T3b Week 5

This week has been a busy one, we went to the farm, had visits to year 1, had nursery children visit our class and had our sports afternoon.

T3b Week 4

We found ladybird larva in our outdoor space and brought them into the class in a clear container.  We enjoyed watching them grow and shed their outer skins, we found aphids and black flies for them to eat.  They turned into pupas and have just emerged as ladybirds - it is time to let them go back into our outdoor area.  

Term 3b Week 2

We have been thinking more about our 'What the Ladybird Heard' story and making maps of the farm and giving directions to the robbers so they can get to the prize cow or other animal.  It has been lovely to see the children use there imaginations and developing writing skills for this task.  We have also had some ladybirds hiding in the class room which we are using to think about parts of 5, each time we find a ladybird and stick it on the template we ask how many more do we need to find until we have 5?

Term 3b week 1

We have had a lovely first week back in Reception and have been able to enjoy the warmer weather using our out door space to investigate and explore.  Our large group phonics time has been going very well with many children able to write longer words including digraphs without support!

Term 3a Week 5

This week we have been enjoying the warmer weather and getting in our out door area a little more.  We looked at the results of our germination experiment and concluded that we need: whole beans, something for them to grow in (soil or cotton wool) the right amount of water and sunlight to grow strong healthy beanstalks. 
 

The ones with out water didn't grow, the ones that were in half only grew a little, the ones with no cotton wool got mushy and stinky, the ones in the dark grew tall but were white.  The beans with water, cotton wool and light grew green and strong we are going to put them in our outdoor space and see how they survive the wild!

We also recorded our retelling of Jaspers beanstalk, hope you enjoy it.

Term 3a Week 3

In our English lessons we have been thinking about the Jack and the Beanstalk fairytale, we read a variety of retellings and worked hard to write a part of the story for ourselves.

In our PE lessons we have been practicing our athletic skills, jumping, throwing, navigating space.    

Maths this week has been working with parts of 5 and using our stem sentences such as -

5 is made of 1 and 4, 1 and 4 makes 5. We used two sided counters to randomly generate number bonds to 5 and used dice patterns to record the results. 

Our germination experiment is progressing and we are finding out what beans need to grow we have put different conditions on each jar of 10 beans

cotton wool, water and light

cotton wool and water

cotton wool and light

water and light

just light

in one jar we split the beans in half

in one jar we added 0 beans

Some of the beans have begun to germinate.

Term 3a Week 2

This week we had an author visit on Monday, made cress sandwiches, worked on our throwing, catching and running skills in PE, thought about the life cycle of a bean and worked on parts of 5 and doubling in maths.  

Term 3a Week 1

Reception have got straight back to work this new half term, learning our new story for this half term - 'Jasper's Beanstalk' by Nick Butterworth and Mick Inkpen.  Our topic is growing and changing with the question - 'How do you make a beanstalk?'  We have ordered the story and used actions to remember different parts.  Planting cress in cotton wool has been fun and waiting until it is big enough to use for cress sandwiches may be hard although we have seen the seeds change in only 2 days!  On Friday afternoon we went for a spring walk to look for flowers, buds, blossom and insects, we saw lots of signs of spring including a robbin, butterflies and a phesent!