Meet your new teacher – transition day 2024
We welcomed a visit from the children who will be in our classes in September. All the teachers in Key Stage 1 are staying in the same places from September 2024. The children were excited, apprehensive, happy and nervous – all at the same time! Feel free to pop over to say hello before we break up for the summer.
1,2B Design and Technology
1,2B completed our design and technology (food) learning today.
We used a recipe for make wraps. We cut, spread, tore and folded to create our own wrap.
Help at home by getting your child involved in food preparation.
Wrap it up!
Today, as part of our D & T learning, Class 1A set off for The Hub to make their own wraps. They were given the choice of cream cheese, ham, peppers, lettuce and cucumber of ingredients to put in their wrap. Everyone thought carefully about making healthy choices. The children used skills such as slicing, chopping, spreading, arranging and rolling and everyone tried hard to use the bridge grip when slicing. Well done Class 1A!
After all the hard work, they enjoyed the fruits of their labour. Yum!
Help at home: Perhaps you could give your child the opportunity to show off their skills by allowing them to make their own healthy wrap or sandwich at home. Or better still… perhaps they could make you one.
Money – making the same amount
In Maths, Year 2 are re-visiting money. We know how to recognise and describe each of the coins and notes. Today, we started by trying to make the same amount of money in several different ways. See some of our work below.
Key Stage 2 Sports Day
Friday saw the event of the year that we’d all been waiting for – sports day! All the children turned their hand to a range of competitive races from the sack race to the long distance. The weather was good and even the sun made an appearance. It was so good to see all the children looking happy and healthy and thank you to all the parents, grandparents and carers that came to support us! Thank you also to the crazy people that took part in the adults race – I’m sure you made your children proud!
Obstacle courses
One of the Prime Areas of the Early Years Foundation Stage is Physical development. Throughout the year, children have been developing their movement and balancing skills in a variety of ways. This week, we enjoyed taking part in an obstacle course. They balanced along the beams and walked across the wobble boards, trying carefully not to fall off.
At the end of the course, children showed us that they could balance on one leg without wobbling!
Next week’s learning
Following on from our learning about the seaside, we’re going to listen to ‘Pirates love underpants!’ next week. (This is a YouTube link. Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog along the play bar and turn off autoplay – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip.)
We’re sure you can imagine the role play that this will inspire… Look out for treasure maps in children’s folders soon!
Nursery rhyme of the week – Jack and Jill
Phonics – Children in Red, Blue and Green group will be playing games to practise some key phonics skills including:
- identifying initial sounds in words (playing I-Spy type games)
- segmenting and blending words orally (e.g. h-a-t and b-u-s)
- spotting rhyming words
Clean Up!
Clean Up
This week, our story took us on a journey, all the way to Jamaica!
We discussed key words from the story: sanctuary and island.
The story even inspired a group of children to build their own animal sanctuary- Well done Harry, Liezah, Jake, Norah and Gracie!
The book had some great messages about looking after our environment. Linked to this, our word of the week was pollution.
In our writing, we’ve written about what happens when you leave rubbish on a beach and how it hurts the animals in our seas and oceans.
Maths
This week’s focus has been on deepening our understanding of how to compare quantities. We have explored this skill in a range of ways: comparing groups of objects, comparing by looking and then by counting, creating groups with equal amounts and using our sense of magnitude, e.g., knowing 8 is a lot more than 2 but 4 is only a little bit more than 2.
We’ve also explored sharing using objects and seeing which quantities can be shared fairly between 2, 3 or 4.
In provision, we’ve been playing ‘Roll and Build’- using our subitising skills to calculate total amounts on two dice, building the amount and matching it to the correct numeral.
Artist focus; Alexander Calder
We’ve been looking at Alexander Calder‘s mobiles in art this week. We started the week with a gallery experience, looking at images of the mobiles around the school hall and drawing them.
We then drew around shapes, or created our own shapes, and cut them out of paper.
Next week, we will be collaborating to make our own mobile art using our paper shapes!
Phonics
Summer 2 week 3 has focused on words ending in the suffix -ed but sounding like ‘t’,’ id’ or ‘d’ such as helped, floated and stormed.
Please continue to use the Little Wandle sheets, sent home with your child each week.
Poetry Picnic
Each week we will be learning a new poem. We will recite this poem each day. By saying the poem out loud, we can focus on the sounds and rhythm of each word or line. We talk to the children about how this can help us become better readers.
This week’s poem is Five Little Peas.
Click below to watch Reception recite this week’s poem!
Reminders, Messages and Dates
Baby photos – Please send in or email (scholesreception@spherefederation.org) a baby picture of your child to support their learning. We will be discussing how they have grown and changed.
Transition Morning- Wednesday 3 July Drop off and collect your child from their usual Reception classroom on this day. We will send a slip home with your child on this day, confirming which class they will be in from September.
Learning journey drop-ins- Week commencing 8 July
An opportunity to “drop into” school and share your child’s learning journal with them. We would like to welcome you into the classroom on one of the following sessions:
Tuesday 9 July 8.45– 9.15 or 3.15-3.45
Thursday 11 July 8.45-9.15
Quarters
In Year One this week, the Maths focus was all about fractions. We already knew about halves so, this week we learnt about quarters. We know that a quarter is one piece of four pieces and that the four pieces have to be the same. They must be equal to one another in order to be quarters. Quarters in shapes helped us to think about the concept visually and we worked practically in pairs to begin to quarter numbers too.
Help at home: You could challenge your child to cut their food into quarters. Pizza or sandwiches would be a great start. How many pieces will there need to be to be quarters? Are they all equal? If they’re not equal, is it a quarter? Can you find a different way to quarter someone else’s pizza or sandwich?
Class News – PE and Design and Technology
This week, we used a template to cut the correct sized material for our pouch. We used the scissors carefully. Then, we started to sew our pouches. They’re looking great! We showed lots of resilience when threading the needle and stitching. Help at home by practising the running stitch or over stitch.
In PE, we enjoyed practising for KS2 Sports Day.
PE – tennis
All year 1 and 2 classes have been developing their tennis skills this half term. We have rolled, bounced and hit the balls as well as balancing them and striking them in different ways.
1,2B enjoyed the space on the field today for our tennis lesson.
