Reception - Wrens Class

Teacher - Mrs Kay

Teaching Assistant - Mrs Bridge

Welcome to Wrens Class Blog! Here is where you can keep up to date with all of the learning we engage in throughout the school year. 

Term 4 - Out of This World!

This term promises to be an incredible learning adventure. We will journey up, out of this world and into space, where we will find out about the moon, planets and explore the possibility of life out there! We will find out about real-life space explorers and share a range of fantastic stories about adventures that are truly out of this world! 

Later on in the term, we will come crashing back to earth and zoom back in time, to a time when dinosaurs walked on earth. We will learn about different dinosaurs, what they ate and where they lived, including finding out about a dinosaur that lived in Spalding! 

Weeks 3 and 4

This term has continued to be an epic adventure, from blasting off around our solar system to find out about the planets that orbit our sun, to changing direction and going back in time to the era when dinosaurs roamed planet Earth. The children relished in all the 'space' facts that they discovered, researching in school and at home too! We learnt about astronauts including Neil Armstrong and Mae Jemison, and thought carefully about whether we would want to go on a mission to a far off planet. We loved reading some great texts including The Smeds and The Smoos by one of our favourite authors, Julia Donaldson. 

Stomp, Chomp, Big Roars, Here Come the Dinosaurs! This text was a great introduction to creatures from the Jurassic age. Using a range of non-fiction texts, we have learnt a lot about some of the many dinosaurs that existed long ago. Did you know, the skeleton of an Ichthyosaurus was discovered near Spalding? Amazing!

Weeks 1 and 2

5,4,3,2,1....... The Wrens have blasted off on an epic adventure finding out all about space! We have been busy learning about the planets (which the children already knew a lot about so we've extended our knowledge even further!), real space explorers called astronauts and thinking about the possibility of life on another planet. The classroom and outdoor areas have been full of rockets and spaceships, some with aliens appearing from them! The children have loved all of the stories we have read, a few of our favourites include The Way Back Home by Oliver Jeffers, Aliens Love Underpants by Claire Freedman and Ben Cort   and Astro Girl by Ken Wilson-Max.  We are loving reading at the moment and the children's phonics skills are developing so rapidly the children are really enjoying reading independently and writing their own stories and facts! 

Term 3  

Help! Help!

This term our topic is called 'Help! Help!'. We will be finding out about different people in the community who help us, real life superheroes! We will learn how to contact the emergency services and about the different services there are that can help people in different situations. We will meet some real superheroes from our community and ask them questions about the different things they have to do. We will find out about their super powers! 

We will continue to develop our reading and writing skills through our phonics lessons, shared reading activities and the wonderful Drawing Club. In maths we will be exploring different concepts around measure, in length, capacity and in weight. We will work on our number knowledge by exploring different ways to make numbers between 5 and 10. 

Weeks 5 and 6

This term ended with more visits from real superheroes from our community, including the fire brigade! We are very grateful to everyone that came in to enhance our learning. We found out about vets, road safety officers and lollypop people. Lots of the children have been inspired to be a community superhero when they grow up. 

We celebrated National Storytelling Week by becoming storytellers ourselves. We shared 'Once Upon a Time' by Nick Sharratt and came up with our own stories based on the same theme. The children came up with some fabulous settings! I'm sure we will see their names in print in the future.

We took part in the RSPB's Big School's Bird Watch and spotted a few birds that are commonly found on our school grounds. We ended the term's Forest Adventures by giving all the children a pet stone (this also linked in nicely with our learning about vets and caring for animals). The children used all their knowledge of habitats, shelters and woodland materials to build homes for their stone pets. Everyone got to take them home at the end of the session to continue caring for them.

We ended the term learning about Chinese New Year. The children enjoyed a Chinese banquet, creating music using the penatonic scale and learning about the history of the lunar festival. We made a large dragon, learnt some dance moves and went on our own parade. 

Weeks 3 and 4

"999, What's your emergency?" We have been learning how to contact the emergency services, by dialling 999!

We have been visited by some real superheroes; Nurse King, PC Repper and the Spalding Fire Brigade! These visits have been fantastic opportunities for us to talk to real heroes and find out what special skills they have to help people. It was fun and interesting to learn about the different equipment they use and the different clothing they have to wear.

The children decided that they wanted to turn the role play area into a doctor's surgery, later enhancing it with more babies and equipment to care for the very young. They took on the roles of doctors and nurses very seriously, demonstrating excellent care, empathy and knowledge of the ailments being presented to them! 

The children were inspired by the fire engine and decided to create their own, some chose to build an engine from construction kits or the wooden blocks outside, whilst others chose to paint fire engines. We made a super display of our work in the classroom. We turned the remote control cars into rescue vehicles and had a go at controlling them, adding in bridges, buildings and 'emergency situations' to navigate. 

Weeks 1 and 2

This year and term got off to a fantastic start with the first day back being our Superhero Day! The children were able to create superhero capes, cuffs and headbands using a wide range of materials and techniques. We went on a superhero parade and shared what we already know about superheroes!

We read the story The Lighthouse Keeper's Lunch and learnt about the important job lighthouse keepers have to keep people save at sea. We found out about Grace Darling, a lighthouse keeper from almost 200 years ago that saved the lives of many sailors. We have learnt about the coastguard and the RNLI who help people that are in danger around the coast, and about lifeguards who help to keep us save in the swimming pool. We worked together to make some fantastic boats using a range of construction materials including junk modelling. One of the boats was big enough for three children to get in!

We have been enjoying exploring different challenges and have talked about ways to ask for help and to support each other in our PSHE and RE lessons.  Our PE theme this term is dance, we are exploring different ways to move in time to music as well as telling a story through our moves.

Term 2 Marvellous Me!

In term 2 we will be learning about the many things that make us special and unique to everyone else around us. We will find out what similarities we have and learn about things that make other people special too. We will learn about some of the many celebrations and festivals that people celebrate and experience some of these first hand with interactive learning opportunities. We will continue to develop our writing skills and will use a programme called Squiggle Whilst You Wiggle to support our gross and fine motor control. It sounds tricky but it's all a lot of fun and involves dancing to some funky music!  

Weeks 5 & 6 

We have been busy finding out about how people celebrate Christmas around the world, and how we all celebrate Christmas too! We have been finding out about things that we do that are the same and things that are different. We are all special and we like being with each other for all sorts of reasons. 

We have had a lot of fun practising for our Christmas performance and we were very proud of the performances we did to our friends and families. We hope you all have a lovely Christmas holiday.

Weeks 3 & 4

The Wrens have been incredibly busy learning about what makes us all special and how we are similar and different from each other. We have talked about the people we live with, some of the special features in our homes and talked positively about others and ourselves when talking about characteristics that are good. We had a lot of fun on our Diwali day, learning about how Hindus celebrate the special festival. This will link on to our RE enrichment day in a couple of weeks time when we have a special visitor coming in to talk about Diwali and the story of Rama and Sita.  We have shared some wonderful stories, including Hansel and Gretel, Monkey Puzzle, Room on the Broom, One Winter's Day and A Squash and A Squeeze. The children have continued to make great progress in phonics and their independent writing is fantastic. The children have started adding words and phrases to their Drawing Club work!  

Weeks 1 and 2

It has been a whizz popping start to the term! We really enjoyed returning after the half term break to some Halloween celebrations! Mwaa haa haa! What's Inside The Witch's Kitchen was a fantastic book to inspire our learning and play in Week 1! We enjoyed reading some of the Funnybones stories and finding out about some of the many bones inside us. It was a great link to learning about our own body and the different parts we have. We enjoyed learning about Bonfire Night and had great fun using different words and sounds to create a dramatic firework song! In week 2 we continued our themed learning and started to explore how families can be different. We read Owl Babies by Martin Waddell and thought about who lived in the nest. We have talked about who we live with. The children are really enjoying Drawing Club and are making very good progress. This week the children showed off their amazing imaginations when they had to guess what could be inside a box hidden in the dark, dark corner of a dark, dark cupboard!  At the end of week 2 we laid our poppy wreath alongside those made by all the other classes in school, in the school hall. We watched the CBeebies short film for Remembrance Day. We will remember them. 

Term 1 - Once Upon a Time

This term we will be settling into school by learning about our favourite traditional tales, both old and new! We will be learning all of the skills and knowledge we need to begin to navigate our journey through school. 

Week 6:

This week in Wrens class we have thoroughly enjoyed learning and playing according to the theme of Little Red Riding Hood.

In Maths this week we have been working on more than and fewer than and the children were able to recognise if Grandma or Little Red had more or fewer cakes/items than the other. We have also built on our knowledge of heavy and light today by filling Red Riding Hood's basket with cakes, identifying heavy and light by feeling weight with our hands and looking and how the scales represent heavy and light too!

We have spent our time role playing, story sequencing and story mapping this week as well as writing the recipe for our cookies, which we made today (Friday) and making get well soon cards for poor Grandma. We have listened to many versions of the story, one where Little Red Riding Hood wasn't scared of the Big Bad Wolf at all and she even turned him into a coat! We have been practicing our name writing lots this week and have been working on our fine motor skills too!

We enjoyed making our cookies for Grandma so much today that I will post the recipe we used for them on another post. We loved counting out how many spoons of the ingredients we would need and baking them together. We also rather enjoyed eating them before home time!

In art this week we have learned how to do weaving, make animal footprints with paint and printed forests using broccoli and cauliflower! This was so much fun and the children loved printing with the toys and vegetables! We have also been busy making and building Grandma's and Little Red Riding Hood's house using junk modelling and the construction materials in the classroom.

In Phonics this week we have continued our learning of sounds n, o and p. We have been reading simple sentences on the white board this week using the sounds we have already learned and have brought home a reading book that we should all be able to read!

One of our favourite parts of this week was when we drew our own maps of the journey from Little Red's house to Granny's house. When we did it together we had all sorts of ideas on what we might face on the way, mountains, caves, tunnels, bridges, and even trampolines with no ladder to get up onto it! We had so many wonderful ideas it was great to listen to them all and allow the children to create their own maps on huge pieces of paper.

We have had a brilliant week this week and look forward to the final week of the term before the October half term break!

Week 4:

This week we have been focussing on the story of the Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf!

In Phonics this week we have continued our learning of the sounds s,a,t,m and i. We have been practicing identifying and writing individual sounds and spelling the words sat, sit, am, it, as, at. You can see some of our amazing writing in the pictures! We are getting very good at forming our letters correctly and so that they can be read easily.

In maths this week we have enjoyed subitising, working on numbers 1, 2 3 and a little on number 4. We have been finding ways to make the numbers using things around the classroom. I wonder if you can collect a certain number of items make our quantities using things at home this weekend?

Our literacy focus has been based around sequencing the story of the three little pigs, drawing story maps and discussing how the Big Bad Wolf looks and feels, e.g. grey, fluffy, angry, big, scary etc. We have been practicing our motor skills, enjoying dough disco and working on our name writing skills again this week using different media.

In our provision this week we have built ad blown down houses using lots of different resources, bricks, straw, sticks, shaving foam cement, marshmallows and spaghetti and more! We have spent time collaging the Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf and junk modelling houses for them all to live in! We have been testing out our ability to huff and puff and blow things down as well as making some nice hot stew for the wolf to burn his bottom with in the shared area! Outside we have been building dens and houses using waffle blocks and the wooden construction as well as enjoying story role play.

Well done everyone for another fantastic week!

Week 2:

This week we have been learning all about our feelings using the colour monster story! We all know which colours relate to the different emotions that we feel and have had lots of fun making our own monsters using paint, feathers, bingo dabbers and all sorts of other crafting items.
We have enjoyed retelling the story using, puppets, wooden spoons, peg dolls and cuddly monsters and have explored colour monster part tens in maths. We have been learning to subitise.
We have also been enjoying more play outside and exploring the shared role play area more. We have been building some lovely new friendships and have settled into the structure of the school day more now and at keen to engage in our short lessons!
We have been practicing our name writing this week in our special school writing books and have enjoyed learning about the "fill your bucket" story too!

Week 1:

What a busy two days we have had!
In Maths this week, we have begun to count using some fun counting songs (you will probably hear your children singing them at home!).
In phonics we have been practising listening to sounds from our environment, such as rustling paper, or a crunchy packet, so that we can practise our listening skills. We have also listened to and sung nursery rhymes including Five Little Ducks, Humpty Dumpty, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Baa Baa Black Sheep.
We look forward to our first full week together next week.