Week beginning 16th March 2026 

This week the children loved learning about mini-beasts using the story What the Ladybird Heard. Each child has written a simple riddle to describe a mini-beast, looked closely at a picture and written about what they could see. We spoke with confidence to read our riddles to our friends and have been practising writing different mini-beast words using our phonetical knowledge.  The children also used salt dough to create their own lady birds. 

  

During our daily maths lessons, the children investigated the composition of 10 and started to find doubles of numbers to 5. It has been lovely to see each child grow in confidence with their application of number.  

    

The weather has been beautiful this week and exploring the forest school area for mini-beasts was a great success! 

            

To end our very busy week, the children loved our reptile visit, learning lots about snakes, chameleons, geckos and bearded dragons and also learning about the celebration of Eid.  

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Next week will be our final week learning about animals, and we will be looking at creatures that live under the sea and exploring Easter.   

 

Week beginning 9th March 2026

This week, our main focus has been farm animals and our principal text has been 'Farmer Duck' by Martin Waddell.  Children have taken part in lots of farm related activities across the curriculum, as well as also writing about pet animals too.

 

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In maths, we have deepened our knowledge and understanding of 3D shapes and also looked at copying and completing more complex patterns.

                                                                                      

Our R.E. this week has involved learning more about the Easter story for Christians and, in P.E., children have enjoyed taking on the role of safari animals, thinking about how they move and playing linked games.

We have, of course, also been busy making Mother's Day surprises.  We hope that you have a lovely, relaxing weekend.

                                                                                 

Week beginning 2nd March 2026 

Wow, what an exciting week we have all had! The aliens have landed at Thomas Willingale School! On Monday, during assembly, the aliens sent us a mission to complete. They asked us for lots of information about the planet Earth.  

  

During our Literacy lessons this week, the children have been finding out and sharing information about wild animals. Completing animal fact file sentences to share with the aliens. The children are continuing to impress us with their phonics understanding by writing CVC words and simple words from memory. 

During our maths lessons this week we have explored sorting rockets from the tallest to the shortest, finding different ways to make 9 and 10 and 3D shapes. Learning new words including sphere, cube, cuboid, cone and cylinder.  

  

The space dome has been an exciting experience for all the children, and they have loved learning about the planets. Finally, dressing up as astronauts and aliens for World Book day has been a great success. 

  

   

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Next week we will be learning all about farm animals and continuing our learning about 3d shapes and patterns.      

Week beginning 23rd February 2026

Welcome back everyone!

Although this half-term is a fairly short one, it is crammed full of lots of exciting activities and events. We started the week by introducing our new topic of 'Minibeasts and Animals.'  Children have been thrilled with the role-play vet's surgeries in each of the reception classes and have been put to work to help a variety of animals.

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Our main text has been Handa's Surprise, which presents a range of hungry animals who are keen to sample the fruit in Handa's basket.  Children have drawn their favourite part of the story, as well as writing about other animals too. 

                                                                                      

Across the curriculum, there has been a wealth of animal related activities, including animal collage, building animal homes and comparing animals by length and height.  Also linked to maths, we have been looking at the days of the week. In art, we have also created some observational drawings of daffodils. It is lovely to finally see signs of spring outside!

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In daily phonics, we have looked at the new sounds 'air 'and 'ure,' as well as 'ar.'  Children have practised writing words with these sounds, as well as previously taught ones.  We have also been learning our tricky words and colouring in the ones that we can read.

                                                            

Our P.E. sessions this half-term focus on Fundamentals and classes have been introduced to our theme of Circus skills.  Children have enjoyed taking on roles of circus performers, such as tight rope walkers and jugglers, practising their balancing and throwing and catching skills. 

                   

We were also lucky enough to have a drama workshop on Monday.  It was set in a toy shop and we had to pretend we were different toys from around the shop on a quest to find magic dust to save the shop.  Everyone listened really carefully and followed the story instructions really well.

                                                                  

Next week, we are looking forward to our whole school immersive space week and World Book Day!

Week beginning 9th February 2026  

Our final week of our topic space has been lots of fun! The children have written beautiful sentences about the first lady astronaut in space. Focusing on our beautiful handwriting skills and understanding of phonics to complete our work to a high standard.

During our maths lessons this week we have been consolidating our understanding of finding one more of a number to 10. 

Our final space activity for the half-term has been making delicious moon rice krispie cakes. The children agreed they were very yummy.  

     

The children have also enjoyed learning about Chinese new year this week and exploring the Chinese alphabet to try and paint their own initial letters for their special books. 

  

To end this half term, we have celebrated Valentine's Day with lots of wonderful creative activities! 

    

We hope you all have a restful half-term, and we are looking forward to our new topic all about animals. 

 

Week beginning 2nd February 2026

Our text of the week has been 'Alien Tea on Planet Zum-Zee.' This has led to lots of discussions and writing about aliens.  We have continued to work hard on our daily phonics and handwriting and children are making fantastic progress in their reading and writing.

                                                                                   

Our maths on mass and capacity has linked nicely to our text of the week.  For an alien tea party, children have been investigating how much of a liquid different containers hold.  We predicted from sight which ones we thought would hold the most liquid. We then worked in small groups to test our predictions, by using the same cup to fill each container, seeing how many we needed to fill them. Some of our predictions were correct but some of the containers didn’t hold as many cups as we thought it would.  Children have also been using balance scales to measure the mass of an object and have been estimating how many cubes it will take to balance the scales with a given object.  Great predicting and working together everyone!

                                                                  

 

At the beginning of the week, we were treated to the Rock Kids Kindness concert. We did lots of singing, dancing and pretending to be rock stars. We all had a great time!

                                                                              

And if the week started on a high, it definitely also ended on one with us finishing the week celebrating Number day across the school.  Children were fully engaged in lots of number related activities both inside and outside throughout the day. Children played number games, such as Snakes and Ladders and class bingo. We sang number songs, looked for numbers in stories, created collage numbers, ordered numbers in a jelly bath, completed number jigsaws, looked for numbers under the canopy, completed outdoor Number Day challenges and lots, lots more.  Even our P.E. was number linked.

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Week beginning 26th January 2026 

What an exciting week we have all had! Lots of learning linked to the eight planets of the solar system. Both reception classes have loved researching each planet and then choosing their favourite one to write facts about. 

 

 

We have also continued our storytelling lessons and built on our vocabulary to create our own story maps linked to the story Whatever Next! By Jill Murphy. The children worked so hard to retell the story in their own words and then put their ideas onto paper. We are very proud of them! 

   

Forest school was a very muddy, wet but fun experience this week. Lots of exploring and playing a retrieval game, thinking about using our descriptive language to find natural objects that are bumpy, smooth, heavy and light. Mrs Lovell had also set up a fabulous shelter for us as a base to come back to. 

     

During our daily maths lessons, the children have been exploring pairs, finding two of the same object to make a pair and then looking at doubles to eight.  

 The reception children are really impressing us with their phonics understanding and daily handwriting lessons. This week we have continued with our curly caterpillar letters g, q, e and s and in phonics we have learnt the digraphs oi and ow. 

Next week we will be learning more about planets and using our imaginations to create our own aliens. 

   Week beginning 19th January 2026 

It has been a very exciting week with reception classes introduced to Opal play for the first time.  Children have thrived in the Opal playground and field areas at lunchtime, particularly enjoying the large sandpit area, the mud kitchen and the bike area.  It has been lovely to see children growing in confidence, embedding skills and building relationships.  The older children have been so caring towards our classes, and it has been wonderful seeing them play alongside each other, in such a nurturing environment.

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In phonics this week, we have learnt the sounds 'ar,' 'or' and 'ur.'  We have also reinforced all our tricky words and learnt a new tricky word song.  Our main text of the week has been 'Whatever Next' by Jill Murphy.  Classes have made story maps and thought about what they would take to the moon.  Children have also been working hard to practise their handwriting of the letters 'c,' 'o,' 'a' and 'd.' 

Maths has linked both to shape, with the creation of 2D and 3D shape rockets and number, where we have focused on the composition of the numbers 6,7 and 8, as well as one more and one less.

                                                                                  

In P.E., we have continued following our unit of dance. This week, we developed a firework dance, thinking carefully about what sort of shapes different fireworks and sparklers made, learning skills and then putting them all together for a class firework dance.

The end of our week was just as exciting as the beginning, as we signed up for the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch.  Beech and Elm classes both learnt about the different British birds that we might see, studying what they look like and what their sound is like.  Classes then quietly took it in turns to go outside to look and listen out for birds, taking our special RSPB spotting sheets out with us.  Despite the large number of us, children were lucky enough to spot quite a number of birds, including robins, sparrows, blackbirds, sea gulls and pigeons.  We are going to report our findings back to the RSPB.

                                                  

Week beginning 12th January 2026

This week the children enjoyed reading the story The Darkest Dark, learning lots about astronauts. The children were very excited to create their own astronaut pictures and make rockets which are now proudly displayed in each classroom.

 

During phonics this week we have explored the sounds oo, ar and oa.  

During our daily maths lessons we have explored the composition of the numbers 4 and 5 thinking about what the numbers look like and different ways of making 4 and 5. 

Forest school was wonderfully muddy this week. The children loved exploring the rain and muddy areas.  

 

Finally, both reception classes enjoyed a fruit kebab workshop. The children enjoyed learning about different fruits and vegetables and then creating delicious rainbow fruit kebabs.  Once we returned to class, the children drew a picture of their kebabs and then labelled their fruit showing their phonological understanding.    

     

Next week we will be reading the story Whatever Next and creating lists of objects they would like to take to space with them!  

Week beginning 5th January '25

Happy New Year everybody and welcome back!  Reception classes have launched straight into our new topic of 'Space.'  We have linked Space to all our areas of learning and children have enjoyed exploring their new Space themed role play areas.

Our main text of the week has been 'Man on the Moon' by Simon Bartram.  We have come up with what we already know about Space and the planets and talked about the planet that we live on. 

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We have also made Moon pictures, mixing different shades of grey and worked at the creative table to produce lots of Space related pieces.

                                                                                       

In maths, we have concentrated on the numbers to 5, including subitising and thinking about 1 more. Classes have also linked it to our topic of Space, thinking about heavy and light.

                                                            

In phonics, we have practised reading our tricky words and also learnt the sounds 'ai,' 'ee,' 'igh' and 'oo,' which has linked nicely with Space vocabulary, such as 'moon' and 'high.'

                                                 

Next week, we will continue exploring space.  In maths, we will concentrate on one more and one less and classes will continue daily phonics, focusing on the sounds 'ar,' 'oo' ( as in 'book' ) and 'oa.' There will be lots of writing opportunities throughout the week.  We will also be having our first Forest School of the term on Tuesday.