RMS

Welcome to RMS!

We had such a fantastic trip to Blackpool Zoo on Friday. We saw many of the amazing animals that we have been talking about in our 'Come and See' topic 'Our World'. It was so exciting to see them close up! We saw huge elephants, tall giraffes, swinging monkeys, swimming sealions, colourful peacocks, stripey tigers, fierce lions, a cute lion cub, some very funny penguins and many more!

Our teachers thought we were so interested and our behaviour was so good that we were all Stars of the Day!

This week all our work and play has been linked to our Come and See topic Our World. We have talked about God's wonderful world and all the amazing gifts in it. We had to think about what we love about our world and what we think is wonderful. We came up with some great ideas - jellyfish, sharks, zebras, crabs, our families - to name but a few. Then we talked about all that we wonder about our beautiful world. This was a bit trickier, but we found it easier when we started our questions with 'why?' or 'how?'.

'Why are some flowers blue and some are yellow?'

'Why do we look different?'

'Why is our hair different?'

'How does lava get in volcanoes?'

'Why are my eyes blue?'

Wow, what amazing questions! We have put all our great thoughts, questions and ideas on our  Wonder Wall.

We looked at a wonderful book and learned that God knows everything - even how many hairs we have on our head and how many freckles on our face! Wow, that really is amazing!

We looked at a slideshow story from the Bible about how God made our amazing world. After six days God needed a rest and he said,

'Indeed it is very good!'

 We are making a huge collage of our beautiful world full of all the wonderful plants, creatures and people that are in it.

We must take care of our world and share it with others because God said,

'Take care of my world!'

Our super mini-athletes on Sports Day

'Jambo' everyone!

This week we have linked all our activities to our whole school Africa Week. We have found Africa on the globe and have learned that it is a large continent made up of fifty-four countries. We know that to get there we would need to go by aeroplane or boat as it is almost completely surrounded by the sea.  We have also talked about the wonderful animals that can be found in Africa.

Banana and Coconut Cake from Tunisia

We made a traditional banana and coconut cake from Tunisia. We found Tunisia on the map of Africa in an atlas.  Tunisia is in north Africa. In Literacy this week we have sequenced four pictures of us making this cake, then we wrote a sentence or caption under each picture.  Our teachers think our writing is AMAZING now that we are nearly Year 1 children!

The cake was so easy to make:

• cut bananas in half (we have also been halving and sharing numbers this week) and put them in a dish;

• put butter on top and drizzle orange juice on too;

• sprinkle with brown sugar and coconut;

• bake in the oven until golden.

• EAT and ENJOY!

Tanzania

Our friends Ron and Sue came into our class to talk to us about Tanzania.  They have raised lots of money to build a school for children there.  The school is near the highest mountain in Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro.  They showed us some very special jewellery that had been made there.  We thought it looked like it was made from shells, but it was made from paper!  Some of us dressed up in traditional Tanzanian costumes.  The patterned fabrics were so bright and beautiful. They taught us an African song with some actions.

Halving and Sharing

In Numeracy we have been learning about halving and sharing. We shared different amounts of bananas between two monkeys.  We had to share them fairly so remembered to say 'One for you and one for you' as we shared them out.

A Dance from Senegal

We have also learned a traditional dance from Senegal that is danced at parties.  It is very different to YMCA but just as lively! It is a happy dance so we had to smile a lot as we bent our knees and bounced forwards and backwards.

Macmillan Dress Up and Dance Day

All the Reception children and staff dressed up as either a policeman, builder, sailor, cowboy, Native American or biker. We rehearsed a simple routine with some wiggles, shimmies and steps and boogied to YMCA.  Wow! The children were fantastic! They were so brave performing on the stage in front of the whole school. We are so proud of them. They all enjoyed the event so much and asked if they could do it again! So, look out for an invitation to a special repeat performance for families.

SFoA raised £180 for Macmillan!

Thank you so much for your support!

Our super 'Dress up and Dance' YMCA costumes.

YMCA clip. 

Please visit the 'Gallery' section of our website for more photographs.

We have made some wonderful Father's Day cards.

We linked this to our 'Come and See' topic - Friends - by talking about how and why our dads are our best friends. The children wrote some lovely messages.

The cards are all their own work and made with love! We hope you love them!

Have a happy day, dads!

This week we received a special video message from Percy the Park Keeper!  Yes, we REALLY did!  In his message Percy explained that creatures are coming into his park during the night and eating his plants.  Percy showed us one of those plants and it was full of holes! He said the creatures don't leave any footprints but he has noticed lots of silvery, slimy trails.  Percy looked a little sad and confused because he loves his beautiful gardens, but just can't think what sort of creatures they could be. 

Percy asked us if we could help him identify the creatures and then describe what they look like. Percy loves all creatures as well as plants, so he said he wouldn't harm them, but put them in a special part of his park.

We already know that we are great detectives because we have solved many challenges while we have been in Reception. We all talked about Percy's problem and very quickly decided that the creatures must be SNAILS!

We now have some new class pets - snails. Mrs Moyster found them in her garden.  They have been eating her plants as well! We have used almost all our senses to observe the snails and have even picked them up and held them upside down (they don't drop). We think they are fascinating little creatures and have written some super duper words, phrases and sentences to describe them. Here are some of them:

• one soft foot

• hard solid shell

• silvery slimy trail

• curly shell

• bubbles in the trail

• eyes at the end of the antennae

Our teachers have been AMAZED at our wonderful descriptions and how we have tried to spell some very tricky words. Especially as we are only four and five years old!

Next week we are going to send a video message back to Percy telling him all we have discovered.

 Fun Observing Snails

Den Building at The Beacon

This week we have been learning about what shelters are for and talking about lots of different sorts of shelters.  We all agreed that the best shelters have walls and a roof to protect us from such things as 'rain', 'snow', 'hailstones', 'the wind', 'robbers' and even 'wolves'!

Now that we have learned this, we went to The Beacon to make our own shelters.  We had a very exciting day.

We met Kirsty and Kerry and we talked about the different materials in the woods that would make good dens - sticks, logs, short twigs, long branches, leaves and bracken.  We then set to work in our teams and were so busy all morning making our super duper dens.  Kirsty and Kerry were amazed at our fantastic den-making skills.  Our teachers thought we worked very hard with great focus, ideas and teamwork. They were also very proud of us because we were so well-behaved.

After our picnic lunch we put the finishing touches to our dens, then played in them for a while.  How exciting!  Some of us wanted to stay and sleep in them!

Later we hunted for minibeasts.  We knew the best places to look and found lots and lots - worms, slugs, snails, beetles, millipedes, centipedes and wood lice.  As we have been learning about minibeasts we were able to tell Kirsty and Kerry some of the interesting facts we now know.

Some of us tried a new way of making a picture. We went to the meadow to pick some small plants such as buttercups, clover and grasses. It was such fun running through the tall grass! When we took them back to the den-making area, we arranged them inside a small piece of white cloth then used a real hammer to squash them.  We were very careful and concentrated when tapping the cloth, taking care not to catch our fingers.  When we opened the cloth, hey presto, the plants had left a print on it making a beautiful picture! Kirsty was very impressed because we knew we had made a symmetrical pattern.

We ended our visit by toasting marsh mallows and chocolate chip buns on the campfire. Delicious!

What a wonderful trip! Perfect! A big, ginormous thank you to Kirsty and Kerry. We learned lots of new skills and even the weather was sunny all day!  

The whole school took part in making shelters. We used recycled materials such as cardboard and twigs from our den building day at the Beacon. It was a super afternoon and our dens looked fantastic. We were very proud of our children as they worked together and shared all of the resources. Excellent teamwork!

Dog's Trust

This week a lady visited our school with her pet dog called Danny. She taught us how to behave safely around strange dogs and how to look after our own dogs.

Our Beautiful Butterflies

Finally, our butterflies have emerged out of their cocoons. We decided that it was time to set them free. We were happy to release them but also felt a little sad as we have watched them grow and develop from tiny caterpillars, into cocoons and change into beautiful butterflies.

Time

1, 2, 3, go!

This week we have been measuring time.  We looked at a real clock and learned some new words - clockface, long hand and short hand.  Then we looked at the different coloured sand timers - one minute, two minute, three minute and five minute.

We used the one minute sand timer to clap for a whole minute, jump for one minute (we were very tired afterwards), then the two minute sand timer to try to be silent for two minutes (that was very hard to do!).

In our groups we

• used the sand timers to make some models;

• estimated how many bricks we had used;

• counted them to check;

• we talked about who had used the most and the fewest bricks.

Then we made two, three and five minute patterns.

We really enjoyed both activities and made some super duper models and patterns.

Our Super Duper Models

One, three and five minute models.