them all of the fun things to do in Reception!

Stay and Play for the first time !

Who will help me bake the bread ? We will said the Reception children! What fun we had learning about how to bake bread. We mixed and stretched and kneaded. We finally baked the bread and tasted it for an afternoon snack. It was delicious!

Little Red Hen - Baking Bread

we have shelled pea pods in search of the evil pea ! We haven't found him yet but we have taken advantage of all these juicy peas and eaten them! They are so delicious! We just have to find the one with eye mask now !

Week Commencing 30th September - Supertato

It might be out first week in school but we have been keen to visit our gardening area. We have harvested the potatoes that last years Reception classes planted and tended to in the summer term. We counted and ordered the potatoes from biggest to smallest . We then used the potatoes in our play when we were cooking up food in our mud kitchen.

Week Commencing 9th September 2019- Harvesting the vegetables

This week we have learnt about symmetry. We used butterfly shape templates and printed patterns and colours on one side of the butterfly. We then folded the paper and pressed hard to print the exact same pattern on the other side. We loved the symmetrical patterns we made !

Learning about symmetry

This week we have learnt about symmetry. We used butterfly shape templates and printed patterns and colours on one side of the butterfly. We then folded the paper and pressed hard to print the exact same pattern on the other side. We loved the symmetrical patterns we made !

Learning about symmetry

We welcomed artist Tessa Townsend into Reception this week. Tessa showed us her tile designs which incorporated repeating patterns and shape tessellation. We then designed our own tiles to be used in the Horsforth Gala entry. The theme is 'Save Our Seas'. Our tiles were used to create sea creatures.

Visiting Artist- Design and Tessellation

We read the story 'Nadias Hands' and learned about Nadia's experience at a Pakistani wedding. Inspired by the story we designed our own mehndi patterns. The teachers offered their hands for the children to apply their pattern!

Week commencing 10/06/2019 Nadias Hands

This week the whole school celebrated health week. We had a taster session of yoga. We practised controlling our body and mindfulness. It was a very relaxing session.

Week commencing 17/06/2019

St. Mary's class continue to sell the school fruit and snacks in their classroom. Classes from Phase 1 come to our shop each day to buy the fruit. We have new monitors each day to serve the customers and take payment. This week we took delivery of strawberries! The monitors labelled up the fruit and priced each pack up. What a great way to learn about money and to practise calculating in real life situations .

The class fruit shop

We have been reading the story 'Monkey Puzzle' where a baby monkey loses his mum, this fits in with our Topic of Jungles and Rainforests! Whitby class ordered the animals in which they were found in the story and had to find them on the map. We gave the Bee Bot instructions to get to each animal. Children then had a go at inputting some instructions into the Bee Bot to get the baby monkey back to his mum. Great use of technology as well developing our understanding of events and characters in stories.

Week Commencing 7/5/2019 - Programming in Reception!

Whitby class were very excited to find out this week that we have 20 hen eggs in an incubator in our classroom! We have started the countdown until they hatch and crossed a number off every day on our calendar. We have been learning all about the life cycle of a hen and the development that is happening inside the egg. We have already come up with some names for our new class chicks and even started planning a new comfortable home for them when they arrive.

Week Commencing 30/4/2019

Our farm animal theme continues this week with our enhanced maths provision. We have been problem solving amount by partitioning. We have also used dough to solve problems with numbers up,to 20! Using dough and small world animals helps us as we can see the objects and move them around to help us calculate.

Week commencing 30/04/2019

What a great time we had at Temple Newsam farm. We saw so many animals and their babies. Spring time is a wonderful time to visit a farm. So much to see and to find out about.

Farm Visit to Temple Newsam

We have been very busy in our growing area. Our jobs this week included planting sunflower seeds, watering the beans, thinning out the beetroot seedlings and finally digging in manure to improve the soil! The garden looks wonderful with all of our thriving vegetables!

Week commencing 30/04/2019

As we are learning about farm animals we decided to create a farm shop in our role play area. We sell the school snack to the key stage classes. Each day we have two new monitors who restock the farm shop and then get ready for a busy day of shoppers! The prices change every day so we can practise counting in 1s, 2s, 5s and 10s!

St Mary’s Farm Shop

Some of the children in St.Marys class were inspired to create their own Easter garden after our discussions of how Christian people get ready for Easter. The children explored the school grounds and found natural resources to create their own garden. They enhanced the garden with dandelion and daisy petals and used rocks and pebbles to create a tomb.

Making an Easter Garden

St. Mary's class got messy in the water tray today as we celebrated 'Shrove Tuesday'. We made our own batter from flour and water and whisked away to get the consistency just right. This practical exploratory session helped us remember the significance of Shrove Tuesday for Christian people around the world.

Shrove Tuesday

The children in Reception often create wonderful small world environments as a setting for story telling. We particularly liked this 'Big Cat' habitat. The children used planks and wood to create levels for the big cats to explore. Doesn't it look exciting and a great invitation for other children to come and join in the fun!

Smallword Play

Our outdoor area is blooming with colourful spring flowers! If you remember we planted bulbs in the Autumn and now we are enjoying a majestic colourful display all around the Reception playground! We left an invitation to draw and paint the spring flowers by offering paint, pastels and pencil crayons for the children to create their interpretation of what they could see. The children observed the shape and colours of the flowers before getting creative on paper.

Spring is in the Air!

During our topic on Dinosaurs we learnt about Fossils. We decided to make a 'Dinosaur Dig' in the role play area of the classroom. The children enjoyed taken on the role of 'Fossil Digger' and discovering the fossils buried in the sand. The children had lots of discussions about where the fossils came from and which dinosaurs they belonged to. We even made our own large t-rex fossil out of kitchen roll tubes and white paint.

Whitby Class - Digging for Fossils

In Whitby class we have been learning about dinosaurs. We learnt that the dinosaurs may have become extinct from a volcano eruption. We had a science experiment where we mixed bicarbonate of soda, vinegar and orange food colouring together to see what an erupting volcano would look like.

Whitby Class - Volcano Experiment

Today we found a tiny ladybird in our outdoor learning environment. We looked very closely at our little visitor and noticed it was black with red spots! We handled the ladybird with care and looked around for a special new home for it. We chose to put it amongst our spring plants and bulbs.

Week commencing 25th February 2019

This week we have been enjoying the sunshine in our outdoor learning environment. We have worked in our growing area to tend to the winter beans we planted in Autumn and also to plant some more bean seeds. We watered them well and carefully heaped more soil on top of them to keep them cosy in the ground.

Week commencing 25th February 2019

On Valentine's Day reception walked to Hall Park on the hunt for a match to our broken hearts! We had a numeral on our half a heart - the hearts hidden in the park had lots of little hearts on them. We had to do lots of counting to find the match! We had a great morning of learning and physical activity in our community. Our local PCSOs also came along to join in the fun and to ensure we were safe when crossing the roads.

❤️ Love Is In The Air! ❤️

This week St Mary's class have had a 'Valentines' theme. We have practised our fine motor skills at our finger gym. We have carefully peeled the stickers off the pad and placed them on the outline of the heart. We also baked heart shaped biscuits this week and we mixed our own icing and iced the biscuits!

Week commencing 11/02/2019

St Mary's class have started their new PE unit based on the theme of pirates! We have practised travelling in different ways and here you can see us practising balancing whilst different pieces of apparatus are placed on our bodies !

Week commencing 4/02/2019

This week St. Mary's class have tried to give the Gingerbread Man a happy ending! We decided to design, create and make a boat for him so he could cruise to safety away from the sly old fox! We thought about which materials to use- what would be waterproof? What design would keep him safe and dry ? We tested our boats in the water tray- we soon learnt which materials are waterproof and which are not .

Week commencing 28/01/19

This week St Mary's class were preparing for their Fairy Tale Ball. We wrote invitations to our family to come and join in the dancing in our very own 'Grand Hall'. We also made a dance hall in our role play area so we could practise our dancing all week in the run up to the special event !

Week commencing 21/01/2019 The Fairy Tale Ball

In our phonics lesson this week we have been learning about the digraph 'oa'. Some of the children had the task of reading the teeny tiny words with the magnifying glass. They then had to circle the words which contained the 'oa' digraph.

Digraph spotters!

Some of St. Marys class made up their own game in our outdoor area on Wednesday. They called their game 'the bottle game'. The children made up their own rules - you have to throw the rings over the cones and you score five points if it you get it over the cone. The children used chalk to create a scoring record. They also shared these photos and videos with the rest of the class so everyone could have a go and know what to do!

Week commencing 14th January 2019

The count down to Christmas is always a busy time especially in Reception! We have practised lots of basic skills through our Christmas themed classroom provision.

Christmas themed learning

This week we have been baking buns in preparation for a surprise birthday party we have been planning! Everybody helped to bake the buns. When they were ready for icing we played a calculating game. We had to roll 2 dice and add up the total number of spots. The total of the spots was the number of chocolate drops we could decorate our buns with! What a busy and fun week we have had!

Week commencing 19th November 2018

This week Whitby Class have enjoyed learning about, and creating our own, repeating patterns. We have been making patterns with paint, with blocks and even using actions to make a repeating pattern on the carpet. Children enjoyed using their knowledge to make a tile pattern using coloured squares. It took great concentration and focus to complete but everyone did a great job!

Week Commencing 12/11/2018 Tile Patterns

This week we have been getting our growing area prepared for growing vegetables! Even though it was a wet and rainy day this did not dampen our enthusiasm! We plAnted the beans and marked the rows with string. Some of the children had a brilliant idea of making a scarecrow to keep the birds off our beans! We hope our scarecrow does a good job!

Week commencing 5/11/2018 Planting Beans

This week St.Mary's have read the story 'Leafman' We explored lots of new vocabulary we read in the story and talked about the journey the Leafman went on. We had lots of natural resources that we brought to school to create our own leaf pictures. Some of us stuck our leaves onto the sticky plastic that was hung on the windows. We created our own transient art pictures!

Week commencing 22/10/18 Leafman

When St Mary's class found a spider scurrying across the classroom floor it caused much excitement! Many of the children cried "Arghhh spider!" That little spider provided the inspiration for this weeks spider theme. We read the story ' Aaaarrgghh Spider' by Lydia Monks. We had lots of spider themed classroom challenges to try. We tried picking the spiders out of a giant web with tweezers and then counting them. We tried to flush the spiders down the drainpipe in the water tray but we only had the use of a pipette! We also made some fantastic spiders from the playdough. We had to count out exactly eight legs though!

Week commencing 15/10/18 Aaaarrgghh Spider!

Can you believe we are already starting to spell words in Reception! Our phonics sessions are very active. We are always moving around and learning to spell words is no different. We have been learning to segment spoken words into individual phonemes. For this fun game we had to wear vests with letters on. When we heard our phoneme in a word we had to run to the make the word. We also practised spelling words with magnetic letters. Some of us even tried the challenge of writing words.

Week Commencing 8/10/18 Phonics !

This week Whitby class have been reading the story 'The Little Red Hen'. Through this story children have been learning about teamwork, co-operation and being helpful. We have enjoyed learning about the ingredients that go into bread and how bread is made every day before it gets to our plates! The children thoroughly enjoyed making their own bread and were eager to take it home to try!

Week Commencing 8/10/2018 - The Little Red Hen

St. Mary's Class have read the story 'Pumpkin Soup' by Helen Cooper this week. We are exploring friendships, teamwork and how to solve problems when we disagree with our friends. We made pumpkin soup in the classroom, We had a go at peeling vegetables before adding them to the slow cooker. Some children have extended their learning further and have been inspired to make their own soup in our mud kitchen! They added some of the runner beans that they harvested themselves for our gardening area. We also had lots of pumpkin themed provision. We used tweezers to pick out pumpkin seeds and we practised counting out an amount.

Week Commencing 8/10/18 Pumpkin Soup

This week we have read the story of 'Supertato' We were so inspired by the story we made our own superhero potatoes! When we came to school on Wednesday we couldn't believe what we were greeted with..... All of our superhero potatoes had been ambushed! They were trapped in sticky tape and couldn't move. This must have been the naughty pea the children cried! We did everything we could to try and make sure the pea wasn't still hiding in our classroom. Look at our pictures to see us mashing frozen peas and carefully using tweezers to securely put the peas into a sealed pot!

Week commencing 24/09/18. Supertato to the rescue!

This week our key text was 'The dot' by Peter H Reynolds. This fabulous books tells us an important message - we are all artists, just sign your name and you have created a unique piece of art! So that is just what we did. We took inspiration from Vashti and created dotty pictures and sign our name on our finished work. We all had a go at signing our name. Our artwork is now proudly displayed in frames on our classroom walls. We are all artists!

Week commencing 17/09/18. The Dot