Jack and the Beanstalk
It has been another fun-filled week in reception!
Jack and the Beanstalk
This week, we’ve been reading the traditional story ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’.
We discussed how this story has been retold many times and some versions of the story are different. Just by looking at two front covers, we could spot similarities and differences.
The story I heard had a musical instrument.
They both have Jack on the front.
He has the chicken in that one.
Word of the week
Every week, we look at a new adventurous word. We call this our ‘word of the week’. This week, our word of the week was ‘gigantic’ – linked to the story ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. The children have enjoyed using the word during role plays and in their writing.
Can you spot our word in any of the writing below?
Observational drawing
This week, we have focused on drawing daffodils using oil pastels.
Planting a (magic) bean
After listening to the story, the children all agreed that we should plant our own bean.
We then wrote instructions to explain to others how they could plant a bean too!
Maths
In Maths, we’ve been exploring the composition of numbers by investigating the numbers within 7 e.g. seeing that 7 can be made of 5 and 2.
We have also used our magic bean machine to combine two numbers.
Phonics
This week, we have continued to read longer words with the chunking method.
We have also begun to read root words that make up compound words and discussing how the two root words create a new word with a new meaning.
Can your child show you the chunking method to read these words?
fantastic helmet zooming winking
Read these root words, then combine to make a compound word.
roof top farm yard car park
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 Spring Wind.
We talk about how a poem sometimes has rhyming words and sometimes doesn’t. Can your child tell you the rhyming words in this week’s poem? We also talk about how a poem can have a fast rhythm or a slow rhythm.
Reminders and Dates
Reception’s Class Assembly- 24.03.23 3pm
You are invited to our class assembly, where we’d love to share our learning with you.
Easter Disco – 3.30 -4.30 24.03.23
The Friends of Scholes have arranged the Easter Disco after school. Parents are not required to attend. The price (£3.50) includes a drink and a bag of sweets. If you would like your child to attend the disco, payment must be made on the Gateway app.
Reception trip to The Railway Museum, York- 30.03.23
Please drop-off and collect your child at the usual times. School can provide a packed lunch but if you’d prefer your child to bring their own, this is also fine. Every child will need a suitable backpack that they are able to carry themselves throughout the day.
Spring 2 Week 3!
Can you believe we’re half way through Spring 2 already?! We’ve got even more great things planned for the rest of the term, so watch this space! Here’s what we’ve been learning this week.
The Hundred Decker Bus
This week, we’ve been reading another ‘Hundred Decker’ story by Mike Smith. The Hundred Decker Bus
In this story, a driver who is bored of his daily routine decides to take himself and his passengers on a long ‘adventure’. As more people get on the bus, more decks need to be built!
Linked to the story, we’ve been comparing cities/towns to the countryside, discussing similarities and differences. Countryside is our ‘word of the week’.
We’ve also been playing ‘eye spy’ in our writing task, looking closely at just one of the decks.
Did you know?…
Each morning before phonics, the children take part in an independent writing challenge. They look at an interesting ‘image of the day’ and simply write anything that they notice. This has really boosted the children’s confidence to ‘have a go’ at writing on their own. Take a look at some of this fantastic independent writing.
Computing
This week, we’ve been using Bee-bots. Bee-bots are an early coding resource. Children have to program the bee using directional and ‘GO’ buttons. They have to pre-plan the algorithm they need to enter, to successfully get the bee to its intended location.
RE/ Living and Learning
We’ve been thinking about how special times are celebrated. Wednesday 8 March was the Hindu festival Holi. Here’s what the children remembered about the festival.
For the celebration, they celebrate colours, Spring, love and new life!- Ted
They got messy with paint!- Mollie B
The temple was very special- Tilly
They eat lunch (at the temple)… it’s really nice and special- Esther
We decorated outlines of people with colourful Holi paint.
As a time to celebrate with friends and family, we linked Holi to our living and learning statement: I recognise that friends and family are important. We spoke about our loved ones in our families and some children chose to draw their family too.
Snow much fun!
Snow always brings much excitement. We’ve enjoyed short bursts of time exploring the snow. On Thursday, we had a snowman building competition to see who could build the tallest snowman in ten minutes. Each team decided on a name for their snowman. We had Timmy, Daisy, Mr. Grinch, Chocolate, Slippery, Stanley and Cupcake ⛄ Well done to team Chocolate, who built the tallest snowman at 73cm!
Maths
In Maths, we’ve been comparing numbers and noticing whether change creates a number that is more or less than another.
In provision, we used the ‘bus stop’ number story to explore subtraction (creating less) and recorded our number stories.
Phonics
Spring 2 week 3 has been a review of phase 3 sounds, reading words with two or more digraphs. We review tricky words daily.
Tricky words can be just that-tricky! We’ve previously introduced a few fun games you can play at home to practice tricky words. Here’s another you could try…
Tricky word stick person (a modified version of the ‘hangman’ game)
We often play this game in class. Write the correct number of dashes for your chosen tricky word and let your child make guesses. Encourage your child to use letter names rather than sounds for spelling tricky words. Draw a part of the stick man for each incorrect guess- you can give extra chances by adding a hat, shoes, gloves etc. to the stick person!
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 the traditional nursery rhyme Pat-a-cake, Pat-a-cake
We talk about how a poem sometimes has rhyming words and sometimes doesn’t. Can your child tell you the rhyming words in this week’s poem? We also talk about how a poem can have a fast rhythm or a slow rhythm.
As a traditional nursery rhyme, we spoke to the children about how words might change in different versions of the song- you will see this in our video.
Reminders and Dates
Comic Relief: Red Nose Day- 17.03.23 We will be marking the occasion in school with a non-uniform day and invite you to make a donation. Find out more about Comic Relief:
https://www.comicrelief.com/rednoseday/
Reception’s Class Assembly- 24.03.23 3pm You are invited to our class assembly, where we’d love to share our learning with you.
Reception trip to The Railway Museum, York- 30.03.23 Please drop-off and collect your child at the usual times. School can provide a packed lunch but if you’d prefer your child to bring their own, this is also fine. Every child will need a suitable backpack that they are able to carry themselves throughout the day. More details and a letter will be sent home.
Writing – all things Dragons!
This half-term our class novel is ‘The Boy Who Grew Dragons’ by author, Andy Shepherd. We are really enjoying reading the book and discovering the mischief that the dragon in the story causes for the main character, Tomas.
Last week in Y2, we drew our own dragons and wrote some adjectives to describe our dragons. We then put the adjectives into some expanded noun phrases.
We have also been learning about possessive apostrophes. We know that these types of apostrophes are used to show belonging/ possession.
See some of our fantastic work below!
Help at home – by encouraging your child to use adjectives to describe things around the home or characters in books you are reading.
Science – working scientifically
This half term our science topic is working scientifically.
During this topic, we will be comparing different roads types and conducting investigations to find out what the best road surface is.
The scientist we will be finding out about is John McAdam. He invented a new way to build roads so that they were smooth, hard and allowed rain to drain away.
The Hundred Decker Rocket
This week, we have continued to explore our topic ‘Let go’.
We have been reading the book The Hundred Decker Rocket.
This story is about a girl called Ivy who sets off on a mission to space. On the way, she meets some very messy aliens. When her rocket breaks down, all the aliens help to fix it and make their own deck.
We decided to create our own class rocket. Everyone enjoyed designing their own deck.
Mine is going to have a swimming pool.
Look! It’s got a ball pit.
I’m going to have a slide on my deck.
Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog (it’s along the play bar) and turn off auto play – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip.
Word of the week
Every week, we look at a new adventurous word. We call this our ‘word of the week’. This week our word of the week was ‘expedition’ – linked to the story ‘The Hundred Decker Rocket’. We looked at the definition ‘ A journey with a plan’.
It was like an expedition when I went to London.
I went on an expedition to Lego Land in Denmark.
You might follow signs on an expedition.
Maths
This week, we have focused on consolidating our number sense by rehearsing the order of the first 10 numbers and understanding that the position that each number holds in our number sequence does not change.
By doing this, we were able to explore ‘one more’ and ‘one less’.
I know 3 is one more than 2 because 3 comes after 2.
It goes 4, 5 so 4 is one less than 5.
Phonics
This week, the children have reviewed er, air and longer words that contain double letters.
Write these words on paper and ask your child to underline the double letters before reading.
hammer shimmer cannot chatter muffin
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 Popcorn.
When reading, we focused on the rhythm of the poem and using short, sharp voices.
Science
We had lots of fun exploring magnetic and non-magnetic objects.
We tried scissors and it worked!
Look it’s picking the metal up!
World Book Day
We had such a fabulous day! We started the morning with lots of wonderful stories with our grown-ups. Then, we were visited by children from Year 3,4 and 6. It was lovely to see everyone sharing their favourite books. In our classroom, we engaged in lots of traditional tale themed activities.
Teaching Assistant vacancy
Please apply online or contact the school if you have any questions.
https://teaching-vacancies.service.gov.uk/jobs/teaching-assistant-5a5fec48-e87a-4046-8b26-73a7a3322f7f
Supertato!
It has been another fun week exploring ‘Supertato’ by Sue Hendra & Paul Linnet. We have been creating WANTED posters for Evil Pea. The children were able to write sentences using tricky words and known phonics.
Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog (it’s along the play bar) and turn off auto play – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip.
Word of the week
Every week, we look at a new adventurous word. We call this our ‘word of the week’. This week our word of the week was ‘villain’ – linked to the story ‘Supertato’. We looked at the definition. ‘A villain is the bad guy.’, drew pictures to represent villain’s and used the word villain in our everyday speech.
Evil Pea is a villain because he is mean to others.
A villain is a baddy!
I don’t like villains!
Maths
This week, the children have been exploring weight. We have focused on using mathematical vocabulary to compare different items.
heavy heavier heaviest
light lighter lightest
Phonics
This week, the children have been reading longer words. We use the chunking method to read words with more that one syllable. We have also spotted words containing double letters (e.g. rabbit) – these are diagraphs too!
Ask your child to chunk and read these words.
sunset chicken carpet carrot
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 Mrs Bluebird
We talk about how a poem sometimes has rhyming words and sometimes doesn’t. Can your child tell you the rhyming words in this week’s poem? We also talk about how a poem can have a fast rhythm or a slow rhythm. Can your child re-tell this weeks poem to you?
Reminders
Early writing presentation – Don’t forget to watch the short presentation by Mrs Payne, one of our Sphere Federation Reception teachers. It has some ideas of things that you can try at home to support your child’s learning.
Living and Learning – Internet Safety
- As part of our living and learning time this week, we have been looking at internet safety. We had a visit from D:side yesterday, who spoke to the children about internet safety. They explained how and why you need to stay safe on the internet as well as teaching the children three clear rules to follow whilst online:
- Ask an adults permission.
- Only talk to people that you know.
- Stick to places that are right for you.
Help at home by reminding your children of these rules before they use the internet.
PE – basketball skills
This half term in PE we are focussing on attacking skills.
Here’s what we’ve been learning:
Attack is offense in Basketball. On offense, there are many different tools available to your team. The goal of the attack is to break through the opponent’s defence and set up an uncontested shot. For this you will need strong fundamentals: dribbling, passing and shooting.
Maths: multiplication
This week in Year 2 we have been exploring multiplication. We are able to recognise equal groups, count how many objects are in each group and how many groups there are. We then use this knowledge to find the total.
We started by writing our equations out using repeated addition. We then wrote the equation as a multiplication.
(E.g. – 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 is the same as 2 x 4)
Help at home by arranging equal groups in the home for your child. You could use socks, coins or any other object that can be counted in 2s, 5s or 10s!
Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog (it’s 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.