Welcome to Year R

Somebody Swallowed Stanley

In reception, our focus text is ‘Somebody swallowed Stanley’ which tells the story of Stanley the plastic bag who falls into the sea and gets eaten by sea creatures. As part of our learning, the children had trays of rice crispies and pieces of plastic and they became seagulls and used spoons to mimic a bird’s beak as it scoops up food from the sea. Using a timer to time them, they scooped up the ‘food’ and put into their tummy bowls before going through the bowls, picking out the plastic pieces. They learnt that the sea birds think they are full up because of the plastic in their tummies and stop eating which means they get very poorly.

This week in Year R

In reception this week, we have been exploring our sense of touch by creating a Beanstalk using our feet. The children had their feet painted, walked through soil and listened to directional language instructions as they walked on the card. This led  beautifully on to our RE lesson where we explored the story of when Jesus washed the feet of his disciples to show them love because he wanted to show them and us to love others and treat each other kindly.


 

Jasper's Beanstalk

Inspired by our focus text, Jasper’s Beanstalk we have been thinking about how fruit and vegetables grow. We have discovered which ones grown on vines, trees, canes, underground and even in water! We’ve looked at the different stages of growth including seeds, seedlings, flowers and fruit. We have also focused on some observational drawings where we learnt how to really look at what we were drawing, how to use our pencils softly.

Day trip To Ireland

Reception are continuing their journey around the British Isles and today we visited the island of Ireland. We started our journey by catching the Red Funnel ferry and sailing to the mainland. We then drove through England over the Severn Bridge and caught another ferry to Southern Ireland. We found out about the country, listened to traditional and modern music, learnt how to say hello and goodbye. We ate some soda bread and then made a flag, used the 'beebot' to act out our journey, played some board games and made some rainbows with pots of gold.
For PE we watched some hurling and then went in the hall to play some games. We all got a chance to use a hurl and sliotar (ball).
Just before lunch we listened to the story of St Patrick and how some people say he banished snakes.
In the afternoon our journey continued and we learnt about Northern Ireland.  Mrs Cory told us that Belfast is the capital city and the Titanic was built there.
At the end of the day we caught the plane back to Southampton because Mrs Cory said she was not travelling back from Stranraer!

Shh we have a plan - By Chris Hauhton

The  English Touring Opera have produced a 14 minute opera that takes you through the story of Chris Haughton’s well loved book with the use of puppetry, spoken work, singing and music.

We made sistrums in preparation for our performance. We listened to the opera first and thought about the following questions.
1 How many singers are there in this performance?
2 Can you hear some instruments playing? What instruments can you hear?
3 Do you like the music?
4 How did the music make you feel?
5 Do you think the music helped to tell the story?
6 What was your favourite part of the performance?

We talked about how the lady used her voice as an instrument to show the bird.  We were going to use our sistrums to be the bird.  What did we notice about the singer in the opera when she was being the bird and how did it sound? (Did the tune ‘fly around’ all over the place like a bird? Was it fast or slow, was it high or low or both?) how can we make those sounds with our sistrums?  We also thought about the pitch of her voice and mimicked the pitch by playing our sistrums high or low.

We then used our voice to sing the tune for 'The Little Guy'. The children have decided to call the character to befriend the birds the Little Guy.
 

St David’s Day

We started the day with some magic. We were going to Wales. We got in our car and drove down to the Red Funnel ferry.  An hour later we docked in Southampton and drove on the motorway all the way to the Severn Bridge.    Thrilled to find out we no longer have to pay a toll, we drove on to Cardiff.   There we found out about the country of Wales, its castles, traditions, food, landscape and, of course, the mountains of Snowdonia.    To celebrate we made Welsh cakes and ate them for snack while listening to Hymns and Arias.    A clip of the Welsh anthem being sung at the Millennium Stadium was shown in honour of Saturdays Triple Crown win.  

 We then had a variety of activities to carry out, starting with sending a postcard back to school  from Wales, making love spoons, using a Beebot to travel from the IOW to Caernarfon Castle, flags, making daffodils, looking at leeks and spelling words with the ‘ee’ phoneme.. 

Henry's mum made two excellent videos teaching us to count to 10 and sing Yellow Bird in Welsh.  We already had books that Early Years Wales had sent us and we looked at the dual language road signs and that ‘ll’ is pronounced differently.   It was approaching the end of our day and time to go back to the IOW, hoping the ferry wasn’t delayed or cancelled!  A great day was had by all, both at home and school.  In a few weeks’ time we are off to Ireland for St Patrick’s Day, so we will be passing through Wales again.  We will remember to wave.

As part of our Chinese New Year learning, Year R and Year 1 Bubble have been learning about Chinese Shadow Puppetry. Shadow puppetry is an ancient way of story telling and is over 2,000 years old. The children created their own version of the ‘Great Race’ which tells the story of 13 animals racing to have a year in the Chinese zodiac named after them. Some of the children controlled the puppets, others told the story and the rest played the instruments to accompany the story.

We have made Chinese Dragon masks...

We have tasted some delicious Chinese food.

Nicky and Marlee created The Great Wall of China complete with the Terracotta Army to guard the wall.

Year R would like to send a massive thank you to Gordy’s Wood Co who kindly donated some of his legendary snowmen to be totally made-over and glittered. The children were overjoyed to get the chance to decorate their snowmen and have taken them home this week.

Yesterday (13th December)  was the Swedish festival of St. Lucia. We started off the day eating our bagels and watching the sleigh ride to set the scene.

We found out some facts about Sweden and all made a Swedish flag.

In worship Mrs Cory told us the story of St. Lucia and then explained how the Swedish people celebrate the festival. We could choose whether we wanted to make a star crown or a candle crown.

Outside we made a sleigh and played a snowball maths game.

When everyone had made a crown we then had a procession around the class before sitting on the carpet and eating some Swedish biscuits and sweets.

Reception celebrated St. Andrew;s day on Monday 30th November.

We found out about St. Andrew and how Jesus had told him to be a 'fisher of men.' We then found out about Scotland, the flag, capital city and its castles. We made shortbread and did the Highland Fling before learning a song, 'You cannae shove yer grannie aff the bus.'

Did you Know Scotland and Greece celebrate St. Andrew's Day?

The scarecrow's Wedding

Reception have had a really busy week. We have been reading the Scarecrow's Wedding by Julia Donaldson and have explored the theme of weddings and linked it to the story of the wedding at Cana. We have written guest lists, invitations, bought presents, made sandwiches and learned how to waltz. On Thursday we held a wedding ceremony from beginning to end. Don't tell Boris! 

Diwali and Remembrance

As part of our Diwali learning this week, Reception class have learnt the Story of Prince Rama and Sita, learnt Bollywood style moves that would be used to celebrate Diwali, created Rangoli patterns using marbles and paint.

We also created Poppy inspired candle holders for ‘Remembrance.’

In Reception, as part of Harvest learning, we learnt about how food is harvested, how produce gets into the shops and we listened to a story about a field mouse called Frederick who harvested words to make poems.
We used salt dough to make a Harvest Loaf. The children used their fine motor skills to roll the dough into sausages, used tools to create patterns, plaited the dough and made a lovely harvest mouse. It looks good enough to eat but we don’t recommend it......

 Now Press Play is an immersive educational resource that brings the curriculum to life. Wearing wireless headphones, children are plunged into a  world of  adventure. Once a month the children act out an educational adventure. In October we became archaeologists and went on a dinosaur adventure.

We have been learning about autumn, the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. We made some apple crumbles to take home and share with our families.

This week, Havenstreet Falconry visited us to tell us all about birds of prey. We saw a barn owl, an African eagle owl, a vulture and a kestrel. It was really exciting!

Our new Gravel area

Over the summer, the Reception Staff have been busy creating an engaging and fun outside learning environment and breathing new life into underused areas. With the support and kind donation of gravel from Branch Manager Rob Lyon and Travis Perkins, Ryde, a muddy patch has been turned into a fantastic construction site that will allow the children to explore, actively learn, create and critically think through play. The children on their return to school were so excited to use the  building tools, hats, high vis jackets and plan their construction ideas on a chalk board bench before building them using a range of construction materials.

Archive photographs Year R 2019-2020

Archive photographs Year R 2018-2019

Archive photographs 2017-2018