Mrs Solakova

Reception – First week back!

19.04.24

Welcome everyone to Summer term!
I really hope that you’ve enjoyed your Easter holiday and are ready for another busy term. We have lots of exciting adventures planned and I am really looking forward to the wonderful learning in the coming weeks!
We began a new project this week, a sensory garden full of scented and colourful plants. In there you can smell different spices like rosemary and curry!

In Little Wandle this week we revisited everything learnt in Spring 2, therefore no new sentences/tricky words will be added to your childs orange book.
In your childs book bag you will find the new summer home learning grid. Please choose at least three of the activities and once ready, share them with us. We can’t wait to see them!!!

In Maths the children focused on the concept of 3-D shapes and their properties. We already explored some of the properties of these shapes earlier when sorting
objects that are 3-D, looking at 2-D shapes, however this week we were naming the 3-D shapes and discussed how we know that that a shape is 3-D, and not 2-D. We explored the idea of flat faces and curved surfaces in activities such as printing and rolling/sliding the shapes down a ramp. We also learnt how to see the 2-D shapes within the 3-D shapes.

The children also embedded their learning by going on a 3-D shape around the school! They found lots of cubes, cuboids and spheres, however the pyramids and cones were trickier to spot.

RE
Pentecost – Good news. In this new theme the children will learn about the gift of the Holy Spirit and serving as a way of life. They will explore what we mean by Good news and know that everyone at times will have good news to share. They will appreciate their own good news, talk about how they feel when they have good news to share and celebrate the good news that they hear from other children and adults. These experiences will lay the foundation to help children understand the Good News that Christians celebrate at Easter – that Jesus is alive!
This week we read ‘The jolly postman’:

We discussed how it feels when we hear good news and then talked about good news we can share with each other. Have a look at some of the wonderful examples:

Dates to remember:
Friday 26th April – Reading morning
Friday 26th April (PM) – Litter picking

Have a lovely weekend!
Mrs Solakova

Reception – Happy Easter!

What a week!
Looking after the chicks, preparing for Easter and welcoming families for Easter egg hunt.

Today was the last day having the chick, but luckily they are going to a loving home. Miss Osman will keep them all in her garden and will send us little updates on how they are doing! During the week we took them for a walk, cleaned the tank and gave them food and water.

Thank you so much for joining us today for a lovely Egg hunt and Easter basket craft. It was lovely seeing so many of you joining us for this special occasion!

The children looked absolutely amazing wearing their Easter bonnets!!!

I hope you all have an amazing Easter holiday!

Mrs Solakova

Reception – New life!

What a week everyone!!! So many things are growing in our classroom, so many things to care for… It’s all helping us to grow in love and care and be a little bit more like Jesus!
As probably you all know the eggs arrived on Monday and started hatching Tuesday evening. On Wednesday morning we had 3 chicks and the rest of the eggs hatched during the day. And that was very exciting for the children, watching them peck and slowly breaking the shell.

The chicks are now all hatched and healthy. They are eating and drinking and of course ready to be cuddled! Everyone had a turn and all the children were super careful while holding them.

Our beans are doing really well too. We make sure that the cotton is moist all the time and that they get plenty of sunshine. Some of them are still sprouting as others formed roots and leaves. Soon they will be planted in the garden!!!

In Little Wandle this week we began reading words ending in -ing. We are also continuing to revisit the tricky words, digraphs and trigraphs. The children are also learning how to write some long sentences like: The goat was born this morning.

In Maths we were learning to see greater numbers as a whole number and its parts at the same time. The children were encouraged to represent their different compositions of
numbers to 10 by providing varied representations to show the different compositions.
We used the stem sentence 5 and 5 are a bond to 10, 6 and 4 are a bond to 10, etc.
The children used visuals to support their understanding.

In RE we continued thinking of different ways to grow in love and care. Thank you very much for bringing your Lenten promises to school. They are now part of a beautiful display. The children are very good at remembering their promises!

Dates to remember:
Monday 25th March – deadline for Easter bonnets
Tuesday 26th March at 9:00 am – Stations of the Cross reflection assembly
Wednesday 27th at 9:00 am – Easter art competition parade
Thursday 28th at 9:15 am – Meet the chicks and Easter craft morning
Thursday 28th – Nursery and Reception cake sale (after school)
Thursday 28th – Last day of term. School finishes at 1:30pm

Have a lovely weekend.
Mrs Solakova

Reception – A very scientific week!

15.03.24

Dear children and parents,
This week we’ve been busy talking about the world around us and understanding the effects of changing seasons on the natural world. We were looking for signs of Spring and painted posters for each season. We talked about the different activities we can do in different times of year and the colours we see.

This week the theme for British science week was time and that opened up lots and lots of discussions about what time means and how we can measure time. We talked about things that go very fast (the fastest animals or ways of travelling) or very slow (growing plants, building a house).

We planted some beans, talking about what the seeds might need, how to look after them and how long it will take for them to grow. The children had to think about what comes first, second. Next week the children will start writing a diary, carefully observing the changes.

1 Find a pot, 2 Put soil in:

3 Put the seeds, 4 Water the seed:

During the week we were making puppets for our end of week sneaky shadow puppet show. We performed in front of each other telling stories and acting out. The children loved using the torches and seeing the effect of light on the screen!

If you need some fresh fruit or veggies, please come to our brand new market. You will find potatoes, cabbage and cucumbers. Also milk, eggs and honey! The children did the labels all by themselves and helped set up the stalls. Well done everyone!

In Little Wandle we read our first super long words like fantastic and shimmer. I’ve added a few of the them to the orange book. Please practice them with your child and if they struggle let them chunk the words.

In Maths we are continuing to think about numbers to 10. The children used conceptual subitising to identify a whole quantity within 10 by subitising the smaller groups that make up that number. This skill will support children to develop mental images for addition and subtraction, which helps children to move away from counting on and counting back.

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

Reception – World book day and Mother’s day celebrations!

08.03.24

Hello children and parents,
The focus for this week was definitely Mothers day! We’ve been busy practicing our song, we painted rainbow flowers and of course decorated fantastic Mother’s day cards! In our writing sessions we were thinking about why we love mummy and how we can help her at home with chores! Here is some of our writing… excellent work reception!

On Thursday we had a wonderful day celebrating love for books and reading. The children looked absolutely stunning in their outfits and they were very excited to talk about their favourite stories in class!
We were thinking about all of the places we can read the book and came out with several ideas:
You can read alone or you can read a friend!

You can read outside (how about on a Tuk Tuk bike) or you can read inside:

You can read with a teacher or with a friend:

There can be few things as powerful as regularly reading to a young child. It has astonishing benefits for children: comfort and reassurance, confidence and security, relaxation, happiness and fun. Giving a child time and full attention when reading them a story tells them they matter. It builds self-esteem, vocabulary, feeds imagination and even improves their sleeping patterns.

To celebrate their birthdays, children are encouraged to donate a book to our class library. The reward for doing this is to come to school in a favourite outfit. You can view our class wish-list on Amazon.
Reception wish-list https://amzn.eu/3RN7MT3

And finally to all of you wonderful mums!!!
I love my mum because she is the best!
I love my mum because she always cares for me!
I love my mum because she is beautiful and cooks delicious meals.
I love my mum because she takes me to school every day!
I love my mum because she cuddles me every and reads a bedtime story!

Have a wonderful Mother’s day and make sure you check your child’s Tapestry page for a special Sunday message 🙂

Mrs Solakova

Reception – Welcome back to Spring 2

01.03.24

I really hope that you’ve enjoyed your half term break and spent quality time with family and friends.
In Little Wandle this term we will focus on phase 4 phonics. That means that we will be learning how to read even longer words like swimming, fantastic and plurals like queens and boxes. We will not be learning any new digraphs or trigraphs, and we will only revisit phase 2 and phase 3 tricky words. In your orange books you will find some of the sentences we read at school. Please practice them for building fluency.

In Maths we learned how to use simple strategies to discuss time and then progress to ordering and sequencing simple events. Next week we will be using calendars to mark off the days leading up to special events and that will help us understand the passing of time. In learning through play the children measured the time by counting how many times they can write their name in 1 min, 3 min and 5 min.

In order to understand what sequencing means the children made honey sandwiches, following one step at a time.

We are also very busy preparing for our Mothers day assembly next Friday. Would be lovely to see you all there at 9am.

And finally, it was lovely to see you all and discuss your children’s progress. As ever your support is much appreciated and valued. We’ve come a long way and it is absolutely fantastic to see the massive progress the children have made.

Dates to remember:
Thursday 7th – World book day
Friday 8th – Mothers day assembly (therefore there will be no reading morning on Friday 8th)

Have a lovely weekend,
Mrs Solakova

Reception – Beginning of Lent

16.02.24

Dear children, parents and carers
I can’t believe we are halfway through the Reception year! The time has flown by….
The children have made massive progress not only in their reading, writing and maths, but also in their social skills, interacting with peers and adults and understanding rules and expectations.

As usual, the week was full of experiences and the children were very keen on trying and participating in different activities. On Tuesday we cooked our own pancakes. We did them from scratch and carefully followed a recipe. They turned out absolutely scrumptious and everyone had not one, but two pancakes. The children even helped wash the plates after 🙂

We were also creating beautiful Valentines cards for our loved ones. The children spend lots of time decorating them and writing lovely messages:

Ash Wednesday was a very special day for us too. We discussed that Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent and that the ashes are made of palm trees. The children started to think about their Lent promises and how to be a bit more like Jesus. Mrs Gallaher brought back ashes from the service.

On Friday we visited St Bartholomew church and looked around to spot significant artefacts and things we are familiar with. I am absolutely impressed of the exceptional behaviour of the children who represented St Adrians in the best possible way:

Have a wonderful half term break!
Mrs Solakova

Reception – Children’s Mental Health week

09.02.24

Hello children, parents and carers
It’s been a lovely week of thinking about feelings, emotions, mental health and wellbeing. Lots of the activities that took place were closely linked with this year’s theme ‘My voice matters’. We played games and enjoyed our time together on the carpet to help the children build a bank of ideas on how they can express themselves.

‘Are you listening carefully?’ This was the question we’ve asked the children. We played ‘The whisper game’ where everyone had to pass the message around the circle from child to child. We made string telephones working in pairs and noticed that when the string gets loose we can’t hear that well.
We also talked about how important eye contact is and played the ‘Eye signaled game’.

In PE this week we danced and did yoga and the children truly enjoyed both activities. They all commented on how well and refreshed they are feeling after the dancing and how calm and content after the yoga:

We also did wonderful writing thinking about our likes and dislikes. Here are some of the examples for you to enjoy 🙂

And finally we began reading a wonderful book called ‘Ruby’s worry’. We all learnt from Ruby. She’s a perfectly happy little girl, until she discovers a worry. The worry – depicted as a scribbly yellow shape – is hardly noticeable at first, but starts to grow and soon it’s with her all the time, stopping her from doing the things she loved.

We made a chart of how Ruby was feeling before the worry and how she was feeling after the worry and discussed the importance of sharing your worry with someone you can trust. That can be your friend, teacher or family, anyone you feel comfortable with. Next week we will create our worry box and the children will be able to draw or write their worry and share it with the rest of us. We all know that if we do that the worry will just disappear :)!

On Tuesday we talked about how to stay safe while using the internet. Smartie the Penguin was very supportive and he helped us understand the importance of never clicking on websites we are not sure of. We watched his story and created posters to take home. We also learnt his internet safety song.

In Little Wandle we started reading very, very long words like picnic and magnet, and even longer ones like bedroom and carpark. We’ve been revisiting phase 2 and phase 3 digraphs and some of the tricky words. In your orange books this week you will find your first longer words. Please practice them at home for building confidence and fluency. In class, when we read the longer words, we use the term ‘chunk’. For example the word bedroom can be chunked into two smaller words ‘bed’ and ‘room’. That really helps the children hear all the sounds in those very challenging phase 4 words.

In Maths the children were introduced to the concept of doubling and they learnt that this means ‘twice as many’. We had plenty of opportunities and the children had to answer very tricky questions like: ‘What does double mean?‘ or ‘Where can you see a double?‘.
We also practiced physically making doubles, using manipulatives and mark making.

In RE we created a wonderful ‘Mary and Joseph are taking baby Jesus to the Temple’ drawings. We also practiced tricky words and ‘igh’ trigraph by writing ‘He is the light!’ Have a look at our wonderful display. No doubt that you will love it 🙂

We are very excited to show you our wonderful Still Art paintings. They are now complete and the water colors look lovely. We all all very proud!

Have a lovely weekend.
Looking forward seeing you all on Monday for another fun filled week.
Mrs Solakova

Reception – NSPCC Number Day!

02.02.24

Hello children, parents and carers,
This week we’ve enjoyed lots of activities, but the best part was the Number Day on Friday. All children came to school dressed in spots, stripes and numbers and they all looked amazing. In continuous provision the children enjoyed lots of mathematical activities. Numicon prints on the playdough table, ten frames and counting bears and sweet jars ready to be filled with candies. All the activities helped us to secure our understanding of numbers 6, 7 and 8 and to practice the 5 and a bit equations. Here are some photos of the day:

Outside and inside we measured and balanced and poured and emptied. Talked about full, empty, nearly full, nearly empty, heavy, light… lots and lots of mathematical language!

The children also used the stem sentence ‘1 more than ….. is …..’ . Then they made flowers and on each petal the number was one more than the previous one.

In Little Wandle we’ve learnt the last digraph and trigraph from phase 3 sounds and from now until Summer term we will concentrate on reading longer words like puppet, bigger, hammer using all phase 2 and phase 3 sounds.

We were also busy learning 3 new tricky words: are, sure and pure. The last two proved to be extra tricky, so please make sure you practice them at home too!

This week we also started a new Art topic – Still Life Art. First we designed our own still art compositions. As you can imagine everyone had a different view and they are all different. Showing a couple here, but please come and check them out during next week’s reading morning. Then we sketched them on a special paper and next week we will start using the watercolours. Very exciting :)!

Dates to remember:

Wednesday 14th February, 9.15am – Ash Wednesday Service at St Barts – parents are welcome to join.
February half term – 19th – 23rd February

Have a lovely weekend.
Looking forward seeing you all on Monday for another fun filled week.
Mrs Solakova

Reception – We are celebrating!

26.01.23

Hello children, parents and carers,
Here are some news from another busy and fun week here at St Adrians.
As you can already guess, this week we took part in different celebrations. Our home corner turned into a party kitchen full of presents, bunting, cakes and sweets. There was also pizza and yummy sandwiches. We prepared some cakes on the playdough table. We’ve made a special chocolate playdough and had lots of gems, sticks and patterned rollers to decorate our ‘delicious’ creations!

All these celebrations were part of our new RE topic Local Church – Community. The children were thinking about what people celebrate and why they celebrate. Next week we will link these experiences with what the parish family celebrates. We will discuss further what ‘Parish family’ means and what sort of celebrations take place in Church.

We also role played a Bible story called ‘Mary and Joseph take baby Jesus to the Temple’ When Simeon and Anna saw baby Jesus, they couldn’t believe their eyes. They waited for a long time to see God’s son. When they finally met him they said that ‘He is the Savior of the world’ and ‘He is the light of the world’.

What a better way to learn the story, but to pretend we are Anna, Simeon, Mary and Joseph. Have a look:

In Little Wandle we learnt 3 new digraphs and 1 new trigraph.

We also learnt 3 new tricky words: my, by, all. We have added them to your child’s orange tricky words books, for you to practice at home.

In English we very much enjoyed a lovely text ‘The snowman’. The children experienced the book in so many ways: made own snowman, danced with snowy ribbons, learnt how to build a snowman, watched the film, cooked biscuits and hot chocolate. The final piece was a very own ‘Snowman book’. I can’t tell you how proud they made me feel while drawing and writing their books. Here are some lovely examples: