I hope you are all well and looking forward to your child’s first day at school.
I have posted two new videos on the Memo section of Tapestry. A hello from Mrs O’Connor and Mrs Reid and also a video tour of the classroom and outside area. I hope both these videos will help your child prepare for their first day.
You may also wish to watch this hand washing video with your child. We will be learning the song at school.
Rub the palms, one two Rub the knuckles, one, two Rub the insides of the fingers And the back of them too Rub the thumbs one, two And the nails one, two Now it’s time to rinse them Happy clean hands for you
I am conscious that some children may find separating from their parents a little challenging. If your child is at all anxious, please prepare your child as much as possible with lots of positive encouragement. Reassure your child that we will have fun playing together and making friends. When you say good bye to your child, a little tip would be to wave briefly and say “See you soon”.
I am very much looking forward to meeting all my new Reception class children and getting to know their families. I’m also very excited and have been busy at school making sure the classroom is ready.
Many thanks to those parents who activated their child’s Tapestry on-line learning journey and completed the ‘All about Me’ section . I enjoyed reading about all the fun activities the children enjoy at home and also finding out what is important to you and your child. If you haven’t already activated your account, it would be great if you could find the time to do this in the near future. I often send information and messages to parents through Tapestry. Please do not hesitate to email the School Office if you are encountering any difficulties. Emails are checked periodically and queries can be forwarded to me. I am also happy to re-send a Tapestry activation email if you wish.
School Office email: admin@stadrians.herts.sch.uk
I’ve created a short video for you all to help you get to know me a little better.
I hope you enjoy the video and the story of the The Colour Monster. I will be in touch again with more videos next week.
On behalf of Mrs Sallis, Mrs O’Connor, Mrs Reid, Mrs Heffernan, Mrs Ruffell and myself, I would like to say a big thank you for the kind and generous gifts. We were overwhelmed by your generosity.
This week both Reception groups continued to protect their ‘bubbles’ but also enjoyed celebrating together.
On Tuesday, we watched the Year 6 End of Year Leavers’ Mass together.
Today, we held a joint ‘Sports Day’. The children competed against each other in relay teams. Races included running through hoops, pass the bean bag and a sack race. The children also enjoyed a well deserved lolly and enthusiastically participated several fun dance games.
May I take this opportunity to thank you all for your support throughout the year. It has been an honour and pleasure teaching your children. They have been a credit to you all and adapted so well to the recent changing circumstances.
Wishing all the children a continued happy and successful school life at St. Adrian’s.
To help the children remember those trigraphs (3 letters/1 sound) we watched the antics of Geraldine the Giraffe (Mr Thorne Does Phonics). Just Google ‘Geraldine the Giraffe’ followed by the sound you wish to find. Below are the videos we watched in class this week.
Meet the Teacher
The children made an ‘All About Me’ wheel on a paper plate to share with Miss Perry, our Year 1 Class Teacher. Each member of the class had the opportunity to chat with Miss Perry and tell her all about their family, favourite hobby, animal etc.
Miss Perry set the children a challenge for over the summer holidays. She asked them to create a portrait of themselves to bring into school on their first day into Year 1. This can be a painting, drawing or collage creation. The portrait will form the basis of their first topic ‘All About Me’.
The children have also been writing a book about themselves in Reception. The aim being to develop confident, independent sentence writing. They wrote about likes/dislikes and described their features such as hair and eye colour. We are aiming to finish the books next week to take home. They are very proud of their books and looking forward to showing off their writing skills.
Maths
This week the children have been writing numerals 0 – 20 in sequence. They used a number line to self-assess their numerals, looking out for reversals of numbers (eg. 3, 7, 9) and making corrections as necessary.
Religious Education
We have been talking about God’s wonderful world and thinking about we can take care of God’s world. We read the creation story from the Bible and discussed the basic concept of ‘fair trade’ and sharing the world’s resources such as food and water. We shared a plate of biscuits and the children immediately exclaimed “That’s not fair!” when Mrs Palmer had the most biscuits on her plate.
Below is a video you may wish to watch at home – God’s Creation according to Genesis.
This week we have been looking at doubling. We used multi-link cubes, Numicon and our fingers to visualise numbers doubled. We also played a ‘Double the Number’ game. Below is variation of the game which you can try at home.
You will need:
Dice.
Counters – two different colours eg. 10 red and 10 yellow. If you do not have counters at home, use two different coloured pens. The idea is that each player will be marking off their numbers with the same colour counter or pen.
Draw a simple number grid – an example is shown below.
What to do:
Each player chooses one colour counter/pen.
Take it in turns to roll a dice – double the number – put your counter on the number.
If the number has already been covered you miss a go.
The winner is the player with the most counters (or marked off numbers with a pen) on the board.
Variation
Create two grids with different numbers on each grid. Each player has a different grid. Play a ‘bingo’ version of the game.
Further challenge
What numbers do we have left?
What number do you need to roll on the dice to mark off that number?
Support
If your child needs a little support, use objects to show your child what the numbers look like when doubled.
Board games
Board games, such as Snakes and Ladders, support your child’s mathematical understanding enormously. Once your child is confidently playing a board game, introduce two dice to develop doubling numbers.
Letters and Sounds
This week we have been revisiting the following digraphs (two letters/one sound).
ar – car, bark, hard, shark, park, market or – for, fork, sort, born, cork, cornet, storm ur – fur, burn, hurt, surf, turn, burp ow – cow, now, down, how, town
We have also been writing sentences to include tricky words and some of the sounds revisited so far.
The teeth of sharks are sharp. Come and see the storm. The cat has a fur coat. I like to go to the town.
To encourage independent writing we made books together. We used card, hole punch and split pins to create the outside cover. The children provided me with their ideas, I made the front cover and they began writing their own simple stories. A challenging time for Mrs Palmer drawing and creating alien, horse, dog, castle and rocket front covers.
Science
Invisible Ink
The children are still really interested in science experiments. This week, our story time inspired a discussion regarding the concept of visible and invisible. We decided to make invisible ink. Here is a short video of the experiment we tried at school:
Physical Development
Obstacle Course
The children collaborated together to create an obstacle course. Throughout the process, I observed excellent team work with the children listening to ideas and agreeing how the course can be used. In particular, I was impressed by the discussions and adaptations to ensure the course was safe and not wobbly.
Expressive Arts and Design
Stick puppet story art
It is always wonderful to see the children motivate and teach each other. One member of the class created a story show. The process involved drawing a background scene, sticking a strip of paper across the scene and creating cut out characters on lolly sticks. The characters moved along the strip of paper acting out a story within the scene. The children were excited to learn a new skill from their friend.
Another busy week at school with the children eagerly embracing all opportunities to learn.
Maths
We read the story of Zog by Julia Donaldson and explored mathematical ideas based on the dragon flying lesson. For example: The dragons are practising their flying. First there were 7 dragons, 2 flew away, how many left? This progressed to the children making up their own subtraction problems.
During our busy finger sessions, the children also began looking at number bonds to 10. They used tweezers to pick up pompoms and placed them into the holes of Numicon pieces. We are planning to continue to investigate number bonds next week. At home, parents can challenge their child to separate objects into pairs of numbers that, when added together, give the number 10. Perhaps use 10 favourite toys or 10 pieces of fruit.
We also played the ‘Compare the Number’ game suggested in my blog on Monday. I was impressed at how well the children listened to each other’s ideas.
All these sounds can be found in children’s Letters and Sounds books. Watch the following short video to hear how each sound is pronounced.
Now that the children are familiar with the sound of each letter, we are also learning the letter names. One way of explaining this to children is that a dog makes the sound ‘woof’ but its name is ‘dog’. We played ‘Alphabet Bingo’ in our Letters and Sounds lesson and the children enjoyed playing the game independently during learning through play.
We are scientists!
As you are probably aware, Reception 2 are particularly fascinated by colour mixing and enjoy experimenting with different materials in the water tray. It was lovely to hear the children declaring that they were ‘scientists’ and we decided to create our own science experiment.
The children were very keen for me to share this experiment with you at home. I have a feeling they would like to try it again!
You will need:
Milk (whole or 2%) Dinner plate Food colouring (red, yellow, green, blue) Washing up liquid Cotton buds
What to do:
Pour enough milk in the dinner plate to completely cover the bottom to the depth of about 1/4″. Allow the milk to settle.
Add one drop of each of the four colours of food colouring — red, yellow, blue, and green — to the milk. Keep the drops close together in the centre of the plate of milk.
Use a clean cotton bud for the next part of the experiment. Encourage your child to predict what will happen when you touch the tip of the cotton swab to the centre of the milk. It’s important not to stir the mix. Just touch it with the tip of the cotton swab.
Now place a drop of liquid dish soap on the other end of the cotton bud. Place the soapy end of the cotton bud back in the middle of the milk and hold it there for 10 to 15 seconds. Look at that burst of colour! It’s like fireworks night!
Add another drop of soap to the tip of the cotton swab and try it again. Experiment with placing the cotton bud at different places in the milk. Notice that the colours in the milk continue to move even when the cotton bud is removed.
Story Telling
The children have been adapting the story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff this week. Each day we retold the story with different characters. Ideas suggested were unicorns, dinosaurs, knights, kings and princesses.
My favourite suggestion was The Three Trolls who stamped and stomped across the bridge instead of trip, trap. Guess who popped up from under the bridge shouting ‘Who goes stamp, stomping over my bridge’? Yes, it was The Big Billy Goat Gruff!
Handwashing Station
Finally, I thought I would share this picture of a super ‘handwashing station’ created by the children using the building blocks. We did, of course, ensure that the children understood we must use clean, fresh water when washing our hands for real. However, I thought it was a lovely example of how the children have embraced the way the world has changed in recent months.
Below are some ideas that we will be exploring in school this week and you can try at home.
Maths
This game is played in pairs with each player deciding who has the more and who has fewer in their hand. Children particularly enjoy the fact that holding more doesn’t necessarily mean you will be the winner – this depends on the card that is turned over.
You will need:
A small bag.
A collection of small pebbles or a similar object eg. pasta, buttons.
Some counters.
Ten small cards shuffled and placed face down in a pile: five cards should say ‘more’; and the other five cards ‘fewer’.
What to do:
Play in pairs.
Each player takes a handful of pebbles and counts how many they have.
Each player compares their count total with their partner’s count total and decides who has more and who has fewer.
Turn over the top card on the more/fewer pile and whoever has the appropriate amount indicated on the card wins a counter.
Return pebbles to the bag, shake it and take another handful.
Keep playing until each player has won three counters.
To extend your child – ask how many more or how many less.
Zog
The following website provides lots of maths home learning activities based around story books. It is possible to look back through the different weeks to find a favourite story. This week’s story is Zog written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler. It is a story of a keen young dragon in his first years at Dragon School – I’m sure you all know the story already!
There is a different activity for each day and you don’t need the book to access the activities. You may also like to watch this family film based on the story with your child.
See Mrs Sallis’s blog this week, look for the digraphs (two letters/one sound) we have been revisiting at school in books you read at home. To remind you, look for qu, ch, sh, th, ai, ee, igh.
Also as per my blog – try asking your child to read the yes/no questions. Perhaps challenge your child to write down one of the questions.
Here is another game you could try.
Cross the River
You will need:
Piece of fabric or paper to represent a river.
Sounds written on pieces of paper or flash cards if you have these at home.
You can choose your own words to focus on or the sounds we have been revisiting in class.
For example:
ng: ring, king, sing, wing. Sounds you will need: r, i, ng, s, w
ai: wait, rain, aim, main. Sounds you will need: w, ai, t, r, n, m
ee: see, feel, seem, keep. Sounds you will need: s, ee, f, l, k, p
igh: high, light, might, night. Sounds you will need: h, igh, l, t, m, t, n
(Note: Make sure you write the digraphs on one piece of paper eg. ng, ai, ee, igh. They are individual sounds represented by two letters).
What to do:
Lay a piece of blue fabric on the floor like a river. If you are playing the game outside then you can use chalk instead.
Tell your child that they have to cross the river, but a crocodile lives in it.
Assume the role of the crocodile and stand in the river.
The only way your child can cross the river safely is to make a bridge.
Ask your child to make a bridge by laying letter cards across the fabric to form a word.
Say a word for your child to form.
Your child chooses the correct sounds to spell the word across the piece of fabric.
If your child needs support
Use simple CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) words eg: map, peg, pig, dog, cat, cup, tin, map, pet
Ask your child to orally sound out the word and take a step across the river whilst saying each sound.
Religious Education
Refer to our blog regarding our current RE topic: Reconciliation – Friends. Listen to our focus story The Selfish Crocodile.
Talk to your child about the story and explore the following ideas:
Friends look after and do things for one another.
Friends make one another happy, comfortable and glad.
What can spoil friendships?
How can we make friends again?
What makes a good friend?
How can we celebrate friendships?
Say a prayer for a friend together. At school we thank God for looking after our friends and keeping us safe. We also ask God to help us to be a good friend.
Expressive Arts and Design
Art in Nature
You could start by looking at the work of Andy Goldsworthy.
Andy Goldsworthy is a British artist who uses things in nature like leaves, fallen branches, ice etc, to create enchanting sculptures.
If you have a wooded area near you, or a local park, go there and create something in this place. The sculptures should reflect the nature around it, so don’t take them home! And then perhaps someone will stumble across your creation! You could always take a photo before you go home.
Encourage your child to think about patterns and colour and how the different materials can be used for different effects.
I hope you are enjoying your weekend. It is hard to believe that we have now been back at school for three weeks. The children have really settled well into our routine and have been fantastic learners this week.
Maths/Physical Development
We played an addition game using numbered buckets (1 – 5). The idea being to throw two balls into the buckets and add up the numbers indicated on each bucket to find the total score. However, the most challenging task whilst playing this game was fine tuning our throwing skills! The children, therefore, thoroughly enjoyed developing their throwing skills.
Letters and Sounds
This week we again revisited the ‘th’ sounds and learnt how to spell ‘thank you’ ready for writing our Father’s Day card. The children previously enjoyed reading a book about bugs and we decided to read a caption which included some of our tricky words and the ‘igh’ sound – The moth likes to go to the light.
We also revisited the ‘ng’ and ‘ai’ sound and began learning to read and write the ‘ing’ suffix. At home you can try reading and writing the following words:
ring, king, sing, song, ping pong, thing, bashing
wait, pain, paint, sail, snail, rain, main
Yes/No game
We read the following caption and the children wrote down their answer (yes or no).
Will all shops sell nails?
This is an excellent game to support comprehension and language skills. Here are a selection of questions you could try at home. Write the message on a piece of paper, ask your child to read the question and decide upon the answer.
Is a thick book thin? Is rain wet? Can a boat sail? Is all hair fair? Can coins sing a song?
Encourage your child to explain their answer. This will develop their talking skills in terms of clarifying their ideas and thinking. I am often pleasantly surprised by answers such as ‘No not all boats can sail, some have engines’.
Understanding the World
The children have been very keen to make a den this week and remembered an activity we played at the beginning of the academic year – shadow puppets using torches. We, therefore, recreated this activity. However, this time the children made an amazing discovery – shadows can change their size. As light moves towards the object, the shadow becomes larger. As light moves away from the object, the shadow becomes smaller.
This is also a great activity for story-telling and developing creativity. In class the children made ogres! We provided black card and lolly sticks. The children drew their pictures on the card, cut out the shape and sellotaped the shape to a stick. You may wish to try this at home.
Retelling a story with Nursery
We continued learning The ThreeBilly Goats Gruff story this week and made story maps.
I was excited to learn that Nursery have also learnt a story – Little Red Hen. We, therefore, linked with Nursery via a video call with each class showing their story maps and retelling their stories.
Pop up Books
I also read an alternative version of The ThreeBilly Goats Gruff to the class which happened to be a pop-up book. The children were inspired by this and wanted to learn a new skill – how to make a pop-up book/card.
At home you can show your child how to make a pop-up book. Follow the video below to make a simple pop up card. We didn’t make ours with the exact measurements. We just cut up strips of paper and pre folded for the children to attach their pop ups onto. However, the video will give you the basic idea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmdW_ODhMY8
Expressive Arts and Design
The children have continued to explore colour mixing – this week we used crushed up chalk to make paint as well as powder paint. Back in the classroom, an amazing castle was created and the children put their colour mixing skills to good use by creating grey to paint the castle.
The problem solving and team work exhibited whilst making this castle was impressive. They even made a draw bridge using string to move it up and down. This required tying knots, a skill we consolidated during our funky finger session. My blog dated 30 March outlines a method you can try at home.
Next week we will be adapting and changing our story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff, I have a funny feeling it might include castles or ogres and am looking forward to sharing the children’s suggestions.
Wishing all the Dads a fantastic Father’s Day. Top tip: look on Tapestry on Sunday for a special message!
Please see below this week’s ideas for home learning.
Cooking at home
I know many of you have already been enjoying lots of cooking activities at home. On the Memo section of Tapestry, I have posted recipe cards produced by Herts for Learning in collaboration with Muriel Green Nursery School. The recipe cards are in an ‘easy-to-use’ format, with clear instructions for ingredients and utensils needed. They also include a clearly explained ‘method’ for following the recipes with photographs and some adaptations that could be made so that all tastes are catered for. I hope the recipe cards will continue to inspire your cooking activities. There are many learning opportunities when cooking with your child below are some suggestions:
Literacy
When reading recipes or words on food packaging, support your child to recognise letter sounds and read as many words as they are able. Help them to notice the sounds of individual letters and blend them together to read whole words.
Reading the recipe cards, books, online recipes and menus will broaden your child’s understanding of what books can be about and how they work.
Provide pens/pencil and paper to give your child an opportunity to make a recipe book/card, a healthy eating poster. This will give your child a really good and purposeful reason to write. Make it fun and part of their pretend play.
Have fun with words as you cook. Play games such as finding words that rhyme with ‘dough’ or ‘flour’ or ‘beans’.
Sound out words of items that you’d like your child to help find in the kitchen for example, Can you get the ‘b-r-ea-d’ or Can you find the ‘r-e-d p-a-n’.
Maths
Talk about numbers throughout your cooking activities such as, how many eggs or apples you might need for a recipe. Allow your child to find them and count them out, with support if needed.
When selecting ingredients or fruit and vegetables for cooking, give your child more than the required amount and ask them to count the amount you need.
Encourage your child to count the food items you are using. Suggest that they gather two onions, then add three carrots and ask ‘how many vegetables do you now have altogether?’
Encourage your child to make a mark on paper for each ingredient, or group of ingredients to see how many you have used. If you do this each time you cook together, at the end of the week you could compare your list to see which recipe used the most ingredients.
Talk about the shapes of the ingredients you are using. For example, the tins of ingredients that are cylindrical, boxes that are cubes or cuboid. Talk about what makes the shapes special such as the curved sides of the tins or how many corners there are on a cube or cuboid.
When your child is helping to gather the ingredients, help them to find them by giving them mathematical clues to describe the shape of the item.
Place all of the ingredients you need for a recipe on a tray and ask your child to pass them to you by asking specific questions such as ‘pass me the ingredient that is beside the apple, or behind the tin of tomatoes’. The game can continue with your child naming the positions of ingredients to you.
When preparing vegetables, ask your child to put all of the beans or carrots in order of length, from shortest to longest, or the potatoes in order of size.
If you have scales, teach your child how to use them and how to read the dial or numerals. You can also encourage your child to guess which of two items is heavier or lighter by holding one in each hand, for example a lemon in one hand and a potato in the other. You could then check if their estimate was correct.
Cooking together lends itself ideally to talking about time. How long do different things take to cook? Set timers together on your cooker, freestanding timer or phone. Talk about how long things are taking to cook or see if your child can guess when they’re nearly ready.
More Maths
Refer to Mrs Sallis’s and Mrs Palmer’s blogs on Friday for maths ideas. Here is another game you could try.
Timing
Place a timing device such as a digital timer near to a collection of small easy-to-hold items such as marbles, shells, buttons etc. and some containers.
Ask your child how many marbles/shells/buttons they think they might be able to put in one of the containers before the timer runs out.
Ask: How many …… did you get in that time? How many did you get in last time? What will you try next? What would happen if you used this different pot? What would happen if you used, for example, buttons instead of marbles?
Encourage your child to record each attempt. How will you remember how many ……… you managed to get into the pot that time?
Variations:
Ask your child how many ……… they could take out of the jar before the timer runs out. Following on from that, how long would it take to remove all the …….?
Alternatively, rather than asking your child how many ……… they can put in a pot in a given time, you could turn the task the other way round and ask them how long it might take to put, for example, 20 marbles in the pot. This can lead onto trying to get quicker and quicker at putting a certain number of marbles into a pot. How will they know that they are getting quicker?
You could build on this idea further by making the most of opportunities to measure lengths of time which may come up in your everyday routine. For example, can the children tidy away in less time than they did yesterday?
Letters and Sounds
Revisit sounds ‘qu’, ‘ch’, ‘sh’ and ‘th’. Play the games suggested in Mrs Sallis’s and Mrs Palmer’s blogs on Friday; post it note hide and seek, What’s the Sound Mr Wolf or the bucket game.
The Car Boot Sale
Pretend you are going to a car boot sale. Gather together some items for sale and ask your child to write labels for each of the items. To develop independent writing, encourage your child to use the sounds learnt so far using their home sound mats. Help your child to sound out and identify the sounds he or she can hear in each word. You could even add prices (under 10p) to the items. Invite family members to come and buy an item from your child’s boot sale.
Father’s Day
Ask your child to make a Father’s Day card and write a message inside the card – Thank you for …….
Expressive Arts and Design
Play different types of music and then dance together in different ways. Play music that is fast, slow, bouncy, smooth and so on. Vary it as much as you can and move in a way that reflects the music you are listening to.
Take it in turns with your child to perform actions such as clapping your hands, stamping your feet, clicking your fingers, blowing raspberries. How many did you count? Make some of the actions big and obvious and others quieter and more subtle.
Planning and constructing
Talk to your child about what they might build before they begin to construct. Offer them a range of things to build with that may include construction sets, wooden bricks or sugar cubes to household items such as empty food boxes and packets, tins, cushions and furniture. The construction could be tiny or enormous or both. Draw a plan, with labels before you start and make a list of what you might need. Take a photo as a record of your child’s efforts and add to making a book over time to capture photographs of all the creations made.
Observational drawings
Invite your child to make an observational drawing of something that interests them in their immediate environment. This could be a model they have made, something in your garden, such as a flower or leaf, a special toy or object that they particularly like such as an ornament. Talk to your child about the item first, asking them what they can see by looking closely at patterns, shapes and colours. Give them a magnifying glass if you have one or use your phone to zoom in to look really closely at the item. Ask your child to select just the colours they will need to draw the item from a selection of pencils or pens. Make a ‘gallery’ for all of your child’s artwork over time.
