Croeso i'r Dosbarth Derbyn

Teacher: Miss Light

P.E. days - Monday and Tuesday

Forest School -  Thursday afternoon, alternate weeks (beginning 21.09.23)

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Class update

Summer 2024

22.4.24-3.5.24  

Reception have enjoyed the first two weeks of our new topic – ‘Serenau Bach’ (little starts). We have been looking at the story of ‘How to catch a star.’ We have explored the characters, setting and the problem in the story. We have learnt about what stars are and when the best time to catch them is. We also created our own constellations using different shapes. We had some excitement last Wednesday when a mysterious box arrived in our classroom. We soon discovered that it was from ‘boy’ the main character in our story who kindly sent us our very own class star. We then thought carefully about what we would use to catch our own stars if we could. There were lots of fantastic ideas and careful consideration surrounding the conversation of this. We then took our designs into our Commando Joes session and created them collaboratively in pairs and small groups. Although we’re so early into our new topic we have learnt so much already. I can’t wait to see where this topic takes us! The children have shared some wonderful ideas of what they would like to explore and learn for our class pupil voice. Needless to say, we will be very busy in our final few weeks of this term. Have a lovely weekend everyone! 

8.4.24-19.4.24 

The first two weeks of our summer term have certainly been busy. As we come to the end of our Muck, mess and mixture topic, we have enjoyed participating in the final few activities. Reception have been busy in their science and technology lessons as they have been looking at bug hotels. They have been listing different equipment that they will need to make it, what bugs they think might live inside it as well as designing it and eventually collaborating in small groups to create them. Miss Light and Miss Ward have been really impressed with how resilient and engaged the children have been throughout completing these activities.  We enjoyed our recent Commando Joe’s session where we needed to rescue the bugs. Unfortunately, they had been blown out of their bug hotels from all the wet and windy weather. It was up to us to get them all back into the correct ones.  In Maths, we have been looking at height and weight. The children enjoyed ordering different objects from shortest to tallest and tallest to shortest as well as using non-standard units like cubes to explore both our indoor and outdoor learning environment to freely measure the height of different objects. We then had a go at measuring ourselves too. We have been using our Welsh when looking weight to help us recap some of our Welsh foods and numbers. The children have been weighing foods to find out how many cubes they weigh. We enjoyed making sensible predictions before finding out the results. The children have continued to make great progress with their tennis sessions in P.E. We are slowly getting the hang of holding our rackets properly to support us in hitting, balancing and catching a beanbag. We are building our confidence using beanbags first before we use the tennis balls.  Next week, we look forward to starting our new and final topic of the year which is Serenau bach (little stars). As always, on behalf of Miss Ward and I we would like to thank you all for your continued support. I can’t quite believe we are already two weeks into the final term, it has flown by. Have a lovely weekend everyone and we look forward to seeing you on Monday! 

Spring 2024

11.3.24-22.3.24  

As the end of the term comes to a close, I just wanted to say how proud I am of all the children for yet another fantastic half term. We have been exceptionally busy and have made so much progress in all areas of learning. I would also like to take the opportunity to once again thank you all for joining us for our Easter craft afternoon on Wednesday. It was lovely to be able to welcome you back into school. The children have worked really hard during their toots sessions with Mrs North, so again, we hope you enjoyed the show! In Maths, we have been busy learning the days of the week through the story of ‘The Hungry Caterpillar.’ This allowed us to correctly order the days as well as test our memory as to what and how much fruit the caterpillar ate on each day. We then enjoyed creating delicious smoothies using the fruits from the story. We have also been getting to grips with using tens frames to support our addition and subtraction. We would like to say a big diolch to Mrs Maunder for getting us the resource. We have also been busy celebrating science week. We have looked at the life cycle of a chicken, completed the happy smells experiment and created a rocket ship to get to space for our Commando Joe’s mission. This week, the children enjoyed learning all about the Easter story. We then got creative to make stain glass windows based around what happened. Da iawn, Reception. From both myself and Miss Ward, we would like to wish you all a Happy Easter. Have a lovely break and ensure to spend time with your family and friends. We can’t wait to hear all about it when we return. One final thank you again, for all of your continuous support.... Happy half term! 

26.2.24-8.3.24  

Reception have enjoyed many different activities over the past fortnight. Last week we celebrated our first Eisteddfod. All the children looked fantastic and really enjoyed the morning. A huge thank you again, for the effort and time that went in to completing the homework entries. It really was difficult to choose the winners. This week, we have been looking at number bonds to further support our addition. The children took their learning outside and used chalk to complete a number bonds diagram. The children enjoyed working out what two parts they needed to make the whole. We also created a code for making Welsh cakes. To support us, we used trial and error to begin with. This meant that we had to instruct Miss Light and Miss Ward on how we THOUGHT you correctly make them. It allowed us to look at ordering and instructions and consider how detailed our instructions that we gave were. Let’s just say that ‘crack the egg’ nearly resulted in an egg being cracked on Miss Light’s head as she wasn't sure where or how to crack it. Thankfully, with some quick thinking, the children ensured that the egg was cracked carefully on the side of the bowl before being added in. We then used our instructions to create Welsh cakes today. The children really enjoyed it and I hope they tasted as delicious as they looked! We also enjoyed celebrating World Book Day. Again, thank you as the children all looked amazing and we had such a fun day. The children enjoyed talking about their favourite books along with designing their book covers. We have also been busy preparing for a very special day on Sunday... Mother’s Day! We hope you all loved your pots and cards as the children worked so hard to make them. Whatever you’re doing to celebrate, have a lovely day with your children and we look forward to hearing all about it on Monday. Happy Mother’s Day all!  

5.2.24-23.2.24

Croeso i nol, Welcome back once again to the second half of the Spring term. I hope you all had a lovely half term and some well-deserved time with friends and family. This week, Reception have been looking at Capacity in Mathematics and Numeracy. We have looked at estimating what we think different amounts of capacity look like from an empty cup, nearly empty, half filled, nearly full to a full cup. I was really impressed with the children’s accuracy and language that they managed to pick up and use this week. We have showed a great understanding of what capacity means. In doing this, we were also able to order them from least to most capacity / most to least. We also measured and experimented with finding the total capacity that different objects can hold. I think we have all really enjoyed our Maths this week! With Eistedfodd also on the way, I just wanted to say a big thank you for all of your children’s entries. They all look fantastic, and I know it will be hard to choose the winners. In school, we have completed our handwriting entries based on a Daffodil poem. Again, it was so lovely to see how much effort went into it and the progress that has been made in their handwriting since September. We have also designed our own love spoons and looked at the different features and meanings of them. Our commando Joes session was based around saving the red dragon, who was stuck on a mountain and couldn’t get down. This has linked nicely to the myth that we are also retelling in Language and Literacy. Once again, we have made great progress in our weekly toot sessions with Mrs North and the children are really starting to show more accuracy when playing it. Diolch yn fawr, thank you, Reception for a lovely first week back. Enjoy the weekend and we look forward to seeing you Monday.  

22.1.24-2.2.24

As another week passes by and we near the end of the first half of spring term, Reception have of course had another busy fortnight. We enjoyed baking biscuits for St Dwynwen’s Day last week, hopefully you managed to try at least one before the children ate them. It was a great opportunity to apply our knowledge of money for the ingredients, even if they were a lot cheaper than the real-world prices... 2p for a bag of sugar? That would be perfect!! We also enjoyed reapplying some previous skills when baking through the use of measuring and weighing the different ingredients. We have also started learning a Welsh dance. It has allowed us to collaborate alongside Year 4 and it has been lovely to see the children laughing and dancing together. They seemed to have picked it up quite quickly and are looking forward to performing the dance at Eisteddfod. This week we’ve been looking at distance which allowed us to experiment with how far different fruit and veg would roll. It was a great opportunity to have lots of rich and in-depth discussions. We discussed how and why it’s important to make it a fair test, the children all understood their role in the experiment and why we couldn’t change them (incase it impacted the final result). We completed yet another Commando Joes mission where we had to reconstruct Farmer Ducks vegetable patch. The rabbits had managed to get into it and destroy it! Thankfully, the children were on hand to help. We’ve also been exploring symmetry and developed a great understanding of its meaning. The children enjoyed exploring symmetry through block play and thought carefully about the need for it to be the same on both sides. Our Welsh language skills continue to grow as we learnt the names of different fruits in Welsh as well as explored where different foods come from. With half term only one week away, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all again for your continued support. I really can’t believe that the children are nearly half way through Reception. They have all grown so much and I look forward to seeing what more we can achieve as a class after half term. Have a lovely weekend all!  

8.1.24-19.1.24

Blwyddyn Newydd Da ac Croeso i nol! – Happy New Year and Welcome back! I hope you all enjoyed the Christmas break and had the opportunity to take time for yourselves and families. The first two weeks back have flown by, and as usual have been very busy. For this half term, the children will be doing gymnastics in P.E. We have enjoyed looking at and completing different shapes and movements and exploring some of the aspirators. We have also welcomed Mrs North into Reception who will be completing weekly toots lessons with us. Our first session was a huge success and we have continued to grow and learn since. We’ve really enjoyed engaging in our musical sides and having a go at playing independently and altogether. We also had our first forest school session of the new year where we explored painting with mud and using natural resources as our paintbrushes. It was lovely to hear the different creations that the children made before returning to school. We’re looking forward to the weather getting a bit warmer so it's not so cold. We also got stuck into our new topic of ‘Muck, Mess and Mixture’ where we have been looking at foods that are fruit and not fruit before carrying out the great ‘Seed or no seed’ investigation. This week we have started to learn about money in maths. We have looked at recognising 1p, 2p, 5p, and 10p coins. We also had a go at using the different coins to role play buying items in our new farm shop.  We enjoyed another Commando Joes session where we had to complete ‘Operation fix the tractor’ for farmer duck. Poor farmer duck's tractor broke, and it was our job to work collaboratively to build him a new one. We also explored the outdoors to support the work of Andy Goldsworthy, an artist we have started looking at in Expressive Arts. Safe to say, we have had a lovely first two weeks back and I look forward to the rest. As always, Miss Ward and I would like to thank you for your continued support. Have a lovely weekend all.  

27.11.23-8.12.23

These weeks seem to be flying by as another fortnight has already passed. We’ve been super busy with our Nativity Practice and are looking forward to welcoming friends and family in next week to watch. We’ve worked very hard, Miss Light and Miss Ward are very proud of all the children as I’m sure you will be too. In maths, we’ve been busy looking at taking things away to find ‘how many are left?’ This has supported the build-up to some of us writing and completing some subtraction sums within 5 and 10.  We’ve really been challenging ourselves in maths as we are quite the mathematicians. At the end of last week, we were greeted with ‘Alfie’ our class elf which was named by one of the pupils. Alfie has been up to all kinds of mischief in our classroom from leaving snowy prints, making his own binoculars having sleepovers and even trying to bring back a snowman from the North Pole! We’re looking forward to having Alfie the Elf with us until the end of term. He also very kindly delivered us a sack full of goodies. We also enjoyed our visit to Trellech areas where we were able to share some of our Nativity songs with the wider community to share some Christmas joy. If you were able to join us, we hope you had a lovely afternoon and enjoyed the sneak peak of our Nativity songs. For our final forest school of the term, we enjoyed some delicious marshmallows with Year 1 for a Thursday afternoon treat. We’re looking forward to some of the fun festivities that are planned for the final two weeks as we quickly approach the Christmas break. A gentle reminder that on Monday 18th December, we would like to welcome you in for our parent Christmas workshop from 1:45pm. As ever, thank you for your continued support. Have a lovely weekend all! 

24.11.23

As always, it has been another busy fortnight in Reception. We started the fortunate participating in Anti-bullying week and Children in Need. The children enjoyed creating their own kindness pledge, wearing their odd socks as well as designing their very own pair, as well as creating different acts of kindness to add to our class kindness jar. For Children In Need, we enjoyed baking some Pudsey shortbread. We hope they tasted as yummy as they looked! We put our all into the run Pudsey challenge and really pushed ourselves to complete as many laps as we could for such an amazing cause. Safe to say, there were some very tired children after it but a real buzz and unity in the air. We were fortunate to have Mrs Cornish join us to harvest some of our vegetables that have been growing in our outdoor area. We look forward to working with Mrs Cornish over the upcoming year. The children have continued to make great progress in practicing in our nativity. Just when you finally get ‘Big Red Combine Harvester’ out of your head the Nativity songs are quick to take it's place! We have continued to work on our Welsh and have now gained a better understanding of the meaning of Sut wyt ti? And how we can respond to it. The next couple of weeks are set to be busy as the build up to Christmas begins to start. On Friday 8th December, we will be visiting Trellech Teas Christmas afternoon. We will be sharing some of our nativity songs with the community so please feel free to join us. On Monday the 18th of December, we would love to welcome you to join us in a ‘Parents Christmas workshop’ where you can create Christmas cards with your children. The cards will then be delivered into our local community. Communication about both of these events have been sent out in a letter this week. Again, thank you for your continued support. Have a lovely weekend!

10.11.23

Reception have had a lovely first week back. Miss Light and Miss Ward enjoyed hearing all about the exciting things that the pupils got up to over the half term. As we enter the final weeks of the Autumn Term, we are looking forward to getting started with our Christmas Nativity.  

This week the children have continued to work hard in Read Write Inc to learn the new sounds. We are really focussing on our presentation and trying hard to sit all our letters on the line. In Maths, we have started looking at simple addition (o-5) and beginning to build an understanding of how it looks as a sum, with the addition and equals sign. This has provided the children the opportunity to continue to practice their number formation. Miss Light and Miss Ward were so impressed with all the pupils as they really challenged themselves this week.  

We have also been learning about the significance of Remembrance Day through class circle time. As a class, we created mini poppy wreaths to decorate our class window as well as used tissue paper to create poppies for the display. We have developed a good understanding as to why it is so important.  

We also enjoyed another wet forest school with Year 1. The children re-imbedded some previous learning about the importance of friendships and what makes a good friend through creating friendship wands. This will support us further next week for Anti-bullying week. We are also looking forward to participating in Children in Need, so another busy week is ahead.  

Miss Light would also like to thank you all for attending parents evening this week. It was so lovely to welcome you back into school. For some it welcomed the return of face-to-face meetings and for others the first experience of a parents evening. Thank you again for all the kind words shared about myself and Miss Ward. We do really appreciate it. Have a lovely weekend! 

20.10.23

Another fortnight has been and gone in Reception. We can’t believe we are nearly at the end of our first half term. Last week we enjoyed celebrating our first Harvest Festival. I’m sure you all had ‘Big Red Combine Harvester’ stuck in your heads like Miss Light and Miss Ward. The children enjoyed painting autumnal pictures of pumpkins, leaves and acorns as well as exploring chalk to create autumnal silhouettes. We were so excited to see them displayed over the church for all our community to see.  At forest school, we created some natural patterns using two/three objects to re-imbed and recap some previous learning. In science, we looked at basic body parts. The children enjoyed drawing around their friends to create an outline. We then used images and some of our initial sounds to correctly label the different body parts. Head, shoulders, knees and toes went down a storm during the input! There was further excitement when discovering that our chickens had laid their very first set of eggs. The children also planted some bulbs, but ‘shhhh Reception’ we can’t quite tell you what they are or what they’re for quite yet! This week we have enjoyed doing some simple coding. We created our own code for how we wash our hands. We were then tasked to ‘de bug’ the code after a very sneaky bug managed to come into our classroom and put it out of order. We have also been exploring ‘What makes a good friend?’ The children were tasked with different images which they had to decide whether it made a good or not so good friend. We are looking forward to exploring this further next week. To take this learning further, at forest school we enjoyed creating friendship bracelets using natural materials. We had to decide what the natural materials represented. For example, a leaf for kindness, a flower for love. On behalf of Miss Light and Miss Ward, we would like to say a big thank you to you all for your continued support. Have a lovely weekend all.

6.10.23

Reception have been very busy over the past two weeks. For our Ti a Fi (You and Me) topic we have been exploring our similarities and differences. To help us do this, we enjoyed reading the book ‘The same but different too.’ We have also continued to practice and learn some more Welsh. We are beginning to become more confident in answering questions such as pwy wyt ti? (What’s your name?) and ble rwyt ti’n byw? (Where do you live?). In maths we have continued to practice recognising and forming numbers to 10, along with creating pictures using 2D shapes and working out what one more/one less is of numbers to ten. We have enjoyed learning some of our new sounds ‘m,a and s’ in Read Write Inc as well as practicing how to write them correctly using the different rhymes. At forest school this week, we enjoyed collaborating with Year 1 to make different homes for our Forest friends. There was also plenty of excitement in the classroom over the return of our chickens. Reception are looking forward to taking care of them over the course of this year. There have already been some fantastic helpers who have changed their water, checked their food and ensured that their run is clean and tidy for them. Looking after our wildlife and planet is very important to us, we have been exploring what we can do to help keep not only our planet but ourselves healthy too. Finally, a special thank you and good luck to Mrs Hassall from all of us in Reception, along with Miss Light and Miss Ward. You have already helped us all grow so much in the first part of our learning journey. Your kindness, care and continuous efforts to support us will never be forgotten. We will miss you lots!  

22.9.23

Reception have been so busy during their first few weeks of school. Miss Light, Mrs Hassall and Miss Ward are so proud of how well you are all starting to settle in. Thank you again, to all the parents who joined us for our open morning and afternoon to see our classroom. We're looking forward to welcoming you into school more over the upcoming year.

In Maths, Reception have been focusing on recognising, ordering and forming numbers from 0-5, as well as counting out a certain number of objects and making / continuing patterns.

Reception have also been discussing the importance of understanding different emotions. They have thought carefully about when they might feel a certain way and why? Along with how we can overcome the trickier emotions that we sometimes feel.

We have started focusing on using our Welsh when answering the register, greeting others, and discussing what the weather is like each day for our Welsh weather chart. We also enjoyed our first trip to forest school through the Wet meadow and exploring a whole new environment.

We are so excited for what our year together will bring. Have a lovely weekend all!