Weekly News 12th December

We have been very busy this week carefully writing in our Christmas cards! Your child should be taking their card home soon. The children have spent a long time carefully making their Christmas cards and are very proud of them.

We have also been learning about St Lucia this week and how it is celebrated, we looked at how Christmas is celebrated around the world. The children tried Scandinavian biscuits and had the chance to make candle crowns. Maybe you could ask your child what St Lucia is?

We would love to see an observation on tapestry of how you celebrate the winter holidays at home. If you upload a photograph on to tapestry, your child will get a chance to talk through their photograph with the class. This will add to the evidence for your child’s understanding of people and communities.

We have also been busy learning Christmas songs for our craft morning on Friday.

Your child should have received their homework about animals around the world. Please let a member of staff know if you do not have this.

The children have all worked really hard and have had a great first term at school, we are amazed at their progress so far- especially with their writing.

As you know we have started next steps with the children. This is working very well but we are noticing that the children who are practising their next steps at home, are racing through their next steps and therefore making more progress. Please look at your child’s next step on their board and any practise you can do at home will hugely benefit your child.

Weekly News - Visit from Father Christmas!

We have had a very exciting week as Father Christmas visited us at school! He left some footprints and a magical letter asking the children to reply and to write their Christmas lists. The children have been very busy using their phonic knowledge to write back to Father Christmas. He will be collecting the letters at the Christmas Fayre.

We also caught Father Christmas arriving at the yurt on CCTV – take a look!

The children have been very lucky as 2 of Father Christmas’ elves have visited us at school, try to spot where they are in the morning!

Every morning we have been counting down the sleeps until Christmas day and writing the number on a board- the children get very excited about this! Perhaps you could do this at home with your child to help with knowledge of numbers.

We have also been learning about why we celebrate Christmas and the nativity story and we have been learning some songs which the children will be singing to you at the end of the Christmas craft morning.

We have also been learning about Hanukah. Can your child tell you why Jewish people celebrate Hanukah?

The children have been busy decorating their Christmas cards ready to bring home to you at the end of term.

When you come to the Christmas fayre, don’t forget to take a look at our new display in the hall! The children used shapes to make pictures of themselves. From this, we found that some children are struggling with shape recognition. Perhaps you could look for shapes in the environment with your child at home. 

Weekly News 29th November 2018

This week we have been learning the sounds b, f and l.

The children have been very busy making shape pictures of people. The children have been using their knowledge of shapes to name the shapes that they need.

We have been doing a thorough sounds, tricky word and blending check with the children this week which has been very encouraging. Please keep practising the sounds and tricky words with your children over the next few weeks so that they do not forget what they have learnt. We will not be reading with the children any more this term to make space for Christmas activities.  We will however, be doing lots of writing which will be drawing on the sounds and tricky word skills that they have been developing.

We have been carrying on with learning about teen numbers. Children can find teen numbers challenging to learn. If you are not sure how to support your child at home with maths, there are some great ideas in the booklet that we gave at the parents information meeting.

Thank you to the parents that have returned the slip about the Christmas Craft Morning. Please do so if you haven’t already as we will need to buy our resources for the morning soon. Please be reassured lots of parents will be taking their children home on that day so please do not order a lunch for your child on that day. If you have already ordered a lunch for your child and you would like to take them home, please ask the office to cancel it for you.

We will be sending your child’s puddle suit home over Christmas. We are finding that some children avoid using our woodland area because they find it difficult to put on their puddle suit. Please practise this with your child at home so that they are confident to use all areas of our reception base.

Weekly News 21st November

This week we have been learning the sounds e, u r and h. We have also introduced the children to tricky words. Tricky words are words that can not be learnt through phonic knowledge and blending, they have to be remembered as a whole word. Your child will have been given a tricky word tag and a book which has one of the tricky words in which we would like you to encourage your child to look for the word, and of course in other books too. Please keep that book in your child’s book bag. We will change this book when your child is ready to learn the next tricky word. By the end of the Reception year, your child should know all of the words on their tag. Please help your child to learn these words but at your child’s pace. Please practise as many tricky words as you would like to with your child. When the children have learnt all of these words we will give them new tricky words to learn on their tag. Tricky words are learnt through memory, repetition is the best way to learn these words. Similarly, you could help your child to look at the word, cover it and then write it.

We have been continuing to enjoy learning lots of things about teen numbers. We have been focussing on the numbers 13, 14 and 15. Why don’t you ask your child to tell you something they have learnt about these numbers. Maybe you could ask your child to find these numbers in your house or when you are out and about.

The children have been busy planting bulbs outside this week. Please make sure your child has a warm coat with a hood in school every day as we enjoy lots of activities outside in all weathers.

We have been busy hand printing pictures of squirrels and hedgehogs this week. This may explain why your child has been coming home with paint stained hands.

Thank you very much to the parents that have replied to the Christmas Craft Morning event. Please return the slip with your £3 as soon as possible as we are needing to buy craft supplies. Thank you.

dough disco

Four mornings a week we do 'Dough Disco' which helps us to develop the muscles in our hands and arms which later helps us with skills for writing and fine motor activities. This is lots of fun and we are getting brilliant at organising all the pots of dough and tidying them away at the end.

Physical play

On a Wednesday we love to go out on the playground and have fun riding the bikes, scooters and balance bikes. We have to learn to share the equipment and take turns and also we are developing an awareness of space and speed ! We get chance to develop our climbing and balancing and jumping skills when we go on the adventure playground.

Spring planting

We have had a lovely start to the Summer term.
On Monday we went to a Music Workshop in the hall which was run by Tommy from 'Rocksteady'. We all joined in with singing and clapping to the beat. A couple of children were chosen to play an instrument or sing using the microphone.



We have been busy doing some gardening too. We helped to empty some pots and carry the old compost and put it into our mud pie kitchen. In our house groups we chose some seeds to plant and talked about what seeds need to grow. We will be watching the seeds develop into plants and then we will be able to plant them into the bigger pots when they are ready.


We have been enjoying the story of 'Jack and the Beanstalk' and reading different versions of the story and noticing what is different. We are going to have our own bean seed to look after at home too. We would love to see your child's beanstalk when it grows......please upload any photos on Tapestry to show us !

Royal Wedding week

This week the children have been really enjoying learning all about the Royal Wedding. They have been completing challenges and making things ready for our Royal Wedding Picnic on Friday afternoon. The children have had lots of fun dressing up and acting out a wedding in our role play area.

Dinosaur Adventure Park

We had a fabulous day out at the Dinosaur Adventure Park. We were very proud of how brilliantly the children behaved.
The children found out which dinosaurs were plant eaters and which were meat eaters by looking at whether they had sharp teeth or blunt teeth. We were amazed at the height and length of
We went into the Animal Encounter Barn and stroked guinea pigs and looked at cockroaches and giant snails. After all the excitement of the morning, we were very hungry for our lunch which we ate in Dippy's Cafe. Before getting back on the 'Magic Bus' we pretended to be Paleontologists and discovered some fossils.

Maths activities

We all had a very busy time completing our maths challenges during our Maths morning. We hope you enjoyed our little Mother's day song and receiving the cards and posies from the children.

We have started to learn about how to measure the length of things. Today we found out how many felt pens were the same length as Caleb and Joshua !

Dinosaur investigation

This week the children have been investigating and exploring how to release a dinosaur which has been trapped in ice. They worked with a partner to think of different ways to release it.

Chinese New Year challenge week

We have had a very busy week learning all about Chinese New Year. The children have been very motivated to complete all the challenges and they had fun in our music and movement workshop learning some Chinese dances.

jungle role play

The children have been enjoying dressing up as Jungle Explorers in our role play Jungle. They have been learning all about African animals this week. Did you know that elephants can swim ?

We have also been having fun making up number games using dice, spinners and counters.

Winter welly walk

We had a wonderful time walking around the village looking for signs of winter on our winter welly walk.

New Christmas Gifts!

We have enjoyed playing with our new Christmas gifts from Father Christmas this week!