Category: Reception – St Adrian

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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