This week we we joined our whole school community at Church to celebrate Father Peter’s 50th year as a priest. Reception always enjoy walking to church with their year 6 buddies. They take such good care of us on the journey and it’s lovely to hear the conversations and discussions along the way.
In Church, Mrs Gregan spoke about how Father Peter has been like a lighthouse for us all, guiding us and the church community to be the best versions of themselves. This has made us think in Reception about how we can be that lighthouse, how can we guide, support and shine our light for others?
What have we been learning this week:
RE: This half term we are reflecting on Jesus’s ascension to Heaven to be with His Father and how He knew his apostles and disciples would miss him so He sent the Holy Spirit to be with them. These are some of the wondering questions that we are exploring: I wonder why Jesus went back to His Father? I wonder where we might see Him in our world? I wonder how Jesus friends were feeling when they waited for the Holy Sprit? I wonder how the Holy Spirit can help us?
Literacy: This week in Drawing Club we have explored the story ‘Pirate Pete’. Our vocabulary this week has been: peer, adventuring, voyage, ocean, navigate, directions. This story was slightly different to previous ones and has allowed us to become story tellers and use our imaginations to fill in the missing parts. We have imagined that we are the pirate and whilst on our voyage, we have stumbled across a treasure chest! We have all challenged ourselves to write sentences about what we found in the treasure chest, (I can see…) and the children have really impressed us and themselves with their sentence writing skills.
For these sentences, Mrs Hartley was looking for 5 things..
1. Capital letter
2. Finger spaces
3. Have we thought about where the letter starts and which way round it goes
4. Are our letters on the line
5. Have we used a full stop at the end
The children were great at remembering these 5 things and were reflective Lizzie Ladybirds when checking their work at the end.
Maths: This week in Maths we have been building on our subitising skills with amounts up to six. We remembered that when we subitise, we “don’t count see the amount”. We have also been exploring ways that we can make six using 2 parts.
Understanding the World: This half term our topic is ‘Water’. It’s wonderful to see some of the children enjoying the optional challenges (see below) and we have already had some exciting water facts being shared. This week, we thought about our wondering questions and what we would like to explore further over the next few weeks. Some of our questions were: “Where does rain come from?”, “How does rain get into the clouds?”, “What are the names of some oceans and seas” and “What is the difference between an ocean and a sea?”.
Let’s Celebrate…
This week’s learning and virtue role models are:
Focused Cooper Crab:
Rebecca, this week we have been so impressed with your focus during drawing club. You wrote a brilliant sentence and the best part was the huge smile on your face when you realised what you had done! It was wonderful seeing you feel so proud of your achievement, it deserves to be celebrated. We are so proud of you too.
Well done Rebecca!
Focused Cooper Crab: Jack!
Jack, you have been so focused with lots of our learning this week and we have been so pleased to see how much you have enjoyed sharing your ideas with others. You’ve especially enjoyed our ‘odds’ and ‘evens’ number discussions and you were spotted re-creating our drawing club story during choosing time! Keep up this brilliant focus and excitement for learning Jack. We are really proud of you!
Well done Jack!
Whole School Virtues - Learned and Wise: Cora!
Cora, you are always learned and wise in the decisions and choices you make and then way in which you treat others. Thank you for demonstrating these important virtues and for being such a good role model in our class!
Well done Cora!
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: Izabelle!
This weeks marvelous manors: Sydney!
Thank you both for being such wonderful role models and for remembering those acts of kindness everyday!
Challenge Books!
The children were very excited to show me the challenges they have completed in their challenge books and we were very impressed! It’s wonderful that they have taken this on with such enthusiasm and determination; it is really showing in their writing.
Today you will find new challenges in your books and we are focusing on the letters ‘o’ and ‘s’. Remember to think about where the letter starts and which way it goes. If you say the rhyme in your head e.g. for ‘s’ we say “slither down the snake” that will help you remember to start at the top and slither down!
Please could these challenge books be kept in bags. Challenges are to be completed by Thursday, so we can prepare the next set of challenges!
We kindly ask that challenges be completed in pencil and this is easier for the children to fix with a purple pencil in school if they need to. Thank you.
Good luck Reception!
Optional Challenges!
It is wonderful that the children are so excited about their learning and to see how keen they are to continue this outside of school. We welcome any opportunity to share these learning experiences with you at home, which is why we have created ‘optional challenges’ across each year group which can be explored over this Summer 1 half term.
These challenges link to the wider area of our curriculum which in EYFS are:
Understanding the World (Science, Geography and History), Expressive Arts and Design (Art. DT and Music) and our Gross and Fine motor skills (PE).
Below you will find the optional challenges linking to the topics and areas of learning that we will be exploring this half term. These fun challenges are designed to cover a range of skills without being stressful or time consuming for you at home. You are welcome to complete them in any order you wish and it would be lovely to see pictures or examples of things that the children have enjoyed at home.
As always, thank you for your continued support.
Important notices and reminders:
Keyrings on bags - we kindly ask that children have just 1 keyring on their school bag. There has been a large number of keyrings on some bags which has caused bags and coats etc. to get tangled up in our cloakroom. We have also seen keyrings with small parts and torches. These are not safe in school.
If children would like to have a keyring to identify their bag, it needs to be a small keyring with no loose or flashing parts.
Thank you for your understanding.Water bottles - Polite reminder that all children need to bring water bottles to school every day. It is really important that they are drinking plenty of water throughout the day and we always have bottles out of bags to encourage this. Please ensure these are labels as some have the same bottle and have been getting them mixed up!
Thank you.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