It’s been a very busy past couple of weeks for Reception, as they prepared for their very first class performance- The Nativity.
We hope you enjoyed it as much as they did!
We were extremely proud of them all and think that they were fantastic!
Have a wonderful weekend,
The Reception Team
The children have been very busy getting ready for our Class Nativity, which will be on Wednesday 5th December at 9.30am. We will provide every child with a costume, but we will need you to provide clothes for your child to wear underneath. Look out for a letter in your child’s book bag early next week that will give you further information about this.
Today we were treated to a Fitter Future workshop with our Year 6 Learning Partners.
Fitter Future is an online website with fun video workouts for the children to follow. It is designed to increase the fitness levels of children. Each workout lasts ten minutes with additional workouts and monthly fitness challenges continuously added to the programme. Pope Paul children get completely free access at home, where they can complete additional monthly workout challenges. Reception will be bringing home their logins next week.
Wishing you all a restful weekend,
The Reception Team
What a busy week!
Anti- bullying has been the main theme in class this week, with Reception focussing more on how to be a good friend. The children have worked very hard producing posters to tell you how this can be done.
They also made friendship bracelets from a range of materials and gave them away to their friends in class.
On Tuesday, Reception participated in an Anti-bullying workshop, where they thought about the importance of being part of a team and how important it is to listen to each others’ ideas.
In Maths, the children have continued to focus on shape and problem solving. In small groups, they have been deciding on their own criteria for sorting shapes, according to the shapes’ properties. Using bubble mixture and different shape cutters, the children had fun investigating whether or not the bubble shape changed, according to the shape blown through.
In RE, we have been thinking about preparing for a baby and relating this to how the Catholic church prepares for Christmas, during Advent.
Today, the children played their own part in deciding the future name of our school, by individually voting.
Wishing you all a lovely weekend,
The Reception Team
This week, Reception have joined the rest of the school, focussing their learning around the book Weslandia. The children worked very hard, imagining and creating their own lands.
In RE, the class have been taking part in ‘Other Faiths Week’ and have been learning about Judaism and the Jewish celebration of Shabbat. They particularly enjoyed trying some sacramental grape juice!
In Maths, we have been learning about 2D shape, describing the properties of each shape and using shapes to make pictures.
Reception spent Friday learning about Remembrance and what it means. They remembered members of their family or friends who are no longer with us, when participating in a special Act of Worship in class.
Enjoy the rest of your weekend,
The Reception Team
As part of One World Week, Reception have been learning about Italy.
The children began the week by finding Italy on a globe, map and Google Earth- everyone thought that it looked just like a boot! They then found Rome and talked about how the postcard on our prayer table, recently written by the teachers, had travelled all the way from The Vatican City to Potters Bar.
The children then worked very hard transforming the home corner into an Italian restaurant. They designed posters and signs to advertise the restaurant, wrote menus and made food to go inside. When it was ready, they had lots of fun pretending to be chefs, waiters, customers and greeters!
On Tuesday, Reception class made individual pizzas.
On Thursday, they made fresh lemonade and it was delicious!
Over the week, the children have been bringing in their brilliant Italian themed home learning. Thank you for supporting your child this week.
This morning, the class celebrated the Harvest Festival with the rest of the school. This was followed by the Celebration Morning, where the children shared their most recent learning and received their very special prayer books from Mrs Heymoz. Thank you to all the family and friends who were able to join us today.
We wish you all a restful half term break.
The Reception Team
Today the school has been filled with excitement and joy as we celebrated the canonization of Pope Paul VI. We started the day with an assembly where everyone was presented with a St Paul VI prayer card. The children then enjoyed an extra break and Fairtrade treat in the sunshine. Following the theme of peace, the children spent the morning creating flags, designs, sketches and mosaics as well as continuing their research on Pope Paul VI. This afternoon we released doves of peace in the playground as a symbol of our continuing mission, following the charism of Pope Paul, to support peace and justice for all. Our pilgrimage to Rome to share in this very special moment was inspiring and uplifting. We felt privileged to be able to represent our school community in this important event. Father Shaun also attended the Mass in St Peter’s Square and we were all invited by Alex (our Seminarian)to visit the English College for Mass and then refreshments, enjoying the view of Rome from the rooftop terrace! Throughout the weekend we remembered our Pope Paul School Community and prayed for the continuing success of our school. We are very fortunate to have a wonderful group of staff who are happy to make a financial and time commitment in support of our community. Thank you ladies!
We have had a very busy past couple of weeks!
Last week we were visited by Father Shaun who taught us all about Baptism through role play. The children also took it in turns to talk about their own Baptism ceremony.
This week we have been very busy creating our own Catholic church in the outside role play area. The children have greatly impressed us with their own knowledge of what happens during a mass. They have enjoyed pretending that they are Father Shaun and altar servers, singing hymns and praying. They have also enjoyed performing Baptism ceremonies.
We also got together with Year Four this week. They helped us to make religious objects to put into our church.
Today we have been celebrating the canonization of Pope Paul VI. We started the day with a special assembly, where we were presented with St Paul VI prayer cards, to use at home with our families. Afterwards, we joined the rest of the school in the large playground, where we had some juice and chocolate.
Back in class, we continued to think about the life and work of St Paul VI and how he worked so hard, continually striving for peace. The children then created art work and celebratory flags based on this theme.
We finished the day by joining the rest of the school in the playground, where Mrs Heymoz and the Liturgy Group let off some beautiful doves, to symbolize peace.
What a moving and very special moment we all shared!
Wishing you all a wonderful weekend.
The Reception Team
What a busy week! We can’t believe how much we have managed to fit in!
We continued to take advantage of the dry weather by taking our PE lesson outside on the field, where we had lots of fun exploring the different sports equipment.
We also used the field for a very special turn taking session with the parachute. We learnt lots of different games and once again showed off our excellent listening skills!
In class, we have been thinking about our families and growing older. In particular, we have focussed on birthday celebrations. The children have been very busy making named wrist bands, writing birthday guest lists, writing out party invitations, creating birthday cards and banners, making party hats and using clay and junk modelling materials to make party food. They also enjoyed using the playdough to make cakes with real candles on.
The most exciting part of the week was when we had the ‘Birthday Party’ role play reveal. The children couldn’t believe that the outside role play had disco music and flashing lights inside. Lots of fun was had recreating party games such as pass-the-parcel and musical ,as well as using the area for a good old sing-a-long and dance.
On Friday morning, we had a visit from two photographers. One came to take our individual photographs and the other came from the local paper, who are doing a special feature soon about all of the local Reception classes. She couldn’t believe how well behaved the class were and how well they listened to instructions. In fact, she told us that we were actually the best class she had ever photographed! This was of course a very proud teacher moment!
The week finished with a visit from our lovely Year 6 learning partners.
We have been blessed with beautiful weather this week and so we have spent most of the time learning outdoors.
The children were very excited to begin learning letter sounds and have had lots of fun doing so.
Thank you for supporting your child by completing the phonics home learning and sharing their reading book every night. It really does make a huge difference to the progress they make. You will notice that we do not send home any letter sound on a Friday. Instead, we ask that you find a little time over the weekend to revise any previously learnt sounds.
In RE this week, we have been focussing on being unique and celebrating differences. The children drew self portraits after using mirrors to look at their own physical features.
We also spent some time learning about St Vincent de Paul and enjoyed watching the Year 4 tell his story in assembly this morning.
It was lovely to have a visit from Amelia this afternoon and to give her the card that the children had made for her. Everyone was so pleased to see her!
Wishing you all a wonderful weekend,
The Reception Team
(Please find Home Learning instructions at the end of this post).
There was great excitement this afternoon as Y6 met their Reception Learning Partners for the first time! They spent their time getting to know each other by reading and playing together in the Reception outdoor learning area. It was wonderful to see the Y6s acting so kindly and maturely with their partners; it is clear that they are going to be excellent role models to them for the year. Here they all are!
In other Y6 news this week, the class were given their badges in assembly for their new leadership roles. Well done also to the Y6s who led the reading in our whole school mass. They also had their first taste of SATs papers, with which they coped very well. In PE, we carried on honing our dodging skills as part of our Invasion Games unit.
I am looking forward to seeing your evacuee costumes on Tuesday for our WW2 trip! Have a great weekend.
Miss Donatantonio
This week’s home learning (due Tuesday 25th September) is as follows:
| English | Schofield & Sims English Skills : Section 1 Test 1 – to be completed in pink Home Learning book |
| Spellings | Words from the Y3/Y4 and Y5/Y6 Statutory Spelling word lists – spelling sentences to be written in pink Home Learning book. See below for this week’s spellings. The children also have 2 envelopes – one containing this week’s words and one empty one. Once they feel they are secure with a word from Envelope 1 (short-term memory), they put it into Envelope 2 (long-term memory). I could test them on their long-term memory words at any time, and they will be revisiting them in class. If they misspell a word that they’ve put into Envelope 2, it goes back into Envelope 1. |
| Maths
Times tables |
Mathletics tasks:
· Nearest Whole Number · Nearest 100 · Nearest 1000 · Rounding Numbers · Multiplying by 10, 100, 1000 · Dividing by 10, 100, 1000 |
| Reading | Spend at least half an hour on readtheory.org
Daily reading. Reading Records are on order. |
| Spelling list (to be tested Friday 28th September)
Words from the Y3/Y4 and Y5/Y6 Spelling Lists |
|
| especially | frequently |
| immediately | sincerely |
| accidentally | actually |
| occasionally | probably |
| therefore | though |
| thought | thorough |
| through | rhyme |
| rhythm | temperature |
