Year R had a special delivery this week which sparked lots of excitement! We came to school on Monday to find a message in a bottle from Polly the Pirate! This has kickstarted our ‘Life on the Beach’ topic – the children have immersed themselves in a range of beach and ocean themed activities this week ready to write back to Polly. To mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day the Year R children watched a snippet of the live broadcast of the event held on Southsea Common. They loved watching the Red Arrows!

What a busy week it has been in Starfish and Seahorse class! We started the week off with beautiful weather and lots of reading, writing and exploring outside and have ended the week on 2 exciting but wet forest school sessions!! This week has definitely been lots of fun and the children have really enjoyed it. After the success of our lovely chicks, the children were keen to learn about a life cycle of something new… We had a special delivery of caterpillars and the children have loved watching them grow! We did some research on the ‘butterfly life cycle’ and the children have enjoyed making their own versions! Now we are just waiting for our caterpillars to transform.

This week our focus in Reception has been around the story ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. The children have been sequencing pictures, writing captions and making beanstalks out of a range of art and crafts. The children have also been practising skills learnt from Forest School last term to complete some fantastic outdoor learning. These included leaf printing, making nature bracelets, making dens, exploring different herbs and their scents, and planting their very own sunflowers!

This week the children had a very special delivery… 11 eggs were delivered to our classroom in an incubator and we have had the very important job of looking after them. The children checked the eggs each day to look out for signs of them hatching. Soon enough, we started to see cracks in the eggs and eventually we had 11 chicks! The children have been so excited and have loved observing, holding and looking after our special visitors. They have inspired lots of art work and writing which will lead into our fact writing next week and exploration of a chickens life cycle… right in time for Easter!

The children had a fantastic day at Forest School this week. They used their teamwork skills to complete a range of fun activities. These included making a fire and toasting marshmellows, cutting wood, making wood necklaces, going on a scavenger hut and lots more!

This week the children were very excited to see our ‘eggs’ hatch into Dinosaurs. We then read stories about Dinosaurs including the book ‘Giganotosaurus’. The children have shown enthusiasm and excitement learning about Dinosaurs and have completed lots of child led learning based around this topic. In maths this week we continued our topic on Height. The children have become confident using vocabulary such as ‘Taller and Shorter’. We have also been practising our phase 3 digraphs and have completed a range of different phonic activities.

This week the children’s literacy focus was a story called ‘If I Built a Car’. The children then designed and created their own vehicle’s using a range of resources including junk modelling, play dough, construction and paint! They then completed some fantastic writing describing what they have made.

Wow what a week!

We are so impressed with how the children have done on their first full week. They are getting used to routines, expectations and are listening to instructions. We have also introduced daily Liturgical prayer (worship) time and started learning some songs, which the children have loved!

Our Literacy has been focussed around the book ‘The Lion Inside’. The children loved reading the story and have spent the week role playing, creating their own lions and mice, sequencing the story, making puppets and much more!
In Maths we have started by introducing sorting and making pairs. The children have been exploring this through their activities whilst noticing patterns and trying to explain their thinking.

As expected, the children are very tired so we hope you all have a restful weekend and enjoy some time together after a busy week. We are are so proud of the children and we know you will be too!

Year R Team

We can’t quite believe it’s the end of another half term, and we will be going in to the Summer term after the Easter break. Although it doesn’t seem possible, it has been a long and busy half term for the children (and adults!) so we are all in need of a good rest. We remain hopefully that they grey wet weather is on its way out for more sunshine and dry days.

This week the children have been busy learning about Holy week and the journey Jesus went on leading up to his crucifixion. We took part in Stations of the Cross on Tuesday with year 1 and 2 and the children listened and sat beautifully during the Liturgy where some Year 5 and 6 pupils brought the story to life by acting it out. This afternoon we will joining the whole school in a special Liturgical assembly as we remember the real reason we celebrate Easter.

In Maths, the children have been learning about 3D shapes (sphere, cylinder, cuboid, cube and cone) and looking at the basic properties as well as looking at real life objects that are these shapes.

We have also been busy making Easter cards where we have focussed on cutting skills and adding a split pin to make a moving part.

Kind regards,
Mrs Lockwood-Peck & Miss Andrews

We have had a busy week this year in year R. The children thoroughly enjoyed the trip out to the library. They were all extremely sensible and well behaved, especially on the long walk there and back. We were very proud of them. Thank you as well to our parent helpers who came along with us. We completed two activities whilst we were there which the children seemed to love!

This week we have also been carrying on with our phase 3 phonic sounds, which the children are doing really well with learning. (y, z, zz, qu)
In Maths we have been focussing on shapes and using shapes to make new shapes as well as looking at times of day- day and night and different things we do at these times.