Hi all

A great way to get your children thinking about addition and subtraction is through drawings!  The children love drawing mathematical marks on their boards to represent addition.  We also use counters, an abacus (!) and some children are even able to add in their heads or on their fingers.  The children in Willow have even been seen to transfer these skills into their own play and act as scorekeepers, making the mathematical marks to show what is happening in their game.  Solving their own problems is great for their self esteem!

Take a look at some of our amazing maths work.  You can see that some of our children can add very high numbers in their heads already!  Our Year 1 teachers are very lucky to be receiving such intellectual children!

Our next step is to ensure that all children are forming their numbers correctly.  You can help us by practising at home.

Hi all!

Just a few updates to tell you what has been happening and what will happen for the next few weeks!

Firstly I’d like to tell you that we had a visit from the borough as part of their moderation cycle (this happens at least once every 4 years for every school in the borough) on Friday afternoon and the moderators were very pleased with what they discovered during our conversations and through us sharing the children’s wonderful work.  This moderation looks at the provision the children receive while in school and how well we as adults support them in their learning and assess them.  Well done everyone!

The children will resume their phonics lessons this week and will be taking home a new RWI book to read with you.  Home reading books will be changed in classes as normal for the week.  Well done to everyone who has really upped the reading at home- we have noticed a big difference in their skills so well done everyone!

Our new reception children will be attending stay and play sessions for the next 3 Tuesdays.  Your child should come to school as normal but during 9:30-10:30, Mrs Dobinson and some other adults will be taking the current children out to the field to take part in activities while the new children have a chance to explore their new environment. During the final week, the current children will spend time with the new children, helping them to settle in while the new intake of parents meet us in the hall.  We know your children will be extremely helpful to the youngest additions to our school!

As usual, please feel free to come and speak to any adult at the end of the school day.  We have managed to speak to lots of you about your child’s writing as SO many children have had their work displayed on the Star Writer wall!  The star writer bag will be given out this week to our 2 best writers of the whole week.

Mrs Toms 🙂

Hi all!

What a lovely term we have had learning all about plants!

Our beans we planted have started to sprout from the bottom so it will not be long before they are sprouting from the top too and we will see some beautiful green shoots.  Olsa, Rona and Jack have been doing an amazing job of watering and caring for our plants.  Well done to the three of you- our resident gardeners!

Some activities we have been taking part in are;

-making a parachute for Jack to float down from the beanstalk safely

-observational drawings of leaves

-adding and subtracting using fingers, drawings, cubes and number lines

-painting images from the story of Jack and the Beanstalk and The Tiny Seed

-building large beanstalks from tyres and other big construction materials

-small world play with stick puppets and castles

-observational drawings of castles

-riding balance bikes while wearing helmets

-learning to use skipping ropes

-matching upper case to lower case letters

-threading tiny beads onto spaghetti strands

plus many more!!

Hi all!

Here are some of the fun activities that are out for the children this week.  Our transport theme is ‘Whatever Next’ and magical space travel!

Use the coloured water to “paint” the letters and numbers.

Use the scales to weigh the animals and use the language of ‘more’ and ‘fewer’

Use the 100 square to write numbers or cover one up with a post it note and ask a friend to guess the hidden number.

Wash the teddy bears in soapy water after they have been up the chimney!

Place the teddies in the spaceships.  Compare with your friends.  Which spaceship has more/fewer?

Build a rocket for Baby Bear to replace his cardboard box rocket!

Here are some images of the children playing with the activities! Great learning!

Use the space writing frames and the word mats to write about Baby Bear’s adventures.

Use the lolly sticks to point to the sounds as you segment for reading.

The children love shared writing on a large piece of paper!  Write the key words.

This is our ‘Whatever Next’ display.  Can you write a list of things Baby Bear took with him to the moon?

If you enjoyed looking through our photos then please leave a little comment! Comments will be sent to us for approval and approved ASAP 🙂

Here are the photos from our school trip to Upminster!  The children loved being on the trains and watching the c2c.

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WOW!  What fantastic costumes you have found or made!  We were very impressed and we had such a lovely day while dressed up.  We look forward to more dress up days in Reception 🙂

Good morning mums, dads and carers!

We will be starting to encourage the children to walk from the school gate to the classroom door after the Easter holidays in the summer term.  Until then, please feel free to walk your child down all the way to the door as usual.  It can be a big and scary thing when you are tiny to walk that far away from the person looking after you when they are normally right by our sides!

When we return after Easter this may not happen automatically for some children.  Some children are already confident to walk down by themselves but others may need more of a gradual distancing.  You may decide to leave them with a few footsteps to walk by themselves and then gradually increase this every few days until they are walking from the gate by themselves.

Our children are all unique and develop in different ways- they cannot be rushed! 🙂

As always, you are more than welcome to come in and look at the children’s profiles in the mornings or pop in after school.

Many thanks,

Reception team

Here are some of the recent activities put out for the children to access during child initiated play.  Please come and tell us if your children have spoken about their favourite activities or what they would like to see more of!

Thank you for your recent kind donations.  The children are enjoying seeing new things in the environment.

Did you know?….  Some boys particularly favour writing and mark making while they are laying down on the floor with a large piece of paper or cardboard?  Have a go at home and see what happens! Alternatively you can sellotape a piece of paper to the underside of a small table and have them lay underneath it and draw/write with their arms in the air.

Reception have been learning all about Mr Gumpy’s Outing.  We have been looking at different materials to see if they float or sink.  Mrs Toms helped us to understand why some things float and why some materials that float pop back up to the surface of the water even after being pushed down!

Please encourage your children to talk about floating and sinking when they are in the bath- you could use shampoo bottles, bars of soap and toys!

Remember; objects with tightly packed molecules will sink (what the material is made up of (inside!)) and objects with more loosely packed molecules will float!

Here are some pictures from our outdoor activity.