Last week of half term!

It's crazy to think that we are now half way through the academic year - it only seems like 5 minutes since we were welcoming all of the children into school for the first time!

We have continued with our topic 'People who help us' with the focus this week being on The Police. As the police wear ID badges, in Literacy the children have been writing personal details about their age, hair and eye colour. Some have then written a sentence about themselves. We have discussed how we are all unique and what this means. To help the children better understand this, they have made detailed portraits of themselves in art, which has included some scrapbook work on drawing an eye. I definitely think we have some budding artists in Reception, as they produced some lovely artwork. Other activities this week have included taking our fingerprints and understanding that these are all different; we even tried 'lifting' finger prints like the police! The children also considered the different professions of people who help us and identified what equipment they would need to do their jobs successfully. In the Secret Garden this week, the children continued the theme of 'unique' by studying different leaves and taking rubbings.

In Maths this week, the children have continued to learn about the properties of 2D shapes by identifying which shape is being described and drawing it. 

We have been very lucky to have two visitors in Reception this week who each talked about the jobs that they do. The first was Mr Borrett, a nurse practitioner, who spent time explaining  his job and then sharing some of the equipment that he uses to help people. The children were very engaged and asked lots of sensible questions.

On Thursday, we also received a visit from PC Hannah, who is a police woman with Suffolk Constabulary. She spent a lot of time explaining what she wears and what equipment she carries and how and why it is used. The children were then lucky enough to have a look at her police car which they all sat in and turned on the blue lights, which caused great excitement!

We would like to thank these visitors very much for their time; it really helped the children to understand their roles better and stimulated so many questions and it was obvious the children loved the experiences. It was also great for the stereotypes of who can do these jobs to be broken.  ​

We have  also been lucky enough to see the visiting tractor that came into school this week. The children were amazed at its size and also to hear that it was a baby tractor!

As is usual at the end of any half term, the children have once again been assessed on their phonic knowledge. Pleasingly, most of the cohort have made progress, which is great. More children have moved into the 'Ditty' group or beyond, which means more children will start to bring home a reading book. Please take the time to share these with the children as well as the green and red words that have also been sent home. Your support makes such a difference to your child's progress, but hopefully you have been having fun with the resources too. As always, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact your child's class teacher. 

Thank you to everyone that came to Parents' Evening; it was lovely to meet with so many of you and discuss your child's progress in school. If you were unable to attend but would like to meet with your child's class teacher, please speak to them directly to arrange a convenient time to  meet.

We have started to receive some lovely homework. Well done to everyone that has brought some in to share. Half term is a great opportunity to have another look at the homework for Reception and maybe have a go at completing another activity which can be shared next half term!

Congratulations to everyone that received a Well Done, or celebrated a birthday this week. 

For Show and Tell next half term, we would like the children to bring in something sphere shaped. 

Have a lovely and restful half term everyone!