Author: 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

26.05.24

Dear parents and children,
This week we discussed some very important matters, including how to reduce the use of plastic, how to look after our planet and what we can do to help. We’ve been reading a story called ‘The tale of the toothbrush’. The story of Sammy and Sophia really helped the children to understand the impact their choices have on our planet: 

We’ve been doing lots of activities around that book and the children built a bank of ideas on how and why we must reduce the use of plastic. They had different ideas and strategies: 

When you go shopping you need to bring your own bag.
Recycle your plastic making sure it goes into the correct bin.
Bring your own reusable bottle and don’t buy plastic bottles from the shop. 
Buy loose fruit and  vegetables instead of wrapped ones. 

We also discussed ways to reuse plastic just like Sofia did. She reused Sammy the toothbrush to clean her shoes and brush her doll’s hair. We even displayed our ideas and made labels for each one.

At the end of the week we all went around the school for litter picking. Unfortunately there was so much litter…. we collected 4 full buckets, but lots more was left behind. The children were able to understand the importance of recycling and how important is to keep our streets clean from plastic.

In Little Wandle this week we’ve been reading CVCC words like nest, best, gift etc. We also learnt 4 new tricky words. These have been added to your child’s orange book.

In Maths this week, the children became more familiar with numbers beyond 10 and the pattern (stable order) of numbers to 20 and beyond. They also focused on seeing the pattern of ten and 4 more, ten and 5 more, ten and 6 more, and so on. They played lots of games linked with counting and recognising numerals like bingo and adding counters to two ten frames. They were able to build 15, 16, 17 etc, by adding 10 counters to the first ten frame and 5, 6, 7 more to the second ten frame.

Great learning this week Reception!
You all deserve a special certificate!!!

Dates to remember:
Friday 3rd May – No Reading Morning
Friday 3rd May – Crowning of Mary Assembly at 09:05 – Parents are welcome to attend
Monday 6th May – Bank Holiday

Have a wonderful weekend!
Mrs Solakova

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

20.07.23

It feels very strange writing my last blog and still hard to believe that such a great year has come to an end.
THANK YOU to each one of you children for all the warmth, the memories, and the learning that we have shared this school year! For when I teach, I also learn. This past year we have grown together. A little bit of each of you will always be with me. Always strive to be the best that you can be!!!

To the Parents… THANK YOU for allowing me to be your child’s teacher. I needed your support so many times and you were always there for me! Your help is much appreciated and greatly valued!
The great results we achieved as a class are such a proof!!!

And finally … you really spoiled me with amazing gifts and heart warming messages!
Thank you so much!!!

Our school trip to St Albans museum and galleries this Wednesday was a real hit! The children thoroughly enjoyed their outdoor picnic and played beautifully. The behaviour was exceptional the whole time! The workshop was super fun and very educational too… we’ve learned so many interesting facts about old toys and we even get to play with some of them. On the way back the children looked for different water birds… and guess what, we spotted nearly all of them! Thank you to all the parent volunteers who supported us. Here are some photos:

On our last day we signed the Year 6’s shirts and wished them best of luck!

I wish this sparkly, confident, creative and kind class all the very best in Year 1. 

Have the best summer!
Mrs Solakova

14.07.23

Hello children and parents,
What a week it has been… from meeting new teachers and watching the Year 6 production, to welcoming the new reception children, being super friendly and kind showing them around.
As you can imagine, the real highlight of the week was when the children visited their new classroom and their new teachers.

Everyone was very excited!
I really liked the climbing frame! – Indie
My favourite part was when we did the glittery paper craft! – Georgie
I liked the stars and the numbers! – Luke
The teachers were very nice! – Lucy

Next week updates:
We’ve decided to have our Teddy bear’s picnic on Tuesday. The weather is looking good so far, but has changed so many times (been checking since Monday :))… so in case it rains, we will have the Teddy bear’s picnic as part of the trip on Wednesday.
So please send your children to school, with their teddies on Tuesday.

Trip to St Albans museum
Please make sure that your child is wearing comfortable shoes and full school uniform.
If it rains your child must have wellies and a raincoat, if sunny, sun hat.
On the day they will need to have a backpack. Water bottles and home packed lunches should fit in the back pack. If you are planning to order school packed lunch, please make sure you let the office now ASAP. They can choose cheese or tuna sandwich.

Have a wonderful weekend!
Mrs Solakova

07.07.2023

Hello everyone,
big thank you for joining us on our Sports day. The children were absolutely brilliant remembering that sport is not just about winning or losing, it is about shared experiences and shared contest. We truly enjoyed all the activities and were very excited to try them all… and we managed to get through all the races, despite the light rain…. so lucky 🙂
Here are some photos from the day:

Well done children. You really deserved your medals and ice lollies!!!!

This week was our final week going to the library. Please make sure that you check for any library books in your house and if there are any, please bring them back next week.

In Little Wandle we continued revisiting tricky words, digraphs and trigraphs and also read even more difficult words like printed and smeared. We were learning that sometimes words that finish with-ed sounds have to be read with -t sound and sometimes with -ed sounds. Tricky isn’t it?

Transition Morning
Thursday 13th July – At 8:45 reception children will need to line up outside Year 1 classroom to spend the morning in Year 1 with Mrs Thompson. They will come back to Reception after lunch for a normal pick up at 3:15pm.

Reception class trip will take place on Wednesday 19th July. We will leave around 9am and be back on time for pick up at 3:15pm.
Please let me know if you can help on the day. We still need volunteers!!!
Please let the office know if your child will have school packed lunch on that day.

Friday 14th July – Non uniform day – £1 donation
Saturday 15th July – Summer BBQ – 12:30pm to 3:30pm

Have a lovely weekend,
Mrs Solakova