The highlight of this week had to be our visit to The Theatre Royal, Plymouth, where we saw 'The Elves and the Shoemaker' in The Drum Theatre, performed by the Stuff and Nonsense Theatre Company.
The children were enthralled by their performance of our focus story and loved the fact that this version had many variations on the version we are studying in class. We would like to thank the FOPs who supported us with the cost and also parents who drove on the day. We also thank Mrs Alberry and Mrs Bridges, our wonderful volunteers, who help us every week in class -  your support is very much appreciated.

In our literacy work, following on from the performance of the story, we have been creating story sticks, using different colours of wool to remind us of key parts of the tale. These will help the children to begin to re-tell the story next week.

The children  have also used alliteration to give themselves elf names and are greatly amused to see their own elves wearing the hats they created, on display!

In maths, we have been continuing with our work on 1 more and 1 less than a given number, ending on Friday with everyone playing a challenge game to apply what they have learnt.

Thank you to Mrs Goddard for visiting class on Friday to remind everyone how to wash their hands thoroughly - so very important at the moment with so many winter bugs around.

READING - we have noticed that not so many children are reading at home at the moment - this is crucial in order for your child to develop their reading skills, so please ensure that you do share their book with them as much as possible.
During the next week you may notice that we have new reading books in school. These will be even more closely matched to your child's learning of phonics and will provide an opportunity for them to practice their learning of phonics. They should be able to read the majority of words in the books which we send home, so do please allow them to practice. Thank you.

Things to remember for next week:
*PE kits should be in school every day please.
*Forest school clothes are needed every FRIDAY.
*Please write in WOW books when you notice something amazing.
*Please read every day with your child and record in reading records any comments you may have. Remember that your child receives a karate reading band each time they read 5 times at home.
*Please read the events diary on this website for dates.

*Bring Show and Tell on Friday 24th January - please bring an object made of fabric, wood or metal. You should tell your friends which material your object is made from and why that is a suitable material for purpose. Thank you.

Happy New Year to you all.

It has been great to welcome everyone back to school this week and the children have all grown up so much over the holidays. Well done to them all for starting back with a great attitude to learning.

Apologies for the lack of blog at the very end of term - many things overtook me, including being involved in a car accident, so thank you for your understanding.

I was a very proud teacher after the nativity play. The children worked so hard to prepare and rehearse for their performance and they were all absolute stars on the day. The positive effects of learning, performing and working together is evident in  the children - super to see.

In the final week of term, they all thoroughly enjoyed making a variety of decorations and no doubt they adorned your Christmas trees with their creations! Our party was a great success, with everyone playing the games with good team spirit and especially enjoying the party food!

As we enter the new year, the children have reflected on their Christmas and sounded out to write about their special time and also to write new year resolutions linked to their learning in school. They all completed a star for 'What I would like get better at this year,' and we saw some grown up reflections about what they would like to improve on.

In maths, 6 is our number of the week and we have also been focussing on finding 1 more than a given number; the children have been investing and recording this in a variety of ways.

Our new topic learning question is 'What is it like inside a shoe?' and the children have started to investigate and explore various types of shoes and the different materials they are made of. They have also been printing with shoes and have started to create elves hats, based on the story of 'The Elves and the Shoemaker.'
We are all greatly looking forward to our trip to the Theatre Royal, Plymouth next week to watch their production of this story - thank you to the FOPs for providing the tickets  for this visit.
Things to remember for next week:
*REMEMBER TO BRING A PACKED LUNCH ON TUESDAY FOR OUR TRIP.
*ALSO REMEMBER TO COLLECT CHILDREN AT 3.45PM ON THE DAY OF THE TRIP. THANK YOU
*PE kits should be in school every day please.
*Forest school clothes are needed every FRIDAY.
*Please write in WOW books when you notice something amazing.
*Please read every day with your child and record in reading records any comments you may have. Remember that your child receives a karate reading band each time they read 5 times at home.
*Please read the events diary on this website for dates.
*Bring Show and Tell on Friday 17th January - please bring an object made of leather or plastic. You should tell your friends which material your object is made from and why that is a suitable material for purpose. Thank you.

Our Christmas tree is up in Class 1 and the children have been set the challenge of decorating it with decorations which they have made themselves.

On Monday we started to do this when Halle's mum came to show the children how to sew Christmas stocking decorations using felt and ribbon. They decorated them with 'snow' and snowflakes and the results are now hanging on the tree. Thank you Hermione for your help and for providing the resources for this activity.

There will be many opportunities to create more decorations for the tree over the next couple of weeks, using different mediums and skills.

In literacy, the children have been recognising what happens at the beginning, middle and end of the nativity story and ordering pictures of the story.

Our rehearsals for the play are coming along very well and we have been to the church a couple of times to rehearse; everyone is looking forward to the stage going up next week. Costume lists have gone out now - please send into school as soon as you can (but no later than Weds 11th Dec) so that we have them ready for the performance. Thank you.
Please  remember that performances are at the church 2.00 pm and 6.00 pm, on Monday 16th December. We ask that the children are back at school to get ready for the evening performance by 5.10pm.

In maths this week we have been ordering numbers and recognising missing numbers to 10 and 20. At the end of the week, the children applied their learning to complete some Christmas dot-to-dot pictures.



Things to remember for next week:
*Send in costume requirements for your child by Weds please
 *PE kits should be in school every day please.
*Forest school clothes are needed every FRIDAY. 
*Please write in WOW books when you notice something amazing.
*Please read every day with your child and record in reading records any comments you may have.
*Please read the events diary on this website for dates.
*Bring Show and Tell on Friday 13th December - please bring a game to play with a friend. Thank you.
*Nativity play performances at the church 2.00pm and 6.00pm, Monday 16th December
*Show and share will take place on Weds 18th December at 3.15pm - please come and share your child's work with them.

As we approach December, it is all about nativity in Class 1 at the moment!

This week we have sent scripts home for your child to learn their lines for the nativity play. If they have a non-speaking part then they will not have brought a script home.
We really appreciate your support with learning lines - our play rehearsals will be stepping up a notch now that we are only two weeks away from performance.

When working through the words with your child, please make sure that you help them to be aware of the lines which are said just before their own, so that they are aware of their cue. Thank you.

Costume lists will be sent out this coming week.

Also, please be aware that we do two performances of the play -  at 2pm and 6pm on Monday 16th December. 

Our literacy this week has continued to focus on the nativity story, with children recognising, creating and labelling the different settings within the story.
In handwriting the focus has been the 'one-armed robot' letters of r, n, h, m and b and everyone has enjoyed developing their paintbrush control when using water colours to paint within the lines of different pictures. Mrs G and I have been impressed at how well everyone controlled their brush strokes.

In maths we have been using the language associated with capacity - full, empty, half full, half empty, nearly full, nearly empty. The children have investigated liquids and solids in various containers to develop this language and to make comparisons.
We also linked capacity to weight when we looked at the same weight of popcorn kernels and 'popped' corn; the children looked at these in two bags and compared their capacity. It was great to hear the resulting  ideas and discussions!

Thank you to everyone who visited the book fair this week - we have been able to select nearly £300 of books for our library as a result.

Things to remember for next week:
*Phonics information session for parents on Tuesday at 3.15pm
 *PE kits should be in school every day please.
*Forest school clothes are needed every FRIDAY. 
*Please write in WOW books when you notice something amazing.
*Please read every day with your child and record in reading records any comments you may have.
*Please read the events diary on this website for dates.
*Bring Show and Tell on Friday 22nd November - please bring a  Christmas book to share with a friend. Thank you.
*Nativity play performaces at the church 2.00pm and 6.00pm, Monday 16th December

This week has been all about the Christmas Story in Class 1!

Our next celebration which is the focus of our learning is Christmas, so this week in our literacy work, the children have listened to the Christmas story and have identified the characters within it. They then drew a picture of each character and wrote a label for each one. They used their phonics learning and a sound mat to sound out to spell each word and we were very impressed with their writing - well done everyone. Next week we shall be learning about the settings in the story.
This is helping to build their knowledge of the story, in order to prepare for the performance of our nativity play.

We began rehearsals this week and we think that we have allocated everyone with parts they are happy with. A final decision will be made next week, when lines to learn will be sent home. 
The children are really enjoying working as a team to perform the play and are especially looking forward to wearing costumes for the two performances! Please make sure that the date is in your diary - Monday 16th December at 2.00pm and 6.00pm.

In maths this week everyone has been solving problems around numbers to 5 and how each of those numbers can be represented. They have used balance scales to find how different towers of cubes can make equivalent numbers and also how different coins can make the same amount. To put this learning into practice, they have all been 'buying' their snack each day, using 1p, 2p and 5p coins to buy a piece of fruit costing 5p. We shall continue with this at snack time each day.
Next week our maths  focus will be around capacity, so if you could use the language of that concept with your children at home, that would be great (full, empty, half full/empty, nearly/almost full/empty, this container holds the most/least, etc). Thank you.

As part of the nativity play rehearsals, we have had lots of experiences in our expressive arts and design learning; in music everyone has been learning new songs, which they greatly enjoy - we have some great singers in Class 1! Small collage Christmas trees have been made for display and we also began a mixed media collaborative display of 'The Nativity'. Everyone enjoys developing their art and design skills.

In PE this week we have been learning how to make shapes and also how to move on one particular body part - this has linked to our focus of controlling our bodies with greater precision. Mrs Forbes has extended this to also controlling equipment and the children have been working on their ball skills with her.

Things to remember for next week:
*DON'T FORGET TO VISIT OUR BOOK FAIR IN THE HALL AFTER SCHOOL EVERY DAY UNTIL THURSDAY THIS WEEK. IF YOU WOULD LIKE A CHANCE TO BROWSE FOR CHRISTMAS GIFTS WITHOUT THE CHILDREN, PLEASE CALL IN FIRST THING ON MONDAY, WHEN THERE WILL BE COFFEES AVAILABLE UNTIL 9.30. ANY BOOKS YOU PURCHASE WILL BE MATCHED BY SCHOLASTIC FOR OUR SCHOOL SO YOUR SUPPORT IS GRATEFULLY RECEIVED. THANK YOU.
*PE kits should be in school every day please.
*Forest school clothes are needed every FRIDAY.
*Please write in WOW books when you notice something amazing.
*Please read every day with your child and record in reading records any comments you may have.
*Please read the events diary on this website for dates.
*Bring Show and Tell on Friday 29th November - please bring an object which is associated with winter - it may be something you wear, use for a winter sport, eat, anything which you can tell us why it is needed in winter. Thank you.

As part of our learning question' 'Why are celebrations special?' we have been learning about Diwali this week.

In literacy, the children have created fact sheets to tell others how the festival of Diwali is celebrated. Some children then shared their newly learnt facts to the whole school in assembly.

After learning about diva lamps, everyone made their own lamp out of salt dough and  learnt a song called, 'I'm a Little Diva Lamp', which we also shared in assembly - well done to everyone.

Our maths learning this week has been all about our number of the week - 5. The children have used their fingers and cubes to investigate how the number of 5 can be made. We then used those facts to explore addition and subtraction facts to 5.

The children have used a variety of different materials in gaining an understanding of what makes Diwali special; as well as the salt dough diva lamps, they made edible sparklers from bread sticks, melted chocolate and sprinkles. They have used pastels to create Rangoli patterns for display and collage to create diva lamp pictures, as well as salt painting with pva glue, salt and watercolours for firework painting.

Everyone also used their senses to taste foods which may be eaten at a Diwali feast. The classroom smelt deliciously spicy when we tasted pakora, samosa, bhaji and naan bread! All of the children tried each food and then rated each one by using a smiley, straight or sad face on their test sheet. Naan bread and pakora were the definite winners!

Next week we shall be starting to learn our nativity play, so once parts have been allocated costume lists will be sent out. We have most of the outfits in school, so will just be asking for the correct coloured t-shirts/tights/leggings/etc. Thank you.


Things to remember for next week:
*Don't forget to make an appointment for our parent consultations - please see Mrs Trevaskis at the office if you haven't already. I am looking forward to seeing you all there on Wednesday or Thursday.
*PE kits should be in school every day please. 
*Forest school clothes are needed every FRIDAY. Please note that this is our new forest school day from now on.
*Please write in WOW books when you notice something amazing. 
*Please read every day with your child and record in reading records any comments you may have. 
*Please read the events diary on this website for dates.
*Bring Show and Tell on Friday 22nd November - please bring a special Christmas decoration to tell your friends about. Thank you.

Welcome to the first blog linked to our new learning question, 'Why are Celebrations Special?'

The children have thought about what a 'celebration' is and have started to recognise why certain celebrations are special by learning the story of Guy Fawkes and the gunpowder plot, in order to celebrate bonfire night.

Our literacy learning has been to use talk to organise our thoughts and to learn and use new words. The children watched video clips of fireworks and read some stories to generate their own word bank of words to describe fireworks. They then worked in two groups to use this vocabulary in an acrostic poem called BONFIRE NIGHT.
Everyone then used collage and paint to create a bonfire picture and selected their own words to describe the bonfire. 

We have continued with our shape work in maths and the children have sorted 2D and 3D shapes, gone on shape hunts, played bingo games and they have also used flat 2D paper shapes as well as 3D wooden blocks  to create fireworks. 

There have been many firework/shape activities in our Learning Through Play (LTP) time this week, including making sparklers from a wooden dowel, strips of paper and tape. 
The children also studied the work of a Russian artist called Kandinsky, particularly his painting, 'Squares with Concentric Circles'. They then investigated what happens when you colour a clear, plastic cup with circles of permanent pen and then melt the cup. The children were fascinated by the video of the cups melting in Mrs G's oven and this prompted a discussion about changing materials. We are going to make the resulting circles into a beautiful firework mobile.  Thanks Mrs G! You can see some of our circles in the picture opposite.



We welcomed Mrs Forbes into our school this week - she will be teaching in Class 2 but is also going to teach PE to our class on a Wednesday morning. This week she focussed on ball skills with the children.

Next week our focus celebration will be Diwali and we will soon move on to learning about Christmas, in order to begin performing the nativity play.
To prepare everyone for this, Rev Marilyn has been into class this week, using her knitted nativity set to tell the story of the first Christmas to the children. Everyone listened beautifully and used the characters afterwards to act out the story. We shall soon think about allocating parts for our production!

Things to remember for next week:
*Don't forget to make an appointment for our parent consultations - please see Mrs Trevaskis at the office
*PE kits should be in school every day please
*Forest school clothes are needed on FRIDAY for this week. Please note that this is our new forest school day from now on.
*Please write in WOW books when you notice something amazing
*Please read every day with your child and record in reading records any comments you may have
*Please read the events diary on this website for dates
*Bring Show and Tell on Friday 15th November - please bring a photograph of you at a celebration which you have been to with your family. If you do not have a photograph, bring something you might wear to a celebration. Thank you.

Welcome to the first blog for Autumn 2.

Our learning in Class 1 this week has been based around two  lovely autumn - themed books called 'Spookley the Square Pumpkin' and 'Penguin and Pumpkin'.
Both stories are about differences and how it is good to be unique, so we have talked about this a lot this week.

The 'wow' activity to start the children on their learning journey was to go on a pumpkin hunt around forest school and every child found their own mini pumpkin which they decorated and named.
They have carefully looked after their pumpkins all week and will have brought them home by the time you read this.

This has meant that they have all learnt to respect and care for something special and we have had lots more great learning too:

In literacy the children thought of their own, new vocabulary to describe how the pumpkins move in the Spookley story and in maths their work has been about 2D and 3D shapes, again based on the story.

Everyone made a penguin, based on the story of a penguin and his brother, Pumpkin. They then hollowed out some pumpkins for their various penguins to 'travel' in, just like the characters in the story.

The children also used  tools safely and effectively to make pumpkin soup on Thursday and tasted it for snack time the next day.

We have had some super pumpkin and shape artwork and we shall be continuing with our shape focus when embarking on the first celebration of our new topic next week - Bonfire night and the story of Guy Fawkes. This will encourage the children to investigate their new learning question - WHY ARE CELEBRATIONS SPECIAL?
Things to remember for next week:
*PE kits in school every day please
*Forest school clothes are needed on Tuesday for this week but PLEASE NOTE THAT FROM THE WEEK BEGINNING 11TH NOVEMBER, FOREST SCHOOL WILL TAKE PLACE FOR OUR CLASS EVERY FRIDAY. 
*Please write in WOW books when you notice something amazing
*Please read every day with your child and record in reading records any comments you may have
*Please read the events diary on this website for dates
 *Bring Show and Tell on Friday 8th November - an every day object which is a 2D or 3D shape. You will tell your friends the name of the object, it's shape and describe it's features.

Welcome to the last blog of this half term.

I feel proud of how everyone has settled into our reception class since September and it is great to see them them all getting used to our routines.

This week we have completed our learning of the phase 2 phonics letter sounds and the children are rightly proud of the fact that they are now sounding out to read and spell cvc words. It has been a delight to see a growing enthusiasm for writing too. The children have been writing materials lists on our role play building site and have also written labels for the models they build. We then record this construction with a photograph and a quote from the children about their model in our class book. Well done everyone.

Our number of the week has been 4  and we have practiced writing the numbers to 4, as well as looking at how the number 4 is made up. We have also had a focus on using the language associated with position. The children have enjoyed following instructions to place themselves and Bobby Bear around the classroom and have also been describing the position of certain animals in pictures.

It was great to see you all at Show and Share this week - I love to see how proud the children are to share their learning with you.

Everyone created a super Christmas card for the FOPs card sale this week - watch out for some beautiful creations for you to purchase when they have been printed!

Our learning next half term will be based on various celebrations, leading up to Christmas. After the holiday, we will be welcoming Rev Marilyn into class to introduce the Christmas story, before we begin rehearsing this year's version of the nativity.
Things to remember for the first week back:
*PE kits in school every day please
*Forest school clothes are needed on Tuesday
*Please write in WOW books when you notice something amazing
*Please read every day with your child and record in reading records any comments you may have
*Please read the events diary on this website for dates
*Monday 28th October is an INSET day. Children return to school on Tuesday 29th October 
*Individual and sibling photographs will be taken first thing on Tuesday 29th October, so please stay with your younger children when you drop off that morning, if you would like a picture of them with their school age sibling. We will make sure that siblings in school have a photograph taken together.
*Bring Show and Tell on Friday 1st November - anything linked to a celebration. this could be a birthday, anniversary, religious festival etc.