Class Blog

Week Ending Friday 15th July 2022

As we have been doing our maths meetings this week and the children have been doing their working out on jotters, I realised just HOW MUCH they have learned to do independently!  We should all be really proud of them. In our maths lessons this week, we have been investigating position and direction. We have used language such as under, on top of, in front of, behind, in between, left and right to describe where things are in relation to other objects. We helped some pirates find their things on a desert island on the big board by telling them how many squares they had to move and in which direction! We were very good at helping them! We also found a great game to help us with m counting money after the pirates had found their treasure!

We have continued our theme of The Seaside by reading some fiction and non-fiction this week. We read a story called The Unexpected Visitor by Jessica Courtney Tickle and then thought about how we need to help all the creatures and the environment by taking and using only what we need. We then learned about the creatures that live under the sea and in rock pools and revised terms such as non-fiction, contents page, index, fact, label and caption. We drew pictures of rock pools and the creatures we can find in them and labelled them. We made some fabulous fish in fish tanks as well!

In R.E. we learned another parable that Jesus told: The Good Samaritan and learned that God wants us to always care for everyone and be kind to them. We also found some resources to make some houses linked to last week’s story!

In PSHE we thought about the things we are looking forward to next year in Year One after having a fabulous time in our new classroom with our new teacher Mrs Broadley. We drew pictures of ourselves as super heroes and wrote about our superpowers that make us special. These will all be going up in the hall with the work of all the other classes.

Week Ending Friday July 8th 2022

In maths this week, we have been investigating sharing between and odd and even numbers. We have learned that when you share between everyone must have the same amount so that it is fair and that you can’t share an odd number into two equal halves but you can share some of them in different ways. We have found that you can share some numbers out in lots of different ways. We used our word ‘equal’ a lot this week! We have shared shells, teddies, pebbles, and anything we can find. We even shared out numicon.

We have continued our theme of The Seaside by reading some fabulous stories this week: A Shark in the Park by Nick Sharratt (one of my very favourite books), A Shark in the Dark by Peter Bently, Tiddler by Julia Donaldson and Barry the Fish With Fingers by Sue Hendra. All fabulous stories and very entertaining. We made our own telescopes and drew and labelled what we could see through them as well as writing reports about our trip last week.

In R.E. we learned that when Jesus was grown up and trying to tell people about God and how he wanted us to live, he used to tell special stories called parables. We learned the story of the Wise Man and the Foolish Man this week and thought about what Jesus was trying to teach us when he told that story.

In PSHE we thought about how we have changed since we were babies and how we will change as we grown up and become adults.

After a rained off first Sport’s day we managed to go ahead on our reserve day and had a brilliant time! We were so proud of all the children, taking part in all the different activities, helping each other and showing great team work and perseverance! Well done to everyone and thank to all our families who turned up to support us. Congratulations to the Yellow team (Yay! My team!) on their first overall win in about 20 years!

Week Ending Friday 1st July 2022

We have had another fantastic week in Reception, starting with our trip to Norton Priory. This was to build on all our learning around mini beasts and what a lot of learning we did! We learned about all the different roles within a beehive, practised collecting pollen and nectar and doing our wiggle dances to tell everyone where it all was. Then we made a bees wax candle and made our very own plant pots out of newspaper and planted a seed each. In the afternoon we went mini beast hunting, looking at habitats. We did some worm charming, caught some min beasts from the trees and investigated the inhabitants of leaf litter. The staff at the priory were so very impressed with our children: their behaviour was excellent and they certainly showed how much they knew!

In maths this week, we have been investigating halving. We have done this with pizzas and with numbers and found out how doubling and halving are linked. We learned that if you are going to halve something, you have to share it between two so that the two parts are EQUAL.

We have continued our theme of The Seaside by reading poetry this week. We read a seaside poem by Shirley Hughes and then moved on to the excellent Commotion in the Ocean. We decided that we didn’t need to get close to the shark to look at his grin as we didn’t want to be eaten and loved the jellyfish poem too! We wrote sentences about some of the creatures and thought of words to rhyme with shark.

In R.E. we learned the story of calming the storm which continues our theme of Special People. In PSHE we have talked about all the different ways we can stay healthy that we have learned this year and especially about mental health and well-being. Remembering the Five ways of keeping our brains healthy and happy: Do Things with Others, Learn a New Skill, Keep Active, Be Mindful,

(take the time to look at things carefully) and Give to Others.

We are now looking forward to Sports Day! Please can the children come into school in their P.E. kits and we will stay in them all day. Fingers crossed for dry weather!

Week Ending Friday 24th June 2022

Wow! What a week we have had! Very well done to all the children for delivering a fantastic worship on being a ‘Purple person’. We are all so proud of you for learning your lines and being so brave and standing in front of the whole school and delivering them! You are all amazing and thank you to everyone who came to see us in action!

This week we have been learning a little bit more about doubling numbers – we need to know our doubles off by heart to at least 5+5 and I am glad to say the children have been lovely and confident! We have used dominoes, played doubling games with our fingers and chalked all the doubles we could think of.

This week we have started our new theme of The Seaside. We have read stories about going to the seaside, some fabulous Winnie the Witch stories where she goes with her pet cat Wilbur to the seaside and under the sea – and of course – being Winnie – things never go quite to plan! We had some brilliant predictions about what we thought was going to happen – including Winnie getting chased by a shark! We have written about what we like to do at the seaside or on the beach and read sentences all by ourselves!

In R.E. we learned the story of Jesus Feeding the Five Thousand with just some fish and some loaves of bread. This is part of our Special People unit and we all agreed that this story showed how special Jesus was. In PSHE we have talked about how we have changed since we were babies and made little books to show some of the things we can do now that we couldn’t when we were very tiny.

Week Ending Friday 17th June

Welcome back everyone! We hope you had a fabulous holiday and managed some lovely time together.

This week we have been subtracting using numbers 11-20 and telling subtraction stories. We have been using our sentence stems to help us tell the stories: “First there were 11 children, then 2 went away, now there are 9.” We used numicon and ten sticks and ones, counters and then moved to pictorial representations. We turned these into whole, part, part representations and then wrote equations to go with them.

In R.E. we learned about our Christian Value for this half term which is peace. We learned about what it means and how we can show it in our everyday lives. We had great fun in our P.E. lesson on the field this week, practising for our Sport’s Day. Let’s hope the weather is kind on the day!

Week Ending Friday May 27th 2022

This week we have been adding using numbers 11-20 and telling addition stories. We have been using our sentence stems to help us tell the stories: “First there were 11 ladybirds, then 2 more came along, now there are 13.” We turned these into part, part whole representations and then wrote equations to go with them.

We have been preparing for our Jubilee celebrations by learning about the Queen, her family and lots of interesting facts about her and her life. We have written some of these facts down. We were very interested to find out she had two birthdays every year and to find out she has 9 different thrones!

We also had some fun reading stories about the Queen: The Queen’s Knickers by Nicholas Allan and The Queen’s Hat by Steve Antony. We designed our own knickers and hats for Her Majesty and have decided to send pictures of our work to Buckingham Palace!

In R.E. we started a new theme of Special People and learned about all the different kinds of people who help us: doctors, nurses, policemen and women, ambulance drivers. We thought of lots and lots of different people who are special!

We had lots of fun with bowling games, javelin throwing and more practise for sports day in our P.E. lesson.

We had a great time celebrating on our Jubilee Day. The children excelled themselves with their crowns for the ‘Crown Parade’ (thanks to all our parents for your help) and we had a fab picnic party in the classroom followed by a disco! Not quite the outside ‘Yard party’ we had planned but just as much fun!

Week Ending Friday 20th May 2022

This week we have been investigating numbers 11-20 and comparing amounts. We have been using our sentence stems to help us and starting to look at where numbers are placed on a number line to help us. For example: “15 is fewer than 18. 20 is more than 14.” We have also been looking at reasoning skills using numbers 10 – 20. This has included things like testing statements about numbers to see if they are correct or not, solving word problems and spotting numbers out of order or find ones that are missing. All these encourage us to deepen our understanding of numbers and place value. We also made up our own part, part whole stories using ladybirds.

We have continued our non - fiction focus this week in our English and learned about butterflies, ladybirds, centipedes and worms. We have learned EVEN MORE new words such as: cast, segment, bristle We read labels and captions and used contents pages to find out what we wanted to know. I think everyone, including the teachers, learned lots of new and interesting facts this week!

We continued our theme of Relationships in PSHE and read a story about two very good friends who have a falling out. We talked about the things that we might fall out over with our friends and how we can make things right if we do. We learned a little rhyme: “Make friends, make friends, never ever break friends.” In R.E. we learned about the twelve special friends that Jesus had and how they helped him in his work. We learned that they had a special name and were called the Disciples and we drew pictures of them.

We had a great time on the space hoppers and using other equipment in our PE lesson this week and we also worked with our gardeners on a school project that is for Knowlsey Borough of Culture with The Owl and the Pussy Cat theme.

We have had lots of fun and are looking forward to our Jubilee celebrations next week! Have a lovely weekend!

Week Ending Friday 13th May 2022

This week we have been investigating numbers 11-20 and using lots of different resources: ten frames, unifix cubes and coins to deepen our understanding of teen numbers and how they are formed of tens and ones (we don’t call them units any more). We have used sentence stems such as “One full ten frame and three more ones is 13.” The children are becoming much more confident and it does help them understand the difference between 13 and 31 and why it is important to make sure we record our numbers correctly! We all agreed that Mrs Jones (who loves cakes) could probably eat 13 small cakes but not 31! We also have been further investigating symmetry using butterflies.

A non - fiction focus this week in our English has meant we have learned LOADS of facts about minibeasts and lots of new words, for example, habitat, insect, arachnid, compound eyes, thorax, abdomen, hive, worker, queen, drone, spiderling, spinnerets. We have written some great facts about insects and used lots of these new words in our sentences. We also wrote and illustrated lists of the min beasts we found on our hunt last week.

We have made lots of our own minibeasts using our modelling materials and had fun playing with our toy bugs; making habitats for them and matching name labels to different insects and bugs.

We continued or theme of Relationships in PSHE we continued learning about friendship by talking about loneliness and what we can do if we either are feeling lonely ourselves or see someone who is. We have started to make a poster to help us remember the actions we can take. In R.E. we thought about our circle of friends and who is in it. We drew pictures of them and labelled them. 
In music this week we were following a pulse using lots of different percussion instruments and having lots of fun! 

Week Ending Friday 6th May 2022

This week we have been investigating numbers 16-20 and watching Numberblocks to help us. We have learned that these numbers are made from 10 and a friend. We have looked at making them in lots of different ways: numicon, cubes, groups of objects and been continuing to consolidate our understanding of place value and understanding that the 1 in these numbers tells us that there is ten already there. We have ordered them, counted sets of objects and found them on different number lines – horizontal and vertical, in ascending and descending order. We have also looked at different ways we can make these numbers.

We have continued our bug theme this week by reading The Very Busy Spider and The Very Quiet Cricket by Eric Carle and then Ethan brought us in a lovely story about a slug who wanted a shell! We have written speech bubbles for characters from The very Busy Spider and read and sorted out lots of mixed up sentences!  

We continued or theme of Relationships in PSHE by looking at friendship, which was also the new theme for our RE work for the next couple of weeks. We thought about what we need to put into a cake to make it delicious and what we need to put into a friendship to make it fantastic.

We went out minibeast hunting with the ipads and found lots of creepy crawlies; woodlice, spiders, centipedes, beetles and lots of slugs and snails. We made some lovely butterflies and had a little investigation into symmetry.

Week Ending Friday 29th April 2022

Welcome back everyone! I hope you have had a lovely Easter break and enjoyed the nice weather!

This week we have been investigating numbers 11-15 and watching Numberblocks to help us. We have learned that these numbers are made from 10 and a friend. We have looked at making them in lots of different ways: numicon, cubes, groups of objects and been learning the 1 in these numbers telling us there is ten already there.

In English all our stories have had a bug theme as we are starting a new theme of Mini Beasts. We have started to read some of the stories written by Eric Carle, one of my very favourite children’s authors. So far we have read The Bad Tempered Ladybird and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. The children didn’t know whether to laugh or be shocked at the ladybird’s behaviour in the story but joined in magnificently with the repeated phrases. We also learned a new word, ‘cautious’ and read a story called The Cautious Caterpillar. We have written sentences to retell parts of the story and also written descriptions of some of the characters the caterpillar meets.

We waved off our Gardeners on their field trip to Llandudno and started a new theme of Relationships in PSHE. We looked at families and how everyone on a family has responsibilities and jobs that they do to make sure everyone in the family is happy. In R.E. we learned about our new Christian Value which for this half term is Respect. We learned looked at our four schools rules: Be Ready, Be Respectful, Be Safe and Be Kind and thought about how we can show respect to those around us. We also celebrated St. George’s Day with Red Team and learned a little bit about our patron saint.

We have had such a lovely last week of term!

In maths we have been investigating 5 and friends, looking at how numbers 6,7,8,9 and 10 can be made with 5 and a friend. The children were lovely and confident with this and we did some Build, It, Draw It, Write It, Say It maths work around this. We also did some revision of all the objectives we have covered this term.

In English all our stories had an Easter theme. We started with ‘We’re Going on an Egg Hunt’ by Martha Mumford and we discovered it was like two other stories we know well. We read a lovely story called Here Comes the Easter Cat by Deborah Underwood about a cat who is very jealous of the Easter Bunny but ends up helping him to deliver the eggs and we also read ‘The Night Before Easter.’ We wrote sentences and drew pictures about the stories and read Easter sentences and matched them to pictures. The children are all becoming really confident reading new things!

We met up again with our Gardeners to have a play with our CAMS toys and help them evaluate the project. (Mr Bell and I spent an interesting lunchtime and evening after school trying to figure out how to get some of them working so we could help the children!) We all had a fabulous time at the Easter Disco!

We drew the enormous flower that grew from the tiny seed we read about last week and drew our own diagrams of the parts of flowers and wrote our own labels and in PSHE we learned how to stay safe if someone we don't know approaches us.

We learned all about the story of Easter; Palm Sunday, The Last Supper and events of Good Friday and Easter Sunday and why it is such an important celebration. Then of course we finished the week with a fantastic Easter Bonnet parade – all the children’s bonnets were AMAZING and the whole school had a great time.

The Easter Bunny set us out an Easter Hunt this morning and we did so well at finding all his clues he left everyone an Easter egg!

Week Ending Friday 1st April 2022

This week we have been learning about time. We started by thinking about days, weeks, months and years. We read Mr Wolf’s Week and ordered the days of the week. We sequenced events in a day and thought about the longest and shortest periods of time. We looked at the hands on a clock and learned about seconds, minutes and hours. Then we learned how to make and read o’clock times. We played some What’s the Time Mr Wolf as well!

In English this week we have been reading poems on a Spring theme. We have spotted similarities and differences between them and used our first poem of the week to help us write our own! We also matched pairs of rhyming Spring words.

In PSHE this week we have been thinking about how we can keep healthy by making sure we wash our hands before we eat or drink anything! We learned how to wash our hands properly and learned a great song to help us understand why it is so important. In RE we continued our work on Special Times by learning about weddings and why they are so special. We did lots of talking about what happens at a wedding and the roles people play.

We had a great PE lesson with nursery where we did lots of partner games and work with small equipment. We were fantastic role models for Nursery and it is always lovely to see children from different classes enjoying time together.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the fabulous women who are in our lives and help look after us and love us!

This week we have been investigating 3D shapes. We are very good at recognising the main 3D shapes: spheres, cones, cubes, cuboids, pyramids, cylinders and triangular prisms. This week we have been testing out our knowledge of their properties by predicting whether they can roll, slide or stack and then testing them out. We have used vocabulary such as straight, curved, edges, points and faces. We also sorted pictures of everyday objects into groups of different 3D shapes.

In English this week we have been reading stories on a Spring theme. We started the week by reading The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle, one of my very favourite authors. We wrote our own versions of the story and made Spring lists of the things we had seen as well as doing lots of reading sentences about Spring and the stories we have read.

In PSHE this week we have been thinking about how we can keep healthy by getting the right amount of sleep. We learned why sleep is very important for our bodies and our brains and talked about our own bedtime routines. We learned a little bit about why we celebrate Mothering Sunday and were very busy on some special projects!

We also helped our gardeners with some market research for their DT project this week and can’t wait to see the finished results!

This week we have been investigating 2D shapes. We are very good at recognising the main 2D shapes: squares, circles, oblongs, triangles, hexagons and pentagons and talking about their properties using vocabulary such as straight, curved, long, short, edges, corners and opposite so we have been looking at different ways we can sort them using their properties. We have explored carroll diagrams to do this.

In English this week we have been learning about Spring – which has been definitely in the air! We took the i-pads out and about on the school grounds to take photographs of what we could see changing around us. We have read some non-fiction texts about the season and revised terms such as contents page, label, caption and fact. We have written sentences about what we have seen. We also read a poem by Shirley Hughes called Spring Greens and discussed why so many animals have their babies in Spring.

In PSHE this week we have been thinking about how we can keep healthy by eating a healthy diet. We looked at different foods and learned that some foods are good to eat every day and others are better to have less often as a treat. We made our own healthy plates to help us remember. We continued our new RE theme of Special Times by thinking about Christenings. We learned what they symbolise and what happens when someone is Christened. Thank you for the photographs you sent in.  Green team celebrated St. Patrick’s day and we learned about Ireland and how the day is celebrated as well as learning about the life of the saint.

We had another creative dance lesson to start our new PE block where we thought about penguins and how they move and danced to Boogie Wonderland from happy Feet. We were so pleased with our dance that we invited our Gardeners in to see the final version. It didn’t take very long for our gardeners to join in!

This week we have been reading some of my very favourite books that help us learn about rhyming. Oi Frog, Oi Dog and Oi Cat by Kes Gray and Jim Field are brilliant books that are funny and help the children learn about rhyming. We have spent all week playing rhyming games, writing rhyming strings and sentences and joining in with the stories. If you haven’t already read these books – give them a try!

In PSHE this week we have been thinking about how we can keep healthy by exercising and all the different ways we exercise. What a lot of different sports and activities we all do! We have started our new RE theme of Special Times by thinking about special times we have had. Next week we will be learning about Christenings. It would be lovely if we could have some photos of the children at their own or family christenings.

Welcome back everyone! I hope you had had a lovely half term!

This week we have been investigating more measuring but this time investigating weight using balance scales. We have compared items in the scales and used cubes as a standard unit of measurement. We have been using sentences such as ‘The glue stick is heavier than the pencil and the numicon piece is lighter than the scissors.’ We have learned to check that the balance scales are level before we start and to keep checking for when they level up as we add cubes to the other side.