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Robins Class

Class News Autumn Term 2023

15.9.2023

Dear Parents/ Carers,

Welcome to Owls and Robins class email. We are delighted to welcome you all to the Reception class.

Firstly, we would like to ‘Thank you’ for allowing us to visit you at your home and spend a little time together prior to the start of school. We are so incredibly proud of all the children for settling in so well!

We have all been learning the class and school rules and are doing so well to remember them in such a short period of time. Many friendships have already been established which has been wonderful to see. A truly wonderful start to the year!

This week we have begun our new theme of learning – ‘All about me!’ We thoroughly enjoyed talking about what ‘makes me, me’, finding out what colour eyes, hair and skin we have, creating some amazing look alike pictures and self-portraits! We have some budding artists in our midst!

We really enjoyed our first PE lessons this week. We listened carefully to the rules and thoroughly enjoyed playing games in the hall.

To aid the children when changing for PE we suggest that the children wear a polo shirt rather than a buttoned shirt and please can we ask that children try their best to put their socks and shoes on independently at home too!

Earrings: please can earrings either be taken out on PE days or taped over with micro-pore tape. Please ensure this is done prior to entering school.

If your child has long hair, please can this be tied back on PE days. Thank you for your support.

 Messages:

  • Water bottles - Please ensure that they are filled with water ONLY. Thank you.        

  • Homework will be set on a Friday and is to be completed by the following Wednesday. This will be set on Tapestry for the time being. Please look out for this.

  • Packed lunchboxes – please do not overfill your child’s lunchbox with food as it can be overwhelming for them. Just a reminder that we are a nut free school. Please do not give your child any food containing nuts. Thank you.

  • Children will be choosing a library book on a Wednesday. Please ensure that the library books are in your child’s book bags in preparation for changing them.

  • If you haven’t already done so, please send in a family photo. Your child will be talking about them next week.

  • Tapestry - if your child attended Lark Rise Nursery or used Tapestry at their previous setting, their observations, comments and photos have been transferred to the Reception class and we will continue to use it. We will download the lovely learning at the beginning of the next academic year (2024-2025, when the children are in Year 1) for you to be able to keep.

Thank you so much for your amazing support so far. We look forward to continuing our journeys together.

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend. We will see you on Monday.

Best Wishes

Miss Hazell, Mrs Skelton, Miss Gannon, Miss Branscombe, Mrs Ofoma, Mrs Caswell and Mrs Prew x

29.9.23

Dear Parents/ Carers,

Welcome to Owls and Robins class email.

We have had a lovely few weeks together, learning all about our classroom rules and demonstrating our amazing ability to follow them as best as we possibly can!  

We all thoroughly enjoyed our walk around the local area this week. The children were so well behaved and were an asset to Lark Rise. We were so proud of them all!

From our lovely walk and from the observations of the different homes we saw, we used a variety of resources to create different types of home. The children painted houses, using appropriate colours and built houses using bricks. Some great examples were seen, even super castles for the adults to live in!

In our maths learning we have been focussing on sorting and matching objects. We also took the opportunity to look at the terms more or less, using our front doors to help. Having found out the colour of each other's front door, we created a chart to find out the most and least popular colour doors. We had more white doors than black and the least amount of red and brown doors.

The children have started a new morning routine. They come into school, place school bags, lunch boxes, coats and water bottles in the correct places, find their name and practice writing it with the correct letter formation. It would be lovely to see the children writing their names at home to support this. If you do not have the letter formation sheets that were in your welcome packs, please let a member of the team know and we will share it with you.

 Messages:

  • There are a number of cardigans and jumpers with no name in. The children are very good at taking off their cardigans and jumpers and safely putting them on their pegs or in the drawers, however they do slip off and get jumbled. With no name in, we are unable to return them. Please take a look this weekend and check the names. Thank you.

  • Please ensure that earrings are removed or covered with micropore tape each Wednesday and Thursday.

  • We have thoroughly enjoyed looking at the children’s homework on Tapestry. Adults will look at the homework weekly and we will share some of the learning with the children.

  • Please continue to share WOW’s with us on Tapestry or written on the WOW sheets.

  • Each week we will have an Owl and Robin of the week. The children receive a special certificate for this recognition.

  • Barnaby and Bethany have started their weekend home visits with the children. Please share photos of their adventures on Tapestry or send them to office@larkrise.com

  • Our handwriting heroes of the week are: Carter, Isla, Mia and Freddie.

We really appreciate all of your support. Thank you so much.

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend. We will see you on Monday.

Best Wishes

Miss Hazell, Mrs Skelton, Miss Gannon, Miss Branscombe, Mrs Ofoma, Mrs Caswell and Mrs Prew x

 13.10.2023

Dear Parents/ Carers,

Welcome to Owls and Robins class email.

Thank you for coming to the Learning Review meetings last night. We hope you found them useful and feel reassured that the children have settled well into their Reception year. Please support us to work with your child to help them succeed in their learning, by working through the targets that have been set for them. This is not meant to be an onerous task, something that can be worked on for a few minutes at a time.

We have had a fabulous few weeks of learning. Last week we focussed our learning around the theme of Harvest. We learnt where different vegetables grow, what harvest means and when it is celebrated. A key feature of the week was the story ‘Little Red Hen’. We listened to the story, answered questions, acted out the story and identified the beginning, middle and end of the story. It was a joy to watch the children with the different character masks, saying the repetitive phrases from the story, in different voices, to retell it. We most certainly have some actors in our midst! We were equally impressed that the children were able to talk confidently about what happened during the beginning, middle and end of the story.

The children watched a short video that explained how wheat is ground into flour. We also shared with them ‘Come Outside’ bread making - it is an oldie but a goodie and the children were fascinated as to how the wheat is collected, turned into flour and then how the bread is made. Here is the link to enjoy it again!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGb8ZFgNDhc 

This week we have been looking at the brain and different parts of the body. The children thoroughly enjoyed using their brains to play different games, including Kim’s games and identified many things to keep their brains healthy.

The children were excited to draw around a member of the class and add labels to identify the basic parts of the body that we can see or feel. Some children then went on to continue their learning through continuous provision, drawing and labelling a body.

 Messages:

  • We have a number of brand new unnamed cardigans and jumpers in the classroom. If you are missing one, please check the ones that we have.

  • A reminder to make sure that the children have their water bottles in school daily

  • Our handwriting heroes of the week are: Ophelia, Rocco, Christopher and Robyn

Thank you so much.

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend. We will see you on Monday.

Best Wishes

Miss Hazell, Mrs Skelton, Miss Gannon, Miss Branscombe, Mrs Ofoma, Mrs Caswell and Mrs Prew x

 3.11.2023

Dear Parents/ Carers,

Welcome to Owls and Robins class email.

We hope you all had a wonderful half term break. It was so lovely to see the children on Tuesday and hear some of the exciting things that you did together.

The children were very pleased to come back to school on Halloween! We enjoyed sharing the story ‘The Adventures of Paddington - First Halloween.’ by Harper Collins books - finding out some different traditions of Halloween time. We used some of our developing fine motor skills to complete some activities including’: cutting 2D shapes to create witch pictures, pushing pins into pumpkins then adding elastic bands to create patterns, painting spiders and using playdough and straws to create spiders too - a lovely afternoon!

We continued to think about the festivals that happen during October and November and focussed our learning on Bonfire Night. We talked about the reason that the 5th November is so special, Guy Fawkes, the Houses of Parliament and how the day is usually celebrated. The children were able to recall that Guy Fawkes looked after 36 barrels of gunpowder and that he looked after them in the cellar under the Houses of Parliament until he was caught.

We really appreciate all of your help to collect bottles and tubes. The children were delighted to use them to create their own fireworks. They excitedly danced to music whooshing, popping and banging with them!

Next week we will be celebrating Diwali and Remembrance Day. If you have any resources to support this learning, we would be delighted to see them. (Please label anything that comes into school so that we can return them to you.)

 Messages:

  • If you haven’t already accepted your child’s invite to Google Classroom, please can you do this as a matter of urgency. Homework will now be set fortnightly on Tapestry and the following week on Google Classroom. It is particularly important as Read Write Inc videos to support learning, will be set as part of the homework tasks . Thank you.

  • Our handwriting heroes of the week are: Stefan, Oliver, Livvy and Sharleez

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend. We will see you on Monday.

Best Wishes

Miss Hazell, Mrs Skelton, Miss Gannon, Miss Branscombe, Mrs Ofoma, Mrs Caswell and Mrs Prew x

 17.11.2023

Dear Parents/ Carers,

Welcome to Owls and Robins class email.

Over the past few weeks we have immersed ourselves in different types of celebrations; from Bonfire night, Diwali and Remembrance Day. The children were able to talk about the reasons why we recognise the significance of each day and enjoyed some creative activities linked to them.

Every child listened so well to the story of Rama and Sita and could explain the reason why Diva’s are so significant for Diwali. We all enjoyed using clay to create a Diva. The children thought carefully about the colours and patterns that they wanted when painting their Divas and were so proud when they completed them.

Thank you for all of your fabulous ideas to commemorate Remembrance day by making a poppy. We had such a variety of ideas: using clothes, lego, toys and even a poppy cake. We really enjoyed looking at them all. Thank you!

This week we also celebrated Children in Need. What a spotty day we had! The children have been so thoughtful thinking about how we can help others. As a special treat the children decorated a biscuit to represent Pudsey bear. We apologise for not sharing the biscuits with you however they were very yummy! 

Next week we will be focusing on using our phonic knowledge to write words, forming numbers correctly and thinking about birthdays as a celebration.

 Messages:

  • This week's homework is on Google Classroom. Please accept the Google classroom invite to enable your children to complete this homework.

  • Monday is Rockstar dress up day. We look forward to sharing the day together.

  • Our handwriting heroes of the week are: Maximus, Leveah, Max and Eliana

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend. We will see you on Monday.

Best Wishes

Miss Hazell, Mrs Skelton, Miss Gannon, Miss Branscombe, Mrs Ofoma and Mrs Prew x

 1.12.2023

Dear Parents/ Carers,

Welcome to December and welcome to Owls and Robins class email.

Excitement has been brewing over the past fortnight for the birthday celebration of the year! Barnaby and Bethany are 5 years old today! We can’t believe it!

The children received an invitation rolled up in a scroll and couldn’t wait to find out what it said. As the invitation was shared, the excitement escalated! The children took the opportunity to create pictures and presents for Barnaby and Bethany! They have been asking on a daily basis when the party is and have been super excited for today! During the week we have thought about different traditions that we have for our birthdays and have thoroughly enjoyed looking at photos of our birthdays. Thank you for sharing them with us. The children were so proud when talking about their birthday celebrations.

Yesterday we used our literacy and mathematical skills to weigh ingredients to make some fairy cakes. We read the recipe, weighed the ingredients and mixed them together. The school kitchen kindly baked them for us. Our classroom smelt amazing and when they were cool,  we iced them in preparation for our party.

Today has been full of excitement as initially our eyes were bursting with colour - not only do we have birthday banners and balloons - Christmas has arrived! A tree and decorations adorned our space and it has been amazing to see how ‘wowed’ and amazed the children are. It was very special to see!

And as for the party of the year… Barnaby and Bethany had a wonderful time, as did all the children. Party games, party food, presents and of course our cakes that we had made. What a super end to the week!

 Messages:

  • This week's homework is on Google Classroom. 

  • Our handwriting heroes of the week are: Evelyn, Caleb, Hanna and David.

  • Thank you for helping us with costumes for the play and for supporting your children to learn their words if they have them. We really appreciate it.

  • If you didn’t see this on Tapestry - As part of our theme learning we will be thinking about how Christmas is celebrated in different families. We will be learning about British traditions but would like your help with any different traditions that you follow. These could be linked to your religion or where family or friends live around the world. 

If you are able to help us, please speak to us on the door or use Tapestry to provide us with information. It would be wonderful if you could send in any real objects, photos or videos. 

Have a lovely weekend. Who is putting up their Christmas tree this weekend? Enjoy if you do! We will see you on Monday.

Best Wishes

Miss Hazell, Mrs Skelton, Miss Gannon, Miss Branscombe, Mrs Ofoma and Mrs Prew x