Tuesday 28th April 2020

We thought we would update you of some of your friends work they have been doing at home, seeing these photographs really makes us smile so we thought it might be a pick me up that you also need at home  Keep sending them to us, it is really important fo rus to know what work you are all up to. 

Lots of Love, Miss Davies and Miss Newbon

Tuesday 21st April 2020

We have received lots of emails today  It has been lovely to see all of your work and to see your beautiful smiles, I am so proud of all of you and the amazing work which you have been doing, keep up the good work superstars. Please have a look at your friends work, hopefully seeing their faces will put a smile on your face as I know you are missing your friends and teachers. 

Keep being positive and keep working hard, Lots of Love Miss Davies and Miss Newbon x

Thursday 2nd April 2020

We have received lots of wonderful work again today, we are glad you are all keeping busy  We have nearly made it to Friday so keep going and keep smiling!

Wednesday 1st April 2020

It was so lovely to speak to you all on the phone again today and to hear your voices, we are so relieved everyone is safe and well. We have again received lots of emails of all of your work and we are so proud so please keep it up  We have sent purple mash codes to many of you, please get in touch if you have not yet received yours, it has many interactive learning activities on for your child to do if you have feel you need something to do. Any questions then please let us know. 

Tuesday 31st March 2020

WOW! What a busy day we have had on our emails today, we have received lots of fantastic work and photographs but most of all we know you are all safe and well. We are beaming with pride with how hard you are working at home especially during this uncertain time and we cannot wait to see you all to show how proud we are in person! Keep on trying and keep on shining and a big thank you for being so positive. Tomorrow myself and Miss Newbon will be making our weekly telephone calls to you all to make sure you are all well and allows you to ask us anything. 

Until tomorrow, Miss Davies and Miss Newbon 

Monday 30th March 2020

That is another day done our little ducks and another day closer to being back at school together! The amount of amazing work and photographs we have been sent today is fantastic! I cannot thank you all enough for the wonderful things you are doing at home with your children, please keep sending us things daily, it is really important to me and Miss Newbon to see what you are doing and to make sure you are all safe and well. Please send everything to ducks@watersideprimary.org.uk, we are online everyday during school hours and we are available for any questions or support you need. We will be ringing you all on Wednesday for a quick catch up and we cannot wait 

All of your fantastic work is below, keep being amazing, lots of love Miss Davies and Miss Newbon 

Friday 27th March 2020

I am so impressed with all of your work we have had sent to us today, you are all working so hard and are making me and Miss Newbon so proud knowing you are trying so hard at home as you would at school. Seeing all of your photographs puts a huge smile on our faces and we cannot wait to see you all again soon and to start learning together again!

Thursday 26th March

Well today Miss Newbon was back in school giving everyone a quick ring for a catch up and to check that everyone is happy and healthy and also getting on OK with their learning packs. It has been so lovely to hear from you all! Please keep in touch with photographs we are just overwhelmed at how fantastic your home learning is. Miss Davies has been busy with the children who are in school today..just wait and see what amazing 'big art' they have been doing! It is simply fantastic. All children in school are doing very well and having a lovely time but we are missing you all very very much. Please make sure you continue to be superstars at home for your parents. Its not easy to stay at home all of the time but make sure you are enjoying the sunshine in your garden if you can. Here is some of our home learning that we have received today!

Miss Newbon and Miss Davies

Wednesday 25th March 2020

Hi our beautiful ducks, today Miss Davies has been in school but has had a lovely day ringing lots of parents to make sure you are all okay, it was lovely to speak to you all and Miss Newbon has been busy at home doing lots of work so we haven't been with the children who are at school today! Instead we wanted to show you all of the lovely work some of your friends have been doing at home, if you have work and photographs to send us then we would love for you to send them to us, please send them to ducks@watersideprimary.org.uk It really has made us smile to see all of your work and beautiful faces today and has lifted our spirits! 

Keep enjoying the sunshine and we can't wait to hear from you all, lots of love Miss Davies and Miss Newbon x 

Tuesday 24th March

Another exciting day here at Waterside and another day of really missing our friends but we know that you are at home getting into your home learning packs. Its been really nice to receive emails full of photographs of children, cooking and making delicious foods and snacks with parents, keeping safe and hygienic too which is fantastic.

Take a look at our learning at school keeping fit today. We worked through the activities in our home learning packs just like you. Today we wrote all about our favourite stories after talking it through with our teachers. As well as this we were lucky enough to have a Bee Active session where we could enjoy the sunshine on our playground, keeping at the safe distance of 2 metres apart at all times. We had some time completing our daily exercises with Joe Wicks again- make sure you send us some pictures if you join in too!

Please remember to enjoy some sunshine in your gardens, stay happy and please please remember to keep in touch with us. It will be so nice to hear from you.

Miss and love you all lots

Miss Davies, Miss Newbon and your FS teachers xxxxx

Monday 23rd March 2020

Good morning our little darlings. Today is the first day of home learning but your teachers are here for you at all times. You can contact us at any time of the day via the website and we will reply as soon as possible. No question is too small. We miss you so much already but here at school the children who are with us are already having lots of fun, something that we encourage you to be doing at home every day. Fun is key and you will learn so much from your play.

Already this morning we have done our 20 minutes of exercise with 'Joe Wicks' on his YouTube channel...take a look...

We wanted to share with you all of our learning we have done today, we have completed todays activities from our learning packs, been outside with some children from Keystage 1 and then got to have some time doing PE with be active.

We miss you so much but we will be in touch every day and please email us to share what fabulous things you are doing, as well as asking any questions about home learning packs.

Parents, we are here, no matter what. Please give yourselves time to take a breather and don't worry about a thing. 

Miss Davies, Miss Newbon and the Ducks xxx

Corona Virus- COVID 19

Self isolation Home Learning:

Please go onto our parent area and click onto the Corona Virus- Covid 19 page and go onto home learning, find our duck page and there you will find activities for your child to do whilst you are self isolating. 

Lots of Love Miss Davies and Miss Newbon 

Week 24 . Week commencing 9.3.2020

This week we have been thinking about the farm and the animals During British Science Week we have been thinking about the science of living things and how animals and plants grow and change. We have matched Mothers to their young and thought about what food we get from the different animals found 'Down on the Farm'. 

In maths, we have been thinking about weight and measuring different objects. We are trying to use mature vocabulary and to predict and compare how to balance scales. 

We have been washing our hands at every opportunity to keep those awful germs at bay. Remember to use a tissue, catch it, bin it, kill it!

Ducks x

Week 23. Week commencing 2.3.2020

This week we have been thinking about different patterns. Patterns are everywhere! You can see patterns in numbers, patterns in shapes, patterns in the environment and in particular we have been thinking about animal patterns. 

In maths we thought of number patterns as we start to think about counting in 2's, 5's and 10's. We used objects to make our very own patterns and described the patterns ourselves as we start to think about those Early Learning Goals. We thought about what patterns we can see in animals around the world as we have started to think about different habitats. We have classified animals from around the world and thought about their homes and why exactly their environments are suited to them. Take a look at our learning about animals and their homes, along with some of the different patterns we have been exploring and creating all by ourselves.

Keeping up with the exercise and fitness interest, we have taken our dancing outdoors this week. We have had a brand new blue tooth player with super speakers so we can choose our very own music and make up our own dances.

Week 22 week commencing 24th February 2020

Welcome back after your week off! We have you had a lovely week a home with your family and loved ones. This week we came back to PANCAKE DAY!!

We had a fantastic time learning about ingredients and the method. We learned new vocabulary and we used scales to measure and weigh out the correct ingredients; milk, flour and eggs. Miss Davies brought in her hot crepe maker so that we could watch the batter mix change from a liquid to the correct texture. All areas of learning we linked as we discussed safety and our physical skills, our maths to measure and our super listening skills, along with reading out the instructions so that we were well prepared to make our very own pancakes! 

Alongside the fun and pancake making, we also learned the meaning behind 'Shrove Tuesday'. We learned how different people around the world celebrate this tradition and exactly why it is a religious celebration. On Wednesday we have then discussed lent and what it means and how people have different beliefs and that's okay.

We have also read the story 'Mr Wolf's pancakes' and spoke about how we can be a good friend and what is right and wrong. We also discussed the word 'moral' and what is means, the children are always asking amazing questions. We have also been ordering numbers to 20 and we have done so well seen as it is one of our maths end of year expectations! 

We have sent lots of Marvellous Me badges out this week and we are so proud how our little ducks are flourishing! Next week is world book day so please remember your pjs and story, we cannot wait to have an amazing day.

- See you next week :)  x

Week 21 week commencing 10th February 2020

This week was Internet Safety week. In our provision we looked into all different kinds of technology and the difference between items of technology that needed to be charged using electricity and those that needed to use batteries to work. This linked a lot of our areas of learning together which means we are getting older and more mature with our thoughts. 

We learned that when using the internet we need to be very safe and the best way to do this is to always make sure we have a grown up who knows what games, apps and programmes we are using. We should always report anything that we do not understand and we should NEVER speak to anyone online, NEVER give out our name/age/ address or school location because you do not know who you are talking to behind a computer screen. 

We used a range of technology throughout the week. We made dark dens and used torches to create shadows and talked about how shadows are made.

We also linked technology to maths and we sued Bee-bots! These are little robot bees that we programme directions into and they move all by themselves! We set ourselves a target where we wanted them to go to and we used left, right, forwards and backwards to manouver them correctly. It was great fun! 

Outdoors we are really starting to look at using our own resources and choices so that we are deciding what WE want to use and create. Its all about checking our own work and really showing our independent skills, what can we add to make it better and what would we do next time. This week we were told we are going to be learning about the farm so we as a team wanted to make a tractor! Take a look at the resources we used all by ourselves...

Have a super half term! Stay safe and enjoy your adventures

Ducks x

Week 20. Week commencing 27.1.2020

This week we have been thinking about being healthy. We have accessed a huge amount of information as we thought of non fiction texts and the use of the internet to find our new things. We know lots of things about different vitamins and minerals and the importance of having our 'FIVE A DAY!'. We are very excited to tell our grown ups that we really want to eat five a day fruit and vegetables and we are counting our fruit and vegetable intake in our school day! 

We have been thinking about foods that we should be eating in moderation or 'not every day' like chocolate and crisps, chips ad burgers...we know that this should be just a treat because of the sugars and fats that are not too good for our teeth and our bodies. 

We have been excited to sort healthy and not so healthy foods, We have been playing in the fruit and vegetable role play area. We have been using scales to weigh items and using money vocabulary to purchase the items in the shop.

We have learned new vocabulary such as vitamins and minerals and learning what different vitamins are good for. We know that Vitamin A is good for our eyesight and we can find this in orange fruits and vegetables and dark green ones too! Vitamin C is needed for our immune system, to keep away those nasty coughs and colds, it helps us to get better and to heal our cuts and grazes. We have loved learning this!

Take a look at our fabulous learning this week and catch up with us next week where we stick to the health interest and start to think about not just food but exercise... why exercise is so good and important to us and our heart, body and lifestyle. 

Week 18- week commencing 20th January

This week we have been learning about Chinese New Year. We have absolutely loved learning about a different cultural celebration and have had so many amazing tasks and activities to complete and to enjoy. Our classroom was filled full of fantastic provision for us to access independently...take a look....

Just fabulous! In maths we have been thinking about forming Chinese symbols which match the numerals 1-10. We had to be super careful because they are formed very delicate and precise and required super fine motor control. 

Some of us painted the number and added glitter and artistic medias!

We learned of the history about Chinese New Year and how the years were named after different animals. Once we had learned the order of the animals and listened very carefully, we could sequence the story and the 12 animals independently.

We did dragon dancing outside using different props and objects. We loved listening to the different styles of music and moving in different ways...

We have had such a fabulous time this week, we even got to taste some prawn crackers and fried rice...using CHOPSTICKS! although this was so much fun it was quite tricky! We thought about the similarities and differences from the Chinese culture to our very own and how interesting it is to learn about the different ways people live, the food differences and the different celebrations. 

Week 17- Week Commencing 13th January 2020

This week we have continued to learn all about winter and we are still awaiting snow and even some ice to explore in! We have been looking at the story 'The Snowman's party' and have been busy writing invitations and making our very own 3D snowmen.

Because it is January and it is cold we decided to get our hearts rates up and warm our bodies up by completing an assault course and exploring in the different ways that we can move such as going over, under and through. It quickly got us warmed up and we started to forget how cold it was outside.

We have also been showing some fabulous maths skills, we have been adding two sets of objects together and writing the addition sum underneath, we have got very good at it and have such good understanding of the symbols and what they mean. 

We have also been independently showing our maths skills by measuring, ordering and counting.

We have also become really good at our double numbers to five, so please ask your child what is the double of 1 to 5 and what does it mean, below is the kind of learning we have been doing on doubles.

Next week we are going to have a special learning week all about 'Chinese New Year', we are going to learn all about the story and its origins and why 2020 is the year of the rat. 

-Duckling Class x

Week 16. Week commencing 6 th January

Welcome back! We hope you had the most amazing two week break with loved ones, family and friends. This week has been filled with love and laughter as we enjoyed hearing all about your adventures, stories and experiences over the holidays. It has been lovely to see everyone back happy, safe and healthy. This week for our writing we wrote our holiday news. We thought about adding in those important phase 2 and phase 3 memory words, as well as adding in finger spaces to make our writing clear. 

We were quite disappointed this week that we had had no snow at all! As we begin to learn about the change in season, its not looking at all like Winter, although some days have certainly felt like it! We have been thinking about the snow though and predicting whether we will see any this Winter. We have been drawing our very own penguins and it was excellent to see some very creative homework....thank you for your support with this... 

In maths this week we have been thinking about filling our very own personal targeted gaps. This has included lots of estimating, counting, adding and even subtracting. We have been very busy, especially as we start to use the high level skill of finding and solving our own number maths problems using all winter objects. 

Have a look at some of our independent 'Winter' art work...

and our fabulous outdoor learning minus the snow)

Have a fabulous week and come back next week to see all things Winter!

Ducks x

Week 15, Week commencing 16th December 

This week we have been continuing our nativity performance practises and the children are doing a great job at learning their lines and remembering all of our songs and actions. We cannot wait for you all to come and see us perform. Alongside that we have focused this weeks learning based around the Nativity story, the children were fabulous at remembering the story and sequencing pictures into the correct order.

We have also made holiday cards we could either make a snowman or a Santa using different media such as paper, paint and glitter.

We wrote beautifully inside and are really developing our pre-cursive handwriting and we really need to continue to practise over the holidays.

Week 14 Week commencing 9th December 

This week we have had a real WOW week all about the place where we live Stoke-on-Trent. We have been learning all about what we are famous for including 'Pottery'. We are lucky enough tot live just around the corner from two fantastic bottle kilns, which we learned all about. We know that we don't use bottle kilns to make pottery any more and that it is super different but some time ago workers would use the bottle kilns to fire the pottery making it suitable to use and used the canals to transport the pottery safely to the factories and shops. It has been a real learning week about the area that we live in. Have a look at our fabulous pictures from the wonderful experience...

We also got to taste the Stoke-on-Trent delicacy of 'oatcakes'. We know that it would be super tricky to find oatcakes in any other part of the country and we all got to have a taste. We discussed texture and taste and used our senses to describe the experience. 

In maths we have been using positional language and describing our own relative position. We are working really hard to use the mature vocabulary in our learning. 

Outdoors this week we have been using our gross motor skills to move over, under and through carefully, skilfully and correctly to develop our movement and negotiating space. Some of us were like spiderman! Our teachers were amazed!

We are really in good flow with our Christmas Nativity 'Whoops-a-daisy angel'. Tickets will be on sale at £2 each and we will be running two performances on Tuesday 17th December, we cannot wait for you to see our magical performance. 

See you next week, Ducks 

Week commencing 25.11.19 Week 12

This week we have continued to learn about the changes in Autumn but this time we have been learning all about hibernation. We know that some animals cannot survive the cold of winter and so they collect their food and make a shelter to keep warm during the Winter and go into a deep sleep called hibernation. We thought also about the animals that do not sleep but they go collecting lots and lots of food to last throughout the cold weather where there food will be a very short supply. 

We thought of ways to help by building hibernation 'homes' for animals such as hedgehogs and bears. 

In maths we have been thinking about our numbers and patterns programme and we are becoming very fast and pacey when reciting one more and one less of a number. Some of us have looked at doubling number which we now know means to add the same amount of objects two times! We know that we need to be really speedy and to just know the answers before we start to develop our skills by thinking about larger numbers! We love maths in Duck Class. 

In other areas of learning we have been thinking about independence. In our creative areas of our provision we have been trying to have our own ideas which is a super star characteristic of learning in the EYFS. We don't need to copy or have a grown up, we can have our own ideas and follow the stimulus given to us, this week it has been Autumn art, using different materials and thinking of the best tools to use. 

As always phonics is so important in Duck class. Again we are working on pace and being super quick at reading VC words and our memory words. We can all mostly read CVC words by blending to read and are starting to use our beautiful cursive handwriting when segmenting to spell. 

* Parents, as always, it is so important to read at least 4 times per week. It helps us so much with our reading at school and is vital in all areas of our learning...thank you for your continued support*

Take a look at our superb display this week...keep an eye out each week for the updated displays. It showcases the beautiful learning we do all week. Next week Miss Newbon and Miss Davies have told us we are having a WOW week all about our home town...start to think about what we are famous for. There is going to be tasting, walking and learning all about the things our home town and local environment have got to teach us! Welcome to Stoke-on-Trent!!
 

Working walls

Our working walls are an excellent support for us here in FS2. They are updated with super important information that we have been learning about throughout the week so that they are there for us to use in our independent learning. We know that prompts, vocabulary and examples of 'what a good one looks like' are there for us to see and to use and we are super trained to use the prompts around the room independently. Have a look this week... Please use them at home to help and support us when showing off what fabulous learning we are doing in school. We love to come home and show our families just how super we are!  

Week Commencing 18th November 2019 

This week we have continued to focus on Autumn and its changes from Summer, it has been a really cold week and luckily we have seen even more seasonal changes. Parts of our water tray had frozen over so we got to experiment and explore the ice and discuss the process of what had happened.

To warm ourselves up after our time outside we have been dancing to different songs and showing how rhythmic we are, we can move in a variety of ways and we adore singing. Have a look at some of our indoor learning this week.

In maths we have been using our fabulous post office role play to talk about the vocabulary of money. We practised sorting coins and using the correct names. We thought of the different shapes, colours and sizes of coins. 

We have also been planting outside ready for spring, we have been planting potatoes and talking about what plants need to grow and how the potatoes will last through the winter. 

We have also begun the preparations for our Nativity and the children are doing so well, next week we are going to send out letters to inform you what costume your child needs and about dates and times for the performance.

Take a look at our working walls.

Until next week, Duck Class x

Week 10. Week commencing 11th November.

This week we have been thinking about change. Changes in our season. Its beginning to look a lot like Autumn now. We have been thinking about our senses. What can we see? what can we hear? and what does it all feel like? We went on a little Autumn walk and collected leaves. We looked at the different shapes, sizes and the change in the beautiful colours. We have used the leaves to create leaf rubbings, to observe the different features of a leaf and to use the correct colours. 

In maths we have been looking at conkers. We have been matching numerals to quantity, using vocabulary of addition and adding two groups together, all of the time we are working on our counting skills. Take a look at some of our fabulous learning.                                     

Also this week we have learned about Remembrance Day. We thought about the solider, nurses and animals who served in a war. We had a two minute silence to say thank you and to show respect to them. 

We had the opportunity to buy and to wear poppies as well as making our very own. 

Have a super week! 

Ducks x

Week 9 week commencing 4th November

Well we hope you had the most fantastic October half term! We have really enjoyed listening to all of your fabulous half term news about Halloween and fireworks! Its brilliant to hear that you have listened so well to your safety learning and have been telling us how you stayed with your grown ups whilst out trick or treating! You can have the best time whilst remaining safe always! Well done.

THANKYOU!!! for your excellent contribution with your 3D creative homework. They are beautifully on display for ll to see and to be proud of!

So this week in Duck Class we have been busy thinking about Bonfire night We have talked about safety around bonfires and fireworks (as always, safety first in Duck Class!) we have been making our very own firework pictures, using tools and techniques to create an exploding effect on paper. We have used luminous paints and talked about the differences in the colours. In writing we have been using our phonics knowledge to write firework sounds like pop! bang! fizz! We are getting super clever now at decoding and segmenting to spell simple words. 

To make sure we have a firm pencil grip we also complete fine motor activities each week...this week it was our turn to make fireworks and sparklers by threading little tiny beads onto pipe cleaners. Some of us even made repeated patterns on them, adding maths and really crossing over our learning! 

Next week we start to think about Autumn. We have started noticing small changes in our environment, and with the weather and the temperature. Our teachers keep reminding us that we might want to bring warmer coats, gloves, scarves and hats in to school to ensure we are prepared for the changes that are happening in front of our eyes!

Catch up with us next week

Ducks x

Week commencing 21st October. Week 8.

Well there it goes, our first half term in Duck Class. This week we were super excited about halloween and our halloween disco! When we arrived at school on Monday morning our teachers had set up our classrooms and they looked a bit spooky! We had a pumpkin which this week we have been exploring, thinking about the seeds, the smell and the textures! We used hammers and spoons and scoops to really dig in. We have designed our own pumpkin faces, some of us using the pre-writing shapes and some of us writing spooky words!

 Sharing halloween spooky objects in maths!

We got to explore and to make our very own potions, putting in all kinds of disgusting things like eyeballs and rats tails! catapillers and other bugs! We thought of our very own potions as we boiled them up in our cauldrons!

We have continued our treasure box stories which will be placed into our brand new reading area after half term as we begin to think about  Autumn, and the fabulous different celebrations that are approaching for the different religions and cultures of the world.We will be thinking about the changes in seasons, weather and environments.  

For over half term it would be lovely if you could make us a 3D junk modelling rocket for our new display after half term and if you go anywhere nice whether it be for halloween or for bonfire night, take lots of pictures and bring them in to show us or even put on our wall.

Have a super half term holiday and remember to stay safe always, especially if you attend any bonfire and halloween events. Stay with a grown up at all times and have a super happy week. See you all on the 4th November!

Ducks xxx 

Week Commencing 14th October 2019 

This week we have had a road safety week where we have been learning all about the green cross code, we have absolutely loved learning about how to cross the road safely and if you ask us we can tell you exactly what to do. 

We went for a walk with Miss Davies, Miss Newbon and Miss James to the pelican crossing to use the traffic lights and to use our green cross code rules. We were very safe and sensible and used the traffic lights sensibly and really enjoyed looking at our local area.

We cannot believe that next week we have done our first half term, next week we are going to be looking at Halloween and doing lots of exciting maths work.

Lots of Love Duck Class x

Week 6!

What a busy week! This week we have been really getting into our learning, to show off to our grown ups exactly what we know. We have been trying to extend our vocabulary as we discuss castles and princesses, following on from our story 'Princesses love to share. We have been thinking about our values at Waterside and making sure we show them all of the time. We learned a new word 'determination' which we now know means to just keep trying even when things are very difficult. We have been thinking about our well being and trying not to get worried if some thing is tricky. We know to just keep trying and to ask for help if we need it...its ok to not always know something!

Meanwhile this week we have been thinking about estimation and having a good guess! We used technology to help us and we had a look a groups of objects to see how many we thought we had...then we checked how good we were by counting the correct amount. 

We have been also exploring colour this week! We used Miss Davies's super cool colour changing glasses to check out what different colours we could see through different lenses! 

We thought we looked super cool! And we loved learning about changes in colours!

As always we have been doing lots of reading with all of our grown ups. We have been reading initial sounds, playing CVC bingo and reading our home readers to show just how super we are trying at home with our loved ones. We need to remember that just 4 times a week means we can be a rainbow reader and get a certificate! Lots of green dojos are up fro grabs for superstar readers. 

Catch up with us next week.. we are going to be having a bit of a WOW week, its busy busy busy and we cant wait to tell you all about it!

Ducks x

Week 5-Week Commencing 30th September 2019 

This week we have been following on from our story of ;Cowboys can be kind' with our new story 'Princesses who love to share!', our learning is still continuing to focus on friendship and our other school values as these really underpin our curriculum. The children are fabulous at sharing and are excellent at discussing why it is important to share and how it makes others feel when somebody doesn't share with them. We then discussed friendships within our classes and who we play with and how we play with them and how that makes us and them feel. It is fabulous to see how amazing we are at talking and sharing our ideas with others. 

This week we have been outside in the environment decoding words, we are really developing our segmenting and blending skills and becoming much more fluent readers. Please remember to keep practising your child's chosen High Frequency Word as this will really benefit their reading skills.

We have also been working so hard on our precursive handwriting, we are finding it tricky but we keep on trying and practising which is making such a difference! :) 

Despite the weather we got to go and see what the builders are doing on the builders site and some of us even got to sit on a digger! We were so excited and had so much to talk about when we came back into class.

Next Week we are going to continue to do more amazing learning! We cannot wait to show you next week. x

Week 4- Week Commencing 23rd September 2019 

This week we have continued our work on the story 'Cowboys can be kind', we show so much compassion for each other everyday and really understand how we can be good friends. The children have discussed what ways they can solve a problem with their friends independently without the need of an adult and it has been evident in the classroom, we have really been showing our values of Respect and Friendship. Well Done Ducks! 

We have also been working on our number formation this week with great success, firstly we used vehicles to practise moving over the numbers and saying our number rhymes, here are our number rhymes if ever you need to use them:

The children then either continued to practise their formation in a glitter tray or in squared paper as they will as they move up the school, the children did a fantastic job.

This week we have also been developing our reading skills by using our phonics knowledge to read the single sounds in the word and then blend them together, to show  our understanding we then had to find the corresponding pictures to match the word. It is evident that our reading is getting much better due to all of the home reading that we are doing.

Remember to keep working on your homework, practising your letter formation and also your phonics groups high frequency words to be tested on Friday. 

Until next week Duck Class x

Week 3. Week commencing 16.9.2019

This week we have been thinking about the story called 'Cowboys can be kind'. We thought about this story during transition and because it is so familiar to us and we loved it, we have been thinking about where and how cowboys live. We made a cowboy ranch and thought about the transport that cowboys used. We made wagons too using a brand new construction called click and join, take a look at the pictures below, we really enjoyed it and concentrated hard to add detail.

We have been reading lots, reading graphemes in the environment and reading our reading books with our teachers. We now have four special books to read for the half term...

Yellow Ducks- Owl Babies             Brown Ducks- The dinosaur that pooped a planet

The Highway Rat                                                      The smelly monster

Going on a Bear Hunt                                              Aliens Love Underpants

The Big Red Bath

We are learning the stories through and through, thinking about characters/plot, feelings and new vocabulary. We are really enjoying this. We read anywhere and everywhere and we are LOVING IT! We are learning how to answer questions such as where/who/what/how/why...a really high level skill!

In Maths this week its all been about finding one more and NUMBER FORMATION. We have been thinking about our number rhymes. For shape space and measure we thought bout height and ordering our friends from short to tall.

Come back next week to find out what we know about our new stories and all of the fabulous learning we do....the weeks are already flying by!

Thanks to all of the parents that 'dropped in' to see our teachers to find out how we have settled in!

xxx

Week two week commencing 9.9.19

Week two almost complete and another fabulous week of embedding our fabulous school values. We have been really getting to know our amazing learning environment.

Here's what we've been up to this week...

" Ive been playing in the Doctors area...ive been making people better by giving them a shot in their arm and checked their ears and eyes. I dressed up as a doctor and my friend pretended to be sick on the bed" LB

"I have played outside. It was so sunny and me and my friends played counting and we found the right numbers to match!" EH

"I looked for a rainbow because it was sunny and rainy!" AD

"Ive been playing inside with the building. I made patterns and tall nice things. I made a fire engine because fireman help us lik eour teachers do. It had a ladder" BMH"

"I painted my face with Mrs Gardiner, I had to look in a mirror to see what I looked like, we look very different!" SB

We truly have had such a brilliant week. We have had lots of circle time discussions to think about our favourite things, our worries about moving into a new class and our favourite foods so that we know we are all happy at lunch time. We have been getting lots of red dojos and weve also now got a brand new reading book to take home! We know that we have to read at least 4 times at home so that we get a certificate at half term!

See you next week!

Week one of a brand new year!

This week we have been so excited to see our teachers, some of us back with Miss Davies, Mrs Gardiner and Mrs Foster and some of us with Miss Newbon and Miss James. It has been super to catch up with our friends and teachers and also we have also welcomed 15 new children who we welcome from lots of different places!

We have been talking about some of the fabulous adventures that we have been on over the Summer but now we are back and its been go go go!

Our teachers have been busy baselining and finding out exactly what we can do, whilst we have the best time learning in our new provision. Our classrooms are all set up beautifully with lots of challenge and exciting tasks to do!

We have learned indoors and outdoors and we have been exploring each area, refreshing our minds with our school values. We are embedding routines already and really getting to know our school vales.

Take a look at our fabulous learning this week...

Week commencing 24.6.19 week 35

Week 35! Where did that time go? This week is all about GRADUATION! The time that every parent or carer looks forward to! Teachers start to get all emotional thinking about how far we have come and they dress us up in funny outfits to take our pictures. They want to know all about our aspirations, and how many of us want to follow in their footsteps and become a teacher one day, or a shop keeper, doctor or a racing car driver! We are starting to think about these things as we are growing up quickly and getting ready for our next step on our journeys through school! We are starting to learn songs and poems and its all very hectic but so exciting! We will keep you posted on dates, times and arrangements- its set to be a smasher!!!

One thing for sure- we aren't letting out any secrets or sneaky peak photographs...you'll have to wait and see! Get your tissues ready!

Ducks x

Week commencing 17.6.19 week 35

This week we had some super exciting news shared at Waterside Primary School. We are OUTSTANDING! That's right, OFSTED gave us an all round grading of Outstanding in ALL areas, including Early Years. Our hard work paid off as we really showcased just how truly remarkable we are, in our learning, behaviour and values. We work so hard with our teachers to really do our best and we are so pleased that OFSTED saw exactly what we do day in day out as outstanding, because we think so too! Have a look at the report, its amazing!   

In other news this week, its all go go go! in Reception, as final data is submitted to the local authority next Monday. Its really time to tie off those loose ends to really secure judgements and to make sure we have given it our best shot this year, ready for key stage one. Our teachers have told us it wont stop there though! Once data is in, we still thrive to succeed and bridge the gap from Early Years to Year One, really preparing those higher skills! Look at our learning this week...

Week commencing 11.6.19

What a week! Over the past couple of weeks we have been learning about the jungle and other natural habitats. We have been comparing different animals and thinking about wildlife that we may have not all known. We have been thinking about the jungle habitat and the vegetation and comparing it to that of a zoo. We took a trip to the Peak Wildlife Park near Buxton to learn about the animals that live there. Our behaviour was impeccable and we listened well. We really enjoyed looking for familiar places on the way there on the coach! Take a look at our fabulous day...

We had the best day! We are really starting to discuss our own ideas now and this day created lots of talking points and circle time conversations, about our favourite part of the day, what could have made it better and we learned all about new animals that we did not know before! We learned that penguins don't only live in freezing cold countries but they live in very hot countries as well, like Peru!

Another exciting week, its all closing gaps and really pushing our learning to be independent and confident. We really need to show our skills off now ready for final data!

Loves

Ducks x

Week commencing 3.6.19

We hope you all had the most amazing half term and a happy Eid to you all who have celebrated! We have enjoyed listening to your stories of fabulous food, super parties and gorgeous clothing. Time with family and friends is so precious.

Meanwhile this week we have been out to Emma Bridgewater to watch a theatre show about a young girl who had moved house and wanted to love her new bedroom. Our behaviour was impeccable. Have a look at some of the pictures.

m      

This week just flew by, catch up next week to find out what weve been getting up to.

Ducks x

Week commencing 20.5.19 week 32.

This week we linked our learning in maths about position and distance, with our PE lesson. We started our sports day practises :)

 We are really trying to now include those higher level characteristics of learning, by making links and critically thinking about our learning. We are striving to make our work better always and really think and work together as a team to constantly better ourselves!

Week commencing 13.5.19 week 31

This week we welcomed some extremely important and special visitors to our school. We were able to showcase just how amazing we are day in and day out. Our behaviour remained impeccable and our learning was just fabulous as we continued to think about recycling and the issues on our local and wider environment. We even completed some fabulous creative homework with our parents at home, using recyclable items from our homes. We have been sorting our rubbish and thinking about how we can save the planet.

Take a look at some of our learning from this week. In maths, we have been learning how to share, using objects, between 2 people and more!         

We have learned that to share in half is the opposite of to double! We've also been thinking about the numbers that cannot be shared equally using the vocabulary correctly.

Week Commencing- 5.5.19    

Well it's been a busy four day week! Our beautiful children have worked extremely hard as they taken on the Summer term. 

This week there has been a real big push on the children working on their own personal learning targets, as they ensure gaps in their learning and acted upon and moved forward. The children have been extremely proud of themselves for moving their own learning on and have also taken on some new learning this week, around 'looking after our world'. The children have begun to think about different materials and their properties, identifying some of the materials which can be recycled. 

We are lucky to announce to our parents, that we have been chosen by the local authority to be moderated on the assessments of the children in both Duck classes. The children and class teachers are extremely excited about this, as we can't want to show the wonderful progress our children have made so far this year. Although, they still have a term of learning, the little Ducks have made 'Outstanding' progress in two terms and with what we hope to be the best progress yet, headed at the end of the Year.

The classrooms have continued to be updated this week and activities of learning continue to raise the children's knowledge and understanding of local and wider issues. There has been a discussion about Ramadan this week, as some of our lovely children and their families are observing this time, as part of their culture. In order to teach children who do not belong to the Muslim faith about such a time, the children who observe this time, have been sharing their experiences with their peers. This has also helped the children to develop their public speaking skills. Well done to all on the way in which the children have responded to their peer in peer teaching. 

This weekend the children have been asked to gather together junk materials, so that this week they can begin to create some wonderful creations from their gathered materials. Please ask your children to gather their materials together and if they want to start making a model, that would be great too! All work will go up on display!

As the sun is on it's way, please can the children bring in hats and suncream, which is labelled. Children will also be able to bring their own water bottles, which they can continue to fill up throughout the day. 

Here's to some wonderful learning in the coming week. 

Thursday am, parents are also welcomed in, to come and join in with our wonderful math learning. Come and join us and have some fun with your child. They do love, you sharing in with their learning in the classroom.

Remember, if you have any questions or concerns then please pop to the door and see us. 

Many thanks

The Lovely Duck Children and Staff x

Week commencing 29.4.18

Week 29

Welcome back! We hope you all had a fabulous two weeks at home, enjoying time with family, friends and loved ones!

This week we have thoroughly enjoyed talking to our friends and teachers about our fantastic holiday news. We all wrote about this too, in our very first independent cold write! This week our teachers have been looking at our independence in both our learning and our play as we approach Key Stage one. We know now that whatever we do or say is valuable to our independence and learning and so we make sure that before we ask a teacher for help, we try to work it out all by ourselves, following prompts and asking friends to solve problems with us. We have been super at learning and playing with peers that we might not always find ourselves interacting with, building up those important prime areas, our communication and language skills, as well as those skills found in the specific area of learning.

We have been thinking about the characteristics of effective learning, how we can solve problems, think critically of ourselves and others and really start to be persistent when we find things tough. Its been a while since we started in FS2 and we are so good now at using higher level skills to really be our BEST!

This week we have been thinking about our pets at home and if we do not have a pet, which pet would we really like. We have been using our role play 'Pet Shop' to embed our learning of money, and using our imaginative skills to act out a shop scenario, taking on a role of someone else and thinking about how 'real life' works in different areas of our local environment. We have been thinking of the right way to look after pets and how we can help them to be happy and healthy and safe. We have looked at pictures of our friends pets at home and discussed our favourite pets in a maths challenge, using voting and British values to find more out about ourselves!

Another smashing week in Duck Class and we hope you enjoyed your little insight. Every day is a learning day.

Take a look at some of our photographs

Ducks x

Week commencing 8th April 2019

week 28

Week 28! We cannot believe how quickly this school year is going! This week we have continued to have lots of fun thinking about what we would like in our environments as we come back into the Summer term! We have come up with some wild and wonderful ideas and we have shown a particular interest in our home lives and we just love telling our teachers all about our parents and their jobs and our pets! This may be a sneaky clue on what is coming up next in Duck Class!

As we get ready for a fabulous two weeks with our loved ones, we have been reminded about and had our very own ideas on how to stay safe when we are out and about. We know how to cross a road, safely with our grown ups and have had a discussion about strangers and people who we trust.

Also this week we have been busy working away whilst our teachers observe and facilitate our learning to challenge us very personally for our very own next steps. We have completed phonics assessments to show just how much we have learned during this half term! Our teachers say that our progress is amazing! We have been lucky enough to have some fabulous weather so we have been really enjoying taking our learning outdoors too!

Take a look at some of our learning this week...

weighing and comparing weights of different objects-trying to make the scales balance!

Sharing the iPads to play on age appropriate games, talking about the safety of online.

Reading and exploring the Spring egg hunt tuff spot, finding and reading  clues to find and count the eggs., We could then add/subtract and compare with our friends who had found the most eggs!

Another jam packed week! It really is non stop down in our Foundation Stage! We just love it.

All that's left to say is enjoy your Easter/Spring break but as always-safety first.

Remember to keep us updated with those fabulous adventures that you may go on. Email or take lots of photos to bring in. Remember everything that you do or see over the next two weeks is valuable to your learning experience. Read, write and remember all about it because we cant wait.

p.s in homework books there are high frequency words for you to practise reading and writing but you can read/write absolutely anything that you wish to!

Stay safe xx

Week Commencing: 1st April  

With Easter just around the corner and Spring in the air, our FS2 children have begun to look at the changes that take place during this season. The children have been using a safe search engine (Google for Kids) in order to learn about Spring and about the new animals that are born on the farm at this time. The children have then drawn pictures and written about such changes, whereby they are starting to show more of their own ideas as they develop their skills of writing. We have had some wonderful writing from the children, which we are very proud of. 

The classroom learning environment has also been changed to reflect the seasonal change and the children have loved exploring these areas of the classroom. The hairdressers continues to be a hit, but will shortly be changed in consultation with the children. As you will see, we like to ensure the learning environment is changed to reflect the needs of the learners and to reflect their ideas, interests and next steps. 

Have a look at some of our wonderful learning this week

Maths in the outdoor area...

Exploring our senses in the citrus tuff spot...

   Our ideas of Spring

In this coming week and the next, the children will be being looked at closely by their teachers, so that the teachers can secure their judgments on the progress the children have made this term. Teachers will be sending out wow moment slips, so as we can capture from yourselves the wonderful learning children are showing at home with yourselves. This information will help us to continue to build the jigsaw of evidence that will be used to assess your child at the end of the year. Any information, is greatly appreciated. It has been lovely to see the photograph evidence being emailed to myself and Miss Newbon. We love seeing our busy learners at home having fun with what they have learnt. Please can we ask other parents, to do the same. We love nothing more, than having these shared with us!

Week Commencing: 25th March 2019

Wow, the weeks are flying by for the teachers and children in the Ducks Class. The children are certainly learning so much and applying their own ideas in lots of different ways both inside and out. 

We are starting to see individual talents coming through and children are really showing how they can offer help and support to one another.

The children have been busy helping to re-organise the outdoor learning space and have shown that they can help to lead their own learning, by giving the adults ideas on what they would like to see in the outdoors. I am sure parents will agree, that the ever changing environment, meets the needs of our learners in FS1 and FS2.  If you as parents have any ideas or bits and bobs at home that the children could explore, then please see Mrs Fraser or Mrs Gardner, who will be happy to listen and take resources off your hands. 

Mrs Fraser has also been out over the last few weeks working with Eastwood Nursery, so if you have seen her across there, this is great. She is working with the Nursery to develop the Maths learning for children in their setting and to help support staff in their own subject knowledge and development. As part of this, the staff have been out to observe Mrs Fraser and members of the team. The feedback from Nursery staff has been incredible and they have been wowed by just how amazing our children in the EYFS area. So well done to all children involved. We know you are our super stars, but it is always lovely for our adults to see you shine, as much as we do. Well done all!

It is getting close to the Easter holidays, so parents please ensure your children are getting enough sleep in order to keep them going till the end of term and it will continue to be busy up until then, with lots of new and exciting learning.

We have had a few children with sore throats this week and feeling a little under the weather, therefore please ensure your child is washing their hands and using tissues which they bin, if they have runny noses. You may also wish to send into school their own water bottle too! The children have regular access to water, but we are more than happy for the children to have their own bottles, if this helps them to stay hydrated and well.  These tips, will help us to prevent children becoming unwell and help to keep children in school and busy learning. 

Happy, healthy children, making happy learning continue. 

Have a lovely week.

From the Ducks Class and Team x

Week Beginning: 18th March 2019

Another busy week in FS2, with the children working incredibly hard in all areas. The role play area this half term has been a huge hit, with all children, especially the boys from Spotted Ducks. The children are making outstanding progress in their speaking skills and helping one another to develop their imagination. We are so proud of them and how hard they are working. We have seen excellent development of ideas in the children's writing, model making, drawing of pictures using ICT and much, much more. Take a look at the learning the children have developed this week. 

Over the next few weeks we will be looking at the children's fluency in their reading, therefore as teachers we would like parents to ensure that they are working with their children at home on their memory words, which can be found in their homework books. The more fluent the children become with these the greater the child will be able to understand what they have read. It will also help to boost their confidence. 

We have had some lovely creative homework come into school, so thank you to those parents and children who are putting into action the learning they have gained at school. 

Week commencing 11.3.18

This wee we celebrated British Science Week. We looked at the story 'We're going on a Bear Hunt', thinking about journeys and the different textures and different environments that we may see or feel. We invited our parents in to share our picnic, where we ate, listened to stories and shared experiences with our friends and their parents. 

​​​​​​   

We had such a fun day! We raised money for Comic Relief and learned about people from all over the world who may not be as fortunate as ourselves. 

 This week alongside all of the memory making with loved ones we continued to think about closing gaps and reaching forward to really start getting those Early Learning goal objectives ticked off. As we quickly approach Summer term 2 and then Key Stage One we are really starting to focus on personal targets and next steps!

Catch up with us next week

Ducks x

Week 4.03.19

Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow! What an amazingly fun filled week of learning this week. The time has just flown by. We started the week thinking about what makes us feel good and worked on our physical development skills. We then had LEA inspections, which saw our visitor observing teaching and learning in school, whilst eating the pancakes we had made, to help us celebrate Pancake Day. 

Have a look at us decorating pancakes. We chose two of our favourite fillings...

We then had another day of fun filled learning on Wednesday, which then led us into Thursday, where we dressed up as witches, snakes, spiders etc from the book Meg and Mog. This helped us to celebrate World Book Day. During this time, we made potions, wrote potions, recalled the stories in our writing and created a class display of our lovely work.

We also shared lots of stories from the collection and made wands to help turn our teachers into frogs! By Friday we were all exhausted and looked forward to the weekend. Mrs Fraser told us we need to get plenty of rest, as we have an equally busy and crazy week of learning next week. So for now, it's over and out. 

The children of Ducks Class. 

Spring Term 2- Week 25.2.19

What a busy week of learning!  We are all settled back into our learning after a restful week at home and really pleased with the classroom changes to help us move our learning on. We have a new post office role play and a new Spring reading garden too! 

We learnt about feelings this week and the impact of actions on others. This was all linked to the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. In order to solve the problem of baby bears chair being broke, we all decided to design and make him a new chair. 

This meant that we got to choose our own resources and worked in lots of different ways to his chair. We painted chair designs and then made them using junk modelling equipment, lego and straws. We all had lots of fun.

The story also helped us with learning about the vocabulary linked to height, weight and capacity. We had fun ordering chairs, eachother (pretending to be bears) and bowls and came up with lots of maths vocabulary to describe them.

This half term the teachers have said that we will be really pushing forward with our phonics, securing what we have already learnt and applying further so that we become confident readers.  We must make sure that we are all reading at home, so that we get better each time we read.

Thank you to our parents who came to join the parent workshop with Mrs Fraser and learnt how to help us with our handwriting. 

Remember each week there is a different focus, so if you want to help me more at home, come and see Mrs Fraser in her workshop (classroom of wonder) this week. 

Here's to another busy week of learning. 

Reception x

Welcome Back Reception,  (Week Beginning 25th February 2019)

The teachers do hope you have had a fun filled week off and that you have had some wonderful time with your families. 

There is a wonderful 7 weeks ahead of you, with lots of exciting new learning experiences, whilst also consolidating your previous skills. 

Your end of term assessments are really showing how hard you and your teaching are working together in order to prepare you for Year 1.

I know as teachers, we can not wait to see what you can show and demonstrate in your learning this coming 7 week.s 

We will be focusing now on those higher level skills within the 'Early Learning Goals' which sees you all using what you know about numbers, letters, words, colours. shape, technology, materials etc in order to develop and create your own ideas. I am sure our artists, musicians, sporty ones etc will love the opportunity to show off and explore new ideas.  

Keep up the hard work with your reading and spelling at home as this will really help too! Remember 5 minutes a day, will keep us grumpy teachers away. Lol! 

For parents, please come and attend the weekly 'Parent Workshops Sessions'. This week there will be a focus on handwriting and how to support your child when writing at home. We always enjoy seeing parents in the classroom, where you will also get to see how our classrooms have changed ready for our new term. We have a 'Post Office' and a new 'Spring Garden' reading area, which I a sure the children will enjoy exploring. 

Have a happy Spring Term 2 boys and girls and remember....

Be the Best You Can Be!

Here's to a busy week ahead

FS2 Teaching Staff

Week commencing 11th February. Week 21

Another fabulous jam packed week in Reception! This week our teachers have been gathering together our final bits of assessment to see how much progress we have made this half term. They have said our amazing we all are again! 

Love is in the air this week! 

We have been thinking and giving our thoughts on what new provision we would like in our room for when we come back after the holidays! We have learned about Valentines day and the meaning behind the special day. We have thought about who we love and why and made beautiful valentines day cards. Have a look at our beautiful creations... 

We are starting to use our own ideas now and really thinking bout the processes of what we want to do and how we want to do it. We are learning to make decisions and to be independent in our learning. 

Have a good half term and please be safe, stay with parents and don't talk to strangers. Have lots of fun and we look forward to hearing about your wonderful adventures when we arrive back to school on the 25th February. 

Remember to read at least four times to be in with a chance of a dip in the prize box!

Love, Ducks xxx

Week commencing 4.2.19

February already! Who can believe that the Spring term is almost half way through! We've had an excellent week as it has appeared to warm up slightly (well no snow at least!) this week we have been Chinese New Year crazy! It would be impossible to share everything we have learned but we were so lucky to have a parent guest speaker to teach us all about how Chinese New Year was celebrated! She bought some traditional clothing in to show us and showed us photographs and bought some of the lucky red money envelopes that adults give to children to celebrate. We discussed some of the similarities and differences of the Chinese culture compared to the cultures and beliefs of ourselves. Its so interesting and amazing to learn about others. Chinese New Year looks like lots of fun with firecrackers and dragon dancing. We had our very own go at dancing like a dragon and moving in different ways!

We also had a fabulous time trying out some traditional Chinese foods. We tasted noodles and prawn crackers! We had the best time.

We learned about the Chinese New Year story. We know that 12 animals had a race in order to measure time and to name years after the animals in the order that they came in the race. This tested and helped our maths sequencing skills and we discussed time. It is called the zodiac! Its a bit different than the calendar we use!

Have a look at all of our learning about Chinese New Year. Its pretty amazing and it really has been a WOW week!

    Our Chinese new Year repeated pattern dragons!

As you can see we have all been very busy! Reading, writing, counting, sorting, playing, dancing, music making, eating and just having a best time with all things...Chinese!

Have a super week and come back next week to see brilliant we are then!

Love, Ducks x

Week 4.2.19  

Week 28.1.19        

This week has come and gone so quick, but we have been able to enjoy a little bit of snow along the way as well as some fantastic learning indoors, as well as going outside to feel and to explore the weather change!

Spotted ducks even had a little debate over who thought it would snow and who thought it wouldn't on Thursday and Friday. The children had to give reasons to explain their opinions. Both groups were correct in a way, because it didn't snow on the Thursday but we did get it on Friday. The children enjoyed this and have asked if we can do this again. We learnt that this is a way we can gather information.

As the yard was a little unsafe this week, we decided to take our large construction inside.  This proved to be an incredible learning experience where children came to gather to develop their ideas and worked safely with real tools. We saw risk taking at its finest and from the teachers point of view, it showed that the children were now able to listen to one another's ideas and could develop work together. The children got to work at height and to negotiate problems along the way. 

We had a great Number Day on Friday, raising money for the NSPCC charity. Everyone looked fantastic in either their black and white clothes or their numbered items of clothing. We all learnt about patterns with numbers, how to calculation addition and subtraction sums using the penguins help and some children worked on the doubling of numbers creating their own doubling number monster. We will be using all of the children's work to create a class display, as the children are extremely proud of their achievements. 

Unfortunately, we still have children not reading at home, please can we ask that all books are in school daily for checking and that your child has read at least 4 times in the week. It is extremely important that the children read at home. As teachers we teach the children how to read, but they will need to work on this at home to become fluent. Your support will be greatly appreciated and it will help to boot your child's confidence greatly. Stickers and reward are up for grabs in Miss Newbon's class- four reads or more a week gets a sticker- a sticker a week form now until half term means a prize! Don't forge to sign your child's diary- it would be a shame if children were reading and getting missed because diaries were not signed. We want to recognise and reward at every opportunity!

Please look out for messages and badges coming out via Marvellous Me. If you are not yet set up, then please see Mrs Fraser or ask at the office for the passwords. We want to communicate in as many ways as possible the wonderful things the children are learning, as well as sending out key messages. 

Have a wonderful week

The Reception Children and Staff 

Week Commencing 21.1.19

This week the children have welcomed Mrs Fraser back with her poorly foot. Although she is hobbling about on crutches, she is pleased to say her foot is getting a little better and she has very much welcomed the support of her children's kind hands in helping her to get about and set up the classroom.  The children have shown just how well established the school values are embedded in the Early Years.  In the words of Mrs Fraser "I couldn't be in better hands, than with my super little helper from Reception. I can't thank them enough for their kindness!"

Also this week, the children have begun to look at a new way of learning maths. It is called "Numbers and Patterns" and is a new initiative to help the children learn the patterns that occur when working with numbers. This is aimed at developing their recall of key mental math skills. It s very fast based and requires their brains to be fully switched on,  however already we have seen huge progress in the children's ability to recall key math facts at speed. The focus is all around working with numbers to 10, so although children may know numbers beyond 10, the children will be learning to do everything that they possibly can with 10. This included, counting forwards and back, counting in 2's, adding facts such as 0+1=, 1-0=, 1X1=, the value of 0, 1 more and 1 less than numbers to 10 and doubles of doubles to 10. 

These are just a few of the focus areas, however in deepening the children's understanding and fully embedding their knowledge of math facts when working to 10, this will enable them to have a secure foundation in which to build on, as they begin to work with larger numbers and concepts in year 1.  We hope you will support this by working with your children on this at home.  I am sure it wont be long before we invite you in to see!

Another story has hit our classroom this week and it is it the story of 'The Three Billy Goats Gruff". The children have loved writing about the story, have acted it out and created a lovely display showing their troll designs. Have a look at the wonderful work that is coming from the children in Reception. They are continuing to work extremely hard and as teachers we are very proud of them. 

A polite reminder- can all children ensure they are reading at home and are working on the formation of their letters and numbers, alongside recalling their key words. You will find these stuck in your children's blue homework books. 

Have another wonderful week of learning boys and girls. 

Parents if you have any questions, then please come and see us. We are always happy to help!

Many thanks

Spotted Ducks and Mallard Ducks Staff and Children 

Week commencing 14.1.19 week 18

This week we have been learning about the Little Red Hen. We have been really interested in the process of planting wheat, which we send to the mill to turn into flour and then making bread. We have listened so well to the process and instructions that our teacher let us make our own bread! We had the best time and discussed safety and how to use tools appropriately.

We used iPads this week to play on age appropriate games. We are getting more confident at adding and subtracting and can use a programme correctly.

We have had another super week. We have received certificates for reading this week. If we read four times a week our teachers are going to let us have a dip in the prize box!.

Take a look at our display from this week and we shall check in next week with our amazing learning!

We cant wait to see what story we are learning next week!

See you soon

Ducks x

Week 17 7th January 2019

WOW! What a busy first week back. We have missed you so much and what a week filled with wonderful stories, exciting news and some amazing work produced.

We have been learning about Rosies Walk this week. The story of the week allowed us to learn and develop our prepositional language. It taught us all about Rosie, a little hen who went for a walk around the farm. She went over and under, around and under to get back in time for tea!. This allowed us to re-enact the story and use some positional language ourselves- a difficult skill to master!

We rewrote the story as well! We learned the story in a Talk4Write style and used this information to use our phonics and to get it down on paper. Miss Newbon has put some extra pre-cursive letters up for us to copy some beautiful formation to make sure our writing is Year 1 ready! This is all our work, from the writing to the art work, the labels and the position photographs for maths. We love doing displays so that we can look back on our fabulous learning.

Also this week we have been learning about technology that we might use at school and at home. We have learned that technology is EVERYWHERE!  Have a look at your homework books! Remember one challenge per week to be bought back in on a Wednesday!

Its been so busy this week, our classrooms have had a little move around! Take a look at the pictures on our homepage. We've given out lots of certificates this week aswel in Mallard Ducks- be sure to get yourself one next week by following our values and working extra special hard! Check class dojo and our Marvellous Me! app too!

Have a super duper weekend Ducks, and lets get ready for the next week ahead

x Ducks x

Week 16- Week Commencing 6th January 2018

Welcome back to the start of the Spring Term.

I hope you have had a magical time at home with your parents making some wonderful memories and for those of you who do celebrate Christmas, that you were lucky enough to have received so delightful presents. 

I am sure you will agree that after a wonderful holiday, both teachers and children will be keen to get back to work and develop new skills for learning which will see them good in later life. 

As with any new term, it is always good to remember some key things. These include:

- come to school bright and early

-bring your reading book and homework everyday

-remember to bring your coat and warm clothing if needed

-read every night at home

-complete your homework weekly

-wear a smile each day to school and pass it on to your friends

-be the best you can be

-try the best you can

-have fun

-talk about what you are learning to your friends, teachers and parents at home

-ask your parents to fill you in a wow moment and send it to school

-follow the school values and rules always

-laugh and have fun

We hope you are looking forward to coming back. The teachers can't wait to see you and hear about all the wonderful things you have been up to. We have our listening ears at the ready. 

See you tomorrow Ducks!!!!

Week 15- Week Commencing 17th December 2018

It's been a busy week of laughing, dancing, storytelling and game playing here in the Ducks Class. We have made Christmas/Winter Cards, decorated Winter biscuits and have even had a Winter break party. 

After a bust half term we are all ready for the holidays, so everyone can recharge their batteries and get themselves ready for the Spring Term. 

From all the staff and children here in the Spotted Ducks class, we wish you a Merry Christmas and or a Happy Winter Holiday. 

See you in the New Year x

Week 14 week commencing 11th December

Wow...what a week. We are almost ready for our Winter production 'Humph the Camel'. We have worked so hard and we are so excited for you all to come and see us. We have learned our lines and songs so super well and our teachers are very proud of how we act and perform, loud and clear!

We are getting ready to finish the Autumn term its been a fantastic start to Reception and this week sees the beginning of data week. The progress we have made is amazing.

Also this week we have been learning about the story 'Lost and Found'. This story is all about a penguin who managed to make his way to a little boys house in search of a friend. The boy is so lovely he tries his best to research about where penguins come from and made a boat the get the penguin back. The penguin did not want to be at the South pole, he just wanted to be with the boy so that he was not lonely!!

We thought about how it feels to be lovely and what we can do to help friends who are sad and lonely. We made boats and researched all about the South pole. We know so much about penguins and the similarities and differences of where they come from compared to England. We have absolutely loved it!

Catch up with us next week to see our fabulous photos and a video of our show...don't forget to get your tickets from the office :)

Ducks x

Week 13

Hello All, 

This week the rehearsals for the Winter Nativity have been in full swing. We have spent a lot of time learning our speaking parts and perfecting the words from the numerous songs. Letters have gone out to our parents for tickets and the costumes that we all will need. The date is getting closer, so the from each and everyone of us, we ask that all our parents ensure you have your tickets. We don't want anyone to miss out on this spectacular performance from all of us in the Early Years. The stage is prepared, the proms are being made and we are rearing to put on a great show for you all. Remember to bring the tissues!

Not only have we been busy working on the nativity, but we have been working incredibly hard to secure our learning for this term. The teachers are looking forward to the end of next week where they will they be telling us about the progress we have made across the whole term.

We can all now do now lots of things that we could not do at the start of the term, so I am sure our teachers are going to be very proud of what we have achieved. However, we know it doesn't stop there and after Christmas we need to continue to work hard on our learning, so that we can challenge ourselves further. 

This week we have listened to our class story of Lost and Found and have created pieces of writing and artwork which tell us about Winter and the story. 

We have also continued to develop our role play skills, along with forming our letters in a range of media. It was fun to see our teachers covered in shaving foam and is was such a lovely way of writing for us as learners. 

A few of our parents dropped in for the parent workshop with Mrs Fraser on Early Maths, however it would be nice if a few more of lovely mums and dads could come and join us. You will get to see how our teachers help us to learn, along with getting some lovely ideas of what you can work on with us at home in relation to maths. Next week there will be another workshop, so look out for the date and time on the weekly newsletter. We love having you in, so please could and see what we are up to in class!

Anyway, time to go as we need to get ready for another busy week of learning and Winter Nativity preparation. 

See you soon

Spotted and Mallard Ducks

Week 12- Week Beginning 26.11.18

What a busy week in the Spotted and Mallard Duck's class. This week we have continued to learn about what it means to be healthy and safe. We have packed ourselves healthy lunch bags and created ourselves healthy meals. Each of us have also tracked our eating habits at home to ensure that over the week, we each are eating a healthy diet. We have also learnt about brushing our teeth.

In maths we have being learning about capacity and using the language such as full, empty and nearly full, nearly empty. Spotted ducks had a debate about whether a cup is half empty or half full. We decided that neither opinion is wrong. 

This weeks the two classes have focused on the story of Oliver's vegetables and Gordon's Great Escape. This focus was on listening to a story and talking about the key events, recalling them in order. These stories, have then helped us to create pieces of writing and a class display. 

Mallard Ducks looked after our very own Gordon. We had a special task to not pop Gordon all week in order to free him to his very own adventure at the end of the week! e did it!! We discussed shapr and unsafe objects that might pop Gordon and hurt ourselves. We were very good at identifying these objects in order to keep everyone safe! We had our very own ideas about what amazing adventures Gordon might get up to once we let him go! Have a look at the pictures!

We have also started to prepare for the Winter Production of 'Humph the Camel', which I am sure you will all be keen to see. The children are working extremely hard to learn the songs and words (for those who have them). It will be a very proud moment for us as teachers to see our EYFS children up on the stage and performing for you. So get the tissues at the ready!

We also have begun to think about Christmas for those who celebrate it and for those who don't, it will be a wonderful opportunity for children to learn about how other people celebrate special events. Our classrooms have started to change along with the weather and are becoming a little more Winter like and in the next week they will embrace the festive season. 

Mrs Fraser, also led a parent workshop on early reading, so some of our mums and dads came in to see how we get taught reading in school and find out the different ways that they can help us at home. It was lovely to see our parents in again, but we would like the number of parents to grow. 

Look out for the next early maths parent workshop running this coming week on Wednesday. We would love you to come and join us! 

If you missed out on the parent workshop, then at the end of the blog you will find the powerpoint to look through. This will help you to know how we teach reading and the expectations for parents in supporting children at home. 

Have a wonderful week and keep looking out for new things added to our blog. 

Mrs Fraser, Miss Newbon and the Reception Team

Week 11 19th November 2018

This week we have had a WOW week all about being healthy!

Thats right...health week! We have been up to so many wonderful activities. 

We went to the local shop. This not only helped us to choose healthy vegetables but it also helped us to enbed the new learning of money! We walked to the shop safely and we were very well behaved! We walked in pairs and looked for road safety. When we go to the shop we learned the names of all kinds of vegetables! We chose what we wanted to make our very own soup! The ladies who worked in the shop were very kind and talked to us about how much things cost and helped us to sort healthy and non healthy foods! PD-HSC-40-60/ELG, CLL-LA/U/S-ELG, M-SSM-40-60.

We had races! We talked about the benefits of exercising and staying fit. We know that its good for the heart and for our muscles. We talked about how fast we ran and how much time it took to complete the race. 

We learned how to wash our hands properly! We know all about germs and how to get rid of them so that they don't make our tummies poorly PD-HSC-ELG

To finish our week we invited our parents in! We had a guest parent in who was a physiotherapist and he talked to us all about healthy bones and muscles! We then learned alongside our parents and showed them the fabulous things we had been learning this week!

We had a truly fantastic week! 

See you next week

Ducks x

Week 10- 12th November 2018

The time has come, where today we remember those soldiers past and present who lost their lives so many years ago. We take a minute to think also about those who continue to work so hard to keep our world a safe place to live. 

This week our teachers have taught us that it is a 100 years ago since lots of soldiers lay down their heads peacefully in a field where poppies grew, having been away from their families to help keep the world safe. We have as part of our learning and appreciation for their service, worked together with the rest of the school to create an art gallery of work which represents how children see and view remembrance. 

We all used paint and other materials in order to create our artwork and these were put on show in the hall for parents to see and to buy. As a school we raised lots of money, which is being sent to help the injured soldiers and their families. Some of us all got to purchase Remembrance day poppies and wrist bands that we could wear in school. 

Mrs Fraser showed us the local paper which told us about the wreaths that people lay around the local area. It also showed the Queen and members of her family laying a wreath in London. In class we had our minutes silence, whilst listening to the music of the last post. 

It helped us to think about how lucky we are and to value our friends and family. 

Throughout the week we also focused our maths learning on using language linked to weight. Mrs Fraser and Miss Newbon helped us to make comparisons of the real fruit and vegetables that had enhanced our farm shop.

Watch out, we will be weighing everything but the kitchen sink now we know how scales work. 

Week 9- 5th November

Remember, Remember the 5th of November!!!

Happy Bonfire Night to one and all.

Here in the FS2 classes we have been learning about colour mixing, the sounds that fireworks make, along with learning about how we can keep ourselves safe around fireworks. Especially if we are going to a fireworks display with our families. We have learnt that we can make patterns in the air with sparklers, but that if we wear gloves, we can protect our hands from getting hurt from the sparks. Mrs Fraser and Miss Newbon also taught us that it is important to look after our pets, as their ears are so sensitive to the sounds that the fires make. 

Bang, pop, whoosh, boom are some of the sounds we learnt as we listened and watched video clips of real firework displays around the world. In the class we all made the oooooh, arghhhhhh sound as we heard the fireworks go off. 

This week we also learnt about the Hindu festival of Diwali. We learnt that it is a special time which remembers the fight between good and evil in the story of Rama and Sita. To help celebrate this festival we listened to Hindu music, we danced in different ways, we made patterns with the colours outdoors and we listened to the story. We also learnt that Hindu decorate their houses with lots of candles to help them celebrate and warn off all evil. Their lights are called Diva lamps. We watched video clips to look at how children celebrate diwali all around the world. This has helped us to embrace other cultures and to learn that some of us believe in the same things and some of us have different beliefs. All of which are alright and should be celebrated. 

We also have a new role play area- the Farm Shop, where we have been learning to identify coins and their value. Watch out parents, we will be raiding your purses soon to tell you how much money you have. 

If you ask your children, I am sure they will have plenty more to tell you. 

Week commencing 22nd October 2018

Week 8

WOW! We cant believe that we are almost at the end of our very first half term in Reception. We are all really good friends and our first set of data since baseline is in! The progress in not just our learning but with our relationships is amazing and we are ready to kick start the next half term with our next steps and with fantastic attitudes!

Its not over yet though! This week our story of the week was 'Room on the Broom'.

We used this text to look at rhyming words and sequencing stories. We showed that by learning a different story each week we have really developed our listening and attention skills, allowing us to retain and recall stories, think about the structure, the characters and we learned how to predict what would happen next!

For those of us who wanted to, we thought about Halloween and discussed our very own family plans for over half term and we had a brilliant time carving pumpkins and decorating biscuits!

We used tools appropriately to hammer small nails into the pumpkins to really develop our fine motor skills and some of us were even writing CVC words around the topic!

It was the time of the term to talk about what we wanted as pupils to see in our environment. We decided we would like to carry on our learning about harvest and Autumn and have a farm shop. Our vocabulary is really growing in this area and we cant wait to learn about money when we can buy our own fruit and vegetables.

Take a look at our new provision, all new and ready for after our week long holiday. Our new story is 'Gordons great escape'. We had a sneaky preview and it looks great! We cant wait to see some fireworks and to really be creative too!

We hope you all have a brilliant week off but most importantly...stay safe!

Ducks xx

Week commencing 15.10.18

Week 7

This week we have started to think about the seasons! We have learned that its now Autumn and that Autumn has many seasonal changes as we say goodbye to Summer. We have looked at the story 'Leafman'. 

This week we have studied the leaves and the trees and learned why the leaves fall down. We have looked at the Autumn animals as they prepare for hibernation and the different ways that they prepare. Did you know a squirrel hides his acorns to store them for the Winter but a hedgehog eats lots and lots of berries before he hibernates so that he is nice and full until Spring!.

We get ready for our harvest festival. We are learning an Autumn song all about the farmers who are busy on the farm, harvesting the vegetables and crops ready for us to  eat! Catch us next week to see how we go on when we perform to our loved ones on Friday!

Maths and literacy did not take a back seat though, we started to learn about patterns! There are so many lovely colours and shapes in our natural environment during the Autumn that we arranged conkers, leaves, twigs and sticks. Some of us made repeated patterns! 

We made our very own leaf men! Some of us made other leaf animals to represent the other animals that we saw in the story

Literacy this week we continue to learn our phase 2 and 3 phonics and we are learning to hear initial sounds and start to orally blend CVC words. We continue to focus on precursive letter formation as well! Super busy ducks this week.

Have a look at our class display for the corridor...

See you next week! 

Love from Ducks x

Week commencing 1.10.18

This week we have been learning about measuring! We have used Autumn objects to measure length using non standard units and really trying to use the vocabulary of short and long! Some of us were super clever and linked it to height by talking about tall instead of long!

We also looked at pine cones and used them to find one more and one less! 

We also carried on our theme of dragons. We made 3D dragons. using all different art resources. We used scissors safely and correctly too! 

Catch up with us next week, we are expecting a visitor!! So come back to see all about it! 

See you soon Ducks x

Week commencing 24th October

What another fabulous week! This week we have been learning about a knight who does not show respect! He takes a magic wand away from a Granny witch! We learned about respect and morals and we thought about the right and wrong behaviours! He is also very unkind to the Grannys grandson, Hector, who shows courage and determination to get the wand back. He is only little but he works very hard to get it back, coming up with all different plans to save the day and to make is Granny happy again!

We did lots of lovely work based around role play and writing, adding in all of our ideas! We wrote some initial sounds, concentrating on letter formation and also we wrote why the knight was not showing the right behaviours. We made magic wands to give as a gift to Granny and we even used our police role play in our classroom to try to catch the big bad knight! We used our investigation skills to find the knight and to teach him the consequences of his behaviour! We don't think he will be doing the wrong thing again!!! Take a look at some of our learning and the wonderful display that we made to show off to the school!

This week we have also been thinking about our letter formation! We have been super busy and another fantastic week. 

Week commencing 17th September

Well now the year really gets underway! We have formed some beautiful relationships now with our newest members of the class and we are enjoying our fabulous provision. We have been thinking about our school values and how we can show respect to ourselves, our friends, teachers and our classroom. We have been thinking about how we can look after our things and have had our own ideas. We really are trying our best to use our big loud speaking voices!

Phonics has begun and we start to learn or continue to learn our letter names and sounds. We thought our teachers had turned into robots at one point as they just keep talking to us, splitting up the words...they call it oral segmenting and blending and its going to make us really good readers! We have our reading books and we know that if we read four times a week we get a certificate and a prize each half term! We love reading in Duck Class.

We have been learning about dragons and the story 'Marmaduke the very different dragon'. We thought about how we can be different and that's ok! We thought about how we are similar and different to each other and looked in mirrors to see some of our beautiful features. We painted dragons in our very own way to show that although they are different, they were all so well designed and decorated.

Next week, we continue with our love of dragons, We are really interested and so our teachers have chosen a new book called 'Hector and the Big Bad Knight'. This will incorporate dragons and also our morals and behaviour learning from this week. We cat wait! Come back to see what we get up to!!

Ducks xx

Week beginning 10th September

What a fantastic first couple of weeks we have had!

We have all settled brilliantly and had a super introduction to FS2. We have welcomed new children to our school and to Duck class who have settled in and fitted in like the perfect jigsaw pieces.

This week we got to know each other and explored our amazing provision. We realised that we learn so much through play and interacting with our friends and teachers. We have spoken all about ourselves and given our teachers all of our interests so that they can find out what we love to learn about!

Look at some of the fabulous things we have been getting up to...

We have been busy making new friends and catching up with old friends and have had such a brilliant time. Week three is fast approaching where we will start to learn about our first interest...dragons!

Come back next week to see our brilliant learning and our continued adventure

Ducks x

Welcome back to school and to Duck class. Your teachers have been super busy getting your brand new classrooms looking fantastic, bright and engaging with all of things you need to do your best this year! You will be able to have a sneaky peek further down the blog.

We hope you have had a brilliant six weeks with your family, friends and loved ones and have been on many adventures. We are excited to get to know you and to help you grow and develop. We are looking forward to hearing all of your wonderful news! We will do all we can to support you and to give you the knowledge and skills you need to get ready for your school life.

Have a look at your beautiful new classroom environment and we will see you tomorrow, bright eyed and bushy tailed. We are going to have the best year!

See you tomorrow

Miss Newbon, Misss James, Mrs Fraser, Mrs Cartwright and Miss Goodwin

Week commencing 18.6.18

Well! This week found out which classes we will be going into in September. We are so ready to move into Key Stage One! Our new teachers are lovely and we are super excited! We did lots of lovely transition activities and our new teachers were really impressed with us!

Back in Duck Class though we learned lots this week! We learned about the World Cup and why it is such a fantastic sporting event. We learned lots of new countries and looked at the map of the world to find out where they were! We went onto the field and practised warming up with some 'race' style activities, preparing us as well for our sports day! Then we all had  a go at taking penalties against our friend! We chose a country to 'play for' and had a super good time. We used our attention and coordination skills and it was great exercise! We counted up how many penalties each team scored to see who was the winner!

We also learned about rock pools! We looked at some really strange looking little creatures that you might find in a rock pool and compared beaches in England with some beaches in other, hotter countries. We were amazed when looking at coral reefs and we discussed which childrens films we might have seen with coral reefs in it! We were excited to watch a clip of Finding Nemo and looking at the real life Great Barrier Reef! We met a new member of staff, Mrs Cartwright who has come all the way from Australia!! It was so good to hear from someone who has first hand experience of beaches in Australia and she knows so much! 

In our writing lessons we have been left to be completely independent. It gave us a chance to show off what we have learned in Duck Class so far and some of us even added question marks and exclamation marks- very Key Stage One ready!

Miss Newbon said that next week we will be starting to prepare for our graduation! This will be so lovely and we cant wait for our loved ones to see it.

Catch up next week

FS2 Ducks xxx

Welcome Back to Our Delighful Ducks- Week 5.6.18

We have made it to our first week of Summer Term 2 and everyone has come back happy and safe. A few us you have come back wearing your spotty scares with pride after the dreaded chicken pox hit our classes. As in reception style of being great at sharing, we now have got children in Nursery and Year 1 that have caught the chicken pox. Apologises to both class, but we do love to share!

It has been a rather busy week in our class starting our new Seaside topic. Our classes have been transormed over the holidays, by our dedicated teachers and they have been a great hit with all children across the classes. We have a new 'Under the Sea' reading area and a 'Seaside Souvenir Shop'. These have helped our children to begin to learn about a visit at the Seaside and the animals and fish living in the Sea that surrounds different countries all over the world. 

We have also begun learning about how we can look after our teeth and keep them healthy. Next week we will be working on how we brush our teeth. Everyone in reception will be perfecting their glimmering smile, ready for the end of year graduation photographs. 

Have a happy week of learning and then a restful weekend. Your going to need all your energy for the coming weeks. 

Love the Duck Class x

Week commencing 21.5.2018

And here it is! The last week of Summer 1. The year is going far too quick! Soon it will be time to say goodbye as we prepare for Key Stage One! However we still have seven weeks left in the fantastic Early Years Foundation Stage. What a week it has been. We have been offering our ideas on what we would like to see in our environment when we arrive back after half term. Our rooms always transform into a different land, its like magic!

We have been giving our thoughts on what we already know about our new topic- At the Seaside. We are so excited for our new role play and reading areas, although we have enjoyed 'The Jungle' and learned so much!

We have had the opportunity this week to showcase our phonics and maths learning independently to our teachers during assessment week. We love a good chance to show off our reading skills and applying them in our writing too!

Come back in a couple of weeks to see our brand new classroom environment. We cannot wait to see work that we have already completed up on displays and also what wonderful learning is yet to come! Miss Newbon says she is going to have some wonderful things in the STEM tuff spot next half term, as it seems that we are mini scientists in FS2!

Take a look at some of our learning this week...

Catch you soon!

FS2 x

A message from our teachers

We hope you all have a wonderful half term holidays. We will return to school on Monday 5th June and cannot wait to hear about you adventures with parents, families, friends and loved ones. As always though, with time away from school we do miss you and think of you lots. Please make sure that you don't leave your grown ups, don't talk to strangers, stay safe and you take care. You are very important and we want you to come back to school rested, happy and healthy. If you go on any holiday adventures, please feel free to collect shells, rocks and other seaside bits and bobs for our learning in Summer 2. We love collectables from other places and we will be learning lots about travelling to other places, particularly by the seaside and at the beach!

Safety first little ones, enjoy your week off

FS2 teachers xxx

Week commencing 14.5.18

Hello! What another brilliant yet so busy week! This week we had the delight of celebrating the Royal wedding! We invited all Mums, Dads and loved ones into school to have our very own Royal wedding party! As the sun was shining beautifully we decided to take all celebrations outdoors! We had music playing, dancing, bubble blowing and not to mention lots of amazing food. Thank you to all parents and family members who donated food and flags to celebrate such a patriotic moment in history.

We learned about the Royal family and what it meant to see such a celebration. I am sure you watched the event with your families and were able to tell them what fabulous information you learned. Did you spot the Queen? Everyone looked fabulous! Maybe you could draw a picture of Windsor Castle or the beautiful Meghan dress?

Royal wedding aside, this week we continued to close gaps on our learning. We consolidated our learning of doubling and halving numbers and had some excellent experiments in our STEM tuff spot. We learned hat by mixing colours and adding bicarbonate of soda and vinegar we could create our own chemistry experiments, watching glitter explode from test tubes and wondering what would happen if we mixed colours!

We had an excellent time learning all about the story Dear Zoo and writing to the zoo to ask for our very own animal. We chose our favourite animal and said why we would like one for our own. We came up with some excellent imaginative ideas and used adjectives (which we now know are describing words) to describe them.

We have really enjoyed learning about the jungle. We have learned some excellent facts about the world and just why jungles are so hot. We learned new words like 'equator' and learned just why animals and vegetation that live in the jungle and in rainforests are adapted to suit the needs of their habitat.

Our next topic is yet to be revealed but we are assured that our knowledge will just keep on growing and we are most certainly going to be Year one ready by the time we leave our amazing Foundation Stage!
 

Catch you next week, please have a look at our amazing learning, who knows what we are going to learn in the next five days!

Take care and stay safe

Ducks xxx

Week commencing 14.5.18

Hello to all from the Ducks in FS2, 

This week we wanted to start by wishing all of our brothers or sisters and cousins who are sitting their KS1 or KS2 SATs this week, the best of luck. As FS2 children we look up and aspire to the older children and this year you have provided us so far with an outstanding example of what it is to be a super, talented and dedicated learner. You have shown us how to behave in an outstanding manner and as a result have shown us that sitting your SATs is something you take in your stride, when you are fully prepared having worked so hard from FS1 to now. We wish you the best of luck. Do yourselves proud and show those tests, what you are made of. You can do it!!!!

From all of the FS2 children and teachers. Good luck!

Week Commencing 7.5.18

What a busy and wonderful week on learning had by all. There's been laughter and smiles all around, especially as Mrs Fraser joined us in our risk taking, as we explored the larger school climbing frame. Oh it was a sight to see! Mrs Fraser was certaintly enjoying herself monkeying about the bars. Next time we will have to take a camera and catch her in the act. I am sure parents will love to see what our teachers get up to, in a bid to encourage us to take risks. Watch this space! A photo could appear at anytime. 

As you can see the weather has improved, which has meant that we can get out and explore the outdoors so much more. Mrs Fraser and Miss Newbon have taught us this week the importance of sun safety, so that whilst we are outside we are able to manage our our health and wellbeing. For our mums and dads, please can we ask that you have given us children suncream and hats to wear outside. Even if it appears cloudy, we have learnt that our skin can still get burnt and at 4 and 5 years old, we don't want to be looking like our grandparents. 

We have worked this week on our knowledge and quick recall of doubling facts and next week will be learning about how we can share objects equally between ourselves. As ducks we always eager to learn a new school, so bring on the challenge. 

As always, we are continuing to work on our writing and this week we have had our friends writing in lots of different ways. Some children write lists,some wrote descriptions and some write labels. Mrs Fraser and Miss Newbon also set us the challenge of writing our own stories. 

The steam coming from our pencils was incredible as we put our imagination and writing skills to the test. 

This half term is flying by and with each week we get closer to the end of term, however each of us in FS2 is working to ensure we do our very best and hope that at the end of term our progress and attinment will show you just how hard all of us have worked and how hard our teachers have challenged us to be the very best we can be. 

Happy Summer Learning

From the Ducks. 

P.S For Key Stage 2 Year 6 children and Year 1 children, we all wish you well in your forthcoming SATs. We belive you can do it! 

Week commencing 30th April 2018

Hello! Another week down! This school year is flying by, and what a year it is. So we continue on our journey through the jungles of the world.

We have been thinking about jungle music, we used materials from the outdoor environment to bang and shake to make different sounds that we might hear in the jungle.

We had a great time using key stage one and two outdoor equipment. It gave us a great opportunity to develop our balancing and movement skills. We were travelling over and under and through equipment, even our teachers had a go! We now know the importance of staying fit and healthy and exactly how we can do that! We know that our heart works really hard to stay strong and to pump blood around our body, when we exercise it gets faster and faster. We have to warm up first though so that we don't pull any of our muscles!

We have been learning about Rumble in the Jungle . Its a fabulous story with rhyming words to describe the different animals in the jungle. We then have had some time to write all about our favourite animal and what they look like.

Busy for us all this week! Come back and see us next week for another update! 

As a polite reminder! Read your books at home. Show your parents how amazing you are at using your phonics to read and to stretch your imagination. Remember four times a week gets you a fabulous prize and a chance for a Rainbow Readers certificate!

Homework also needs to be completed for a Wednesday. Just choose one from the list each week and if you need any support, you can speak to any of the Early Years team.

See you next week

Ducks x

Week commencing 23rd April

Wow what an adventure we are on! Who knew that the rainforest floor was so dark because the trees are SO tall that they block out all of the sunlight? This week we have been exploring more and more about the jungles of the world. We know that the jungle is so hot because most of them lie on the equator! That's the hottest part of the Earth!

Did you know, the Amazon Rainforest is so big, that our country could fit into it 17 times!!!

This week we have been thinking about being Year 1 ready. We have been setting out very own questions and writing them down, and then using the internet to research the question! We then wrote the answers all by ourselves. Don't worry, we all know now that we have to use Google kids to search, because that's safe!

We have also been thinking about using our own ideas to create our own jungle structures. We have been using our imaginations and a load of old junk! Have a look at our fabulous designs.

We are learning so much! We love our jungle topic!

See you next week

Ducks x

Welcome back to Reception. The sun is finally here and we hope it is here to stay so that we can get outside some more and play, learn and explore. 

This half term we will learning about life in the 'Jungle'. Mrs Fraser, Miss Newbon and Miss James, have been busy in the holidays transforming our classroom into the Jungle. We have a 'Jungle Campsite' role play area and a Jungle Safari, Jeep, reading area. We all  went in and went 'wow', because everywhere looked vibrant and colourful. 

It wasn't long till we were all changing our roles in class and becoming Jungle Explorers. Who needs to watch Jumanji, when we have the Jungle in our classroom. 

This week we have learnt to develop questions that we can then go off and research, finding out about which animals live in the Jungle. We have also begun to look at patterns that animals might have on their bodies and we are all looking forward to next week when will be getting to design our own jungle patterns, for a new species of animal that we have created for the Jungle. 

Look out for these on our next weeks blog. 

From the Jungle Exploers, over and Out.

WHAT A DAY!

We have just got back from a busy yet wonderful day at the Farm. We have been so busy learning and playing. We got to feed lots of animals such as cows, lambs, goats and rabbits. We also saw some alpacas and horses! The staff there were so helpful and were able to tell us lots of information about the animals and the farm. It has been brilliant and it has been such a fun day and just when we thought it couldn't get any better, we got to go on a real life tractor ride! Some of us have never even seen a Tractor before, let alone been on one.  After our picnic lunch, we went into the play barn. In the play barn more fun was to be had! We climbed, crawled, ran and jumped our way through all of their cool equipment until it was time to get back onto the bus for home. 

On our way back, it was clear to seen that from all the busy learning, some of us were worn out. Mrs Fraser and Miss Newbon took sneaky pictures of those children who had fallen asleep. It was such a shame the adults didn't fall asleep. When we got back to school, there was so much to tell our parents and information to share with Mrs Knowles. We can all honestly say, we had a magical day, putting our learning into real context. Who knows, maybe some of us might end up as farmers, when we grow up, looking after the animals, after all! We are all excited for our next trip into the big wide world. 

Week Commencing 12.03.18

Hello to you! How lovely to see you. We hope your week has been as fun as ours!

It has been Science Week here at Waterside and us little ducks have been joining in with the buzz. We have had a cool new tuff spot in our classroom and we have been making circuit with our friends and teachers. We got so excited when we made the light bulbs light up through using the wires and batteries. We have been learning about electricity in our homes and our school and have been playing games on the Interactive Whiteboard to help us understand.

It has also been Mothers Day so we have been celebrating our lovely Mums and ladies in our lives who help us grow and love everyday.

We had tea and cake in the hall and then had some time in our classrooms spending time with one another. It was lovely. (Especially the cake part!)

Once again, thanks for checking in with us.

We hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

Love from Ducks x

Week commencing 03/03/18

Welcome back to our class blog after a fun filled week. Here in FS2 we never stop! 

Our week started off with a blast on Monday as we all dressed up as where's wally! We had so much fun and looked incredible. Thanks to you, our wonderful parents for making us look so good. Our teachers didn't let us down either, we barely recognised them when we came into school! They can be so silly, but in a good way, of course. We had lots of activities such as trying to find wally! Wally crosswords and puzzles and lots of where's wally stories. It was so lovely to have a day dressed up all together sharing different stories with one another. Some of the older children from upstairs came to visit us in the afternoon and brought us some special stories, we buddied up and they read us a story. It was beautiful. 

This week has brought us a new story and a new topic. Our story is the ''Enormous Turnip.'' and our topic is all about the Farm! We have been reading the Enormous turnip story with our teachers and today Miss James taught us about all the different characters today and even did impressions of them all! (she was actually pretty good at it.) We have done some super writing all about the story, what happens and what we think may happen. We have also wrote about the different characters. Our teachers have been very impressed. 

Lots of us have been getting our competitive side out as well this week (including Miss Clarke!) We went outside and had a proper game of football. Goals, teams, team talks, half time, the lot! It was so much fun. The sun was shining and we had a picnic outside with water and fruit at half time. We took it in turns to choose our team mates and be team captains as well as taking it in turns to be in goal! Lots of us had amazing control  and skill over the ball, Miss Clarke was very impressed! 

Thanks for checking in with us here in Duck Class. We are looking forward to a lovely weekend with you all.

Have a good one, 

Love Ducks x

Hiya Ducks!

What a week, we don't know about you but having Thursday off due to all of this weather defiantly made it feel like the weekend had come early! We hope you all had lots of fun in the snow. Although, i'm suprised nobody got blown away by the wind if you were out having fun! We were gutted to miss World Book Day and see all of you dressed as 'Where's Wally' but don't fear! Your costumes will NOT go to waste. Your teachers are keeping ours safe and are waiting to hear when Waterside book day will happen so we can all come dressed in our red and white stripes. However, I don't think it'll be too hard to find us!

Where will you want to hide when you're Wally?

Even though its been a four day week, us here in duck class have still been as busy as ever. 

We have a brand new role play area in our classroom and Miss Newbon bought us walkie talkies and mega phones to go in there. There's never a quite moment as you probably know! We have done some super learning in there and had the chance to be super duper creative and use our wild and wonderful imaginations. 

We have helped to make some big art to go up on our police station too. Miss Clarke helped us to make a big police car and Burglar Bill! we used so many different art resources and materials. We love some big art here in FS2.

We have been learning all about Chinese New Year too this week. We have being watching lots of videos and documentary's about 'the year of the dog' We totally got our art on and made loads of ace decorations! We also had a very special parent come into school and telling us all about what happens at Chinese new year and what celebrations take place. Then we had a fun four legged friend come to visit, it is the year of the dog after all! As well as all of these lovely things, we thought it would be rude NOT to partake in eating some prawn crackers... YUM!

We've thoroughly enjoyed getting wrapped up warm and going outside to play in the white stuff. We know that it can be abit of a pain sometimes, but when its white on the ground, the sky is blue and the sun is shining, we can't complain at all. Here are some pictures of us simply just playing in the outdoors and having a good old laugh. 

Cheers for taking some time out to catch up on our blog. We love updating you on our adventures and we love going on them even more so. 

We hope that the sun shines on your weekends and you have the best time with your little'uns! 

Make memories and be happy.

                                                                                                      Much love,

                                                                           Ducks x 

Well Good Morning Ducks, 

The snow is here once again and has made it tricky for you to get into school and to be safe. Therefore, for you inspiring book worms and super learners, the teachers are setting you a few challenges to complete, before you head out into the snow for fun.

You can complete two or more of the challenges below and for those of you who complete all the challenges, there will be a prize as a reward.

You can choose from:

• Making a poster, showing the clothes we need to wear and the weather linked to each of the four seasons. 
• Just like the gingerbread house construction, can you now make a farm house for your favourite farm animal, such a stable for a horse.
• Create a Where's Wally picture, hiding the character amongst the farm animals. 
• Take a photograph of yourself dressed up as Where's Wally and find yourself a silly and interesting place to read. You can then send your photographs to your teachers email address or to the office who will forward them on. These will then be put on the class display. 
• Number investigation- Show in pictures and with numbers all the different ways that you can make 10, such 2

Happy home learning. Don't forget to bring them in to show your class teachers as there will be prizes for those who complete the most challenges. 

Love the FS2 team x

We celebrated Pancake Day in Duck Class. We looked at the raw ingredients needed to make the perfect pancake. We used the internet to follow instructions, measuring the correct amount and mixed them together correctly. Mrs Fraser then cooked the pancakes on the hob in a frying pan. We knew that we should never touch the hob or the pan because it’s far too hot!!  

(   
We learned that pancake day is celebrated in different ways all over the United Kingdom but most countries have pancake races! So we had a race to see who would come first, second or third!      

The only thing left to do was to taste the pancakes!! We learned about our British values and how to vote for our favourite topping on a pancake. We made a bar chart to show our findings.

We tasted our pancakes with lemon and sugar and we couldn’t wait to tell our loved ones at home all about our amazing day. We learned that we shouldn’t eat pancakes every day because the ingredients aren’t all that healthy! But now and again, they are ok!

We listened to the story of the Runaway Pancake, and we realised it was just the same as The Gingerbread Man! 

Week commencing 29/01/17

Hello again! Fancy seeing you here. This week we are reporting back from FS2 where our class has been full of fun, laughter, learning and quite frankly, organised chaos!

Apologies that we did not put up a new blog last week, we wrote one with Miss Clarke 3 times but unfortunately, technology was not on our side! We know that lots of you will already know about our gingerbread man invasion, hopefully we can try again and get it up for you to read all about. For now, here are some pictures to help you understand what we've been putting up with here in Reception!

This week we have carried on making lots of traps to catch the gingerbread man using our creative resources and junk modelling. We even made a ''laser quest trap'' out of string! We tested the trap out whilst blaring mission impossible music because why not? We wanted to see if it was hard enough for those horrid gingerbreads!

We have also being celebrating number day this week. Today we have all come to school in our own clothes that are either covered in number, shapes or patterns. We look great! We have had lots of number and maths themed activities out in our classroom and done some maths dancing too. We have all had lots of fun and are having a very fun Friday.

Thanks for popping in.

Us grown ups here in Duck class would like you all to have a wonderfully brilliant weekend, no excuses!

Can't wait to hear all about them.

Love and peace to all,

Ducks x

Week commencing 15.01.18

Welcome back after a very busy week of learning, to Duck Class.

This week we have been so super at learning all about a brand new story! As well as exploring musical instruments, going on hunts around the school and learning all about the world of 'technology.'

Have a scroll down and take a look! You are more than welcome.

Hansel and Gretel is our new story. we have being so busy learning all about it and as always doing some wonderful writing all about the story. Our role play area has also turned into the Witches gingerbread house! if only all of our houses were made from sweets! However, if that was the case, we don't think that they'd last for very long... maybe this weekend we can tell you all about our new story.

Our tuff spot in our classroom has turned into a musical instrument extravagance! We have really enjoyed learning all about the different instruments, sounds they make and what they're used for, as well as playing them! (very very loudly...)

This week has also involved a lot of talking to our teachers and friends about Stranger Danger. We know that we should always stay with our grownups and if a stranger does approach us, we know the right things to do. We now know that if we get lost in a super market or shopping centre for example, that we can tell somebody in a uniform, like the shop worker or a policeman and they will help us find our grownups. We also are very aware that if somebody we don't know comes over to us at the park or on the street, that we don't talk to them or go with them but we stay with our friends and adults and tell somebody that we TRUST.

We here in Duck Class are officially ready for the weekend! We hope that it is a restful and happy couple of days for everybody! 

Love Ducks x

Week commencing 06/01/18

Welcome back to our class blog after another week of school life. Come on in and take a look at what we have been getting up to!

This week in reception, we have been continuing to learn all about the Little Red Riding Hood Story. We have done lots of writing about the characters and even leant our very own talk for story poem. We have added our own actions to help us remember all of the words.

One of our main focuses this week in reception has been 3D shapes! We have being trying super hard, learning all about them and their properties. We have our own 3D shape tuff spot in our classroom and even went on a 3D shape hunt outside with Miss Clarke. We fount so many Cubes, Spheres, Pyramids, Cones, Cuboids and lots of others out in our outdoor environment! We officially have an eye for spotting out things and objects that are 3D shapes!

This week lots of us had lots of fun doing PE! We practiced our balancing and jumping and played so many games, we think we spent more time laughing than we did exercising but that's OK!

We have had a wonderful week here in Duck Class. We hope that all of our little ducks and yourselves have just as wonderful weekend and we will see you back next week to catch up on our shenanigans!

Ducks x

Week commencing 03/01/2018

Hello everybody! Before we get started, a happy new year to you all. Us grown ups here in FS2 would like to wish all of our little ducks and their families a happy and healthy 2018 where you make memories, laugh lots and make the most of everyday. We hope that you all have had a lovely break with your little ones and to those who celebrate Christmas, we hope that Santa was good to you as well as the children!

This week in duck class has been a short one, but a fun one non the less! We have been learning all about Little Red Riding Hood. We

have done some amazing writing about the story and lots of paintings of her, the wolf and not forgetting Grandma. We now have Grandmas cottage in our classroom! we have absolutely loved dressing up as the characters and role playing in there. (We think its our favourite role play yet!)

This half term our topic is called ''Will you read me a story?''

On this note we think it would be lovely if all of our little gems could be reading lots of different stories over the next couple of weeks. Here in fs2 we love circle time and we most defiantly love talking! (we really really love talking...) so, we will be able to tell our friends and teachers about lots of different stories we've read or looked through at home! 

Like we said, this week as been a short one. In no time we will be updating you yet again on all of our learning. Everyday is a new one, a  

new chance and something new to learn about!  

Happy Weekend little Ducks. Have a blast.

Duck Class X 

Week commencing 11th December

Eeeekkkk!! SNOWDAY! How exciting!

Enjoy your day off in the snow with your loved ones but most of all stay safe, take time and care whilst out and about or even just at home having a fabulous time in this chilly but super beautiful weather. Whatever you're getting up to, wrap up warm and be extra careful! We will see you right back at school as soon as its safe, as that is our main priority.

If you choose against braving the cold we thought it would be nice to set you some exciting Winter tasks to do, and bring them back to your teachers for green dojos! We have been learning all about Winter so you will be experts by now!

1. Write a list of things you need to make a snowman. If you can do that easily, why not write a set of instructions, and if there's any snow left on your return to school, we can follow them and make our very own class snowman! (L-W-40-60/ELG, PD-MH-40-60)

2. Design a scarf, using repeated patterns. Remember to make the pattern exactly the same, for example you could choose blue spots, red spots, blue spots, red spots...be very imaginative! (M-SS-ELG)

3. Research all about Winter and the seasonal changes. You could print things from the internet or even copy in your own handwriting...remember to always ask a grown up to help you when using the internet. (UTW-T-ELG)

4, Draw your very own winter scene. Use the correct colours and draw appropriate objects for this time of the year. (EAD-EMM/BI-ELG)

Enjoy your day little Ducks and see you real soon for lots of fun learning and a super last week of the Autumn term.

Safety first, always

FS2 teachers x

Week commencing 03/12/17

Hello again! Come on in and take a look at what us busy little ducks have been up to this week! 

Christmas is on the way which means our winter production is just round the corner. We are so excited as there are only 3 days standing in-between us and our big show! We have worked so hard and cant wait to see all of your proud, smiling faces coming to see us do our thing! 

Our teachers have done a lovely little winter/Christmas table in both classrooms, we have our own Christmas tree and decorations. We have also made our classroom door into a Christmas display, we have been drawing and painting lots of pictures to go up on there. It's still a working progress but its certainly getting us in the festive spirit!

We have been focused on the winter season this week and our classroom has turned into a winter wonderland! Its so fun, we have a winter cave reading area and a tuff spot full of messy things such as, icing sugar, flour and sugar cubes, it also has plastic cups in there. The idea is that we make igloos and it is going down an absolute treat! 

We have been hot on with our maths and number skills this week too! We have being learning all about what the double of a number is. The gruffalos child has been helping us by using a really fun game on the interactive whiteboard! Our teachers are really impressed with how we are coming on in every area, especially Maths. 

And last but not least, today has been a very fun filled friday, even more than usual. When we woke up and came to school this morning, we found... SNOW! We were so excited that we were outside pretty much striaght away! Making snowballs and talking about the snow and the ice. We also questioned why it was melting so quickly! We love wrapping up nice and warm and going out to play in the white stuff, lets hope it comes again so that we can all build a snowman together!

As always thanks for checking in and having a nosey at all the fun that weve been having. We absolutely loving coming to school but we love coming home to you too!

Have a great weekend Ducks and stay safe. We'll see you and your lovely little faces on Monday morning.

Ducks X 

Week Commencing 27/11/17.

Us again!  

Welcome back to our blog, we hope you sit back and relax whilst you read all about our busy week.

This week in reception we have been focusing on the Gruffalo's Child! The Gruffalo is one of our favourite characters and we've been learning all about him. He has terrible tusks and terrible jaws and terrible teeth in his terrible jaws! But we aren't scared of the gruffalo, because to be honest, hes not terrible at all! We have learned that the Gruffalo's child LOVES to hear stories from her Dad and she goes on a little adventure of herself. She wanted to go and find the big bad mouse! We have been painting some super pictures of the Gruffalo along with the gruffalos child and all of the other animals in the story too, like this fox, the mouse, the snake and the owl! They have been put into our special learning journeys and some of them are hung up on our brand new gruffalo display! We have a new gruffalo tuff spot too which Miss Newbon made and we LOVE it!

We have also been doing lots of writing this week about the gruffalo and his friends, we have been writing about what he is like and what he likes to do. We looked at the big bad mouse who was not big or bad. She looked so big because of shadows! We have also being having a go at sequencing the story with our teachers using pictures, which we did very well with! We used good teamwork and spoke to one another about where different parts of the story go. We really impressed our teachers by how well we listened to one anothers ideas and suggestions. This shows respect, one of our favourite School British Values!

Earlier this week some of our Mums and Dads came into school to see our maths learning. Lots of of did some amazing number formation work along with matching numerial to quantity all the way up 20... ALL BY OURSELVES! Lots of gold dojos were given. (Gold dojos are the best!)

This morning we have had a circile time and some of us have been bursting with excitment at the fact it is now officially the 1st of December! This means its nearly Christmas and some of us have been opening up our advent calanders  and having chocolate for breakfast! (YES!)

We have also being talking about our feelings during our circle time as some of us have had some tears this week. Our teachers have made us feel lots better by giving us extras cuddles and making us laugh. (They're very good at that!) Sometimes its ok to be sad and cry and its so important that we talk about how we feel. Next week we are going to make a Feelings display with Miss Newbon and Miss Clarke, because after all, its ok not to be ok sometimes! But here in Duck Class, we pick oursleves back up and do things to make us feel happy again.

And last but not least, we just have to share about how excited we are for our Nativity! We have all being practicing so hard in the hall and in class. We are wonderful at doing our songs now and lots of us have lines to say. We are practicing everyday and getting better and better by the second. We just cannot wait to get dressed up and for you all to come and see how spectacular our winter production is going to be. 

The grown ups here in recpetion would like to wish you all a lovely weekend, full of chocolate and laughter. 

Be safe and have fun with your little treasures!

Love from your little Ducks X 

Week commencing 20.11.17

Another week done! Time flies when you are having fun.

This week saw the beginning of our Nativity practises. We are SO excited to show off our fantastic singing! Our teachers were so proud that we learned all seven songs in 2 days! We have actions and we are learning to sing loudly without shouting. Its going to be a fabulous Nativity and we cant wait for you all to see it! We cant tell you what its about, but lets just say there is a very clumsy character who is really funny!

This week we have been learning about being independent and knowing that if we want to write or practise our numbers, we can do it all by ourselves, we don't always need a grown up to help. We have been using the prompts around our room to write all by ourselves! We know that we can ask our friends to help us and its been so fabulous to show our teachers things that they never knew we could do! 

We have also been thinking about constructing and building models. We now know that before we make or build, its important that we do this for a purpose, so we now know to design what we want to build, and to think of the resources we wish to use have a look...

Weve also had the iPads out this week, having a big focus on our understanding of technology.  We have been using them independently to take pictures of our friends and of our own learning. We are super with technology now and we can even play on interactive learning games all by ourselves!

This week we have also been learning how to count and order numbers to 20! We have been doing it in small groups and even in class all together, lining up for dinner we all have a number! Being called out to learn with a grown up we all have a number...we have been ordering EVERYTHING! 

We are so excited for the next few weeks, we are going to be learning about another season...WINTER!

We have already seen and felt some ice and so we know its definitely getting much colder! We are going to learn exactly where ice comes from along with the other characteristics of Winter. 

Have a super week and see you soon!

Ducks x

Week commencing 13/11/17

This week has been so full of lots of different things! Where do we begin?

We here in Duck Class have been focused on anti bullying week, Percy the Park Keeper, space ships, Children In Need and so much more!

Right back at the start of week on Monday morning, we went into a very important assembly all about 'Anti Bullying Week.' Bullying is not kind and it is not acceptable here in our class or school. We are all friends with everybody and are always kind. We learnt all about how everybody is different and that's ok because how boring would it be if everybody was the same? We learnt that being different is actually something to be really proud of and celebrate!

Our moto for the week has been "All different, all equal." 

Also this week we have really enjoyed learning all about our new friend, Percy The Park Keeper. Percy is a super example of what a good friend is like. He always does his best for others and is always looking out for his animal friends. We have been looking particularly at one of his stories "After The Storm." Lots of us have done some wonderful writing and have been able to retell the story perfectly. 

Outside has been quite exciting this week, a space ship has landed in our playground and it is so much fun! We have been up into space in there, looking at all of the planets. We also have had an Alien School in there! Some of us pretended to be aliens and some of us pretended to be the teachers, it was so much fun.

Our imaginations never cease to amaze our teachers! 

Last but not least, today has been a very special day because it is Children In Need! We have spent this lovely, sunny (but freezing cold!) Friday, in our own yellow and spotty clothes to celebrate. We have had lots of fun with Pudsey Bear and learnt all about what Children In Need means. We have all brought £1 into school so that we can make a difference to those children who need it most. We know that these pennies are going to go towards helping others that might be too poorly to go to school themselves. We have watched lots of videos and read some stories all about the lives of others and we know that we are extremely lucky and that it is extremely important to help in anyway we can because after all, we are all different, all equal. 

Thanks so much for checking in with us! We will be back in no time with more updates from our beautiful Ducks.

Have the best weekend and don't forget to never stop laughing and smiling. 

Duck Class x 

Week commencing 6/11/17 - Duck Class

Greetings and welcome back to our class blog after another lovely week at school. The ducks have been very busy this week, getting stuck into their learning and adventuring. 

The week started off by learning all about each others weekends, lots of us had lots of fun going to see the fireworks and bonfire displays. We have been telling our teachers all about them! In honour of bonfire night, we have been doing lots of art work of fireworks, bonfires and sparklers. We have created firework paintings using junk modelling resources and we even used the chalk outside with Miss Clarke and drew fireworks all over our playground! it defiantly made it look a lot... brighter!

We have also been learning all about Capacity this week in Reception. We are improving in our maths knowledge and skills everyday! We have taken lots of different shaped and sized containers and we have been making them full, half full, half empty and empty with our teachers and then writing all about it. We have done this inside in our special capacity tuff spot and outside in the water trays too! 

Another thing that we have been really proud to be a part of this week is Remembrance Day. We had a very special assembly where we learnt about the importance of remembrance day and how important it is to think of those people who have lost their lives. Also, to remember people we may love and have lost in our own lives. We watched a special and beautiful video all about poppies too, some of us have been wearing our poppies very proudly this week which is just lovely to see. In duck class, we believe that you can never be too young to show respect to anybody and everybody. 

Thanks for catching up with us on our weeks at school! We hope everyone has a super weekend full of fun and laughter.

Duck Class x 

Welcome back Duck Class! 

After a fun filled week at home with our lovely family and friends, we are back into the swing of things here in Duck Class. We have been busy little ducks, going on autumn walks, learning about firework safety and doing lots of show and tells from half term! 

Miss James and Miss Clarke took us out on an autumn walk in our wellies and big warm coats! it was so much fun, we learnt all about our senses, what we could hear, see and smell. we also collected lots of different coloured leaves to go onto our display, to make pictures with and we even made leaf men!

With bonfire night approaching we have being learning all about how to stay safe around fire and fireworks. Fireman Sam has been very helpful and being teaching us his top 10 tips for Bonfire Night! We know that fireworks, bonfire fires and sparklers can be very hot! So we have to wear our gloves and stay with our grown ups. We also know that fireworks and bonfires are super to watch! But its important that we stay back so that we are safe. 

Now we know all about bonfire night and Autumn, we are more than ready to enjoy the season in full force and enjoy our weekends watching some colourful fireworks going off in the sky!

Duck Class x

Week commencing 9th October 2017

This week we had our super Harvest assembly. We practised our song so well every day this week and all of our hard work paid off as  we wowed our families and friends with our super singing and actions. We also wowed our teachers with our colourful autumn clothes that we wore especially for our performance! 

We know that harvest is a time to be thankful and to appreciate all of the food that we get to eat and share from all over the world.

We are very lucky.  

We have continued to learn about the Lost and Found story this week, thinking about sequencing the story and practising our writing to retell the story. We even re-enacted the story outside by working together and using the construction materials to make boats! We sailed away to find the lonely penguin and brought him home so that he could be happy and looked after. We have also really enjoyed watching the animated version of the story that our teachers found for us on YouTube.

Our fire station role play area in our classroom is the BEST! We love to play in there, pretending to be super hero firefighters. This week we took lots of cardboard boxes and made them into fire engines! We took them, lots of red paint, Miss Clarke and Miss Newbon outside so that we could have lots of fun painting so that we could put them in our fire station. 

We have continued our topic all about friendship this week too. We are getting to know and remember our school values and are using them everyday to help us be the best friends we can be. Next week we are so excited as we are going to make friendship cupcakes to celebrate all that we have learnt as we come to the end of our topic. We love being good friends and we love eating cake! 

Week commencing 2nd October

Another week has flown by in Reception.

We are well on our way to knowing our school values and we are using these daily to ensure we are always doing and being our best.

We have started to learn all about a beautiful story called 'Lost and Found' by Oliver Jeffers. It is all about a penguin who appears to b lost and in actual fact he is not lost at all! He just wants to have some friends. We have been doing lots of activities related t the story including shape penguins!! We've even learned all about the South Pole!

We are super excited about our Harvest festival too! We are learning a super song and cant wait to perform in front of all of our families and friends. We will post pictures and videos to show you all! Watch this space...

Week commencing 18.9.17

This week in Duck Class we have started to look at our first book for our topic of friendship. We have learned that everyone around us, including ourselves have a bucket! You cant see it! We learned a new word called 'invisible'. We have learned that to fill someones bucket you must be kind and loyal and to be a good friend and that we don't want to empty our own or anyone else's bucket or that makes you feel very sad and lonely.

We have started to find out all about the values that we follow at Waterside. We have learned that our red value is respect and that we do not only need to show respect for ourselves and others, but we also need to respect our learning environment too. We know that we look after each other and our things...that way we can fill buckets too!

We have had a brand new role play! We told our grown ups that we would love a fire station and now we have one! We are learning about the people around us who help us as part of our friendship topic and now we can be firemen and ladies too!

Another super week in Duck class. I wonder what exciting things might happen next week?

Week commencing 11.9.17

We have been super busy this week, getting to know each other and completing our baseline documents. We have shown our teachers all of the wonderful things we already know and have been telling our adults what we would love to see in our classroom! 

Teachers now know us really well and can see exactly where we are working at and we are so excited to start our topic next week on Friendship. Miss Newbon read our new story 'Have you filled a bucket today?' all about how to fill peoples buckets by making them feel loved and happy. We are all really good friends in Duck class already and we cant wait to learn more! 

Week commencing 4th September...Week one...complete!

And what a week it has been! We spent lots of time getting to know our new teachers and some new friends that have joined us at Waterside.

We have been busy getting to know our fabulous learning environment and all of the exciting new things for us to learn about and to explore! We haven't been the only busy ones though. Our teachers have been super busy, finding out all of the amazing things we already know and they have been interested to find out all of the wonderful adventures we have been on during the Summer break.

We have been showing off how super we are with our letters and numbers, shapes, reading and writing, as well as showing how fantastic we are at communicating and learning with others. We've been indoors and outdoors whenever we have liked and we've helped to make our room even more special by adding work onto our walls!
 

We have learned about our Dojo visual rewards. We are so excited to have our names on the shiny gold dojo! We know that that is a super star place to be!

Week one you have been amazing!

Hello little ducks! Welcome back to what is going to be a year full of fun learning whereby we will be making lots of new wonderful memories together!

We hope that you have had a fabulous Summer and are full of energy ready for the Autumn term. We have really missed you and are looking forward to seeing your smiley faces tomorrow.

Over the Summer your Mummy Ducks have been super busy creating a magical, nurturing environment in which for you to learn, grow and develop.

If you want a sneaky peek before the term begins, then scroll below and see whats ready and waiting for you!

3 . 7. 17

I can show you the world !!!

This week we have been learning about Aladdin! we have been so fascinated to learn about the Genies, their magic and how Aladdin was granted wishes.
This week we began our exciting preparations for our graduation which is on the 17th July!

We have been working hard and ready to show off our great work!!

We have also been practising hard on our races for sports day which is on the 11th July!
we hope to see you all there!!

26 . 6. 17

Tale as old as time - song as old as rhyme. Wow what a busy week we have had this week! it has been non stop from the word go!

beginning on tuesday we had another fabulous transition day, we WOW'd our teachers by setting the nursery a great example; showing them how to be good friends and do fantastic learning. 

Our Fairy tale this week has been Beauty and the Beast, we have loved reading the story and re-enacting it. We have done some excellent literacy and written a letter from Beauty, to the beast. On thursday we took part in a whole school dedicated Art day, we have created some SUPERB pond life pieces which will be available to buy from the School's Anniversary party on saturday 1st July.

We hope to see you there!!

Duck Class

19.6.17  You shall go to the ball!!!   This week in duck class we have learnt the fairytale Cinderella!

We have enjoyed learning the story and sharing what we have learnt, we have acted out the story and even written it out!! we have been checking our work this week to see if we have improved on our next steps and we are working really hard.

In maths this week we have been created castles by drawing around 2D shapes and learning about the differences between our castles and real ones. We have also been looking at halving and sharing, we worked together to see how we would share the cake at Cinderellas ball!

The teachers kept trying to take more cake though!! 

We have make some wonderful art pieces this week that are cinderella themed! we are very proud.

Our teachers are SO proud as we have achieved 100% green dojos in FS2L AND  FS2N this week!! well done ducks

12.06.17

What BIG learning we have been doing! This week in duck class we have been learning all about little red riding hood and that pesky wolf! An my what big EYES, EARS and TEETH he had!!

we have enjoyed acting the story out in pairs and groups and even dressing up as the characters!! We went on a journey to find grandma's cottage and how many steps it took us to get there!! we also compared the size of Grandma, little red riding hood and the Wolf.

We advanced in our writing this week and looked at character descriptions and writing them independently, we used fantastic words like "huge, scary, mean, wicked and sneaky" in our writing.

5 . 6 .17

FE FI FO FUM that is a new topic we can smell!

We have started our 'Fairy Tales' topic this week in duck class with 'Jack and the Beanstalk' being our book of the week. The children have enjoyed learning the story, acting it out and even writing the story. We have been writing some fantastic character descriptions of the giant and starting to use our 'WOW' words such as 'grumpy, scary and frightening'. In maths this week we were very lucky to have some magic beans to share with our friends. We have also been measuring and comparing giants feet to ours, we have never seen such big feet in all our lives!!.

We have been showing off our excellent performance skills on our new Role play 'X factor Stage'! We have also been working hard and doing some great learning in our fantastic reading area, ' our reading castle'. We have had a great first week back and can't wait to keep doing our great learning for the next half term.

22.5.17

This week in duck class we have been enjoying our final week learning about pirates! we have been looking at different pirate stories and adventures they have had. We have finished the week off by each writing our own exciting pirates adventures.! We have helped to create a 'pirate map maths' display in our classroom, in which we have been looking at doubling parrot feathers, the capacity of different objects, making patterns on pirate ship sails and the properties of shapes. 

We certainly have been busy!

Have a great half term from all the staff in duck class!

15.5.17 

This week in duck class, we have been busy telling people what we have learnt about pirates. We have been creating some wonderful pirate ‘tools’ including maps and eyepatches. We have shown some of these on  our display. We also created some instructions to find out buried treasure, and even drawn a map to show the way. Let’s hope those pesky treasure thieves don’t find it. We have been showing just how great we are with our writing and phonics in our weekly diaries too. We have been busy looking at shapes and how to identify how many vertices, faces, and sides they have. We have been doing lots of independent adding and subtracting in our heads. We are getting very independent now, and we love going into our classrooms to do adding up and taking away numbers by counting on or backwards! We can even write our own number sentences!

We have been talking lots this week! Our teachers wanted to know what learning we love to do, and what interests we have, keep your eyes peeled for our new topic after half term!! Its going to be so much fun!

8th May 2017

Shiver me timbers! What a week!

We have been stranded at sea and we had to write a message in a bottle to send out to sea! Our role play area has changed from a birthday party to a treasure island so that we can find the missing treasure.

We know all about the different ships that pirates live on and the way pirates live! We have been finding lots of treasure, here there and everywhere around our classroom, adding and it together and taking some away as it gets stolen from other cheeky pirates! We have to keep lookout from our ship and work together as a team to keep them away!

In Talk for Writing we have learned all about parrots in 'My Parrot Jim'. We learned two verses of the poem, thinking about the rhyming words and we managed to write the poem out all by ourselves using the pictures to help us with what comes next. We love writing in Duck Class.

We love our topic on pirates!

2nd May 2017

Pirates!

Ahoy me hearties! Our new topic for this half term is pirates! We discussed all of the things we already knew and what we would like to find out about. Over the next few weeks we have so many wonderful things to do!

On Friday we had our very special 'Pirate Day' where we all dressed up as pirates (even our teachers!) We had so much fun acting like pirates, making telescopes, pirate hats, parrots and even swords!!  On Friday we had a pirate party to celebrate Captain Cutlass' birthday! 

We now know how to dance like pirates too. We practise the pirate dance on the 'Five a Day' website everyday. It has taught us to move like a pirate and to learn new pirate words like 'hoist the sail!' and we even have to 'scrub the deck!'. It must have been tough being a pirate! We know we have to be god pirates or we might have to 'walk the plank!'.

We cant wait to learn more about pirates! This week we have made 'WANTED' posters because we need to find the pirates who tricked Captain Cutlass in our story 'Pirate Post'.

13th March 2017

This week in Duck Class we had a special arrival!

Four baby chicks! We decided to name them  Charlie, Jack, Henry and Daisy!. We had a super time learning all about the life cycle of a hen and discussing the features and changes from eggs to chicks!

We have been excited to learn how to care for the chicks and to discover everything that the chicks need to be happy and healthy.

                                                                                 ,

We had to be really quiet whilst the eggs were hatching and make sure they were warm. We cannot wait to hold them, they are very noisy!  

16th January

We have had a lovely week learning together all about celebrations and birthdays. We have been reading about Kippers Birthday together and learning to retell the story using Talk for Writing. We are getting very good at retelling the story.

We have made Kipper a birthday card and written in it, made patterned wrapping paper for presents and made shopping lists for the party.

If you would like to send in photographs of your birthday celebrations that would be great!

We can't wait to celebrate Kippers birthday next week!

Have a look at all the other independent learning we have been doing too!

Week 09.01.16

Well we have had a busy week in Duck class. We have continued to learn about pets and had a visit from Miss Lukasiwecz pet dogs, Bella and Dolly. They were two lovely Cocker Spaniels that were very friendly. We saw them sit, roll over and listen carefully to Miss Lukasiewicz. We really enjoyed them visiting!

We also had a visiting theatre company who came and gave us a fantastic performance of the Snow Queen. We were all amazed by the show and enjoyed it so much. We have been talking about it for the rest of the week!

We ended the week with some lovely snow. We had a great time exploring and investigating the snow. As we don't get snow very often we spent lots of time outside, making snowballs, snowmen and enjoying exploring.

We can't wait to see what next week brings!

Week 02.01.16

Welcome back after our holidays. We hope you had a good rest and those of you who celebrated Christmas enjoyed your celebrations!

We are all now ready and raring to go with some more fantastic learning to build on everything we already know.

As always we have had a busy week learning and discovering together. We have been reading the story The Great Pet Sale by Mick Inkpen.

So we have been to our local pet shop to learn about what we will need to look after pets. We were very sensible and walked down to the pet shop with great attitudes. We had a good look around the shop and event saw a budgie called Derek!

We have some special pets coming to visit us next week!

Week 31.10.16

We hope that you have all had a brilliant half term. We are back to do some fantastic learning together and can't wait to see what learning we discover together.

We have been learning all about Diwali, we have made rangoli patterns, Diva lamps, done some dancing and played musical instruments along to the dancing. We have also done lots of learning about celebrations and discussed what we like to celebrate with our families. 

We also learned about Bonfire night safety and how to stay safe on the 5th of November. If you have enjoyed a celebration this week we hope that you have had a great time.

Duck Class

Week 10th October

What a busy week of learning we have been doing so much learning, have a look at our photographs to see what we have been up to.

Please remember you are all welcome to our harvest celebration on Wednesday 19th October at 9.10 in the school hall. Any donations of food will be welcomed and donated to the local foodbank.

Week 3rd October

We are now reading the traditional tale Goldilocks and the three bears. We have been thinking about the choices that Goldilocks made, eating the porridge, breaking the chair and sleeping in baby bears bed.

We have had another action packed week of learning together, just look at the photographs at what we have been doing. 

Week 26th September

We have continued learning about friendship. 

We have made a cheesecake together! Mmmmmmm

We listened carefully to the instructions and made a biscuit base, mixed cream, strawberries and sugar to make the topping. Then it went into the fridge to set. The next day we were able to share the cheesecake together and show even more friendship.

Week 19th September

Continuing our learning about friendship we have been reading the book Cowboys can be Kind. We are learning about ways to show friendship and kindness to everyone.

We have made cowboys hats and been showing kindness to our friends in our learning.

Can you see us showing friendship in our photographs?

Week 12th September

This week we have been learning about friendship.

We have made a friendship paper chain, decorated cakes for our friends and shown our friendship value to all our friends in the class. What a wonderful start to our time in duck class.

Week 5th September

We would like to say a big welcome back to children from our nursery and to some new children also. We are excited about the year ahead and can't wait to see what adventures and learning we will do together. 

From Mrs Donnellan, Miss Newbon, Miss Lukasewicz, Miss Lukasiewicz and Mrs Foster

Week commencing 11/7/16

We have had another busy week in Duck class with lots of learning and we have also been preparing for our graduation. We are almost ready to go into Year One. We have also sent home reports for all the brilliant children in duck class and also letter to let them know their class next year. If you have any questions about your report please speak to Miss Davies or Mrs Donnellan.

We would love to see all our families at the Graduation, it is on Monday 18th July at 1.15 in the school hall.

Please call the office to get tickets and then come into class afterwards for our open afternoon.

Week 04/07/16

Firstly we would like to say happy Eid to all of family and friends; we hope you had a lovely time celebrating. This week we have continued to learn about space and are developing a true understanding and interest for the topic. We are working hard to become truly independent in our learning and developing our skills ready for Year One.We have done lots of circle times this week and talking about how we feel about our transition to our new classes, we were all very honest and I know everybody is going to have a positive mind set during our transition period.

Have a look at the construction we have being doing with the Kapla this week, we are really using our imaginations to think about building new and different models. Can you build using blocks, lego or other construction? If you do, please send us a picture and we will put it on our page.

These last two weeks are going to be very fast and full of learning and we are sure we have lots of fun and enjoy our last few weeks together.

Our Foundation Stage Sports Day

01/07/2016

What a fantastic sports day we had today, I was so impressed with all the children they showed such determination and were perfectly behaved. You are such a credit to our school and make all of us so proud! We did lots of races today; we did a running race, bean bag race, egg and spoon race and a sack race! We got given stickers if we came 1st, 2nd or 3rd and even got to stand on a podium. Not everybody can win and we certainly think taking part is much more important aswell as supporting our friends.

We then all got to have a picnic on the field and enjoyed our dinner with our family and friends, it was the perfect morning.

Thank-you for everyone for supporting and we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.

Week 27/06/16

This week we have been reading the story The way back home by Oliver Jeffers, continuing with our Space theme. We have enjoyed this story and learning about the aeroplane and the spaceship and how they got back home.

We had a fantastic afternoon of den building with our friends and families on Thursday. The rain stayed away for the afternoon but if it had come we would of have plenty of places to shelter. We have so much fun and can't wait to build some more dens and we will make them even better. Thank you to everyone for coming.

Week Beginning 20/6/16

This week we haven't had any visitors like last week but we have still continued to do lots of learning around our space book this week 'Whatever Next!'. This week our blog has been written by Tala and Aminah.

We have sequenced the pictures of the story using our knowledge from talk to writing to help us and then wrote the story. We have even used our own box to go to the moon and have a picnic with an owl! At the end of the week we then wrote the story of Whatever Next and produced some fabulous work!

Here is Tala's fantastic writing of the story.

This week we have also painted our hands and feet to design aliens, we loved it and want to paint the teachers feet next!

We have made alien space ships and even tried to go the moon ourselves.

We are also getting ready for sports day and have been practising our races and understanding the start and finish line, we are so excited for next Friday and we hope to see you all there.

Speak to you next week, Swan & Duck Class x

Week Beginning 13.06.16

It has been another busy week and lots of exciting things have happened in Swan and Duck Class. This week our blog has been written by Jessica and Setayesh.

Our Daddies came to school for dinner because it is Father's Day. We had lots of food, we had a tuna sandwich and chicken nuggets, our daddies had dinner from the dinner ladies too. We went outside with our daddies and our brothers and sisters, we were very excited. We even got to go on the big playground and use the big equipment, we wish our Daddies came to school everyday. We love our Daddies and it is nice to spend time with them.

On Friday we were ever so shocked, we went for a walk around the school and everyone had gone! We were very worried about their whereabouts, we wrote where we thought everyone had gone and thought maybe they had been stolen or even gone to the seaside! Luckily they had only gone for Sports Day, Phew!

We wonder what is going to happen next week!

Swan & Duck Class x

BIG POETRY READ!

What a fabulous afternoon reciting our poems aloud to a wonderful audience. We were all very proud of our poem and enjoyed ourselves. Parents, family and friends were invited to come into the classroom and share our learning together. We had a great time.

Thank you all who came.

The Big Poetry Read

We have been preparing for the Big Poetry Read all week during talk for writing. We have really enjoyed ourselves and we can already perform the poem after only two sessions!

This half term we are learning all about Space and its wonders!

As we love to read here at Waterside we are going to focus on 4 different books throughout the half term.

-Whatever Next

-The way back home!

-How to catch a star

-On the moon

Our trip to the Blue Planet Aquarium.

We had a fabulous time and we all got to experience new and interesting things. We were very lucky to watch a show at the beginning of the day, the show allowed us to see some of the animals being fed. There were two scuba divers and they were wearing equipment to help them breath under water. In the tank there was lots of animals such as sharks, sting rays and thousands of fish! The lady scuba diver got to feed the fish using a bottle which she shook into the water, she then fed the sting rays by putting fish into their mouths. One of the sharks however thought they were a sting ray and kept hugging the scuba diver!

We got to see lots of wonderful creatures such as jelly fish, star fish and even electric eels!