Year R - Orange Class | Westmeads Community Infant School

Year R - Orange Class

Mrs Brentnall, Mrs Thomas, Mrs Frattaroli & Mrs Barker would like to welcome you to

ORANGE CLASS

Maths in Reception

This presentation gives you information on how we teach maths to your children and how you can help them at home.

Reading, Writing and Phonics in Reception

This presentation gives you information on how we teach Reading, Writing and Phonics to your children and how you can help them at home.

Term 3

Splish! Splash!

'Why do we need water?'

Term 2

Once Upon a Time

'Can you tell us a story?'

Message from the Year R teachers

It has been a quieter week in the last week of Term in Reception, but we have been busy doing lots of different Christmas crafts – making cards, decorations and paper chains. In Phonics we have played games to practise reading and writing words with the sounds we have learned so far and in Maths we have played counting games and sung number songs. We have also spent lots of time outside in the playground, playing games with each other and even enjoying a hot chocolate in the Outdoor Classroom. We hope those of you at home have enjoyed some of the Christmas activities we shared on Microsoft Teams and have been having fun with your own Christmas preparations.

We loved watching the videos of the Nativity performances this week! These are now available for you to watch on Microsoft Teams. We are sure you will agree that all the children gave confident performances and sang beautifully. Well done to everyone in Yellow and Orange Classes! A big thank you again to Luka’s Dad for filming and putting the videos together for us.

Next term our PE days will be as follows:

Yellow Class – Mondays

Orange Class – Wednesdays.

Please send your children in PE kits on these days.

Thank you to you all from everyone in Reception for the very generous and thoughtful gifts and cards. We hope that you all have a very happy and healthy Christmas and we look forward to seeing you all in 2021!

Mrs Watkins Mrs Brentnall Mrs Thomas

The Gingerbread Man

Orange Class loved reading and retelling the story of the Gingerbread Man using puppets and small world characters. We made salt dough gingerbread men and decorated them to hang on the Christmas tree, and even decorated little gingerbread men to eat as our marble treat!

Gingerbread Man Marble Treat

Salt Dough Gingerbread Man Decorations

Story Retelling

We are Reading Rockstars!

Well done to Orange Class who were Reading Rockstars for the first time this week! Mrs Gowing presented us with the Reading Rockstars Guitar on Friday after our Celebration Assembly. We are really proud of all of you for reading at home so often - keep up the good work!

Children in Need

We had a fantastic range of outfits for Children in Need this Friday, when Orange Class all dressed up in things that make them happy! From dinosaurs to pyjamas, superheroes to princesses, everybody looked brilliant! Thank you to all of you for helping your children choose their outfits and for donating to such a worthwhile cause.

Phonics on the Creation Station!

This week in Phonics we have been learning the /c/ sound and the letters C and K. Linked to this lots of the children made their very own King Crowns on the Creation Station, decorating them with shiny jewels and pom poms.

Indian Food Tasting for Diwali

This week we learned a little bit about the Festival of Diwali. We watched some Cbeebies programmes about how the festival is celebrated and read the story of Rama and Sita. As well as designing Rangoli patterns on the playground with chalk or in the classroom with Numicon, we tasted some Indian Foods. Some of them we liked, and some we were not so sure about! But the children used lots of lovely adjectives to describe what they were eating, sharing their opinions with each other and discussing what the foods tasted like.

Stories that are special to us

This term we are learning all about stories and we have started this theme by reading lots of different books. We have loved sharing the children's favourite stories this week! Have a look at the photos to see which stories we've read.

Term 1

All About Me

'What can you tell me about yourself?'

Wake Up Shake Up Term 1 - If You're Happy and You Know It

Wake Up Shake Up Term 1 - A Pirate You Shall be

Orange Class Autumn 2020

As a Fantastic Finish to our first term at school, we have made video showing some of the exciting things the children have been doing since September. They have made a wonderful start to their school life and we are really proud of how well they have settled and how much they have already learned!

Fun in the Reception Garden

Orange Class have been making Silly Soup in the Mud Kitchen, using different natural materials. They carefully cut up some flowers and mixed them with conkers, pebbles and leaves to make delicious recipes! The children watered the plants and swept up to help keep our outside area tidy and well looked after!

Write Dance

Write Dance is an exciting music and dance approach to develop the skills needed for writing. This term the children have enjoyed dancing and moving to music and chalking on the large chalkboards outside.

Harvest

The Little Red Hen

We have been thinking this week about where our food comes from. We have learned the story of The Little Red Hen and performed it in front of the rest of the school in our special Harvest Assembly on Wednesday. We made hats to where during the assembly, showing one of the animals from the story.

Handa's Surprise

This week, as part of our work on Handa's Surprise, we printed with fruit. We also made observational drawings of some of the different fruits in the book. We went on a fruit hunt in the Outdoor Classroom, using positional language to describe where the fruit was hidden - 'under the bench', 'next to the tree', 'on the leaves'. Once we'd found the fruit we even got to taste some of it!

Fruit Hunt

Fruit Tasting

Fantastic FRED

The children had great fun this week when Fantastic FRED and the Professor came to visit Westmeads! Fantastic FRED and his professor talked to the children about how to look after their own mental health in a positive and memorable way.

F.R.E.D is an acronym for the four practical ways in which children can help to look after their own good mental heath:

Food – eating the right foods

Rest – getting enough sleep

Exercise – being active

Digital Devices – managing time online

Stomp, Chomp, Big Roars!

Here Come the Dinosaurs!

To celebrate National Poetry Day this year, we read lots of dinosaur poems from the book Stomp, Chomp, Big Roars! Here Come the Dinosaurs! Orange Class performed one of the poems - 'Stomp, Chomp, Big Roars' to the rest of the school during our Zoom Poetry Assembly on Thursday. They were particularly good at the ROARS!!

Orange Class used the iPads for the first time this week, playing a maths game to help practise counting and recognising numbers to 5.

Outdoor Classroom

Orange class had fun in the Outdoor Classroom this week, finding conkers, slugs, snails and apples that had fallen from the tree. They made potions, looked for fish and insects in the pond and looked for bugs in the bug house.

Owl Babies

Orange Class have been busy making feathered friends this week! We read Owl Babies and then created our own owls and decorated them using leaves and feathers. We also made some owl puppets to retell the story. We talked about which owl baby was the biggest (Sarah!) and which was the smallest (Bill!), cut out pictures of owls and ordered them from biggest to smallest.

The Rainbow Fish

This week we have been reading the story 'The Rainbow Fish' by Marcus Pfister.

The children learnt to trace a picture of a fish and then added handwriting patterns to decorate them using special handwriting pens. They had to control the pens and pencils carefully to draw different patterns and shapes. They found out where everything is kept on the office table area and learn how to tidy it away carefully ready for the next person. It's really important that everyone remembers to write their name on their work!

Our First Week

The children enjoyed exploring their new environment and making lots of new friends during their first week of school. They are settling into their daily routine well and have shown great excitement when learning new things.