Term 6 - where has this year gone!
This is one of my favourite terms of teaching but one of the most emotional - every day the children’s ‘wings’ spread a little further and they will soon be ready to soar into Kingfishers….but not quite yet!!!!!!
We still have 5 and a half weeks of enjoying every moment together and my goodness will we be enjoying ourseves - we have so many exciting events to pack in over the next few weeks as well as all our learning. The Great Fire of London - a theatre performance, school fete, sports day, whole school trip, whole school pilgrimage, science week, topsy turvy day, leavers service and much more are just some of the events planned, keep an eye on the newsletter for dates of all these events.
Another ‘goodbye’ we say before the end of term (I did say it was an emotional term!!!!) is to Ms. Reynolds, she is just coming to the end of her teaching placement with us and has already secured a full time teaching post which she will begin in September. We thank you Ms. Reynolds for all the teaching and all the fun.
So….what have we been up to this week?
This week in Reception we started our week by singing “Five little men” and have certainly not lost our enthusiasm for the “whosh!” part of the song!
After all the little men had flown away we started exploring the Rekenrek, continuing to build upon our number skills and enjoying learning how to use a new manipulative within maths.
“Mrs Brown look, there are 5 red and 5 white, that makes ten!”
Both EYFS and Year 1 have started our new History topic - The Great Fire of London…..it’s all very interesting so far….recreating the houses, drawing, painting and building.
In Maths, Year 1 children have been learning about o’clock and half past. We have been wearing analogue watches and have been having ‘time checks’ every half an hour! A fantastic example of how learning in the classroom is needed and applied to real life.
Our whole school theme is Build It Up - so in Design and Technology this week, Year 1 have been looking at inspirational buildings from around the world - we explored what is meant by the word structure and were truly inspired when we explored some of the worlds most inspirational buildings. We then had a go at sketching our favourite structure. As you can see in the pictures below, the attention to detail is amazing - I am sure you will have no trouble identifying the buildings from these drawings.
Reception this week have been busy developing their sentence writing skills and it has lovely to reflect on how far they have all come. In September they were simply mark making and now they are mastering penmanship, holding their writing tool using the correct grip, demonstrating control, using cursive letter formation, independent spelling - we are just so incredibly proud that we just want to show it off. At the end of the day, don’t be surprised if we come out of school waving strips of colourd paper at you - we just want you to see how much effort your child has given to their learning - my emotions are off again - we are just so proud!!!!
Then on Thursday - possibly THE most exciting event happened (possibly only exciting for us and most certainly not for the residents)!!!!!! Apparently, there was a water leak! What did we do - oh yes, we reorganised ourselves, relocated ourselves and over came the challenge. We all hopped on the bus and headed up to Chaddleworth (there was not a water problem in Chaddleworth). Well, you just had to be there to absorb the energy and excitement of this unexpected event! We located ourselves in the hall and once we had overcome the excitement of spotting a dead spider on the floor, we managed to settle down for our Thursday French lesson, Madame Wilson joined us and we were open for business as usual. Afternoon reading and French followed by PE as happens every Thursday - well done Robins, your resilience, endurance and all round ‘up for the challenge’ attitude was exemplar.
On Friday the sun was shinning and we took our learning outdoors. Just outside our classroom door, Mr. Withers has very kindly built us two planters. My plan was to fill both planters, over the next two weeks, with compost and grow some lovely herbs. However, the children obviously had others ideas and they absolutely loved cutting the grass with scissors, their imaginations went into overdrive and I was being offered grass ice cream, grass soup, grass tea - all freshly served from their very own grass patch!!!!! Looks like we will have to reach a compromise - one planter for the wild grass patch and one planter for herbs.
Our Forest School session brought our first week of the term to a close.
What a week!!!!
Please remember to bring sunhats to school.
Have a wonderful weekend and see you all on Monday.
