We are very excited in Reception because we have been introduced to a new story telling incentive within the Early Years. It is called ‘Helicopter Stories’. The previous two Tuesdays we have had special visitors who have taught and explained the concept of Helicopter stories to us.

What is a helicopter story?

Simply put, a ‘Helicopter Story’ is where a child tells an adult a story and it is written down word for word. The story is then acted out on a make shift stage by the child if they so wish and the other children within the class.

Helicopter stories allow children to see their ideas come to life in a fun way that involves and engages their peers. It allows children to grow in confidence with their story telling and eventually will encourage the children to write stories independently.

There is a parents workshop to bring “Helicopter stories’ into the home. There are 3 sessions

Come and watch story acting – Tuesday 9th February 11am

Workshop 1 for parents – Tuesday 23rd February 9 – 10.15am

Workshop 2 for parents – Wednesday 2nd March 9 – 10:15am

We are hoping that as many parents will be able to attend as possible, as we strongly belive this notion of story telling will help our children develop with their early literacy skills.

For more information on ‘Helicopter Stories’ please visit the following website:

http://www.makebelievearts.co.uk/early-years-storytelling/

Kind Regards

Mrs Jones and Mrs Coston

Since we have been back from Christmas we have been learning lots and lots. Last week and this week our focus has been on the Antarctic because we have been reading the stories, ‘Penguin and the Pinecone’ and ‘Penguin Small’.

We started the week off learning all about the word ‘curious’ as the penguin found a curious object, which was in fact a pinecone. The children had a go at describing their own curious object by having some items in a feely bag and describing them to their friends. Their friends had to guess which curious object had been chosen.

The children then used the Ipads to investigate more about where the penguins lived. They used the app Google Earth and knew that they needed to find an area that was white as the penguins lived in an area covered in ice and snow. They were successfully able to navigate their way around Google earth and could find where the penguins lived, as well as looking at where they live within the world. They even wrote some facts about penguins.

Over the last two weeks the children have been learning to recognise and order the numbers from 0 – 20. They particularly enjoyed going on a number hunt. Within the garden there were 20 penguins with the numerals 0 – 20 on their tummies. The children then had to find all of the numbers and write them down when they had found them. The children loved exploring the garden looking for the numbers and they felt very grown up walking around with a clipboard and pencil writing down the numbers they had found. Perhaps they could try this activity at home?

Also outside in the garden, the children were practicing their balancing skills. They created their own obstacle course using lots of the outside equipment and made their way across this carefully. They are becoming very confident at moving in different ways and balancing on the apparatus.

We have learnt many new phonic sounds since the last time we posted. Unfortunately we have decided against using the children to give examples of our phonic sounds, as creating the videos takes a long time to do.

However Mr Thorne on youtube explains them wonderfully and we will post links of his videos up.

Here are the videos to the new sounds we have been learning;

n sound – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whLEI0ubdao

p sound – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjPC26xA_8M

g sound – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Utd2QjG4_8

o sound – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCwoLDKvee0

c sound – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuEu5ho39cU

k sound – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qQho8cF2gY

u sound – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jC0XpKQoJOQ

b sound – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8Rnfji6_64

f sound – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_njG5IyVbWM

e sound – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKyXo9rFVow

l sound – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9k6QVgchvUY

h sound – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW__hIQj8Z4

sh sound – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHNTFlcuoDc

r sound – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ3_f2thAwg

j sound – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XlyICN_aM

Enjoy!

We are making Christmas plates in Reception to raise funds for new trips in the spring term.

We are selling the plates for £3.00 or £3.50 for a personalised plate. Below is an example of one of the plates.

If you would like to order a plate please come and see one of the Reception team.

Please can you send your child in with their christmas play costume in a named carrier bag.

Our dress rehersal is on Monday and our actual performance is Wednesday morning at 9:30

If you have any problems with obtaining a costume for your child, please come and speak to one of the Reception team as we have plenty of spare costumes.

Many thanks

On Monday the Reception children visited Wellgate Community Farm in Collier Row.

We had a lovely day and were so lucky with the weather.

The day started off with us catching the bus to Collier Row and then walking to the farm. Once we arrived at the farm we had our lunch straight away.

After eating we went on a tour of the farm where we were able to meet all of the farm animals and learn a little bit more about them.

At the farm we saw lots of animals. Some of the animals we saw were; A cow, a Shetland pony, rabbits, ducks, turkeys, pigs, geese, bees and a few others.

Here are some pictures from our lovely first trip.

Thank you to all of our adult volunteers. We couldn’t have orgainised the trip without you.

Dear Parents, we would like to apologise for our lack of absence on the blog.

As I am sure you can appreciate this is an incredibly busy time of year and unfortunately we have been unable to update the blog as often as we would have liked.

Recently there has been Halloween and Bonfire Night. The book that the class read in keeping with these two festivities was Julia Donaldson’s ‘Room On The Broom’. The children loved this story, especially when they found out that the dragon had visited our school! Thankfully it was a kind dragon and not a scary one. The maths lessons last week focused on adding two simple digits and becoming familiar with the addition and equals symbol.

This week we are celebrating Diwali, The festival of light. The children loved hearing this story today and they have created some wonderful drawings of the 10-headed baddy Ravana. Within maths this week we will be focusing on height and length, comparing sizes and measuring in non-standard forms.

Here is a link to a child friendly version of the story of Diwali

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/stories/lets-celebrate-diwaliperformance

Also here is a picture of Ravana!

Don’t forget if your child shows you any wonderful learning at home to note it down on a ‘wow’ moment. (one has been attached to this post if you need a spare one) wow moments

Mrs Jones

On Thursday we celebrated Bonfire night by doing a range of fun activities including; science experiments, art work and modelling. Have a look at the picture below to see what we got up to!

This week we have been learning the ‘i’ sound and words that begin with the ‘i’ sound.

Below you will be able to see one of our children modelling how to say the sound correctly and the phrase for writing the sound. Just in case you can’t hear him, he is saying “Down the body and a dot for his head”.

Ask your child if they can show you anything beginning with the ‘i’ sound at home and if they can write the ‘i’ sound.

IMG_0638 IMG_0639

We will post our next sound on the blog shortly!