Some home learning ideas...

Hello everyone,

We continue to be overwhelmed by the amount of writing that has been coming in from home! It has been brilliant. I thought it was about time to put up some more home learning ideas. Most of these ideas are linked to the topic we will be doing from next week: The Gambia. More information will follow about what we will be up to. 

• Find out where the Gambia is and write down a fact i.e. capital city, national food etc. 
• Find and draw the Gambian flag. 
• We'll be looking at a family that lives in the Gambia - find out about what people do in your family so we can compare. 
• If you can remember, we had a name writing competition at the beginning of the year and we would like to revisit this. However, we would like to see your WHOLE name (middle names included) and it must be written. Feel free to use as many colours as you want. 

Lastly, we had a visit from the year 8 sports leaders based up at DMS today. The children were all given the opportunity to participate in a set of activities devised by the year 8 students. 

Reception team

Joint morning with Pre-school

Hello everyone,

Fantastic to see so many children coming in with some home learning today! The variety is brilliant and we appreciate the time you spend with your children doing these wonderful things. 

This week we are going to be finished off our Chinese New Year topic. Tomorrow we are going to be having a special joint morning with the Pre-school children. Some of the children in the current reception class experienced this when they were in Pre-school and it is great for them to see how far they have come in one year. We will be doing a whole range of activities that give children the opportunity to support the younger children. 

Also this week we will be doing some Chinese cooking. All children will have the chance to make something this week in order to try it. We will be making noodles, rice, a Chinese curry and sesame toast. 

In literacy we will be using some of our cooking to help us write a recipe for making noodles. It is great for children to practice writing in lots  of different contexts and recipes are great for this. 

Finally, on Wednesday we will be welcoming some year 8 sports leaders into the school to do some activities with us. 

Reception team

Maths problem

Hello everyone,

This week, instead of a few writing ideas, I thought it would be nice to change it up with a maths problem! Feel free to put your solutions on a Wow! Moment and bring it in. We are also still accepting your Waste Wizards so keep them coming. The ones we have had in so far have been fantastic.

The Cow's patches:

A cow named Brian has 6 coloured patches on it. They are only white and brown patches. Can you work out all the combinations for the coloured patches. For example - 1 patch could be white and the other 5 brown etc. 

See if you can work out which way is the quickest to make sure you don't miss any combinations out. It may help children to see a visual representation of the cow and its colours. 

We will go through the problem in school so we look forward to seeing your solutions! 

Reception team

Thank you!

Hello everyone,

Thank you very much for all the junk modelling resources that you have been bringing in over the last week or so. We appreciate this greatly. We have now run out of space to store it all so do not need any more! Fear not though as there will be another post in the future should our supplies dwindle. 

We're busy practicing our dance this week for the DMS trip in a few weeks time. We have been using different ways of travelling around a space whilst listening to a piece of music. We will be putting children into groups soon so that each group will have a sequence to practice. We will let you know what your child will be doing so they can practice it at home and you can join in! 

In phonics we are going back over a vast chunk of the phase 3 sounds. Children will be working in lots of different sized groups over the next few months, covering a different set of sounds each week. You will also begin to see some of these sounds appearing in your child's group reading book. They are always a bit more tricky for children to see in words so lots of repetition is needed. 

Reception team

Waste Wizard Competition

In our school assembly yesterday, we were visited by Kirsten Juniper from the Dorset Waste Partnership. She set the children the challenge of entering another special recycling competition. The children were asked to make a “Wizard” out of any items that can be recycled (excluding glass) to try to win a fabulous “Eco Pack Prize”. 

The children should bring their recycled Wizards to school by no later than Friday 6^th February. Teachers will be judging all the entries and announcing the winners at a special assembly that we will be having (on the 6^thFebruary). 

Some of the winners will then be sent on Kirsten to be entered in the next stages of the competition.

After the children’s fantastic response to our “recycled Christmas tree decoration”, I am confident that the children will create some more brilliant entries for the competition this month.

I look forward to seeing some magical creations!

Home learning ideas

Hello all,

As before Christmas, we will continue to put a blog about some possible writing ideas up every week or so. As always, any writing children are doing is fantastic and we would love to see it so please bring it in - even if it is a few letters.

• Now the children know the story of how the Chinese zodiac came about - write a list of the animals that took part in the race. Or their favourite animal and why.
• Write your name and the name of the animal year you were born in.
• Make a Happy New Year card and send it to someone else in the class. 
• Make a menu for our Chinese meal next week - this could help us confirm what the children would like to cook and eat.

We look forward to seeing what you come up with.

Reception team

Slight adjustment to dance showcase date

Hello everyone,

I have to apologise for giving out a wrong date yesterday for reception's dance showcase trip up to DMS. The date is the 11th February not the 12th, as I had said. Thank you for bringing this up this morning. Letters will be going home soon. 

Also, thank you for the great response to the junk modelling advert. 

Reception team

Chinese new year topic

Hello everyone,

Thank you to those of you that came to the parent information session this morning. If you were unable to attend and would like to chat about what is coming up in the term ahead, please come and speak to one of us in the morning. 

This week we begin a 3 week topic looking at Chinese New Year. Today the children were introduced to the story behind Chinese New Year - the nasty dragon Nian - and also to the story behind the zodiac - the emperor's race. See if you can remember all the different animals that were in the race? In literacy this week we will be looking at writing some labels for the different animals as well as using some descriptive words to write a poem about a dragon or lion dance. Children were very excited to see the huge dragon puppets that are used at Chinese New Year! In maths we'll be introducing children to basic addition and subtraction using objects. There will also be chances to use number lines to help children with counting and recognising the order of numbers.

We will also be starting a dance based on the book 'Mr. Wolf's Week'. In a few weeks time we will be taking the children up to DMS to participate in a dance showcase. There will be lots of different reception classes there and parents are more than welcome to attend. Letters will be going out soon. 

Lastly, some super writing coming in this week! Keep it up!

Reception team

Junk modelling advert

Hi all,

If anyone has any spare junk modelling bits please bring them into school! We use a lot of junk modelling things for making and creating and the children enjoy using it during their choosing time. Our supplies are running low so any help to resupply our stocks would be greatly appreciated. We accept pretty much anything; egg boxes, cereal boxes, large cardboard boxes, drinks cartons etc. 

Thank you, Reception team

Some home learning ideas

Hello everyone,

The children have settled back in very quickly and are looking fully prepared for the term ahead. Below are a few ideas for some work to do at home. Please don't feel we are asking any unwell children to do extra work! We all want them to be fighting fit and ready for school before anything else. We will be starting our new topic of Chinese New Year next week so some of the ideas are related to that. 

• Take a picture of your back garden during winter and get children to write some labels for the things they can see i.e. tree, car, frost.
• Use a plain piece of A4 paper and make a snowflake by cutting out a circle and folding it before taking snips out of with scissors. 
• Design your own winter clothes outfit. 
• Ask children what 'one more' or 'one less' is than a given number - in a context i.e. if we had one more person at the dinner table how many would there be? 
• Find out and write a fact about China ahead of our new topic! 
• Find out what year you were born in according to the Chinese zodic. 

As always, any discussions you can have with children about different concepts and ideas - brilliant. Please continue to bring in any work you are doing at home! It is fantastic to see the progress that all children have made already. 

We are also going to be starting a new display of Wow! Moments so please continue to bring these in - they are lovely to read and children are very proud of them. 

Reception team 

Welcome back!

Hello everyone,

I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas! We have been hearing lots about what you've been up to with your children and how generous Santa has been this year. I also hope that many of our children get well and return to school soon! It was a rather quiet day today. 

This week we will be easing back into things by having a week focusing on how we learn. The topic for the week is the season of Winter. The children have been introduced to three puppets that help to characterise their learning:

1. Playing and exploring (Can I do this)? - Monkey

2. Motivation (Do I want to do this?) - Penguin

3. Critical thinking (How do I do this?) - Dolphin

Children will be encouraged to think about how they are going to complete tasks and how they can extend their own learning. To achieve this, we will have lots of new things for the children to do out in the classroom as well as the things that they are familiar with. I will include more about these in the parent information session next Monday or can talk to you if you are not available to attend.

In phonics this week we will be having a re-cap week on the sounds that we have learnt - as we have now finished all the sounds! Phew! After this week we will be targeting teaching to cover sounds that individual children are unsure of.  

Reception team