This week’s blog is brought to you by Aaliyah, who has been with us on work experience. Thank you, Aaliyah.

This week, in Reception, the children experienced their Jump Up day and had lots of fun meeting their new teachers: Miss Dench, Miss Cannon or Mrs Barnes. Some children were initially nervous to move up a year but found themselves enjoying their first day. Alma said, “I was nervous; now I am not because it was fun!” and Reggie said, “I can’t wait for next year!”. The children had time to explore the classrooms after their introductory circle time, with Edie and Leyan agreeing that their favourite activity was painting and Ian enjoying the building area of the classroom the most. The children did a writing activity based on ‘Little Rabbit Foo Foo’. Maria said, “I had fun, it was good”.  Zoe, Ahmad and Yousaf played ‘Buried Treasure’ together before the children came back to Reception at the end of the day.

We have returned to the concept of repeating patterns this week. The children have been deepening their understanding of different patterns, developing a more secure knowledge of pattern rules and becoming more confident in verbalising their thinking. Children have been supported in drawing out the unit of repeat from a pattern shown to them. They then enjoyed inventing and describing their own patterns. In a next step, children looked carefully at a friend’s pattern and tried to copy it.

Why not have a go at acting out a repeating pattern at home, for example, head, shoulders, knees, head, shoulders, knees….? Or head, head, knees, knees, head, head, knees, knees?

Preparing for Wimbledon

The racquets and balls have been out to get us in the mood for the start of Wimbledon next week. Budding Jack Drapers and Emma Raducanus have been learning to control the ball and develop their hand-eye coordination.

One Colour Day

Thank you for supporting School Council’s rainbow creating efforts today, raising funds for our four House charities: Homeless Angels; Yorkshire Air Ambulance; Elephant Human Relations Aid and Make a Wish.

On Thursday, we noticed how much our potato plants had changed since we planted them. The stems stood tall and firm; the leaves were softy on one sided and covered in veins on the other. The roots ran through the soil, delivering nutrients. Most importantly to the children, though, new potatoes were visible and waiting to be harvested.

We counted the potatoes and discussed ways of sharing them equally with RDT, considering both number and size.

The potatoes were then used to practise the grouping skills that we have been developing this week. We discovered that we could make two equal groups of five potatoes or five equal groups of two potatoes. When we made two groups of four, there were two left over and when we made three groups of three, we had one left over.

The potatoes were washed, chopped, boiled, buttered…..

and finally eaten!

Some of us enjoyed them more than others.

Thank you again to Mrs Wake for supplying the seed potatoes for us to plant and telling us how best to care for them.

Refugee Week

We used the thought-provoking questions in Kate Milner’s book – ‘My name is not Refugee’ – to help us empathise with those children, who have to escape from their homes in search of safety. All of the children drew a picture of something precious that they would take with them if they had to seek refuge away from home. They explained to their friends why they had chosen those items

Thank you to Mr Carter for transporting us in the school minibus to Headingley station so that we could board the train to Knaresborough. We wandered down the cobbled Water Bag Bank, noticing the thatched roofs and chequerboard cottages. Reggie described the echoes we created under the viaduct as ‘the clouds talking back to us” – fabulous! By the time we reached the riverside, we were all “starving” so had to snack on a biscuit, attracting a duck or two and a black headed gull (thank you, Lucas’ grandma, for the identification). The 117(/118/120? steps – depending on who was counting steps were a challenge but we were rewarded with this spectacular view of the River Nidd flowing through the valley below. After a delicious picnic, we sketched the castle. You will have to wait to see more photos and our forthcoming art work at the Arts Celebration. An ice-lolly offered a refreshing treat before we headed back to the station for our return journey. Thank you to the family members who joined us.

Welcome Molee

Thank you to Hector’s mummy for delivering a caterpillar to our classroom on Tuesday. The children held a discussion around what we might call him. Hector chose Molee (an inspired suggestion from Alma). We are taking our responsibility as Molee’s guardians very seriously and researched how to give him the best chance of flourishing. We discovered that he needs a ventilated habitat, a warm environment and food: ideally the plant on which he was found – in Molee’s case, a broad bean plant. Isaac signed up to the poo-removal rota with gusto. A bit of sticky tape on the end of a finger seems like the most hygienic way to undertake the task.

Hatching chicks

Mrs Garden very kindly let us borrow the nursery chicks on Thursday afternoon. Miss Whiteley shared a fact book about chicks. We heard about: where chickens live: their life cycle; what they eat; how the egg functions; how the chicks hatch and what happens shortly afterwards. The children were invited to hold a chick very gently and then we wrote about what we noticed.

Father’s Day

If you are sharing happy memories or being thankful on Sunday for daddies and other special role models in our lives, enjoy the day.

The children have enjoyed their learning at ‘ACE ices’ this week. They have taken on the roles of staff and customers with enthusiasm and it has been wonderful to hear the development of relevant vocabulary. They have also demonstrated their number sense in deciding how much to charge. Patience and understanding with turn taking has been evident, revealing how much children mature during the Reception year.

The ice-cream flavours they have invented for ‘the specials board’ are very creative.

Look at the height of our class bean plant!

The children have been delighted to measure its recent growth: now 20 cubes tall. We also noticed the curved shape of the soft leaves. If the plant is to flourish further, we may need a deeper pot (and a more appropriate stake).

It has been wonderful to hear about how the children are looking after their own plants at home. Please do send in progress photos (via Tapestry) if you have any.

On Friday, during storytelling, we allowed our imaginations to take us on an adventure to the top of a beanstalk. Can the children tell you what happened in their story?

When we think about being healthy, we often think about our bodies. Whilst it is important to look after our bodies, we must also look after our minds. We learned that our mental health is how we are feeling and the thoughts we are having. It is normal to experience a range of emotions each day and how we feel can affect our behaviour. When Colour Monster handed round compliments, we noticed that we felt happy. There are many options for maintaining a healthy mind: having sufficient sleep, dancing, playing a board game, singing, drawing, sharing a book, painting, playing with family and friends, exercising outdoors, baking a cake. When we have feelings that make us feel uncomfortable, we know that we can talk to a trusted adult and they will help us.

Maths – developing our spatial reasoning by selecting and rotating shapes

This week, the children have had the opportunity to explore the attributes of shapes and select them for a purpose. They have been encouraged to explain why they have chosen a particular shape and why other shapes would not be suitable. We have been rotating shapes (noticing that they are still the same shape whatever their orientation) to fill a given space. It was fun to find the shapes that we needed to make our pictures.

It was also fun working in teams to solve a tangram square puzzle. We completed the challenge with such confidence that Mrs Shipley took the picture away to see if we could remember how to fit all of the shapes in the square. We were very proud of ourselves when we were successful (even if a few of us cheated – you know who you are!).

Jigsaws offer a brilliant opportunity to develop our spatial reasoning skills If you do not have one at home, you can make one from the front of a cereal box, a photo or a drawing.

Happy half term, everyone.

What have we noticed in the beautifully illustrated and nostalgic PEEPO (by Janet and Allan Ahlberg)? We spotted that, in the past (1940s), clothes were dried in front of the fire rather than in the tumble dryer or on the radiator. We noticed that there was a radio for entertainment rather than a big TV on the wall. Mummies slept in hair nets. The toilets were in the garden: that must have been handy when playing outside, wouldn’t it? Less so in the middle of the night. And the prams, well, how small were those wheels?! Beds, however, remain similar today, we still enjoy porridge for breakfast and we grow fruit and vegetables in gardens at home or at school.

We had fun guessing who was who in the baby photos so thank you for sending them in! The children talked about how they looked as a baby and how they look now. They considered what they can do now that they could not do as a baby. When we wrote about it, we tried very hard to remember our capital letters, finger spaces and full stops. We also noticed that, when we write about the past, there is often an ‘-ed’ on the end of the word, for example, played, looked, crawled, mashed (up food).

Why not ask older relatives what they recall from their childhood (if they don’t already delight in telling you!)?

Potting our beans

We have been so excited to observe the progress that our ‘beans in a bag’ have made over the last couple of weeks and we have been able to talk about the different parts of the plant. Can the children recall, for you, which part is the leaf, stem, bean and root? We also talked about the role of each of the parts of the plant before potting them in nutritious soil. The children understood that we will need to keep the plants hydrated and in the sunlight.

How tall will they grow, we wonder?

On Thursday, we spent some time considering the 80th anniversary of VE day. Isaac explained to us that VE stands for ‘Victory in Europe’. We looked at a map to find the United Kingdom and chatted about what we mean by ‘united’. We noticed that the flags for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Island come together to form the Union Flag. Our map illustrated how the UK is a part of Europe. We thought back to what we had learned on Remembrance Day and discussed, again, how we might feel if there was a war going on in the UK now. The idea of leaving our families as evacuees seemed very daunting but we agreed it was better to escape to the safety of the countryside. It is always enlightening to listen to Reception children drawing on their own lived experiences/discussions from home and how they relate to our topic of discussion. Isaac recalled visiting a war time shelter in Northumberland and Leon wondered if the beams in people’s houses might protect them from bombs.

Deaf awareness week

By placing fingers in our ears, we developed a sense of how challenging it might be for people who have hearing loss. We appreciate that some of our friends might need equipment to help them to hear more effectively and Luke told us that his grandad has a hearing aid. We learned that some Christians believe that Jesus performed a miracle when he enabled a deaf man to hear. If we cannot hear properly, we might need to find other ways to communicate and we practised signing a few words. Can they children recall what they were?

Preparing for sports day

Only two weeks to go! We are practising for our team relay races in our Tuesday PE lessons and out on the field. We are considering our tactics, such as holding our arm close to our bodies so that the egg does not fall off the spoon. What is really lovely to witness is the growing camaraderie within the house teams: cheering for our friends is, arguably, the most rewarding part of sports day. If you are out enjoying the (promised) fine weather this weekend, why not make up some races of your own?

Our current Talk for Writing text, ‘How to Catch a Star’ by Oliver Jeffers, has provoked some interesting discussion in RS. This week, children were invited to ask questions of children who had adopted the ‘character’ of the boy, the rocket, the seagull or the star.. Through effective questioning, we learned that (in our imaginations) the boy likes stars because they are shiny and sparkly and that he will “pop the starfish” he finds “in a tank and play with him later”. The seagull is prepared to “try a taste of crab” but thinks he’ll “prefer an ice-cream cone”. When the star was asked why she was pointy, she was clear that, “God created us with points”. The rocket felt he would need someone to “set him on fire” to shoot up into the sky.

When you read a story at home, why not encourage the children to be one of the characters and you can ask them questions? I’m certain that you will be impressed with where their imaginations take them (and you!)

Beans in a bag

Last week, we popped some broad beans into bags, added wet paper towels and attached them to the window in the hope that they would germinate. By Thursday of this week, we were rather concerned that the beans were more likely to bake than germinate in the strong sun that was hitting the window, so we moved them to a light but cooler area. In doing so, we were excited to notice shoots emerging from a few of of the beans. We wonder what will happen next.

A trip to our apple tree

….revealed that we were not the only visitors. We noticed that ladybirds were attracted to feast on the pesky greenfly (aphids), which want to eat the sap on the leaves of our apple tree. Mr Magnell showed us how the leaves curl in on themselves in response to the greenfly. Caterpillars also enjoy a leafy snack.

….we discovered, have three dimensions: length, width and height.

We learnt that, whereas a 2-D shape – such as a circle or a square – is completely flat, 3-D shapes are solid objects. Cubes, cuboids, cylinders, pyramids, cones, triangular prisms and spheres were handled and we noticed how they were alike and how they were different. We considered how many flat faces they had and whether there was a curved surface.

To help us solve a number of ‘crimes’ – including spilled milk, a painted table, stolen raisins and cut flowers – we had to consider the ‘footprints’ left by our 3D-shape suspects. By identifying the 2-D shapes within the 3-D shapes, we were able to work out which shape was guilty of which crime. The children were very keen for the ‘criminal shapes’ to be punished (rather punitively, it has to be said).

The crimes

The suspects

The evidence

The punishment

To emphasise the differences between flat surfaces and curved surfaces, we explored which shapes are better for stacking and rolling.

This knowledge about the properties of 3-D shapes helps us when we are building stable models in provision.

3-D shapes also inspired our storytelling this week. This week, Curvy Cone had a night of naughty antics in the freezer: smashing up apple pie with his point; melting the ice cubes and squashing the spherical peas into circles. The Reception children love to share what they have drawn/written with their storytelling heroes.

Please be sure to look out for 3-D shapes in your environment at home and when you go on outdoor adventures.