Bet, met, set, yet, pet, wet...

Hello everyone,

This week we have been looking at poetry and more specifically at rhyming words, strings and phrases. For some home learning this week I have put some unfinished rhymes below. You could write the missing words into the phrase or come up with a list of possible words it could be. We have been encouraging the use of 'real' words.

• Dinosaur, dinosaur stomped around, dinosaur, dinosaur shook the.....
• Some were big and some were small. Some were fat and some were.....
• Five hungry dinosaurs, wading through a swamp. The first one said.....
• Once there was a dinosaur, and all he did was....
• Allosaurus, stegosaurus, brontosaurus too, all went out to the....
• Five enormous dinosaurs, letting out a roar, one went away and then there were....

Good luck!

Reception team

Dr, Bike Tomorrow

- Quick reminder that Jonathan Dixon, our helpful and friendly SUSTRANS officer, is in school tomorrow offering to give your bicycles a quick service. All the more reason to cycle to school and win us points for the BIG PEDAL
DM

Problem solving with year 1!

Hello everyone,

Today we had the opportunity to work with the year 1 class to solve some practical problems. As we are focusing on 'Resilience' for our learning power at the moment we were encouraging children to persevere and manage their distractions. It was lovely to see so many children working together with each other (and children from another class!) to try and figure out a solution. The problems they had a go at are written down below.

• Radioactive field. Children had three planks and had to get across a space without touching the floor.
• Spaghetti and tweezers - you had to get the bits and pieces out of the spaghetti only using tweezers.
• Duplo tower - You had to make a tower out of Duplo that was one metre tall.
• Egg jacket - Children had to come up with a contraption that meant an egg wouldn't break when dropped from a good height.
• Dominos - How long could you build a stack of Dominos before they fell over.
• Moving car - Children had to move a truck from one location to another without touching it with any part of their bodies.

Needless to say there were some very novel ways of solving the problems and some children clearly have a very unique way of thinking about things. We will continue to carry out sessions like this so that children can become familiar with the year 1 classroom and interact with children who have already been in year 1!

There should hopefully be some pictures on the school website soon for you to look at.

Reception team

This week...

Hello everyone,

This week we are going to be moving our focus within our dinosaur topic from finding out information to poetry. We'll be thinking of rhyming words and phrases and hopefully conjuring up our own poems. See if you can pick  word and find some rhyming words that go with it; cat, mat, hat, sit, fit, kit etc. Alternatively if you fancy a challenge try to come up with a phrase that rhymes; 10 dinosaurs down by the pond, along came a wizard and shook his wand. 

In maths this week we will be continuing our focus with addition and subtraction but this will be in the context of money. Today we showed children all the coins we use in this country and compared how many pennies you would need to match each one. Throughout the week we'll be role playing with money, adding and subtracting amounts and trying to solve money problems.

We have also begun some cooking today! We are going to be making a carnivore meal and a herbivore meal. This carnivore meal will be dinosaur eggs (meatballs) and a nest (spaghetti) and we'll actually be trying some leaves (mint, basil etc) as well as other foods a herbivore could eat. 

Tomorrow we're going to be teaming up with year 1 children to begin the process of transition. Children will take part in various activities that will challenge them to solve problems and work together as a team.

Reception team

Vision screening

Hello everyone,

Today children will have come home with a letter in their book bag outlining their results for the vision screening that took place in school today. If you don't have a letter then you may have opted out of the screening. If you opted in for the screening but do not have a letter please come and see us tomorrow. 

Reception team

10 green bottles...

You may have noticed that the plastic bottle greenhouse is nearing completion - we now need more plastic bottles to help complete the roof. Please bring bottles into school to either Mr Gibson (R class) or Mrs Webb (Yr 2).

Thank you!

Weekly news

Hello everyone,

This week we have continued to delve into the world of dinosaurs. We have been looking particularly close at facts and what makes a fact. We have been learning that a fact has to be true and that it contains information - in this case, about dinosaurs! In maths this week we have been continuing to focus on addition and subtraction. As this is such an important area we will be making sure children have a great depth of understanding before moving on to bigger numbers. This week we have been looking at some worded problems that require mathematical knowledge as well as vocabulary comprehension. 

Thank you to all of the replies for the Ditch your stabilisers' sessions. Jonathan Dixon will be coming in to help lead the sessions. All you need to do is bring your child's bike into school this Thursday or next Thursday. You should have been given a slot by now so if you are not sure please come and see us tomorrow. 

At the end of the week you will hopefully receive the newsletter containing lots of information about what we'll covering in the summer term. If you have any questions about any of the content,please come and speak to one of us.  That's just about everything for this week!

Reception team

Parent Information session

Reception Parent Information session due for Monday 18th April, school hall 9am. You will here all about what the children will be learning through the summer term.

Big Pedal starts Monday 18th April

Just a reminder that we are taking part in "The Big Pedal" again this year. We would like to encourage as many children as possible to come to school on their bicycles and scooters.
The competition lasts for the next two weeks.
In the last two years, the Prince of Wales School as achieved a very high percentage of scooterists and cyclists. We are hoping to achieve the same again in the competition this year.
Parents who scoot or cycle with their children can also earn points for the school.
DM

A visit in assembly from 'Iron Man!'

A very exciting assembly on Wednesday, when 'Iron Man' made a visit to The Prince of Wales School!

The school have been focussing upon building our Learning Powers and our current particular focus is ' Resilience'. Iron Man presented the school with a knitted turtle which is our school mascot for 'resilience'. In class this week the children have been working upon how to 'grow our resilience' within their individual learning.
'Being absorbed', 'managing distractions' around them and 'persevering' are key areas we have all been thinking about developing with each others' help.

Dinosaur topic home learning...

Hello everyone,

We have begun to make inroads on our latest topic: dinosaurs. You may notice a couple of sheet stuck up when you walk in the classroom that outline our current knowledge of dinosaurs and some questions that we would like to find the answers to. Hopefully we'll know all the answers by the time the topic has finished. Below, I've put some ideas for things that you could do at home if you would like to. As always, any work that is done at home, and the children are proud of, is welcome into the classroom.

1. Discuss why dinosaurs don't live now. What do you think happened to them? (we'll also be discussing this in school).
2. Write down a list of 6 words that you think best describe a dinosaur. It could be any type of dinosaur.
3. Use recycled materials to make a dinosaur!
4. Learn the names of some new dinosaurs. This website is very informative: http://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/dino-directory/index.html
5. Find out what the word 'Dinosaur' actually means.
6. Using pipe-cleaners or art straws, create a dinosaur skeleton - like the one in the picture.
7. Solve this problem:  Mr. Stegosaurus had been looking forward to his birthday. He had invited 6 friends around. Then he remembered about 5 more people he could invite. How many people would there be altogether?
8. Write down one fact about dinosaurs.
9. Design, describe and name your own created dinosaur.

Any home brought in will always be shown in school. We look forward to seeing what you come up with!

Reception team

Farm trip!

 Hi all,

Yesterday we had our second trip to Maiden Castle Farm! We were blessed with lovely weather and many, many muddy puddles which were great fun to walk through when walking there and back!

At the farm we learnt the names for mummy, daddy and baby animals. See if you can remember some of the names! A mummy pig was the hardest one to remember! We also got to see some chickens and fed them their breakfast. We had the chance to look at the eggs that had been laid by the chickens. We were lucky enough to see a baby chick that had only recently hatched. 

After that we saw lots of different aged cows and got to go into the lambing shed to see the new born baby lambs. There was even the opportunity to stroke one of them. It was an all round lovely morning and our thanks go to the Maiden Castle Farm for having us!

Reception team

Farm trip tomorrow!

Hello everyone,

Tomorrow we are off to Maiden Castle Farm for the morning! We apologise about the lack of correspondence about the trip! If children could come to school tomorrow morning wearing their school tops/jumpers, and play bottoms/trousers. As well as this, please could we ask for children to wear some wellies, as there has been quite a bit of rain around. Who knows, we may have some puddles to walk through.

If anyone is available to help with this trip tomorrow morning that would be greatly appreciated. Although with such short notice it is understandable if you are busy! 

Reception team