The Spring term is always such a magical time of year. The children are settled and confident in their first year at school and all of their hard work in phonics shines through as they begin noticing more words around the room and find that they can read them by themselves! They begin to flourish with their writing as they are walking around with notepads, clipboards making lists and writing their own words and stories. Learning to read and write are such special milestones and we couldn’t be more proud of the enthusiasm and pride the children have shown this week.
We have a very special community at Our Lady’s with many skills and talents and this week we have been lucky enough to hear stories read to us in different languages; Slovakian and Spanish. The children were captivated and it encouraged some lovely conversations about other languages that they might speak or be learning at home. This is something that we want to continue as the children have really enjoyed it and have definitely been inspired!
We have continued to expand our vocabulary after reading ‘The Three Billy Goats Gruff’ and it’s been lovely hearing the children use some of this vocabulary in their play and discussions around the classroom.
Reception, can you teach your grown ups these words and actions at home?!
What have we been learning this week…
RE: This week we have continued to reflect on the three kings. We discussed the gifts that they took with them and the significance they had, we also thought about what gift we would take if we were going to visit baby Jesus and why. The children came up with some brilliant ideas: “a crown because he is our king”, “a Holy bracelet for heaven” and “special medicine so that he can help other people in the world”. We have continued to learn the Glory Be prayer and decided that we would like to share this with the whole school. We have been busy writing the prayer, photographing the actions and this has made a beautiful display in the hall for the whole school to see.
Literacy: This week we have been reading the story of the ‘Three Billy Goats Gruff’. We read the story together and learnt some new vocabulary which we acted out to help us remember the meaning. Over the week we explored a character, the setting and then we adapted the story to make it our own, whilst using our phonics knowledge to add labels to our pictures. We are becoming even more imaginative with our story telling and ideas and have thought of some very creative ways to help the billy goats get over the trolls bridge!
Maths: This week we continued to explore the composition of number, specifically numbers three and four and five. We explored the different ways that these numbers can be split into parts for example, three can be split into two and one, or one and two but the whole is still three. We practised this by making these amounts out of different resources and splitting them into parts. We have used a stem sentence to help remember the different ways these numbers can be made e.g “3 and 2 makes 5 alltogether”.
Understanding the world: Thank you for the baby pictures that have been sent in, the children are very excited to see these and we look forward to sharing them over the next in class next week as part of our past and present investigations!
Let’s Celebrate…
Each week children across the school are celebrated for demonstrating our learning characters and our school virtues. They are celebrated in class and in our Friday assemblies.
Determined Sadie Spider and Cooperative Roger Robin: Izabelle!
Izabelle, we have been so impressed with your determination this week. You have really thought about what it means to be a role model and how our choices and actions don’t just help ourselves but help others too. You have been determined with your choices and with your learning this week and we can see how happy that makes you; you’ve had a very proud smile on your face! You’ve also been cooperative and have done a brilliant job at looking after our classroom. Thank you for being determined and for being a tidy detective!
Well done Izabelle!
Kiki Creative Chameleon: George!
George, you have been really creative with your play and constructions this week. You’ve created some exciting role play games with various costumes and resources as props and have thought about how everyone can have a role and share their ideas within the games too. Keep enjoying lots of stories as this will give you even more creative ideas! Thank you for sharing these with us!
Well done George!
Whole School Virtue - Eloquent and Truthful: Mary!
Mary, you spoke so eloquently during our RE this week when we were thinking about why the Wise Men chose such special gifts for baby Jesus. You spoke about how special Jesus is to us all and thought deeply about the gift that you would give. You always try your best to follow in Jesus’s footsteps by being an eloquent and truthful friend.
Well done Mary!
Lunch time awards:
We also have lunch time certificates which are awarded by the lunch time team to those children who they see being wonderful role models and using marvelous manors:
This weeks role model: Cora!
Cora, you are a wonderful role model for our class and it’s lovely to see that you still pride yourself on being a role model out of class too.
Thank you Cora!
This weeks marvelous manors: Sydney!
Sydney, your kind manors do not go unnoticed. Thank you for remembering to be polite and for setting such a good example for others. We are really proud of you.
Thank you Sydney!
Important notices and reminders:
Polite reminder when completing the form below for the stay and play session, please write your child’s name. Without this, the response is anonymous and I don’t know who is attending. Unfortunately, I have had 3 responses with no names, if you think this may be you please let me know; thank you.
Reception Stay & Play - Spring 2 Term
We are delighted to invite grown ups back into school for our next stay and play sessions. Please click on the button below, enter your child’s name and select your preferred date and time. As with the previous stay and play session, we kindly ask that you select and attend one of the dates so that we can plan for staffing and ratios. If you able to attend either of the dates, please select this option. This would be gratefully appreciated as it would help us to allow for more evenly split groups.
We are looking forward to welcoming you into our classroom and showing you what we have been busy with this term!
If your child has an achievement or something they wish to share they are welcome to bring it on their house teams day:
Mondays: Bamber (Yellow team)
Tuesday: Harcourt (Blue team)
Thursday: Marsden (Green team)
Friday: Plessington (Red team)
(Please note this is not compulsory and doesn’t have to be each week, it is only if they have something they wish to share).If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact Mrs Hartley
s.hartley@ourladystarofthesea.lancs.sch.uk
Have a lovely weekend
God Bless,
The Reception team