Library Visit

We paid a little visit to Tickhill Library to listen to some stories and have an explore. We had fun listening to No-Bot Robot, a story about a robot who looses his bottom (this made us laugh!) Emergency Vehicles, (that had pop out pages!)  Hurray for Henry (he lost his blanket and we had to help him remember where it was) and Puffin Peter (who tried to find his friend Paul). 

Leslie was very welcoming and kept all the children engaged and wanting to read more. She would be happy for you to join the Library and take part in the Summer Reading Challenge...if you dare!

Cathedral Visit

What a lovely day!

We enjoyed our bus ride to Sheffield before going inside the Cathedral itself. There, we split into three groups so that we could find all the Angels in the Cathedral, and learn about how the Cathedral was built with its lovely windows and structure. We then went on to make our own stained glass windows each telling a story of its own. After lunch we listened to the amazing organ player who gave us a demonstration and played us the theme tune to Harry Potter!

An informative and exhausting day out.

SummerTerm Two

We will start our term with a visit to Sheffield Cathedral where we will explore and find out what a cathedral actually is. Our topic for a few weeks will be based around castles, princessess, princes and of course dragons! From here we will explore holidays and joruneys as we look back at our time in Reception and prepare ourselves for the transition to Y1. Daily phonics to boost reading and writing will take place as will our Daily Mile where we explore the school grounds, take part in races or have a lovely walk. We will continue to sharpen our counting skills, adding and taking away by using numicon or cubes. Our creative brains will be put to work as we paint, design and model a castle or cathedral. 

Releasing the Butterflies!

As part of their topic work from last term, Year 5 had watched caterpillars building thier cocoons and then turning into butterflies. Mrs Lowe had kindly invited our children to visit them in her classroom and we were able to see the caterpillars.

This term however, we have helped release them into the wild within the school grounds. At first the butterflies seemed to be shy, but then with a little help from Mrs Sanderson, the butterflies all found their new homes.

This was lovely to see as we are reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar and learning BSL (the days of the week) to help us remember the story. The Reception children were able to talk about the life cycle of the butterfly as this was something we worked on last week.

Amazing stuff!

Summer Term One

If you go down in the woods today, you're sure of a big surprise!

During this term, we will be exploring In the Garden. This will see us learning about the life cycles of butterflies, frogs and flowers as well as drawing and painting what we can see. We will go on bug hunts to find out which creatures we are sharing space with just outside to us. Through this we will continue to strengthen our super sentence writing skills working on what we already know as well as learning more skills, from perserverance to more letter sounds and blends. In Maths we will continue to work on our counting and calculation skills using numicon and other pieces of equipment. In RE we will be looking at the story of the Creation and the Garden of Eden; what was in it and does it look like our gardens at home?

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A fond farewell...

We have now said goodbye to Mr Kenny, our student teacher who was a super star in the Reception class. He did a wonderful job and not only taught our children so much but also learned a lot about being a Reception teacher. It was so nice to see such a positive male role model in the Early Years. Goodbye Mr Kenny and good luck for the future. 

World Book Day

Thank you so much for all of the lovely costumes during World Book Day! We had a parade to show them off and well done to Eva who won a prize for her costume from Dear Zoo.

Great fun!

Fitness Friday Fun!

We had so much fun during Fitness Friday. We concentrated on throwing and catching skills...but played a game making sure there was no smelly socks in our bedroom. It was so much fun throwing the smelly socks into the other team's bedroom and making it untidy! We showed Mr Kenny that we could listen well and follow instructions, freezing like statues when he told us to as well as well as ensuring we threw under arm.

Lots of fun! (Photos below)

Being Superheroes

After getting so excited in the classroom by pretending to be Superheroes, we decided to go outside on to the playground to 'fly' around and rescue people. We had lots of fun in our masks and capes (even if they were pretend!) 

See our fun photos below!

Chinese New Year

To celebrate the Chinese New Year, we made lanterns making sure that the colours we used were reds and yellows. We had to make sure that we carefully cut the lines on the paper to make the handle of the lantern and held our paint brushes steady so that the paint went on the lanterns and not anywhere else!

Spring Two

Is it a Bird.....? Is it a Plane....?No, it's a Penguin!

Spring Two will have a focus on Superheroes. We will be looking at describing them and what super powers they may have as well as designing our own superhero masks. We will explore Australia during Commonwealth Week as well as having a focus on And Tango Makes Three, a beautiful story about two male penguins who foster an egg of their own. This will allow our children to explore their own families learning that we are all the same but all different. Through circle time and lessons we will be learning about the Salvation and what this actually means. We will continue our daily phonics lessons to help the children read and write as well as counting and number work. Mr Kenny will continue to teach in our class (I feel a Superman outfit is about to appear!!) 

For Alien Day and Planeterium Visit pictures, go to Nursery's class page!

Muddy Monday

Ever wondered what we get up to during our Muddy Monday's? Here goes....

This week we went outside and took a walk around the outside hedges. We discussed the different leaves we saw. Very carefully, we touched the leaves, even if they were spikey! (We were very careful with holly and used our special 'pincer fingers' for this task!) We collected our own excting leaves and then went back to the classroom to draw our leaves. We made sure that we chose the right colours as well as looking closely to see we had drawn the correct shape.

 New Faces in the Classroom

A huge St Mary's welcome to our Student Teacher, Mr Kenny who will be with us for the next 5 weeks in Lumley! 

Earth to control!

We are going to be dong some junk modelling this term, so any donatuons of egg boxes, empty cereal packs etc would be very much appreciated!

Thank you

Spring One

Our topic will be based around SPACE (as in outer!) We will be describing aliens and deciding what we should take with us on a rocketship to the moon! (decisions, descision....)

We will coninue with our daily phonics to help us read and write as well as our counting and number recognition. As we are doing so well at counting, we will be delving deeper, looking at adding, subtracting and even counting in 2's! For Literacy we will be doing some more T4W (what to take with us to the moon) as well as looking at what actually makes a sentence and how we can do this ourselves.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL  (and to all a Goodnight!)

I hope that you have a lovely Christmas and New Year Celebrations 

 Reading Books

Over these next few weeks we should be ensuring that you child has a reading book. Books that are handed out may not have words in it. This is to get the children to familiaries themselves with sharing a book and discussing ideas and what they can see. From here, we will ensure that they have books with words, both tricky words that cannot be sounded out, but also with words that match their phonic knowledge (words that they can sound out.)

Please do not worry if your child has not yet got a book. This is because we want to ensure that the children are ready for reading books having a basic understanding of some letters and sounds and at this age, children develop at different stages.

Should you wish to discuss this with me, please do not hesitate to get it touch. 

World Nursery Rhyme Week

Thank you to all who were able to support us for our Nursery Rhyme Performance. This small performance has taken the children hours of rehearsing words, actions and remembering to sit still and sing! We really appreciate your support, so thank you for coming along. 

Children in Need

Thank you to all for your continued support for Children in Need. We had an amazing day with some excellent costumes, brilkliant cakes, and even a visit from Pudsey himself! the children were delighted to show off to Pudsey and showed him how well we could count to 20 and then back again. He thought we were all amazing!

Autumn Two

Julia Donaldson Books and Christmas Time

This term sees the Reception children learning about the initial sounds in words as well as rhyming words through the use of Juila Donaldson books such as Room on the Broom and The Gruffalo's Child. We will also be ordering stories and describing characters through learning the Nativity Story. This will see the first introduction of Talk 4 Writing; a whole school strategy that sees the children internalising texts confidently in order to tell or retell a story. We will continue with our daily phonic lessons, learning the correct formation of letters and introducing blending of simple words. In Maths we will be concentrating on number recognition to 20, in and out of sequence, as well as forming the numbers to 20 and being able to count the correct quantity to the numeral.

This term will see two performances by our Foundation Unit. One is the Nursery Rhymes during World Nursery Rhyme week and the other is of course the Christmas Nativity. (Get the tissues ready parents...it gets me every year! )

Dates for this half term

17th November - Anti-Bullying Assembly at 2.30

21st November - Nursery Rhyme Performance at 2pm

29th November - Christingle Service at Church 2pm

8th December - Panto trip in afternoon

11th December - Foundation Stage Nativity at 10am and 2.15pm

20th December - Christmas Meal at lunch time (if requested)

21st December - Christmas parties during afternoon

22nd December - Christmas Church Service at 2pm

BACK TO SCHOOL ON THE 8th JANUARY

A Change to the People you will see in your classroom

Mrs Kabesh -  Reception Teacher  (SENCo)

Mrs Powell -  Reception Teaching Assistant

Mrs Vernon -Liley - Support Assistant

Mrs Chapman - Support Assistant

Mrs Wortley -  Reception & Nursery Teacher

Mrs Holmes -  Reception's Muddy Monday Expert

Welcome back everyone!

I hope that you have had a lovely holiday and are well rested and ready to start the new school year. I am raring to go so I hope you are too!

How this works...

I will update this page as we go along to bring you information, dates and photographs of the children's learning. I update by putting the most recent at the top BUT always scroll down in case I have added new information or changed the page over.

Happy reading and happy learning! 

Autumn Term One

This term sees us learning about ANIMALS. 

YEAR ONE

The topic is called 'Aren't Animals Amazing?' We will be looking at texts such as 'The Tiger Who Came to Tea' as well as 'Dear Zoo'. We will visit the Forest School and be looking at different classifications of animals...are they reptiles, mammals or amphibians, farm animals or wild animals or are they pets? As well as looking at how amazing we, as humans are. (Well aren't we? ) In Maths we will be looking at more or less numbers to 20 and beyond, concentrating on forming our numbers. We will be studying Henri Rousessau in our Art lessons and trying to recreate some of his work.

We will continue with our daily phonic lessons in order to help reading, writing and letter formation.

RECEPTION

Our topic is called 'Animals and Me!' We will be looking at the animals around us and the patterns that they have. We will be having daily phonics lessons in order to build up a bank of letters and sounds which we can then practice writing out own names and the names of animals. In Maths we will concentrate on counting up to 5 and beyond as well as forming the numbers correctly.

Being the first term, we will get to know the children through play and circle times, allowing their confidence and trust in themselves and others grow.

RECEPTION - MUDDY MONDAY!

We will be taking our learning outside on Monday afternoons (come rain or come shine!) so please can you ensure you bring wellies on this day. You can leave them at school should you wish, but please ensure that they are labelled.

RECEPTION & YEAR ONE FITNESS FRIDAY

PE kits will be needed for children. Our PE lessons will take place on a Friday afternoon during 'Fitness Friday'. (Year 1 will be already familiar with this.) PE kits can be left at school for each half term and then taken home to be washed during the holidays! Please ensure all kits are labelled clearly with names (shorts included please.) Year 1 will also have PE on Thursday afternoons.