Year 2

 

Meet the Teacher Information Evening

 

 

year 2 parent information evening slides.pdf

Letters

Year 2 Spring Term Information - 06.01.2025

Autumn Term Information - 06.09.2024

• Art - Exploring Colours Knowledge Organiser
• Art - Still Life Knowledge Organiser
• Design & Technology - Push & Pull Knowledge Organiser
• Geography - Explore the World Knowledge Organiser
• History - Movers & Shakers Knowledge Organiser
• Science - Habitats Knowledge Organiser
• Science - Human Survival Knowledge Organiser 

Year 2 Blogs

11 October 2024

It has been a little while since our last blog, but my goodness have we been busy in Year 2!

In Maths, we have continued using our knowledge of multiples of 10 when counting larger numbers. We have used different resources and representations to count in groups of tens and ones. 

A special visitor, Phoebe came to visit us this week. She is training to be a therapy dog with the help of Nick and Finn.

As well as learning about the Christian festival of harvest in class and through a visit to the church; we have been learning about the Hindu Rice festival - Pongal. We created some Kolam art using coloured rice.

Forest School - I think in this case a picture is worth a thousand words.....

13 September 2024

It has been great to be back together after the summer!

We have been looking for things that have changed in our classroom over the holiday and making the most of some of our new learning areas – our Reading Garden has been particularly popular.

In writing we have been reading and writing about trolls! We have been thinking of amazing adjectives to describe and compare different trolls. Our favourite word this week has been ‘jagged.’ 

Maths has been all about multiples of 10! We can count in multiples of ten from 0-120. We have used practical resources to make 10 and have explored the relationship between one ten and ten ones.

Blogs from Year 1

16 February 2024

In the lead up to half term, Year 1 has been very busy utilising their new skills over the term and putting them into practice in all lessons. 

In Music, we have been exploring sounds, looking at long and short sounds, loud and quiet sounds, and finding and keeping a beat. We are using these skills to play along with some music on our glockenspiels.

In Computing, we are using the skills we have developed to create a digital story book. The children have enjoyed creating the digital art and adding text to it.

We have continued to develop our addition and subtraction abilities in Maths lessons, and are implementing these in a variety of ways. The children have enjoyed using the different resources we have around the classroom to represent the number sentences and have made their own stories to go with them. We are now moving on and looking at counting in twos, building this with blocks so we can see the pattern in the numbers.  

 

2 February 2024

Year 1 have been working extremely hard in maths this week developing their addition and subtraction skills. They have been writing their own addition and subtraction stories using ‘first, then and now’ and representing equations as part-whole models and bar models.

In English, we have been writing poems inspired by the Big Garden Bird Watch. We hope you enjoy them, we thought they were very entertaining!

At forest school, we have been learning about seasonal changes and have been identifying deciduous and evergreen trees in the school grounds. We have also been developing our team work skills, but pulling our friends on the swing.

 

  

12 January 2024

We have had a busy start back to school this week. The children have come back happy and enthusiastic to learn.

They have enjoyed our start to this term’s Geography learning, we played a fun game with our friend taking it in turns to use directional language to help them get around. The children really enjoyed this and worked well in their pairs to communicate to their friends. The children then spent some time learning about maps and creating some maps of our route to assembly.

  

In forest school we had a lovely session learning about the season of Winter. Mrs Jackson is leading the children in taking part in the Big Bird Watch, looking at which birds visit our school. We learnt about what birds eat and why they need extra food in the winter. You could try this at home spending some time outside and seeing who visits your outdoor space. If you do take part at home bird spotting or exploring the winter season, please email pictures into Miss Thompson or Mrs Jennings as we would love to share home learning in class.

 

 

20 October 2023

Year 1 have had a very busy first half term. We have been exploring our new learning environment, getting to know the new adults working with us and learning lots of new skills.

We have been collaging autumn leaves. We have thought about the colours we need and then been developing our fine motor skills by tearing, rolling and sticking the tissue paper to decorate them. We have had to use scissors very carefully to ensure the leaves are cut out properly.

 

We have been enjoying using different manipulatives in our maths lessons, including numicon, tens frames and cubes to help us solve problems. We have also enjoyed accessing Numbots, which you should now be able to access from home too.

We have been using our mini whiteboards lots in our English lessons so we can all share our ideas. Mrs Jennings and Mrs Thompson have been so impressed with our independent writing!

15 September 2023

Mrs Jennings and Miss Thompson have been so proud of how well everyone has settled into year 1. We have been extremely busy completing lots of learning and exploring our new classroom. 

In English we have started some work based around the story Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers. Children have been using their phonics to write key words and simple sentences.

In art we have been exploring colour mixing. We used poster paint to explore what happened when we mixed different primary colours together, and then worked hard to create our very own colour wheels.

At forest school, we loved exploring ice blocks containing different natural materials. We have also loved digging for fossils and developing our gross motor skills by climbing trees and ladders.

 

Blogs from Reception

7 July 2023

We had a fantastic time at forest school this week. We spent the whole day in the forest as a reward for collecting 20 blue smileys. We enjoyed plenty of activities and even had our lunch in the forest!

We had a lot of fun swinging in the trees.

We made nature crowns by collecting different flora such as leaves, petals, grass and feathers. 

 

 

 

Lots of role play happened in the forest, cakes and soup were made, many dinosaur bones were discovered and fairy adventures occurred.

 

We made woodland peg dollies and clay face puppets, leaves, sticks and petals were used to add features and stories were acted out with them.

 

We finished our day making smores we toasted marshmallows on a fire and put it between two biscuits, yummy!

 

30 June 2023

This week we have been on our school trip to South Angle Farm. It was so much fun meeting lots of different animals.

We met some large farm animals including sheep, goats, donkeys, pigs, alpacas, and llamas. We loved stroking and feeding them. We met Wilbur the pig, he is 4 years old and weighs the same as a small car! 

We also met some smaller animals on the farm, we brushed Edward the rabbit, gave Sandy the guinea pig a cuddle and gently stroked the shells of Comet and Trixie the tortoises. 

South Angle Farm also has some reptiles and minibeasts. We met Sebastian the corn snake, Amber the bearded dragon and Princess fuzzyboots the Chilean Rose terantula.

As well as meeting a wide variety of animals we enjoyed our picnic lunch and a play. 

Our sports afternoon was also enjoyed this week. Mrs Riches was very proud of how we worked together as a team and supported each other to complete a range of activities. 

 

23 June 2023

This week we have enjoyed sharing Handa’s Surprise by Eileen Browne.

The story is set in Kenya which is in Africa. We found out about some of the animals that live in Kenya and which fruits are grown there. We brought some of the fruits from the story into school to taste such as pineapple, mango and passionfruit. First we prepared the fruits by peeling and chopping them.

Then we put them together to make a fruit salad and tasted them, they were delicious! 

We observed the fruit closely and produced some observational drawings of the fruit in a basket like Handa’s. Mrs Riches was very impressed! 

 

We tried balancing baskets on our heads to carry things like Handa does in the story. It was quite tricky! 

 

16 June 2023

This week we have been finding out about animals around the world. We have identified features they have in common, where they live and why. 

In the art area we have been busy using different paper to create wild animal pictures. 

During PE we have been practising skills such as aiming, agility, jumping, running and throwing in preparation for our sports afternoon. 

We had a fabulous time at forest school helping Dino Dan. He sent us a letter asking us to search for dinosaur bones and fossils so he could find out what dinosaurs roamed in our forest millions of years ago. We found plenty of bones and teeth which we believe belonged to a Tyrannosaurus Rex and a Stegosaurus. We dug them up, cleaned them and made dinosaur skeletons. 

We finished our dino dig with some delicious popcorn cooked on the fire, yummy!

 

9 June 2023

This term our topic is ‘Big Wide World’. We will learn about the global community to which we belong and explore how living things, communities and climates differ around the world.

This week we been sharing We’re Going on a Bear Hunt and We’re Going on a Lion Hunt. 

We looked at similarities and differences between the two stories including the characters and the setting. We worked in teams to produce our own story map to retell the story of We’re Going on a Lion Hunt.

In Maths we have been sharing, finding out how quantities can be distributed equally. 

 

 

We have been following lots of our own interests and demonstrating lots of skills learnt throughout the year such both inside and outside, such as cutting, attaching and measuring to turn the junk modelling into all sorts of creations. We have also shown lots of resilience, determination and teamwork to make rockets, robots, dolls, sun loungers and items to set up an ice cream parlour. 

 

 

Our week finished with a bear hunt of our own in the forest. We went through the long swishy grass, through the deep dark forest, across the wobbly bridge and into the bear cave. We couldn’t believe we actually found a bear! 

 

 

26 May 2023

This week we have shared the story The Greedy Bee by Steve Smallman and Jack Tickle.

We found out lots of information about bees and how they make honey, we then made our own honey sandwiches to taste the honey, it was delicious!

In maths we have had a lot of fun exploring doubling. We found out that doubling is two groups of the same number added together. 

We have been busy learning outside in our garden with our friends, exploring with water, role playing in the mud kitchen, caring for our sunflower seeds by watering them and mark making creating pictures and patterns together. 

We found a special letter in the forest this week from the forest fairies. They asked us to make some fairy wands to wave around the forest to spread the magic while we are not there. We also had a lot of fun cooking soup, pies and cakes. Mrs Riches said they tasted scrumptious!

 

19 May 2023

This week there have been even more exciting changes to our tadpoles and caterpillars.

Many of our tadpoles are now froglets, they have grown their front legs and have been returned to a pond.

We were also delighted to see our butterflies emerge from their cocoons. We waited for their wings to dry out and then they were ready to be set free. We released them in our garden. They were reluctant to fly away at first and even rested on some of us before flying away. 

We have been busy in our garden, digging up the weeds and planting sunflower seeds. We have been thrilled to see the apple seeds and conkers we planted in the autumn have started to grow! We have two horse chestnut trees and three apple trees. 

We enjoyed the story of Katie and the Sunflowers as she stepped inside Van Gogh’s famous painting called Sunflowers. We then painted our own sunflowers. 

 

 

12 May 2023

Lots of exciting changes have happened this week. Our tadpoles are growing nicely, we have noticed their bodies changing in size, shape and colour and some even have back legs! Our caterpillars have all made their cocoons and we are eagerly waiting for them to emerge as butterflies.

We have been getting up close to snails this week and finding out lots of facts about them. 

After closely observing the snails, we were inspired to paint them. We carefully drew a snail, then we used the watercolours to paint them.

We found out about an artist called Henri Matisse. He created a famous piece of artwork called The Snail. He made it by creating a collage using cut up pieces of painted paper. We then created our own collages of snails. 

We found plenty of snails at Forest school. We found many of them underneath the logs and climbing up tree trunks.

 

5 May 2023

The Coronation of King Charles III has been a focus of our learning this week. We found out that a Coronation is a special ceremony where a new king or queen is crowned.

Throughout the week we have learnt lots of interesting facts about the coronation and King Charles III.

In the creative area we have designed and made our own crowns, the sovereign’s orb, coronation ring and the sovereign’s sceptres. To create these we needed to measure, cut and attach pieces of paper together using glue and Sellotape.

 

We were also very busy painting portraits of King Charles III. We are very proud of them.

 

 

To celebrate we planned and prepared a Coronation Celebration Day. Bunting and Union Jack Flags were painted.

We all came to school wearing our finest clothes dressed as Kings and Queens, enjoyed a Royal treasure hunt, singing, dancing and eating delicious treats. 

 

28 April 2023

This week we have been learning about the lifecycle of a butterfly. We have some real caterpillars that we can watch grow and change into butterflies. We are very excited about this! The story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar has helped us understand the life cycle of a butterfly.

We found out that butterflies have symmetrical wings. We have enjoyed exploring with a variety of resources to create symmetrical butterflies.

In maths this week we have been focussing on numbers up to 20, ordering the numbers, matching the correct number of items and understanding that the teen numbers are made up of 10 and some more.

At forest School, we continued our learning about the life cycle of a butterfly and used the natural resources to create symmetrical butterflies. We also practised using a hammer to bang nails into some wood. We then used wool to weave around the nails to create a caterpillar. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

21 April 2023

This week we have been learning about the life cycle of a frog. We have loved the story of Tadpoles Promise. Tadpole loves his rainbow friend, the caterpillar, and she tells him she loves everything about him. "Promise that you will never change," she says. But can tadpole keep his promise?

To observe the life cycle of a frog first hand we have set up a pond in our classroom and added some tadpoles. We are going to look after the tadpoles and observe how they grow and change into frogs. We are very excited about this! 

The life cycle a frog consists of four stages, we have been learning about these stages and sequencing them.

“First the female frog lays eggs, it’s frogspawn” Timothy.

“The tadpole hatches out and gets bigger” Pippa.

“It grows back legs and then front legs and its tail shrinks” Isabelle.

“it’s a frog and then it can lay more eggs but only the female” Riley. 

Mrs Keel brought in her pet tree frogs Dustin and Lucas for us to observe. We found out that tree frogs spend most of their life in trees and can change their skin colour to camouflage themselves.

In maths this week we have been working on number bonds to 10. We have explored finding pairs of numbers that total 10 altogether.

  

31 March 2023

We have been learning about spring this week. We found out about some flowers that grow in the springtime and used our artistic skills to create pictures of hyacinths and daffodils. First, we observed the flowers and then decided whether to use paint, pastels, felt tips, colouring pencils or crayons to represent our spring flowers.

Mrs Riches was very proud of our artwork! 

Easter is a festival in spring celebrated by Christians. To celebrate Easter we made some Easter cards to give to our families and made chocolate Easter nests with eggs to symbolise new life.

At forest school we spotted some signs of spring such as new buds growing on the trees, daffodils, primroses and tulips. We enjoyed an Easter egg hunt in the forest followed by a delicious chocolatey snack and hot chocolate, delicious!

 

24 March 2023

This week we have enjoyed another traditional story, The Gingerbread Man. 

We followed a recipe to make our own gingerbread men. First, we weighed out the dry ingredients and added them to a mixing bowl. 

Next, we used a spoon to stir them altogether. The ginger and cinnamon smelt delicious.

Then we added the egg, butter and syrup and used a spoon to bind it together.

Then we used our fingers to gently knead the ingredients together to form a dough.

The next step was to roll out the dough and cut out the gingerbread man shapes.

The gingerbread men were then put in the oven to bake. Luckily when the oven was opened, they didn’t run away! Once they were cool, we decorated them with icing and enjoyed eating them, yummy!  

 

 

17 March 2023

This week we celebrated Science week the theme this year is Connections. We found out that Science is finding out about things around us.

We focussed on the connections between our body parts and our senses. We found out about parts of our body we can see and parts of our body that are hidden away inside us. They all have a different job to do, to help us stay healthy. 

“The heart is protected by the ribs” Pheobe

“My brain works hard to help me remember stuff. I only knew my name when I started school now I can read” Alice

“These are lungs they help us breathe” Henry.

“That is a leg bone, it’s long” James.

We read Jack and the Beanstalk and wanted to grow a beanstalk so we planted some bean seeds. First, we put cotton wool into a pot, then we put in some bean seeds, then we watered the cotton wool. Now we have to wait for the beans to grow. 

We enjoyed visiting the science department in secondary with Mr Frank to carry out some science experiments. It was a lot of fun!

To support Red Nose Day, we donated some money to wear red and found out that our money will help children in Great Britain and Africa who are not as fortunate as us.

 

10 March 2023

Goldilocks and the Three Bears has been a focus this week in Reception. We have loved sharing this story together. 

We have talked about the story and how the characters felt. We decided that Goldilocks should apologise to the bears especially baby bear, so we wrote a letter to say sorry. 

We had a lot of fun with the junk modelling resources creating a bed for Goldilocks to sleep in. We used our cutting, measuring, and joining skills to create our beds. 

Mrs Riches was amazed at how we used our skills and our creative ideas to make the beds. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We wanted to make our own porridge to taste so we cooked it on the fire at Forest School. It was not too hot, not too cold but just right, delicious!

 

3 March 2023

This week we have been reading The Three Billy Goats Gruff and celebrating world book day.

We have compared different versions of The Three Billy Goats Gruff and talked about the characters and the setting.

We used our imagination to paint, draw and write descriptions of trolls.

Retelling the story was lots of fun, we focussed on retelling the story in sequence and remembering key repetitive phrases.

“Who’s that trip, trapping across my bridge?”

“It’s me the big, billy goat gruff. I want to eat the lush, green grass”.

We enjoyed a bridge building challenge, we had to make sure our bridges stretched across the river and it was tall enough for the troll to fit underneath. 

We celebrated World Book Day by coming to school dressed up as our favourite book characters, which included Katie Morag, Mary Poppins,  Little Red Riding Hood, The Gingerbread Man and Matilda. We had a lot of fun and enjoyed sharing lots of stories, completing a book scavenger hunt and emersed ourselves in an audio story telling of The Gingerbread Man.

 

24 February 2023

This week we started our new topic ‘Once Upon a Time’. We have been reading The Three Little Pigs.

There are many different versions of this book. After reading some we compared different versions of the story and were surprised to hear that in some versions the pigs get eaten by the wolf!

We enjoyed the challenge of building our own houses just like the little pigs. We were able to choose our resources from lolly pop sticks, straws, pipe cleaners, Sellotape and playdough. 

We then tested to see how strong our houses were using a wolf to huff and puff! (Mrs Riches turned her hairdryer into a wolf!). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We were surprised at how strong our houses were!

Using junk modelling to design and create a safe secure house for the pigs to live in. We added some special features to keep the wolf out.

“The walls are sticky so if the wolf tries to climb up, he will get stuck” Willow.

“There are spikes on the roof to stop the wolf getting in the chimney” Riley.

“I put shields on the front and back of the house so that the wolf can’t scratch it” Thomas. 

 

 

 

This week at forest school we cooked pancakes over the fire. We learnt that Shrove Tuesday is the last day before the period which Christians call Lent. It is the last chance to indulge yourself and use up all the foods that aren’t allowed in Lent.

We enjoyed eating the pancakes with lemon, sugar and syrup, Yummy!

 

10 February 2023

Space has been a focus this week in Reception. We shared some stories by Oliver Jeffers How to Catch a Star and The Way Back home. 

After reading How to Catch a Star, we discussed the different ways the little boy tried to catch a star. We thought of other imaginative ways that the boy could catch a star. 

We then enjoyed, The Way Back Home which led us to finding out about space travel. We watched a video of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin the first people to land on the moon and enjoyed watching Tim Peake in space and learning about life in the space station. 

We have been busy in the creative area creating moon pictures by painting and printing and challenging ourselves to build our own rockets using junk modelling materials. We learnt how to draw shapes, make cone shapes, and attach different pieces securely. We have loved flying our rockets outside.

We designed our own space mat for the Beebots to travel around. We programmed the Beebot to travel from one space to the next by counting how many spaces to move forwards, backwards, left and right. It was a lot of fun! 

 

3 February 2023

This week we have been reading Peace at Last by Jill Murphy. Mr Bear could not get good nights sleep due to lots of noise. We have been learning about the importance of a good bedtime routine and a good night’s sleep.

We helped Weatherby Bear to get ready for bed. First, he got undressed and got into the bath. Next, we washed him with soap and dried him. Then we put his pyjamas and slippers on.

 

Once he was dry, we brushed his fur and cleaned his teeth. Then we tucked him into bed and read him a bedtime story.

We have also been finding out how important it is to clean our teeth. We know brushing our teeth gets rid of any food around the teeth and washes away sugars that can hurt our teeth. 

Lots of learning has been taking place in the continuous provision this week. We have loved playing outside, exploring numbers, modelling with playdough, making musical instruments with junk modelling materials and creating pictures using the loose parts. 

 

 

 

 

27 January 2023

This week in Reception Class we have been finding out about polar bears. We found out they live in the Arctic in the North Pole and realised that penguins and polar bears do not live together!

We read the non-fiction book Polar Bears by Tristan Walters and wrote our favourite facts about polar bears.

During our maths lessons we have been exploring the composition of numbers to 5 by counting how many altogether from two groups. We had a lot of fun playing bus stop. Some people sat on the bus and some people waited at the bus stop. We then counted how many people altogether when everyone got on the bus.

‘There are 5 altogether because 2 and 3 makes 5’.

‘I know there are 4 because 2 and 2 more makes 4’.

‘I can see 3, 2 and 1 makes 3’. 

Forest school was a lot of fun this week. We joined in the RSPB Big Garden birdwatch. We sat very quietly and observed the birds visiting forest school.

We also lit a fire to cook our snack on. We sliced open a banana and filled it with chocolate, then wrapped it in foil and placed it in the fire. It tasted delicious!

The heat of the fire cooked the bananas and melted the chocolate!

  

20 January 2023

This week we have been finding out about the Chinese New Year. This festival signals the beginning of spring and is celebrated in January or February. It is a time when families and friends get together to say goodbye to the old and welcome the new.

This year the Chinese New Year begins on January 22^nd. It is the year of the rabbit.

We made lanterns to decorate our classroom, we used gold and red as these colours are believed to bring good luck.

We prepared and cooked a Chinese stir fry with mushrooms, peppers, carrots, noodles, rice, and prawn crackers. We challenged ourselves to eat it using chopsticks, which proved quite tricky! 

 

 

 

We found out during the Chinese New Year people participate in lion and dragon dancing. This is to bring good luck into the new year. We made our own lion and dragon’s head and tried out the dancing ourselves accompanied by Chinese music. We had a lot of fun!

 

 

13 January 2023

This half term our topic is ‘Winter Wonderland’. This week we have been answering the question where is it always cold?

We found out that it is cold and snowy in the Arctic and the Antarctic and that different animals live in these cold places.

We enjoyed creating our own snowy landscape in our small world play area.

After reading The Emperors Egg by Martin Jenkins we found out lots of information about penguins. We used our phonic skills to record some of our favourite facts. 

We observed some penguin photographs which helped to inspire us to paint our own penguin pictures.

 

As we haven’t had any snow or icy days this week, we made our own ice by freezing water. We then explored the ice by using our senses.

“It’s freezing!” It’s melting away to water”, “The ice is getting smaller, “My hands are wet and cold”, “It’s very hard”, “It’s melting because my hands are warm”, “It is going to water now”.

We took advantage of a windy day at Forest School by making kites and flying them. We discovered worms live in the soil and we tried tree climbing for the first time.

 

 

16 December 2022

We have been thinking about the celebration of Hanukkah this week. We found out that Hanukkah is a Jewish holiday that lasts for eight days and nights and usually occurs in December.

To celebrate the eight nights of Hanukkah people light candles on a special candlestick called a menorah.  In addition to the lighting of the candles, gifts are exchanged, and children play games such as spin the dreidel.

We had a lot of fun spinning the dreidel to try and win the most gold coins. 

We have also continued to prepare for the celebration of Christmas. We have made Christmas cakes for our families.

We weighed out all the ingredients, mixed them together, and put them in the oven. We then decorated the cakes with icing and a sprig of holly. They looked and smelt delicious. We can’t wait to taste them!

 

To decorate the top of a Christmas tree we have made angels. We had to follow the instructions carefully to create our beautiful angels.

We found out that people send Christmas cards to their family and friends to wish them a Merry Christmas. We are very proud of our Christmas cards for our families. 

Our last Forest School this year was a chilly one. To keep us warm we had a fire which we toasted marshmallows on and put between two biscuits to make a smore. It was delicious! We also created some Christmas table decorations by attaching holly using nails to some log discs we had cut last week.

 

 9 December 2022

We were so excited this week to be able to perform our Nativity to our families and friends. Mrs Riches was so proud of us as we danced, sung, and acted brilliantly. It was a great show, and our family and friends thoroughly enjoyed it.

We have shared the book Dream Snow by Eric Carle. We enjoyed retelling the story in our own words using the small world play resources. We thought about what the farmer might have wrapped up for his animals for Christmas.

We took up the challenge in the school advent bag to write a letter to Father Christmas. We talked about how to politely ask for presents and not to ask for too many! We then impressed Mrs Riches with how our writing skills have developed by using our phonic knowledge and correctly forming many letters.

In maths this week we have been challenging ourselves to identify one more and one less. We hung some baubles on a Christmas tree and then predicted how many there would be if there was one less or one more.

We joined in Christmas jumper day on December 8 to raise money for Save the Children to support children in the UK and around the world.

It was a cold and frosty morning at Forest School, but we wrapped up warm and had a lot of fun exploring the frozen water and making a Christmas decoration by sawing, drilling, threading and decorating.

 

2 December 2022

This week Reception have been learning about Christmas. We have read a variety of stories to find out about the First Christmas. We found out about the birth of Jesus and why Christians celebrate Christmas. 

 

 

We have been busy preparing for the celebration of Christmas. We know that Christmas is celebrated on 25 December every year and people put up trees and decorate their homes. 

We have also been very busy preparing for our Nativity show. We have been practising our singing, dancing, and reciting our lines as well as designing tickets to give to our families to invite them to come and see us. We can’t wait to share our performance with them. 

 

Preparations for Christingle have also taken place. Christingle is a special service often held during advent. We have made our own Christingles using an orange, four cocktail sticks, red ribbon, some sweets and raisins and a candle.

Each part has a special meaning, the orange represents the world, the candle represents Jesus being the light of the world, the ribbon represents God’s love, and the sweets and raisins represent the four seasons and God’s creations.

 

We held a special assembly for Christingle where our candles were lit, and we had time to think about how we can bring light to other people who might be sad or lonely.

 

 

25 November 2022

We have enjoyed sharing the book Owl Babies by Martin Waddell and Patrick Benson this week.  We focussed on the characters thoughts and feelings during key events in the story.

‘Bill is scared because he’s little’ Alice

‘Sarah is the biggest and is a bit brave’ Oliver

‘Sarah is kind and looks after her brother’s because they are younger’ Pippa

We wrote in speech bubbles to express the owls’ thoughts and feelings. 

We have continued to use our creative skills to create collages of owls. Mrs Riches is very impressed with how our drawing, cutting and collaging skills have improved. 

At Forest School we wondered whether any owls are nesting in our owl boxes. We retold the story of Owl Babies and made our own owl masks using the forest treasures found. We also made some bird feeders by melting lard on the fire and mixing in some bird seed. We then put them in yoghurt pots to set. We will hang them in the forest next week which will help to keep the birds fed during the autumn and winter. 

 

 

18 November 2022

We’ve had an exciting week taking part in Maths Week and meeting a very special visitor.

Maths week celebrates how maths can help us every day in our lives and help us to be confident and develop a can-do attitude.

We had a lot of fun in Reception exploring number. We have been focussing on number composition knowing numbers are made up of two or more other smaller numbers.

During our playing and learning we have developed our maths skills without even realising. We particularly enjoyed exploring with larger numbers and shape.

 

We helped support Children in Need by donating money which will support children all over the UK. We came to school wearing yellow and were delighted to get a visit from Pudsey Bear! We had a lot of fun making Pudsey masks, measuring the height of Pudsey’s friends, painting and cutting out Pudsey bears and practising our counting skills by adding the correct amount of spots to Pudsey.

 

We finished our week cooking chocolate cake on the fire at Forest School. We scooped out the oranges and poured the cake mixture in, wrapped them in tinfoil and waited for them to cook. They tasted delicious!

 

11 November 2022

In Reception this week we have been learning about Guy Fawkes and why bonfire night is celebrated on November 5^th. We talked about our experiences watching a firework display and recorded what we could see and hear. We also used our artistic skills to create a firework display picture.

In maths we have been focussing on 1:1 correspondence, number recognition and subitising (recognising a small group of objects without counting).

We found out about Remembrance Day which is a special day in November that gives people the chance to remember those who fought and lost their lives during the war and to honour their memory. We had a 2-minute silence at 11 O’clock in the forest to remember the soldiers.

  

 

 

 

 

 

In PE this week we had a visit from Mrs Burgess, she taught us a ballet class. We had a lot of fun moving to the music, being elves and fairies and mixing magic spells.

 

4 November 2022

Pumpkins and Diwali have been a focus in Reception this week.

Tesco Supermarket kindly donated us some pumpkins. We have explored the pumpkins by cutting them open and scooping them out. The pumpkins were ‘wet’, ‘smelly’, ‘hard’, ‘soggy’, ‘yucky’ and ‘slimy’.

 

 

Mrs ‘Witches’ helped us to create our own spells. We put lots of ingredients into the cauldron such as a frog, ghost, pumpkin, and a bat. Then we wrote down our spells using our phonic knowledge.

 

In the art area we used our knowledge of colour mixing to mix red and yellow to make orange to paint pumpkins. We also used our scissor skills to create pumpkin collages. 

 

We made pumpkin soup by preparing the pumpkin, carrots, potatoes, and onions. We then cooked the soup on the fire at Forest School and it enjoyed it, delicious!

 

Diwali is celebrated by Hindus in India and all around the world in October or November. It is also known as the festival of lights. We have made our own Diva lamps, painted Rangoli patterns, enjoyed listening to and retelling the Diwali story of Rama and Sita and creating patterns to decorate our hands with. 

 

21 October 2022

This week we have started thinking about autumn. We have been reading Leaf Man. It follows the journey of leaf man as he is blown across the land. A Leaf Man's got to go where the wind blows.

 

We have collected autumn leaves around the school and observed the different colours, sizes, and shapes. To remember the autumn leaves collected we wrote down the colours we observed.

We also printed with the leaves to create some beautiful autumnal pictures and painted our own autumn trees.

 

At Forest School we had our first fire, we toasted marshmallows. They tasted delicious!

 

14 October 2022

This week we have been learning about people who help us, at home in school and the wider community.

‘My Mummy helps me to wash my hair’- Isabelle

‘Mrs Riches helps me learn new graphemes’- Riley

‘Mrs Slater helps me if I fall over’- Pheobe

‘Police Officers get bad guys and put them in jail’- Ernie

‘Firefighters put fires out with a hose of water’- Thomas

Mrs Riches was very proud of our writing all about people who help us. We are beginning to use our phonic knowledge to record with.

We have been working on improving our scissor skills. We cut out pieces of blue and yellow paper to decorate a police car.

We have followed instructions to make our own little firefighters with our handprints and enjoyed singing the song Five Little Firefighters.

In Maths we have been using shapes to develop our special awareness. We used positional language such as behind, under and on to describe our creations.

Forest school was a lot of fun Mrs Riches made a rope bridge, we used our strength and balance to walk along it. We also used the conkers we have collected to make conker necklaces by drilling a hole in them and then threading them on to string. 

 

7 October 2022

This week we have been reading The Colour Monster. One day, Colour Monster wakes up feeling very confused. His emotions are all over the place; he feels angry, happy, calm, sad and scared all at once! We have talked about expressing our feelings and emotions and helped the Colour Monster organise his feelings into colours and emotion jars.

 

After eating apples for our snack, we wondered why the apples had seeds in them. We found out lots about apples and now know that apples grow on trees and the seeds can be planted to grow new trees. We planted some apple seeds and look forward to watching them grow.

We also talked about things we can make with apples and then made an apple and blackberry crumble. We prepared the apples by peeling off the skin and chopping them up. We then put the apples and blackberries in a dish, added the crumble and cooked it. It was delicious! 

 

  

30 September 2022

This week we have been learning about how we change as we grow older. We have talked about what babies need help with what we can do now we are 4 and 5 and what job we would like to do when we are grownups. Reading When We Grow Up has given us lots of ideas.

 

In maths we have been exploring ways to represent the numbers 1, 2 and 3 and have been doing lots of counting and matching.

We were very excited to go to Forest School for the first time. We met the Grandmother Tree, learnt about keeping ourselves safe in the forest and the important rule of ‘No pick, no lick, be careful with a stick’. We explored the forest area and can’t wait for next week! 

 

23 September 2022

This week we have been thinking about our families. We have shared the books The Great Big Book of Families and Families, Families, Families. We found out that there are many kinds of families, but they are all special to us. 

We made our own family trees, we talked to each other about our families and who lives in our house.

This is our class ‘Our School Family’.

In Maths, we have been exploring matching the same, comparing different and sorting using a variety of objects such as socks and buttons. After sorting and matching we talked about how we had sorted the objects whether it was by colour, size, or shape.