Termly News

Summer Term 2024

It has been another exciting term in Reception with many fun and engaging activities including our first Sports Morning, Maths Day, Earth Day, school trip and even a visit from some Surrey Police officers and their police car!

This term we were extremely excited to introduce Drawing Club to the children. It is a way of building skills including fine motor, maths, early writing and vocabulary through the magic world of stories. Drawing Club incorporates story sharing, speaking and listening, drawing, writing, vocabulary, mathematics, imagination and collaboration. Each week we have a focus story or animation. The children learn new vocabulary linked to the story or animation and are invited to Drawing Club, where they may draw a character, setting or event. They can innovate their drawings and add secret passwords, magic powers, hidden symbols, letters or numerals. The children have loved coming to Drawing Club and we cannot believe the level of imagination the children have shared this term. A few of the stories we have focused on are – ‘Mrs Armitage on Wheels’ by Quentin Blake, ‘You Can’t Take an Elephant on the Bus’ by Patricia Cleavland-Peck, ‘Barry the Fish with Fingers’ by Sue Hendra and ‘Tiddler’ by Julia Donaldson.

We have been completing Phase 4 in our Little Wandle phonics sessions. The children have been revising Phase 2 & 3 graphemes as well as reading longer words and compound words. We have learnt to read words ending in suffixes: –ing, –ed /t/, –ed /id/ /ed/, –est and some new tricky words. The children have enjoyed using their new learning to support them with writing in Drawing Club as well as reading their new weekly books.   

In Maths we have been securing our knowledge and understanding of numbers to 20, sharing and grouping and learning more about shapes. On Maths day we had so much fun exploring patterns we could see in our environment as well as creating our own patterns using a variety of resources around the classroom. We used these patterns to create a whole-class underwater scene. We have also explored our use of positional language: such as behind, next to in between to describe the position of objects within our classroom. We even made comparisons between two or more people’s perception of an object based on where they are standing!

This term we have had many exciting events such as; Earth Day, our wonderful trip to Bekonscot Model Village and a visit from Surrey Police. On Earth Day, we discussed the importance of looking after our planet and the environment as well as finding out what everyday things we can do to help. We carried out some creative activities and planted seeds so we can help the growth of many living things. We even spent an hour without our lights in our classrooms to save energy!

Our trip to Bekonscot was so much fun. The children enjoyed exploring all the models, learning about the history of the area and how transport has changed over time. Our train ride was definitely a highlight of the day and we had such a lovely time.

During our learning about ‘People Who Help Us’ we had a special visit from Sergeant Lomas and PC Ridley from Surrey Police. They spoke to us about their role in keeping people safe, their uniform, police vehicles and even let us try on their uniform we all had so much fun including the teachers! We were also lucky enough to have a visit from a nurse who spoke to us about how she helps people and showed us how to make a sling.

We have enjoyed learning all about ‘Under the Sea’ with many of our sea themed stories. We have been exploring some sea-themed sensory tuff-trays, created lovely arts and crafts and made boats out of tin foil. We then became scientists and tested how many gems/marbles it would take to sink our boats. We worked as a team to restructure our boats and made changes to see if we could make them float with more gems/marbles.

We also cannot forget that Fox, Squirrel and Hedgehog have all completed their first ever Class Assemblies! Many of us were nervous at the time but all enjoyed sharing our learning and performances with you.

Finally, we have thoroughly enjoyed visiting our new classrooms and teachers as well as spending lunchtimes out on the back playground to help us get ready for Year 1. We cannot believe we are days away from finishing our first year of school!

Spring Term 2024

There has been lots of exciting learning this term and we cannot believe how fast the time has gone!

This term in Phonics we have been learning our Phase 3 graphemes as well as reviewing Phase 2. The children have been working hard to read words with double letters and learning how to use chunking to read longer words. They have enjoyed using their phonic knowledge to support them with writing words and sentences about what they can see in images linked to the amazing books we have read. We have enjoyed reading ‘The Rabbit, The Dark and The Biscuit Tin’, Owl Babies, The Teeny Weeeny Tadpole’ and ‘A Little Seed’. We also particularly liked ‘Supertato’ where we created our own supermarket, made our own fruit and vegetable superheroes and wrote about where we thought the peas were hiding when the school cooks couldn’t find them!

We have really enjoyed exploring the cold winter weather this term and what changes it causes to our environment. Acting as scientists, we carried out an ice experiment where we used a range of materials such as salt and warm water to see what would happen to the ice. The results were quite interesting, although we were a little sad to see that it all did still melt! As the weather got a little warmer we started to learn all about animals and their lifecycles. We first learnt about nocturnal and diurnal animals and were surprised to learn the reasons why some animals sleep during the day when we are awake! Then we had a delivery of frogspawn which has visited all three classrooms to give the children a memorable first-hand experience of lifecycles by immersing them into a scientific exploration of frogs, pond life, metamorphosis and growth. We absolutely loved exploring our frogspawn and were so excited when they turned into tadpoles! We thoroughly enjoyed observing them and the physical changes that occurred in their lifecycle.

In maths we built upon our number knowledge by exploring the composition of 6, 7, 8 9 and 10 using more practical resources and our subitising skills to build these numbers. We played many games and songs to help us learn our number bonds to and within 10. We then looked at double facts to 10, playing games with dice and tens frames to support our learning. In the last few weeks we worked on recognising and naming 3D shapes and finding 2D shapes within the 3D shapes. We went on a 3D shape hunt to see what real 3D objects we could find. Finally, we looked at sorting and creating patterns, some of us were good a spotting repeating patterns in our environment.

This term we have had many exciting events such as; World Religion Day, Safer Internet Day, World Book Day and Science Week!  On World Religion Day we enjoyed exploring the religion ‘Judaism’ by colouring and completing craft activities to make our own Mezuzah Boxes and the Star of David. World Book Day was one of our favourites as we got to come to school in our comfy pyjamas! We explored the storybook, ‘What the Ladybird Heard’ and particularly enjoyed decorating and eating ladybird biscuits during our Cosy Bedtime Read Session. We were also lucky enough to have Year 6 visit our classrooms to share some lovely stories with us! During Science Week Year 5 came over and we went outside to explore the concept of change over time through the seasons. We used this knowledge to help us create blossom trees using tissue paper.

We also celebrated Chinese Luna New Year with a whole range of fun activities – such as, listening to celebration music, reading the story of the Chinese Zodiac and trying some noodles and rice.

Towards the end of the term we looked at all of our cute baby photos and played ‘Guess Who?’ which helped us to understand the concept of past, present and future. In the last week we learnt about the Easter Story, completed fun crafty actives including baking our own chocolate nests and even had a visit from a real life CHICKEN!

Autumn Term 2023

We have had a wonderful start to the school year.  This Autumn, the children have been very busy getting to know their new school and we have thoroughly enjoyed spending time getting to know all of them!  There has been so much excitement, learning and fun.  We have been working on setting expectations, introducing them to our Golden Rules, routines and thinking about how we can celebrate our differences as well as what makes a good friend.  In addition, we have introduced the children to the wonderful world of Westfields Infant School with Odd Socks Day, Reading Matters Week, Time to Shine Day to name just a few...

In terms of curriculum highlights, we have particularly enjoyed learning the Phase 2 graphemes (simple sounds) and learning to blend these sounds to read words.  We have had many fun topics such as 'All about Bears' where we read 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt' and acted it out around the school grounds, to see if we could spot signs that a bear has been to visit us.  We found bear paw prints in the ground and then we used our sounds to help us label photos from our 'Bear Hunt Walk'.  In maths we made repeating patterns using bear paw prints and sorted natural materials into groups using variety of criteria.

We also immersed ourselves into a world of traditional tales, starting with Jack and The Beanstalk where we counted magic beans and matched them to their numeral on leaves from Jack's beanstalk.  In literacy we discovered and named some GIANT items that had fallen down from the top of the beanstalk and we got creative and painted characters from the story.  Our next traditional tale was 'The Three Billy Goats Gruff'.  We wrote where the Troll may have ended up once he had been butted off of the bridge and in maths we found different ways to make 5 and looked at one more, one less than a given number.

We have also been very lucky to experience some WOW moments!  First we were lucky enough to have one of our lovely parents in to talk to the children about the celebration of Diwali.  Then we had a Diwali feast followed by an Assembly to light all of our diva lamps, it really was an exciting learning experience.

As a year group, we carried out our very first science experiment this term, by investigating 'What would have happened to the Gingerbreadman if he swam through the river?'  The children were so enthusiastic about making predictions and testing their theories.  In and around the classroom we opened mini bakeries, which was lots of fun.....and even more mess!

What a festive end to the term we had with our wonderful Year Rs performing their very first Nativity.  All of the staff were so proud of all the hard work, joy and enthusiasm the children showed during the performances.  The last couple of weeks of term were very busy days filled with crafts, music, festivities ... alongside plenty of glitter.  The children acted as elves around the classroom, we began practising subtraction by taking away amounts of Christmas lights and then wrote our own number sentences.  We even had a visit from Father Christmas!

All of the children should be very proud of what they have achieved and we cannot wait to see what the next term will bring!