This week, Reception have been learning about snails and other gastropods. They started off the week reading the story of The Snail and the Whale by Julia Donaldson.

One tiny snail longs to see the world and hitches a lift on the tail of a whale. Together they go on an amazing journey, past icebergs and volcanoes, sharks and penguins, and the little snail feels so small in the vastness of the world. When disaster strikes and the whale is beached in a bay, it’s the tiny snail who saves the day! 

In response to the story, the children have:

• discussed what it would be like to live with your house permanently on your back
• written about where they would travel to on the tail of the whale
• found rhyming couplets in the book
• made maps detailing where in the world the snail and the whale travelled to
• wrote their own slimy messages
• made collages inspired by the story and The Snail by Henri Matisse
• explored spirals
• recreated places in the book using small world

After some heavy rain on Wednesday, the children were amazed to find snails everywhere!! In fact, the total snail count was around 45!! The children carefully placed the snails onto the class Snail World and  spent lots of time observing them.

Immediately after finding the snails, a frog was suddenly spotted, causing lots of excitement. Mrs Gymer managed to carefully catch it for a very short while, so the children were able to have a good look at it. While this was happening, a butterfly landed on Mrs Gymer’s shoe and wouldn’t fly away! So much excitement!

In Maths this week, the children have had lots of fun solving problems based on the book Mr Gumpy’s Outing. Activities included: making a boat and predicting how many marbles it could hold before sinking, ‘How many legs?’ problem solving, where the children in pairs, had to select a number and explore which combinations of characters would total that number of legs. They were also given the task of working out who could be in Mr Gumpy’s boat, if there were 6 legs in there altogether, then 10, then 12. The children had fun trying to work it out through role play too.

We are all very excited for our class trip to the zoo on Tuesday. Currently, the weather is predicted to be around 23.C and sunny. Please ensure that your child has a bottle of water with them and a hat. Ideally, a rucksack should be brought to carry lunches or a paper bag that can be recycled. The children will be carrying their own bags all day, so nothing too big and bulky please.

Have a lovely weekend,

The Reception Team

Reception started their week with the big question: Who is Queen Elizabeth II?

Everyone in class had heard of The Queen, but most children didn’t know much about her, or why she will be celebrating her Platinum Jubilee next week.

The children spent the week learning about Her Majesty’s life; they particularly enjoyed listening to stories about what she was like when she was their age.

Over the week, Reception made: bunting, flags, crowns, hats, and made replicas of Buckingham Palace. They wrote about The Queen and made London landmarks from junk modelling material.

Today, the children had lots of fun dressed as kings and queens. Thank you parents for providing your child with such fantastic costumes; they looked amazing!

This afternoon, Reception joined the rest of the school outside for a Jubilee celebration. They sang the whole school song, ‘Here’s to the Queen’, danced and had some special celebration cake and juice.

Enjoy your well deserved half term break children!

The Reception Team

This week, Reception have continued learning and sharing their  knowledge about space. They found out the following facts:

1) One million Earths could fit inside the sun – and the sun is considered an average-size star.

2) For years it was believed that Earth was the only planet in our solar system with liquid water. More recently, NASA revealed its strongest evidence yet that there is intermittent running water on Mars, too!

3) Comets are leftovers from the creation of our solar system about 4.5 billion years ago – they consist of sand, ice and carbon dioxide.

4) You wouldn’t be able to walk on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus or Neptune because they have no solid surface!

5) If you could fly a plane to Pluto, the trip would take more than 800 years!

6) Space junk is any human-made object orbiting Earth that no longer serves a useful purpose. Scientists estimate there are about 500,000 pieces of space junk today, including fragments from rockets and satellites, and everyday items like spanners dropped during construction of the International Space Station!

7) An asteroid about the size of a car enters Earth’s atmosphere roughly once a year – but it burns up before it reaches us. Phew!

8) The highest mountain known to man is on an asteroid called Vesta. Measuring a whopping 22km in height, it is three times as tall as Mount Everest!

9) There are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on all the beaches on Earth. That’s at least a billion trillion!

10) The sunset on Mars appears blue.

Thy enjoyed learning about the different planets in our solar system by listening to this song:

After listening to this song a couple of times, some children made the solar system from rocks and used it along with some rockets for imaginary play.

In English, the children heard the wonderful story  ‘How to Catch a Star’. Everyone discussed and then wrote about how they would catch a star.

In Maths, the children had fun participating in lots of spatial reasoning activities. These activities included matching simple shape arrangements to their friend’s model or picture. The class were amazing at this!

We are looking forward to the sunny, warm weather that is forecast for next week. Please make sure that your child comes to school with their water bottle, a named hat and wearing sun cream.

Thank you!

Have a lovely weekend,

The Reception Team