Thomas Willingale School and Nursery
Summer Term 2024
Dragons
Week 6
8th - 12th July 2024
This week in our Literacy lessons we read the story of Zog, by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler.
We made our own story maps to help us sequence the story before retelling and writing the story. Look at how much progress we have made with our independent writing this year!
We made our own dragons by colouring a dragon head and tail and cutting them out with scissors. Next, we folded two strips of paper to make the dragon's body and stuck it to the head and tail to complete our dragons.
In our mathematics lessons we have been copying patterns, following instructions and visualising and building numbers using Duplo bricks and multilink cubes.
We practised reading phase 4 sentences and adding details to the pictures to make the sentences true.
Walk to School Week
We joined the rest of the school in celebrating Walk to School Week by walking, cycling or scootering to school. We earned stickers for travelling to school in these ways and signed a poster to pledge to walk, cycle or scooter at least once a week.
We learnt that walking to school can boost our energy and keep us healthy with movement, makes us feel happy, helps us to make friends, be part of the community and look after our environment and nature.
We hope everyone enjoyed our walk to school week and will try to keep walking, cycling and scootering regularly to school. 🚶 🚶♀️ 🚲 🛴
Next week, we will be talking about what we have learnt throughout our reception year and what we are looking forward to as we transition to Year One!
Forest School
The children in Reception absolutely love attending Forest School on Tuesdays with Mrs Lovell.
They have been able to take their topic work into our forest area by looking for minibeasts, creating castles with natural resources that they have found, built caves and homes for dragons, painted pictures with mud, and creating pictures with leaf and bark rubbings.
The children also enjoy some free time to climb trees, take turns on the slide, dig, roll and explore. What a wonderful and amazing outdoor learning experience each week in all weathers!
Dragons
Week 5
1st - 5th July
This week Beech and Elm class have been reading stories about dragons.
The children were able to use adjectives to describe features of a dragon and labelled the parts of a dragon.
They wrote poems describing a dragon using imaginative and interesting language and vocabulary.
In their literacy lessons the children have been writing colour poems.
In their mathematics lessons the children have been continuing to learn about odd and even numbers and been looking at number patterns, sequencing numbers and which numbers are one more or one less.
Next week, in thier topic work the children will continue to learn more about dragons. In tier mathematics work the children will be looking at patterns and in literacy they will be sequencing and writing their own stories by retelling the story of 'Zog.'
Aspiration's Day
On Monday 1st July the Reception children joined the rest of the school in celebrating Aspiration's Day. Everyone looked wonderful in their uniforms, costumes and outfits showing what they aspire to be.
Each class chose a winner who received a special book and bookmark.
Elm class winner was Lilia and Beech class winner was Noah.
They were able to explain their outfits and why they aspire to be a palaeontologist and nurse.
Both classes met Gary, a police officer from the special crime unit. He told the children all about being in the police and what his job is.
The children enjoyed trying on his police hats and uniform.
Knights
Weeks 3 and 4
17th - 28th June
During these two weeks the children in Reception will be learning about knights and how they protected castles and the kingdom through stories and role-play.
Beech and Elm class have drawn knights, used foil to make themselves a knight helmet photograph and used split-pins to create moving knights.
Marvellous Maths!
The children in Beech and Elm class have been developing their number skills by learning about doubling, subtraction and odd and even numbers.
In our topic work next week we will be learning about dragons!
Sport's Day 2024
Thank you to Super Star Sports for helping to organise and run our Sport's Day.
Everyone joined in the fun and showed their grown-ups all the skills they had been practising over the term.
Castles, castles and more castles!
Weeks 1 and 2
3rd - 14th June
We started this term's topic by learning about castles and reading the story,
'In the Castle.'
The children wrote a list of the characters and drew their favourite ones.
Beech and Elm class have painted their own castles using ready-mixed paints, learnt how to use watercolour paints and thin brushes to paint a castle picture and created castles with 2D shapes.
The children wrote a description of a castle and labelled the different parts of castles. They learnt the vocabulary; 'drawbridge, moat, ramparts, portcullis, tower, window, flag, arrow slit and turret.'
At Forest School the children found natural materials to create castles together.
In the Reception garden the children climbed on the castle and worked together to build a castle with boxes.
During 'choose your learning' time, Myla drew a 'bouncy castle' on the large interactive smartboard, choosing her own colours and using her finger to draw.
During the next two weeks, the children will be learning about knights.
Summer Term 2
Castles, Knights and Dragons
This term in Reception we will be learning all about castles, knights and dragons and writing our own fairy tales and stories. We will be doing lots of whole class work and becoming more independent in our learning activities to support our transition to Year One.
Shakespeare Day
We had great fun dressing up for Shakespeare Day with the rest of the school and listening to some Shakespearean stories including 'Romeosaurus and Juliet Rex.'
We learnt about the play write William Shakespeare and wrote descriptions of him.
We made our own flower and leaf crowns.
In our music lesson with Mrs Bartels, we listened to some instruments from the Elizabethan period and danced to the music.
What an exciting day learning all about William Shakespeare.
Forest School
We have been loving our Forest School sessions with Mrs Lovell on Tuesdays.
We have explored the Forest School environment, hunted for minibeasts using trowels and forks to dig in the soil.
It is so much fun rolling down the hill and sliding down the new slide.
Dinosaurs
Week 6
20th - 24th May 2024
In our last week of our Dinosaur themed topic, we have been rescuing dinosaurs from ice. The children talked about needing to heat up the ice to make it melt. They used their hands, toothbrushes and paintbrushes. After a while, they thought of using water to pour over the ice to help it melt. They rescued all of the dinosaurs!
We have been reading, Dinosaurs Love Underpants and sequencing the story. We cut around the pictures and stuck them in order before writing our own sentences to retell parts of the story.
In our mathematics lessons we have been learning about doubles and making double dominoes up to twenty.
We are looking forward to our half-term break and returning to our final term in Reception!
Dinosaurs!
Weeks 4 and 5
6th - 17th May 2024
The Reception children have been learning some facts about dinosaurs including what dinosaurs ate, their different sizes and the features of dinosaurs.
In our Literacy lessons we have been writing dinosaur facts, writing descriptions, writing a menu for a dinosaur and labelling the different features of dinosaurs.
In our mathematics lessons we have been doing careful counting when solving additions and using counting dinosaurs to help us with subtraction. We have been finding the pairs of numbers that total ten to work out the number bonds for ten.
We also worked in groups to sort dinosaurs on a Venn diagram using the criteria of what dinosaurs eat. We sorted the dinosaurs into herbivores (plant eaters), carnivores (meat eaters) and omnivores (eat plants and meat).
We have also been working with flat 2D shapes and learning the names and properties of solid 3D shapes. We carefully cut out some 2D shapes and used them to make our own dinosaur collage pictures. We went on a 3D shape hunt and found cones, pyramids, cylinders, spheres, cuboids, cubes and prisms. Then we used the polydron shapes to try and build some 3D shapes.
In our knowledge and understanding and expressive and creative sessions we have been measuring, matching and comparing the lengths of 'dinosaur bones' and pretending to be archaeologists and palaeontologists as we search for 'dinosaur bones' and carefully clean them with brushes. We made dinosaur skeletons using art straws and used our handprints to paint our own 'nameosaurus' dinosaurs. We made some more dinosaurs using half a plate for the dinosaurs' bodies and some shapes to add legs, a head, plates, horns and spikes.
Next week, we will be finishing our dinosaur topic and checking to see how much we have learnt. We will be reading 'Dinosaurs Love Underpants' and retelling and sequencing the story.
In our mathematics we will be developing our understanding of subtraction.
We are looking forward to celebrating Shakespeare Day with the rest of the school and showing our parents our P.E. skills during our Sport's Day.
DINOSAURS!
Week 3
29th April - 3rd May
What an exciting week in Reception.
At the beginning of the week, something mysterious appeared in the Reception garden. Beech and Elm Classes searched the Reception garden and noticed some gaps in the hedges, scratch marks in the grass, broken branches and footprints.
They discovered two large colourful eggs.
The children gathered sticks, leaves, grass and flowers to make a nest and took the eggs back to their classrooms to observe and look after.
The children made predictions about what could be inside the eggs and drew and wrote about their ideas. Many children thought it could be a dragon egg. Other ideas included; a butterfly, fox, unicorn, dinosaur, a bird and a rabbit egg. We read a book called, 'What's in the Egg?' to help us learn which types of animals hatch from eggs.
Everyone has been trying to be quiet in the classroom so they don't scare the animal in the egg and have been waiting for it to hatch. When they came to school on Friday, the egg in Elm class had cracked and they were all excited to see what was inside.
We were amazed to find a dinosaur! Elm class drew the dinosaur and they voted for their favourite name. Elm class have called their dinosaur, Sparkles the Stegosaurus.
In Literacy this week the children have been practising writing in sentences using the phase 2, 3 and 4 sounds they have learnt.
They have also been practising reading and writing some more tricky words.
In mathematics, the children have been working with a partner to sort different ways of representing the numbers 9 and 10.
The children also worked individually to find and circle different ways of making 9 and 10.
Next week the children will be learning about what dinosaurs liked to eat and some dinosaur facts.
Our Trip to Hertfordshire Zoo
Friday 26th April 2024
We had an amazing day at Hertfordshire Zoo.
We were excited to go on a coach and when we arrived at the zoo we went to the Dinosaur World!
The dinosaurs were huge and some were a bit scary!
After seeing all the dinosaurs, we sat under the canopy on the grass for our picnic lunch. It was so much fun!
After lunch we walked around the rest of the zoo. We watched a bird show and saw lots of different animals; big cats, penguins, monkeys, reptiles and fish to name a few. It was very exciting.
We had an amazing day and the weather was perfect!
THANK YOU VERY MUCH TO ALL OUR PARENT VOLUNTEERS.
We hope you had an enjoyable day. The children loved it and we hope you did too.
Welcome to the Summer Term 2024
Weeks 1 and 2
15th to 26th April
Minibeasts
To finish our animal topic the children will be learning all about minibeasts. They will learn about different types of minibeasts and insects, describe their features and go hunting for them as they learn about their different habitats.
We read the story, 'What the Ladybird Heard' by Julia Donaldson and Lydia Monks.
The children used their imaginations to write a sentence about what a ladybird might be thinking.
In our mathematics lessons we have been sorting minibeasts by different criteria and number of legs and comparing lengths.
In expressive arts and design we have been painting our own minibeast pictures.
We read about the famous artist Matisse and how he used cut and ripped paper to create a collage. We read the story, 'Snail Trail' by Jo Saxton and then created our own collage snails in the style of Matisse.
We finished our animal and minibeast topic by visiting Hertfordshire Zoo and saw lots of different birds, reptiles, pets, farm animals, tigers, leopards, fish, monkeys and animatronic dinosaurs which leads us into our next topic which we start next week;
ALL ABOUT DINOSAURS!!