Category: Reception – St Adrian

02.05.25

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

We celebrated Mary on the writing table too by sending messages and lovely drawings. The children are using their phonics brilliantly!!!

On our making table we designed special Rosary beads using pipe cleaners.

Catholic Social Teaching
The children learnt so much about our new topic Dignity of Workers. We discussed how God created the world and he created humans to work in the world to keep it a happy, peaceful place for everyone. So everyone who works is loved by God and must be respected by everyone. We also learnt that respect is about thinking about others before yourself and making sure everyone feels like they are important and their presence valued. The children dressed up with different outfits and named the profession behind each outfit.

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 we determined what are the best 3-D shapes for tasks such as rolling or stacking. We considered why this is the best shape as well as what different 3-D shapes do or do not have in common. This helped us to develop spatial reasoning skills.

And finally but not least, congratulations for all your hard work and motivation! You truly deserve the awards, red sash and golden rosette!!!

Dates to remember:
Monday 5th May – Bank Holiday
Tuesday 6th May – School photos
Friday 9th May – Reading morning

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

25.04.25

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!

This week we fully dedicated to Pope Francis and his life. The children took part in various activities and learnt lots of facts about his mission and believes. In art we used collage technique to create little Popes. We talked about the type of clothes they wear and how are they called.

We also discussed the meaning behind each symbol on Pope Francis’ coat of arms.
The sun is a symbol of the Divine light and the Gospel
The mitre (pointed hat) represents the Pope’s role as the head of the Catholic Church.
The gold and silver keys represent the Pope’s authority in both Heaven and Earth.
The star symbolises Virgin Mary and the flower St Joseph.

And finally we wrote a special prayer to Pope Francis.

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 blue book.

Dates to remember:
Friday 2nd May – No reading morning
Friday 2nd May – Crowning of Mary Assembly at 9:00 am – all parents welcome
Monday 5th May – Bank Holiday Monday

Have a lovely weekend!
Mrs Solakova

04.04.2025

Big thank you for a lovely end to another busy term! What a special gathering we’ve had today! We thought about Jesus and the Cross, about the meaning of the color purple and what happened on Good Friday!

I hope you all have an amazing Easter holiday!

Mrs Solakova

28.03.25

Hello children, parents and carers,
The focus for this week was definitely Mothers day! We’ve been busy practicing our song, we painted number 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!

I really hope that you’ve enjoyed our performance. The children worked hard practicing the song and painting special Mother’s day flowers.

In Little Wandle we continued to read words ending in -ing and plurals. We are also continuing to revisit the tricky words, digraphs and trigraphs learnt so far. The children are beginning to learn 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 is a part and 5 is a part. The whole is 10, 6 is a part and 4 is a part. The whole is 10, etc.
The children used lots visuals to support their understanding and sang various songs like ’10 Green Bottles sitting on a wall’.

And finally but not least, congratulations for all your hard work and motivation! You truly deserve the awards, red sash and golden rosette!!!

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 treat!

Mrs Solakova

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!

Our beans and cress seeds are getting taller every day. We make sure that the soil 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!!!

We learnt lots of interesting facts about how seeds grow and created a beautiful display of a plant:

We also watched a timelapse video of a growing seed. The children were absolutely mesmerized!!!

Our new role play is also ready to be explored. 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 swimming. We are continuing learning that if the word is too long and hard to read then it can be ‘chunked’. Some words even need to be chunked into 3… fan-tas-tic!!!

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.

We also made number books, thinking about what’s 1 more and what’s 1 less than a given number.

And finally but not least, congratulations for all your hard work and motivation! You truly deserve the awards, red sash and golden rosette!!!

Dates to remember:
Friday 28th March at 9:00 am – Mother’s day assembly (There will be no reading morning on that day)
Monday 31st March – Deadline for Easter bonnets
Wednesday 2nd April at 9:00 am – Stations of the Cross Assembly (all are welcome)
Thursday 3rd April at 9:00 am – Easter parade (all are welcome)
Thursday 3rd April – Non uniform day (£1 or more for the Catholic Children Society)
Friday 4th April/9:30 – 10:30 – Hot cross bun gathering and Easter craft day (all children are invited to wear purple)
Friday 4th April – School finishes at 1:30pm

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

14.03.25

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. The weather has been brilliant! Crazy changeable weather bringing much excitement and learning!
How snow and hail are different?
Where is the wind coming from?
What makes a rainbow?

This year’s British science week is ‘Change and adapt’ and that opened up lots and lots of discussions about what is means to adapt and how living creatures change in time. We made a giant caterpillar, painted animal boxes and planted some seeds.

We planted beautiful purple gladioli, talking about what the bulbs 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. They used their brilliant phonics skills to write about it 🙂

In our English lessons we continued to read the story ‘Pirates love underpants’ however we are retelling it with our own words. We also made pirate boats and tested if they will float or sink. Why it is floating? Why it is sinking?

In Little Wandle this term we are focusing 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 introducing any new digraphs, trigraphs or tricky words. We are also busy mastering fluency even with super long sentences like:

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.
We also talked about length and height. We went out and found different length sticks, then we arranged them in order starting from the shortest and finishing with the longest.

In RE we read the bible story ‘The good Samaritan’.
We discussed questions like: Who is your neighbour? and Why it’s important to be kind? We helped the robbed person by giving him plasters and lots of kindness and care

And finally but not least, congratulations for all your hard work and motivation! You truly deserve the awards, red sash and golden rosette!!!

Have a wonderful weekend!
Mrs Solakova

07.03.25

What a week we’ve had!
Went on a trip, dressed up for book day and learnt all about Ash Wednesday!!!

Well, the trip was definitely the highlight of the week! The bus journey went very smoothly and the children were very sensible and kind. They all said ‘Thank you’ to the bus driver and ‘hello and goodbye’ to all passengers! Well done!

The performance was absolutely smashing!!! We danced, we sang and did all actions!

After the performance we enjoyed a delicious lunch in the park!

Next week we will continue with the story ‘Pirates love underpants’ and start creating different settings and characters. Ahoy pirates!!!

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 a book and came out with several ideas:

You can read alone or with a friend….

You can read sitting on a tire or bike…..

You can read on a bench or climbing frame…. The options are endless 🙂

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

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 Porter brought back ashes from the service and made a cross on everyone’s forehead!

And finally but not least, congratulations for all your hard work and motivation! You truly deserve the awards, red sash and golden rosette!!!

Have a wonderful weekend!
Mrs Solakova

14.02.2025

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.
This week began by thinking about how to stay safe on internet and what to do if something doesn’t look right while using 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 learnt his internet safety song.

After listening to Smartie’s story we discussed all the ways to stay safe and created speech bubbles with lots of advice! We even modelled Smartie!

In Maths the children explored the composition of numbers to 8. They learnt how their skills of perceptual subitising and counting can be used to see and represent the composition of larger numbers in different ways.

The children were encouraged to name their representations of numbers up to 8 and prompted to match numerals to these quantities. To draw their attention we went on a minibeast hunt and counted how many legs each one had (no minibeasts were harmed in this activity :)) We counted 6 legs on the ant and 8 on the spider!

And finally but not least, congratulations for all your hard work and motivation! You truly deserve the awards, red sash and golden rosette!!!

Dates to remember:
Wednesday 26.02.25 – Parents consultations – 1:00 – 3:00 pm
Thursday 27.02.25 – Parents consultations – 4:00 – 7:00 pm
Tuesday 04.03.25 – Theatre trip to Alban Arena

Have a wonderful half term break!
Mrs Solakova

07.02.25

Hello children, parents and carers
It’s been a lovely week of thinking about feelings, emotions, mental health and wellbeing. We played games and enjoyed our time together, we learnt how to help each other by sharing our emotions and express ourselves. We read 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 also did wonderful writing thinking about our likes and dislikes. Here are some of the examples for you to enjoy 🙂

On the making table the children created lovely human faces with lots of emotions. They did great job describing how they feel and why they feel that way 🙂

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 blue 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 developed the skill of perceptual subitising. This form of subitising refers to instantly recognising the number of objects in a group without needing to count them. The concept of subitising zero and up to five items was introduced in small steps. We did dot plates and used them in our PE lesson to do jumps, hops, star jumps and much more:

What a crazy ‘Crazy hair day’ it has been! The children had amazing hairstyles, fun and very creative!

And finally but not least, congratulations for all your hard work and motivation! You truly deserve the awards, red sash and golden rosette!!!

Have a lovely weekend.
Looking forward seeing you all on Monday.
Mrs Solakova

31.01.25

Welcome to our blog! We hope you’ve had a fun week like us. We’ve enjoyed lots of activities, but the best part was the Pets as Therapy Day on Friday. All children came to school dressed in all sort of animals, from little creatures to scary tigers… and they all looked amazing!

Lexa and Polka even visited our classroom and the children made them feel very welcomed. They gave them lots of cuddles and read their favourite stories to them.
Have a look yourself!

Well done for taking part in our Pets as Therapy art competition and congratulations to the winners! Your posters look amazing!

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!

In Maths we talked about 4 side shapes and practiced describing the properties of the squares and rectangle. The children learnt that the square has 4 equal sides and the rectangle 2 short and 2 long sides! We went on a hunt around the school and looked for 4 side shapes in the environment. We were lucky to spot lots of square windows, rectangle benches and much more:

In RE we talked about how Jesus wants all children to be his friends and when his disciples tried to push the little children away Jesus said: “Let the children come to me, and do not stop them,” Jesus said. “The kingdom of heaven belongs to these little ones.” 

And finally but not least, congratulations for all your hard work and motivation! You truly deserve the awards, red sash and golden rosette!!!

Have a lovely weekend.
Looking forward seeing you all on Monday.
Mrs Solakova