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Welcome back everyone and a big thank you to all who came to our Class Assembly today! It was lovely to watch back some of the video clips from throughout the year and see how much the children have grown and changed throughout Reception. All of them did so well learning their lines and song lyrics, we are so proud of them all!

This week, we have started our new topic of ‘pirates’! Whilst most of the week has been taken up with assembly rehearsals and prop making, we have still managed to create our own treasure maps this week out of tea-stained paper. We have also done a Big Write this week where we created a list of instructions about how to find the treasure on our maps. The children had some amazing ideas featuring deadly volcanoes, sea monsters, traps hidden in palm trees and swamps and some amazing ideas about what was inside their treasure chests. They have thoroughly enjoyed dressing up in pirate clothes this week and having a go in our small world area where we have lots of pirate figurines too.

Next week, we will be learning about some real life pirates from the past and we also have a special visit on Tuesday, from the company @BambuuBrush. They create eco-toothbrushes and will be coming to speak to the children about how we can use non-plastic alternatives, recycle all of our plastic packaging and how it affects our oceans. We look forward to their visit!

Reminders:

A reminder that our Class One and Two joint trip to Woburn Safari is on the 20^th June. Children will all need to bring a packed lunch on this day which is in a disposable bag rather than a ‘packed lunch box’. If it is a sunny day, we ask that you apply sunscreen before the children come to school as we are unable to do this or accept any creams into school. If your children are travel-sick and wear special wrist bands or have medication, please let the school office know in advance. Children will also need to come into school on this day in their usual school uniform and with a sun-hat. You may wish to provide a waterproof jacket with a hood if it is a rainy day as most of the day will be spent outside (fingers crossed for sun!)

If you haven’t already, please can parents return their ‘BambuuBrush’ letter to school so we can inform the workshop whether you wish your child to appear on camera or not.

Thank you and have a lovely weekend!

Class One

Happy half term everybody! When we come back, we will be starting our new topic of pirates so you may want to research them over the half term!

We have had a very busy week in school with both a Sports Day and a school talent show! Both events saw us show off all of our skills so well done to everybody who took part, have a look at some of the photos on the ‘school gallery’ page above. This week, we have also been very busy getting ready for our class assembly, learning some tricky split e sounds in phonics (also sometimes called ‘magic e’ words), such as ‘like’, ‘home’ and ‘mate’. The children are now getting very good at spotting them in their books and remembering that they make one sound! We have also been making masks, learning lines and even learning a few songs in preparation. Make sure you come check out our Class Assembly which is on Friday 7^th June at 2:30 (you may want to get here early to get a good seat!) A reminder also that all children should now have a cap or hat in school to wear at playtimes and lunchtimes. The rule after half term will be, ‘not hat….no play’ so please ensure your child comes to school with one each day

Enjoy your half term everybody!

Class One

What a busy week we have had in Class One. After having a long week end we came back on Tuesday full of energy to learn. On Tuesday we were lucky enough to have an amazing afternoon out with Sporting Futures at the Leys school in Stevenage! The children were taught how to maypole dance and we learnt all about celebrating the beginning of May and the start of the summer. 

We were able to hula- hoop, limbo dance, hook a duck, along with many other activities (if you haven’t already, check out our gallery page above!)

The children thoroughly enjoyed our trip and were all so well behaved so. A big well done to all of them!

We have been hard at work looking at how important the oceans are to us and how we can look after our planet. We looked at materials that can be recycled and those that can’t and children had a hunt around the school to look for man-made and natural items.

The children really enjoyed looking around the school and discussing how to look after our world. We have lots of boxes now in class one all for recycling.

This week we have continued our “under the sea “topic, our role play has been transformed and we’ve been looking at all the different layers of the ocean. The children were then tasked with colour mixing to create a painting of their own layers of the ocean. This will be a work in progress as next week we will add in all of the sea creatures. 

Reminders

• Now that we are into summer uniforms, socks (and tights if it is a cold day) should be white please, not navy blue.
• We are also finding that many of the children are not reading on a daily basis at home. As we move on to more formal learning, it really is vital that children read their books with a parent or big sibling every night at home. It really does make such a difference your child’s level at school and is vital to ensuring your children progress through a range of book bands. A recent study concludes that if a child reads for just 10 minutes every day, they will experience and be able to use 1,800,000 words in their vocabulary in the school year, whereas a child who only reads for one minute a day with only gain up to 8,000!
• A reminder that children should have blue shorts, a white t-shirt, a blue hoody or jacket and plimsolls or trainers in their PE kits. Spare socks are also a must as the girls who wear tights need something on their feet if we go to the field. 

Welcome back everyone! Our last term of the academic year (where has the year gone?) This week we have started our new topic of ‘Under the Sea’, by researching some underwater creatures! We first thought of something we would like to find out and then we typed our questions into the google-kids search engine called kiddle. We then wrote our answers in our own Q&A books which are on display in class; the children have clearly been writing over their holidays as their writing was amazing! In other news, we have started to get ready for this years’ sports day with lots of running races in PE. Later in the half term, a list will go out on the school gate to let you all know which colour teams we will be in.

Notices

• As you have probably spotted on our newsletters this week, Class One have some school trips coming up this term! On 7^th May, Mr Smith has kindly arranged for us to attend a ‘Sporting Futures’ event at the Leys School in Stevenage, where we will be trying out some Maypole games and dances. Letters should have come out with your children today regarding times etc. Children will need take their water bottles with them and also wear their PE kits on this day, so as long as these are in school, there is nothing else for you to prepare for this. Lunches will be as normal with the children eating before we get on the coach. Strangely, there is a little typo on the letter which says ‘27^th June 2018’ in small writing at the top of the letter- please ignore this, it should not be there!
• Later in the term, the teachers have arranged for a joint school trip for Classes One and Two to Woburn Safari Park! The children have not been told yet, so you may want to keep this a secret for now! Letters will come out to you soon to let you know all of the details but as with all our school trips, the children will come to school and leave at the normal time on this day.

Here we are at the end of another term! It is hard to believe that when we get back, it will be our final term in Reception but we have lots of fun things in store linked to our new topic of ‘Under the Sea’. Thank you to all who attended our Easter Service this week, we hope you enjoyed joining in with our Easter celebrations. Today, the children should be bringing home all of their PE kits and book bags. Our new homework grid will be set after half term as usual along with our class curriculum grid, to let you know what we will be up to in Class One.

Reminders/ Other

After half term, we will be doing some of our PE lessons up at the school field! If your child does not already have an outdoor PE kit in school, this will be vital after half term. Sadly if the children do not have their PE kit in school, we are unable to let them participate due to health and safety reasons.

If you would like to do any extra learning with your children over the holidays, feel free to research some sea creatures or learn some facts about oceans and coral reefs.

WANTED! After half term, we will be doing some art and craft involving CD/ DVD disks. If you have any that you could donate to class, we would very much appreciate it! We are also a little short of knickers and boys pants in our spare clothes draw so if you have any Class 1 underwear at home which could be returned to us, or if you would like to donate any old underwear, we would be very grateful!

Lastly, we seem to have mysterious collection of apples accumulating in Class One over the last few weeks (8 in total!) Despite our best efforts to reunite them with the correct child, no one is yet to claim them. If you could send them with a sticker on to ensure they are named, or send them in a little bag/ pot, that would be a great help to us in solving this mystery!

Enjoy your two weeks off everybody,

Miss Ingle and the Class One staff.

This week in Class One we have been visiting our ‘space shop’ which appeared overnight in our classroom! We have been using 1p and 2p coins to add up simple amounts and ‘purchase’ space suits, moon bots, a mars rover robot, telescope and lots more! It was very tricky when we were only given 2p coins and so we have had to remember to tap them twice, to understand that they are worth 2 pennies.

On the topic of Mars rovers, we have been looking at how technology can help both astronauts and people back on Earth, to do lots of jobs for us. We watched a Cbeebies video of how computers are all around us, controlling hand dryers and taps, traffic lights, automatic doors, escalators, microwaves and many more! We then began to think about robots and used our own mini robots called Ozobots. It was great fun drawing mazes on paper and watching them respond to the different colours to do tricks and move around our pieces of paper, we were all very engaged in our robot learning!

On Tuesday we also took part in our school’s ‘Experience Easter Outside’ day and got to take part in lots of different activities, based on the different parts of the Easter story. We will be doing lots more Easter work next week and look forward to singing some songs in church at the Easter Service on Thursday.

Thank you to all who attended parent’s evening this week and we look forward to seeing more of you attending on Monday evening. Enjoy your weekend everyone!

We have had a fantastic time in Class One this week, taking part in lots of science themed activities! This year’s school theme was ‘Outer Space Science’ which linked nicely with our class topic! Some of the activities we took part in included making the different moon phases out of Oreo cookies, creating our own mini-solar systems using oranges, making space shuttles, paper parachutes and lots more!

In other science we have been bug-hunting in our school nature area and had great fun naming our insects and observing how many legs, shells and wings they had. We have also been learning all about Earth as a planet including the layers of the Earth, why volcanoes happen and even making our own volcanoes using bicarbonate soda, vinegar and washing up liquid.

Next week we are starting to learn the about the Easter story and will be taking part in our school’s ‘Experience Easter’ celebration workshops on Tuesday. We will also be starting our mini topic all about nocturnal creatures!

Enjoy your weekends,

Class One

What a great week it has been in Class One! Continuing with our theme of ‘space’, we have read the story ‘Aliens Love Underpants’ this week which has inspired lots of fun learning!

We looked at illustrations of all of the aliens and talked about what we might do if we met one and this led to fantastic alien pictures, complete with written labels. We even did some tricky ‘Year One’ work, writing their own character profile of an alien, using sentence starters and conjunctions such as and, also, but, however and because; they were great fun to read! In maths this week, we have been searching for and creating our own patterns. We looked around the classroom for patterns in our environment and noted some of the shapes we could see. Many of us found it really tricky to name some of the 3D shapes we saw, so we will be working on this over the coming weeks. Feel free to also test us on our shape knowledge at home too. One of our favourite lessons this week was a measuring lesson where we went out onto the playground for a pants pinging competition! We loved seeing how far we cold ping them and measured the distance using metres, centimetres and footprint, it was great fun!

Next week, we will be doing lots of outside learning throughout the week, to look for signs of spring in the environment. In Reception, we believe there is no such thing as the wrong weather, only the wrong clothes, so if your child does not already have wellies left in school each day, they may wish to bring them in for next week! We will be doing lots of scientific activities such as, looking at changes in the trees, comparing and measuring the sizes of leaves, hunting for animal hibernation spots and looking at some of the plants and flower which have started to grow in our nature area. If your child hasn’t already, you may send some wellington boots into school for them to wear throughout the week. On Wednesday, we will be taking part in our school science day too and look forward to trying out all the different science workshops run around school.

Enjoy your weekend!

Class One

Welcome back everyone, hopefully you have all had a restful half term. We began our new topic this week with the theme of ‘journey into space’. The children have been having great fun making space rocks out of playdough, creating their own lunar landing sites with rocks and astronaut figures and have been learning all about the planets in our solar system. We were very intrigued to learn about the orbit of planets and the children have amazed us with their facts about black-hole and meteors this week. We enjoyed learning about each of the planets and have even written a list of things we would pack, to go on a journey to another planet!

The children have also enjoyed learning all about the constellations this week. We counted the number of stars in some of the most well-known constellation and used star-stickers on black paper, to replicate some of our favourites. We then used the star-gazer app on the IPads, to search the sky for Leo the Lion, the Big Dipper (also part of the Great Bear), look for Sirius to dog star, Cassiopeia the W shaped queen constellation and our favourite…‘the pterodactyl’ (also known as Cygnus the swan, but we decided it looked more pterodactyl-like!) We also used our number skills this week to play a fun space number game, adding amounts to 10 to place the correct number of rockets on each numbered planets. We have been encouraged to use our fingers OR physical objects to understand that when we add, our number gets bigger. Next week, we start to think about what it might be like to be an astronaut and of course celebrate World Book Day 2019 which is always a very exciting day.

Enjoy your weekends everybody!

Here we are at the end of another half term and now half way through the year! This week the children completed their mini-topic of fairy tales by growing their own beanstalks, dressing up in prince and princess outfits to visit ‘the ball’, made their own glitter crowns or fiery dragon hats and read lots of traditional tales! We enjoyed looking at how many tales feature the number 3 (3 bears, 3 billy goats gruff, phrases that are said 3 times) and had to think about the moral in each story. We linked our maths to fairy tales too this week by reading ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ and then playing ‘what’s the time Mr Big Bad Wolf?’ The children were so good at reading o’clock times! Some are even able to now read half pasts too.

Reminders

• Children will continue to need both an indoor and outdoor kit in school after half term. PE days will continue to be on a Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon.
• Don’t forget WORLD BOOK DAY is coming up on Thursday 7^th March! You may want to get planning your costume in advance. We can’t wait to see supertatoes (and evil peas!), Gruffalos and Horrid Henry’s, stick men and many more! Prizes are awarded to the best costumes and ‘group entries’ are also allowed should you wish to team up and have a theme! (As usual the teachers are sure to get involved too and show our silly sides with some book-inspired costumes!)

Hopefully all children have brought home all of their PE bags, hats, scarves and other school items! Wishing you all a happy half term. We will see you again in a weeks’ time when we begin our new topic….Outer Space!

This week in Class One, we have been talking all about ‘wellbeing’ as part of national ‘wellbeing week’. We have been thinking about what to do if we feel sad or angry, been talking about how to be a good friend, thinking of ways to keep us healthy and practising our ‘self-help’ skills so we can get better at problem solving with independence. One of our favourite parts of the week was our visit from Herts Catering where we got to sample lots of new fruits! Our favourite was the physalis which looks like a little superhero, hidden in its cape! We also enjoyed the dragon fruit, star fruit and figs although the ‘lime challenge’ was hard to do without pulling a very sour face!

In other news, we have enjoyed learning all about Chinese New Year this week. The children have taken part in a variety of Chinese inspired activities including making Chinese lanterns, writing our names in Mandarin, creating animal puppet and masks based on the Chinese zodiac and creating our own dragon dances in PE. Ask us this weekend if we can remember how to say Happy Chinese New Year in Chinese! Enjoy your weekend

Class One.

This week in Class One, we have based our superhero learning around the story of ‘Supertato’. This Monday we arrived in Class to find an unwelcome surprise…. Frozen peas everywhere! And on the carpet, a letter from a nasty villain along with our hero Supertato, trapped under some cling film. There could only be one villain nasty enough to do something like this…..the Evil Pea! Class One set to work straight away to create our own WANTED posters, featuring a description of our green nemesis and a piece of advice to tell people what to do if they spot him. We posted our WANTED posters all around the school and waited for someone to find him…

Luckily, after a week of superhero maths, (finding 2 digit numbers on a 100 grid/ adding 2 numbers together), some computer work (creating our own heroes using the DC Kids, ‘Hero me!’ game), and some fun pea squishing with mashers in Busy Fingers time, we received some good news….the evil pea had been captured! To celebrate, we used our art skills to create our own Supertatos using real potatoes! We then finished the week with some Superhero aerobics in PE and made our Supertatos come to life using stop-motion apps on the IPads. It was great fun watching our videos back and our posters have amazed the rest of the school this week. Well done Class One heroes!

This week we have been continuing our topic of superheroes and super villains! We have been having great fun creating our own comic strips this week, adding character speech bubbles and even acting out some of our superhero scenes! The class have all taken turns to perform their comic strips to the class and in play and learn, have been making some superhero outfits to wear.

In Maths this week, we have been using our doubling powers and have loved singing along to ‘the doubles rap’ (which you can find on YouTube). We have been doing lots of fun, practical number activities to see what happens when we put our two amounts together and have recorded our number work using dots, paint splodges, pictures and sums.

Next week, we will be having a ‘Supertato’ themed week so feel free to visit your local libraries over the weekend, or research the Supertato books, written by Sue Hendra.

Enjoy your weekends and see you all on Monday!

Happy New Year and welcome back everyone! Hopefully you have all day a lovely Christmas and enjoyed your break. The children have come back to school full of beans this week and have got stuck into their learning; their reading in particular seems to have come on lots over Christmas!

We have started our new topic of superheroes this week and we began the theme by learning about some of the many superheroes the children knew about. We talked about what makes a hero, what they might look like and the children worked in groups to create their own superhero characters. Some of the heroes included Jaxon the Jelly Man, an evil genius who throws jelly at people, Heart Girl with the power to love, Super Shark, an undersea hero who can become invisible and Laser Man with the ability to shoot ‘statue rays’ at enemies!

The children have also been adding single digits numbers during their number work, taking part in ‘superhero training camp’ sessions (PE fitness circuits), writing whole pages of sentences about their favourite superheroes and of course, dressing up in our new superhero themed role play! A great first week back!

Other/ Reminders

• The children are rising to the challenge of changing their own books each day!
• Thank you to all parents who have returned badges to school this week.
• A reminder that children will need both indoor and outdoor PE kits this term, in school at all times.

Merry Christmas everyone! Well done to the Class One children who have all settled so well into their new school this term. The class have achieved o much already, it is hard to believe we are now a third of the way through the school year!

A big THANK YOU from all of the teachers for your kind gifts and cards to us all, we are blown away by your kindness!

We leave you with a few reminders and notices and wish you a very Merry Christmas and a happy new year!

Notices

• All books and reading records have been collected in over the Christmas holidays so please do not worry when you cannot find them! Should you like to read over the holidays, you are more than welcome to use books from home or the library to indulge in some festive stories or perhaps even research our new topic of ‘Superheroes’ which starts after half term!
• All lost property left in class has now been passed on to the big ‘lost property’ box situated outside of the office so please check this for any missing items.
• Homework will start again after half term. Thank you for all of your hard work this term, the children loved showing their home-learning off in today’s assembly! It has now been sent home with the children to keep so that we can start afresh after the holidays.

Enjoy your holidays everyone and see you in the New Year!

What a busy week we have had in Class One! This week we have started our mini-topic of dinosaurs! The children have had lots of fun taking part in some of the dinosaur themed activities we have set out in class, including digging for fossils in sand, creating their own model dinosaur, using the dino’ swamp tuff tray (complete with green water) and even using the computers to find out more about their favourite Jurassic creature. Ask us more about our learning at home to see what we can remember!

In other news this week. we had an extra special PE lesson on Monday with Stevenage Sporting Futures…’Pudsey PE!’ we had lots of fun, thank you so much for all of your children in need donations this week. We have also been having lots of fun in our new ‘Costa Coffee’ themed role play all week using our money skills and acting abilities, our teachers have enjoyed watching us act in role!

Other

Parents Evening slips have gone out in book bags today to let you all know which time your appointment is. Whilst we always try our best to fit everyone in with their preferred time, this year lots of parents wanted a similar time which has proved a little tricky. If any of you are unable to make your time, please come and see me and let me know.

If any children have effort/ values/ achievement badges at home from previous weeks, can they please be returned on Monday?

Next week we begin to learn songs for our upcoming Nativity! How is it this time of year already?! Be prepared for your children to come home singing some rather catchy Christmas tunes!

Welcome back everyone, we hope you have all had a restful and happy half term last week. This week in Class One, we have been learning all about fireworks! We began the week with a journey back in time, 400 years ago where we met a rather scary character.... Guy Fawkes! The children loved finding out some child friendly facts about the Gunpowder Plot and took great pleasure in acting out the story, complete with a Guy, King James and some soldiers. Ask us about the Gunpowder Plot at home, to see what we can remember.

As well as our history learning, we have also been using our art skills this week, using printing techniques to make some beautiful firework pictures.

On Wednesday we learnt all about the festival of Diwali by making some clay Diwa lamps, making some samosas in the curriculum kitchen and even trying out some Bollywood moves in our PE lesson!

We ended the week with a Remembrance Day themed day today. The children have tried out different workshops throughout the school, linked to RE values and WW1 history…have a look at some of the photos on the school gallery page very soon!

Other

. Based on the children's interest, week we will be starting a short unit on dinosaurs next week. Have a look over the weekend to see if you can find out some interesting dinosaur facts in preparation.

This week in Class One, we have been starting to think about people who keep us safe and we began this topic by thinking about who keeps us safe when we cross the road. The children were extremely knowledgeable about how to cross a road safely and were able to demonstrate how to Stop, Look, Listen and Think during our demonstration which was really lovely to see! We have been learning about the role of lollipop lady, thinking about how we should behave near busy roads and the children conducted their own traffic surveys outside of the school, to see which was the most popular vehicle to drive in St Ippolyts. The children have even been patrolling our outside area, creating their own ‘speeding tickets’ for fast vehicles that go by and dressing up as police officers which has been very funny to watch!

We had some fantastic links to maths this week by looking at examples of road signs that the children might see when they are out and about and we learnt all about the ‘warning’ triangle signs and other various shapes we might spot. The children then made their own road signs using lollipop sticks and paints….even a ‘dinosaur crossing’ sign!

Thank you to all who came to Open Session on Monday this week and also for all of your kind donations for Harvest Festival. We hope you enjoyed the service and watching your little ones donate all of their lovely food parcels in church. Enjoy your weekend,

Miss Ingle, Mrs Holmes, Mrs Sabri and Mrs Gemmell.

Class One was greeted this week with a bit of a mystery on Monday….a lost satchel in our outside area! Upon inspection, we noticed some envelopes, stamps, paper and royal mail signs inside; it was clear who the lost bag belonged to…the Jolly Postman!

Class One set to work writing letters to the postman to alert of his lost bag. They added a contact number so that he could call the school and signed the letter off with their names in a polite way; the Class One teachers were very impressed with our sounding out skills. We have also built our own post office in class this week to sort out all the postman’s letters. We have been adding stamps onto our envelopes (and choosing first or second class varieties depending on how quickly we want our letters to reach our destinations) and have also been weighing out parcels, using the weighing scales. Other activities have included, buying items from the post office using 1 and 2p coins, creating new decorative door numbers for our houses, drawing pictures from the Alan Ahlberg story ‘The Jolly Postman’ and even dressing up as postal workers, complete with letter bags and royal mail hats!

Reminders

• Thank you for some of the WOW forms we have had in so far. It is lovely to celebrate your children’s successes at home with the class and we look forward to seeing some more soon! More WOW forms to be handed out soon.
• A reminder that next week is our Harvest Festival at St Ippolyts Church. The church service starts at 9:15 and features songs and showing from some of the older children and of course, the giving of any donations by the children of St Ippolyts School.
• Lastly, as you may be aware, new data protection regulations came into effect this year across the UK. As a result of this, schools and organisations are no longer permitted to distribute names of classes outside of school (such as in the form of class lists for parties and Christmas card lists). We appreciate that this is a little inconvenient to parents but hope that you will understand. Should you wish to form a class list yourselves by speaking to other parents outside of schools, you are welcome to do so.
• Lastly, we are looking for donations for Class One spare underwear (especially girls knickers please!). If you have any that you would be willing to donate to our shared class supply, we would be extremely grateful as they always come in handy for our little ones when accidents happen!

Thank you and enjoy your weekends everybody!

This week in Class One, we have been thinking about people who help us at home! We read the Anthony Brown story, ‘Piggybook’ to help us start to think about all the different things that our grown-ups have to do every day. The story features some very amusing pictures in which all of the Piggot family start to transform into real pigs, thanks to their messy behaviour! This led to some great discussions about how we can help out at home and the children have been practising by measuring water into washing up jugs, making pretend dinners for their ‘families’ in the home corner and have even been designing some trophies, to say thank you to those who help us at home.

Next week, we will be reading the story of the Jolly Postman to begin to think about people who help us every day such a postmen/ladies and lollipop people. We will be posting letters using stamps and envelopes and will be practising crossing the road safely, using our zebra crossing and road sign toys in the outside area.

A big thank you to everyone who attended curriculum evening yesterday! I hope that it was helpful to you all and has given you a little more of an idea about what we get up to each day here in Class One! Next week will be our first cake day of the year (on Friday). Children are welcome to leave their usual snack at home on this day and bring in either 25p for one cake, or 50p for 2. Children must bring their money in a named envelope please, to ensure we have no missing coins throughout the day.

Happy weekend!

Miss Ingle, Mrs Holmes and Mrs Sabri.