4/7/22

This half term has been fun filled! We have looked closely at Mini beasts, Australia, koalas and famous artists during Children’s Art Week over the last five weeks. We have learned lots of facts about Koalas as well as their habitats. We went on a trip into the forest to make Koala habitats. We had a great time working in teams. We read the story of Kevin, the Koala who could, and spoke about growth mind-set and how change can be good for us even if it can feel a little daunting. We also had a special delivery of caterpillars! Five caterpillars have lived in our classrooms for two and half weeks and we have watched them grow and change into butterflies. This process is called metamorphosis. We said goodbye to the Butterflies and realised them on a warm, sunny day for them to go and lay some new eggs on the leaves.

During National Children’s Art Week, we learned about Vincent Van Gough and Picasso. We were so inspired by their art work that we then created our own art using pastels, paints and shapes. We have also been thinking about what makes us wonderful. There are lots of things that make us all wonderful! We even thought about what we would like to be/do when we grow up and what our dreams are for the future.

We also had sports day. It was so much fun! The most fun part was bouncing up and down on space hoppers as well as watching Miss Eames and Mrs Rehinsi race each other. We we all winners and enjoyed cheering all of our friends. 

We have really enjoyed learning how to double and half objects and numbers. We got to half lots of fruits and then we got to eat them with our partners. It is important to remember that when you are sharing, you must share equally with the other person otherwise it is not fair.  We have learned lots about addition and subtraction. We have used these skills and put them into real life situations using word problems. We had to make sure we listened to the word problem carefully so we could work out the right answer.

And here we are, the end of our Reception year has come.
We can’t quite believe how quick this year has gone. What an amazing year it has been too. We have grown and learned so much - we are definitely ready to transition into Year 1. We have two new classrooms to explore in as well as a brand new shared area and playground that we can’t wait to learn and have fun in.

We are all looking forward to having lots of summer fun before we head back to school in the Autumn Term for more fun and amazing learning!

26/05/22
We end this half term with celebrating the Queen's Platinum Jubilee!

This week we have been learning about the life of our Queen. We know that she is 96 years old, she is the longest reigning Queen EVER and she wears a shiny crown. We really enjoyed having our Jubilee picnic, wearing our crowns and listening to some music. 

We have loved learning about all things under the sea! We learned that a jellyfish can sting you, the boy seahorses have the babies, a swordfish can swim very fast, a shark can have up to 5 rows of teeth and an octopus has 9 brains! Sea creatures are truly fascinating. 

One day, we walked into class and saw a message in a bottle had been left. When we read it we learned that it was from a boy called Jack. He had been captured by some pirates on Tortuga Island and they were making him find their treasure. We had to draw maps and write letters to try and bring him back to safety. This of course meant we dressed up for pirate day and made telescopes, eye matches, pirate hats, hooks and swords. Safe to say, it was great fun!

We have become very good at adding and subtracting numbers. We have been using lots of different items to help us count and find out the answer. We also learned about money and why we need money. Did you know that the 5p is in fact the smallest in size but it is worth more than the 1p and 2p even though these coins are bigger in size?

After the half term break, it will be our last few weeks in Reception before we go to year 1. The year is going so fast! We are so excited to learn about mini-beasts and learn lots of facts about countries around the world. 

And that's the end of the Spring Term.... Hasn't it flown by?!

Over the last 6 weeks, we have been looking at Traditional Tales. We started the half term with Jack and the Beanstalk. We even made our own beanstalks and we watched them grow over the weeks in our classrooms. We were surprised at how much water the broad beans needed to grow. We have now taken them home to take good care of. We have also explored the stories of; Goldilocks, Three Little Pigs, Red Riding Hood, Enormous Turnip and The Gingerbread man. We debated whether Goldilocks was good or bad (still can't decide), we made gingerbread dinosaur and unicorns (a spin on the traditional kind), we tasted lots of vegetables, tasted turnip soup and problem solved using lots of different materials to see if we could build the strongest house like the third little pig. We have also produced some AMAZING writing over the last few weeks. We are using 'and' and 'because' in our sentences as well as beginning to use adjectives to describe who or what we are writing about. Our teachers have told us how proud they are of us. 

We can't forget to mention how incredible Discover Class assembly was! It was lots of fun to do, we spoke so loud, learned a new song and showed Explore Class and Year 1 our amazing learning and acting skills. 

We haven't only been looking at stories by the way. We have also been learning how to tell the time, working on our subitising skills and learning our number bonds to 10, 20 and even 100! We really enjoy subitising and using our knowledge of number to say what we can see within a number. We love using counters and Numicon to help us with our Maths work and can work as a team to solve a maths problem.

We have loved exploring all kinds of fun in the shared areas too. We have loved using streamers to dance to music, using planks of wood to jump off of, mixing gooey cornflour, using large containers to see how water flows, using the large blocks and tyres to build cars, playing offices with post-it notes and telephones. The list really does go on...

Have a wonderful Easter Break and we can't wait to get back to what we do best in the summer term :)

We have had a very exciting half term and have been learning lots about dinosaurs, superheroes, Space and natural disasters - can you believe it?! We were so surprised to see one morning that there were dinosaur footprints in the garden. We guessed it was a dinosaur because they were enormous! We had to tell Ms Scott about this emergency so we wrote her letters to tell her what we had seen. Our teachers were very impressed with our detective skills.

We loved learning about what makes a good superhero and a bad villain. We enjoyed designing our own superheroes and chose which super power we would have – x-ray vision, invisibility and even teleportation to name a few.

Did you know Jupiter is the largest planet in our Solar System and it has huge storms on it? We also found out that Venus has many volcanoes on it and it is the hottest planet – reaching to 475 degrees to be exact! We think Martians live on Mars because we found out it used to have water on it. What do you think?

Oh, and how could we forget… there was an earthquake! We came in one day to find everything upside down and on the floor, it was a right mess! We learned about lots of different natural disasters like tornadoes, volcanoes, avalanches and many more. We sure have some facts to tell you just ask us.

We bet you have never heard of the word subitising before. Have you? We are able to see a group of objects and can say how many there are without even counting. How clever are we? Not only that, but we can see numbers within a number. For example, the number 6 can be made up of 4, 1 and 1 as well as 3, 2 and 1. We found out there are so many ways of making a number.

We are excited to have fun during the half term break and we already can’t wait to learn lots more things when we come back!

This has definitely been an action packed half term! We have learnt all about Claudia Jones (the mother of Nottinghill Carnival) and her challenging journey to the UK. We compared the similarities and differences between where we live and Trinidad and New York, the places where she spent much of her life. We then designed and made our own costumes and held our very own Early Years Carnival! We had so much fun, even then rain couldn’t dampen our spirits! 

We also had an amazing Science Week where we took part in lots of different experiments from finding which liquid cleans money the best to observing how bread touched with dirty hands moulds quicker than bread not touched at all. We made predictions and drew conclusions from what we found and learnt a few new fancy science words in the process. 

These past few weeks we have also been practising and preparing for our Nativity. Even though there has been a slight change of plan, we have been amazing at practising our lines and remembering all the words and actions to the songs. We look amazing in our costumes and Christmas jumpers and have had lots of fun filming it. We can’t wait for you to see it! 

What an amazing start to Reception! We have settled so well and are happy to come to school, which is a great start to our school life here at Ainslie Wood.

We have experienced so many amazing and exciting things this half term! We have read loads of books including 'Elmer', where we looked at how beautiful it is that we are all different; 'Coming to England', when we explored the difference between England and Trinidad and we even had afternoon tea with the Queen! We also read 'Giraffe's can't dance' and had our very own jungle party! 

In Maths, we have been exploring the numbers 1-10, practising number formation, subitising and counting an amounts. We have explored colour and shape patterns and have practised creating our own patterns using cubes. We have also explored different types of measurement (capacity and weight) and have made some interesting predictions. Additionally, we have used our knowledge of shapes to name and describe a wide variety of 2D shapes. We can name most 2D shapes and are beginning to understand some of their properties.

We have made lots of new friends this half term and are already excellent learners! We can't wait for all the fun that is coming next half term!