Author: Mrs Solakova

12.07.24

Dear children and parents,
We have had a very interesting week with new children settling in, a morning with Mrs Thompson and planning an End of Reception party!

In Maths and Little Wandle we are revisiting tricky learning like bonds to 10, odd and even numbers, reading longer words like portrait and sight reading words like when, what and why. That gives us extra time for games and spending quality time with each other in the last weeks of Reception… Where did the time go? We played parachute games on the field, baked muffins and enjoyed the sunshine. Have a look:

Thursday morning was such a success and Mrs Thompson was absolutely impressed with all children and their exceptional behaviour and knowledge. The children spent the time in year 1 classroom painting, listening to a story and playing outside!

As you probably already know, on Friday next week, we are going to have an End of Reception party! All children are very excited and looking forward to it. We have decided to make a party food list and everyone brings something different. Please make sure you check your child’s reading record for further information 🙂

And finally… we are all very excited about the Euro final on Sunday! We made flags to support England! We all hope that they are going to win!!!

Dates to remember:
Friday 19th July – Reading morning
Friday 19th July – Last day of term. School finishes at 1:30pm.

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend!
Mrs Solakova

05.07.24

Hello children and parents,

Without any doubt this weeks’ favourite was EYFS Sports day! All children showed excellent sportsmanship, playing fairly and respecting each other. The carousel activities went well, but the races were definitely everyone’s best part of the day!

Thank you to all grown ups too, for taking part in the races. It was wonderful seeing your little ones so excited watching you compete 🙂

Well done children. You all deserved your medals and certificates!!!

Dates to remember:
Thursday 13th July – Transition morning (all children will spend the morning with Mrs Thompson in year 1 classroom)
Friday 14th July – Reading morning

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend!
Mrs Solakova

28.06.24

Hello children and parents,

It has been a very sunny week and the children enjoyed spending more time outside playing with water and sand, drawing with crayons and making muddy pies! We were also busy getting ready for the sports day next week. We can’t wait to put our PE kits and show you what we’ve learnt.

In Little Wandle we read new words with -ed endings and discussed that sometimes we read the -ed end like ‘-id’ and sometimes like ‘-t’. Some of the new words this week are cloaked, scooped, croaked. The children are also very busy writing even longer sentences using their phonics knowledge. They are getting more confident in writing for different purposes and a very recent example is fathers day:

In Maths we were busy making simple maps of familiar places. We even used some scenarios or stories to enhance their map making, such as ‘Train ride’. To describe the maps the children used keywords and sentences like ‘First, I need to pass the bridge, then I go straight and after I turn around the park.’ Thank you very much for your lovely maps. They look lovely on our home learning board.

Dates to remember:
Tuesday 2nd July at 10am – EYFS sports day (Children to come to school in their PE kits and school cap.)
Friday 5th July – Reading morning

Wishing you a wonderful weekend!
Mrs Solakova

21. 06.24

Well, what else can I say but what a performance!!! Well done children, you really smashed it today! So confident saying your lines, exceptional singing and fantastic artwork! What else could you ask for! You certainly made me and Mrs Reid super proud and grateful to be your teachers! You absolutely proved that hard work always pays off!

Thank you to all the children who built our ark! 

Thank you to all children who chose an animal and clambered on!

Thank you to all children for creating a beautiful rainbow!

Thank you to all the children for their fantastic singing and the heavy rain! 

And thank you all for the sunshine!

And thank you all for all your lovely writing. It was fantastic seeing all of you thinking about the story and writing amazing sentences!

Hope you all have an amazing weekend!
Looking forward seeing you all next week!

Mrs Solakova

14.06.24

Hello parents and children,
Without a doubt today’s blog should be dedicated to our amazing trip to the Cathedral. I am absolutely impressed with all children, their sensible behaviour and attentive listening. They reminded us once again that the children of St. Adrian’s are exceptional 🙂

In the first part of the day we walked around the Cathedral to discover the beautiful stained glass windows. The lady was very kind and she explained how they’ve been made and what they represent. Then the children created their own stained glass windows. We are very much looking forward to showing you our fantastic art on the open evening 🙂 

The weather stayed dry so we had our lunch in the park and even managed to watch the nesting peregrines through a telescope. Here is the link for the live camera if you want to have a look too:

https://www.stalbanscathedral.org/peregrine-live-cam

In the second part of the day the children learnt about the different roles in church. They dressed up as priests, flower arrangers, built an arch and recorded wedding messages.

What Is A Father?

A father is someone who’s always around
when you’re stuck for some friendly advice.
A father is someone who knows how you feel
and who’ll help you without thinking twice…
A father is someone so thoughtful and kind
he’s made his own place in your heart…
A father is someone you wish all life’s best
with the love that’s been his from the start.

Happy fathers day!!!

Dates to remember:
Friday 21th June – No reading morning
Friday 21th June – Reception class assembly

Wishing you a wonderful weekend and fantastic Father’s day Sunday!
Mrs Solakova

07.06.24

Hello and welcome back to the last half term of Reception! Hard to believe, isn’t it?
This term is going to be a very busy one! There are lots of exciting things to look forward to: St Albans Cathedral trip, Class assembly, Sports day, Teddy bears picnic and transition morning!
In the next 7 weeks we will continue to observe changes we notice from Spring to Summer and will discuss how to stay safe in the heat. In PE we will mainly be practicing for our sports day. The games we’ve prepared are super fun 🙂

Our Little Wandle journey will continue with phase 4 sounds – longer words, plurals and -ing and -ed ends. The children are getting more and more familiar with how to blend, chunk and read those not so easy words. We will really focus on writing sentences, as the children now have the needed skills to develop that love for writing. Please make sure you practice all tricky words regularly. They will help us build fluency when reading more complicated books.

In Maths we talked about grouping and sharing, made doubles using our doubling machine and discussed odd and even numbers. The children used the fair and unfair sharing skills to identify whether a number is odd or even by sharing into two groups. Using language such as ‘odd’, ‘even’, ‘equal’ and ‘unequal’ prompted the children to make the links to the number of objects they are sharing.

The two groups are equal – that number is even.
The two groups are not equal – the number is odd.

Dates to remember:
Thursday 13th June – Trip to St Albans Cathedral
Friday 14th June – No reading morning
Friday 14th June – Fathers day assembly – Parents welcome

Have a wonderful week!
Mrs Solakova

24.05.24

Hello parents and children,
This week we added the final touches to our garden. It is looking wonderful and also attracting lots of bees and butterflies. The children are feeling very proud of what they achieved and every day they will check for weeds and water the plants.

In Little Wandle this week we have been looking at -ed word endings, deciding whether it makes -ed sound like in hunted or -d sound like in bumped. We also read words with -est endings like softest and strongest. We also learnt the last 2 tricky words for reception:

Please practice all tricky words at home too, so your children can feel confident recalling them. Don’t forget to continue reading both practice book and library book.
Thank you for your continued support.

In Maths we explored sharing and grouping which are both different methods of division. We talked about sharing as dividing a set equally between a certain number of groups. And grouping as dividing a set by placing a certain number of items in each group. We learnt that to share we need to take one object at a time and give it to one child before taking the next object and giving it to the next child, repeating this process until all the objects are gone or each child has an equal amount.

Wishing everybody a very restful half term. I have heard lots about your plans for the holidays and can’t wait to hear all about it from the children when they return.
Mrs Solakova

17.05.24

Hello children and parents,
It won’t be enough to say that we all had a lovely day today! Our Pentecost party was such a success with glorious weather, delicious food and most importantly …. wonderful children!!! They practised hard and learnt our very special song, remembered important facts about Pentecost and were able to explain in detail why we are celebrating today. Well done children.

On Thursday we made delicious red jam sandwiches, decorated with balloons and bunting. We set up the food and cut grapes, strawberries and watermelon. Thank you children for being so helpful. Our families felt very welcomed in our rather red classroom 🙂

In Little Wandle this week we continued reading long words, however some of this week’s words were extremely long… handstand has 9 sounds!!! We also learnt 4 new tricky words:

In Maths we continued working with shapes, however this week we learnt how to identify shapes within shapes and that shapes can not only be separated to make new shapes, but also that shapes can be combined.

Have a wonderful weekend!
Looking forward seeing you all next week!
Mrs Solakova

10.05.24

Dear children and parents,
Here are some updates on our exciting week.
First and very important we truly enjoyed the wonderful weather. From decorating plant pots to water fights, the children had plenty of fun learning and exploring! As usual they were super helpful and our outside area is looking better than never.

As you can imagine we were also busy learning to read words like string, strap, scrunch. They proved to be very difficult to segment as you can often miss a sound … We also learnt 4 new tricky words:

In Maths this week we were learning to further explore the properties of shapes
and spatial relations. The children had plenty of opportunities to Provide opportunities to explore the attributes of shapes and to select shapes for a particular purpose. We created lovely mosaic with shapes and the children built on the learning from previous
steps by now manipulating shapes. Children explored moving, turning, rotating and flipping shapes to fit into the spaces provided.

We are very excited to show you what we’ve made…. We learnt lots about boats, how they travel, why they float and what makes them move. The children explored floating and sinking by placing different objects in a water tray. They predicted which objects would sink or float and then tested their predictions. Then they designed their own boats:

The trickiest part was to actually build the designed boat. The children worked in teams having to negotiate what materials would be best for a boat, what would make it unsinkable.

And of course at the end we went to test the boats! Are they going to sink or are they going to float? If they sink, why… what went wrong?

Well done reception for another great week!
Looking forward seeing you again next week 🙂

Dates to remember:
Friday 17th May – No Reading morning
Friday 17th May – Pentecost party at 9:15am

Have a lovely weekend!
Mrs Solakova

03.05.24

Dear children and parents,

We entered May thinking about Mary, Mother of Jesus. The children prepared a lovely display with the 12 Apostles and helped write their names. They were singing the hymns beautifully and their behaviour during the assembly was exceptional!

In RE we also continued our learning about Pentecost and read the story of the Holy Spirit.

Forty days after his Resurrection Jesus returned to his Father in heaven. His friends were sad. They missed him.  They felt lonely and afraid without him.  On Pentecost day, they were all together in the house.  Crowds of people came to Jerusalem to celebrate the feast. The friends of Jesus did not go out to join them.  They stayed all together in the house.  They talked about Jesus and remembered what he had told them.   As the wind filled the room, they began to feel different.  Joy and happiness filled their hearts.  It was wonderful.  They knew that Jesus had kept his promise to send a new friend, the Holy Spirit.  “Let’s go out and join the crowds.”  Peter said.  “Let’s tell them the Good News that Jesus is alive.”

Based on Acts 2: 1-4.

We talked about the Holy Spirit as something we can’t see or touch, but feel. The children began learning a new song as well:

In Little Wandle we continued learning phase 4 sounds, but this week we focused on words with short vowels like train, track, bring and smash. We also learnt 4 new tricky words. Please practice these at home too for building fluency.

In Maths the children built on their understanding as they explored the change structure of addition by adding more and subtraction by taking away. The focus was on increasing and decreasing a quantity by a given amount, while continuing to work within 10. The children used real objects to see that the quantity of a group can be changed by adding more or taking away.

And finally… a caterpillar update! The caterpillars are growing big and fat and entering into the next stage of the life cycle – chrysalis. We observed the changes carefully and talked about what comes next.

Dates to remember:
Monday 6th May – Bank Holiday
Wednesday 8th May – School photos
Friday 10th May – Reading morning

Have a wonderful weekend!
Looking forward seeing you all on Tuesday!
Mrs Solakova