Purple Mash

Sunday, 15 May 2011

We shared our Easter Holiday news and wrote
about what we had been doing.

Year 5 came down to help us with our reading and to help
us tidy up the wildlife garden. We have plenty of tadpoles,
dragonflies and spiders. We are hoping we will find some
frogs and butterflies soon


Activities on the plasma have been
fun to share with friends.
This week we started planting seeds
and learning how to care for plants.


We have enjoyed dressing up and pretending to
be at the seaside. We have been writing
postcards and playing in the ice-cream parlour.

We find using the plasma much easier now
that we are becoming great readers.
Making the most of the outdoors and the sunshine.
Spider Tricks
Making musical sounds for different type of minibeasts.

We talked about fair and unfair situations.

We have drawn some lovely pictures of our pets.
Gary the giant African land snail came back to
school for the summer. He prefers the warm
weather because he has come from a hot country.
Mr Roberts introduced our new baby rabbits to us in
assembly and he managed not to drop them!
Our Guinea pigs are much happier now and are
looking much healthier. It must be all the love and
attention they are getting from our caring children.

This week we have used some of our time to make
the animal enclosures even more fun for them.
Mr Williams worked hard over the Easter holiday to build
our pets gardens. Now we can all take turns to go in
and care for and play with the animals.


We are making a vegetable patch to grow some
fresh food for our pets.
We have been counting up to 100
and can even count in 10's.

In maths we thought about the days of the week and made diaries.
We used words like 'yesterday, today and tomorrow'
Making sure our handwriting is neat by sitting nicely
and holding our pencils correctly.
We let Mrs Carter and Mrs Abel know if we need
some help by using our traffic light lollipop sticks.
We shared our 'Sunny Days' survey sheets and
made a mind map in class of interesting words.
We use 'thinking thumbs ' when we are on the carpet.




Saturday, 14 May 2011

Summer Term Overview

This term's topic in Reception is 'Sunny Days'. Below you will find the 7 areas of learning with the content we hope to cover. For further information about learning experiences provided for your child please speak to a member of staff.

Mathematical Development

• Counting to 100, count on from a given number, saying the next number
• Counting up to 20 objects, estimating and recording numbers
• Recognising numbers between numbers
• Using the language of direction
• Adding by counting on and combining two sets/partitioning sets
• Subtracting by counting back; removing small number of objects from a
larger set
• Comparing capacities of 2 containers
• Estimate and measure length/height
• Beginning to count in 10’s
• Recognise and order the days of the week, understand terms today,
yesterday and tomorrow
• Sort, recognise and name 3D shapes

Language, Literacy and Communication Skills

• Recounts – Writing about holiday news, activities in the day, day trips and
re-telling stories.
• Make collections of significant words linked to topic (garden, seaside,
holidays)
• Poems about summer days – replace words in repetitive poem to create new poem
• Use knowledge of rhyme to identify families of rhyming words
• Use capital letters and full stops in simple sentences.
• Jolly Phonics – Recap 42 sounds, action, letter recognition and formation.
• Identifying sounds in words, blending simple words
• Continue to introduce tricky words (reading/spelling)
• Understanding alphabetical order

Personal and Social Development, Well being and Cultural Diversity

• Understand the importance of taking turns and sharing – play simple group
games.
• Relationships - dealing with fair/unfair
• Changes- discuss how feelings change
• Sun safety – Discuss how to stay safe in the sun/ at the beach
• Sort clothes that we wear at different times of the year
• Care of school pets & garden wildlife – Countryside Code

Knowledge and Understanding of the World

• Sorting objects found in the garden into living/non-living
• Planting seeds.
Minibeast hunt in school grounds/pond/ woods
• Compare similarities and differences between seaside/countryside
• Discuss transport for holidays. Create graphs/charts
• Investigating/ making sandcastles using variety of materials
• Compare own holidays with those of parents/grandparents
• Discuss Welsh holiday towns – create postcards

Religious Education
• Thank you prayers
• Reflection/stilling
• The Good Samaritan Story
• Visit to church – New life/ Baptism

Creative Development

• Observational drawings of minibeasts/plants
• Decorate own plant pot for planting
• Make minibeasts using clay
• Design and make own miniature garden
• Giant paper mache minibeasts
• Explore symmetry – butterfly paintings/ craft
• Look at work of Andy Goldsworthy – using nature
• Look at seascape pictures and discuss colour/texture
• Create own seascape pictures using powder paints
• Music – A variety of theme based songs covering tempo ,structure,
loud/quiet and timbre
• Dance – A day out in the country – movements to portray activities

Physical Development

• Using large equipment – bikes, scooters, trikes, climbing frames, fort
• Throwing/catching/bouncing a variety of equipment
• Hitting ball with a bat along the floor and into the air..
• Scissors skills, increasing control of paintbrush, pencil etc, Controlling
mouse, IWB pen, Beebot, tape recorders etc
• Manipulating clay/ playdough – making minibeasts
• Digging using range of garden tools

Welsh Language Development

• Communicating in Welsh through Speaking and listening, reading and writing.
Covering topics of:
• The Garden
Minibeasts
• Holidays
• Outdoors