Spring 1 

This term we are looking at our new topic of ‘Winter and Ice’. We are going to be taking part in different science experiments, such as 'sticky ice' and the 'blubber' experiment. 

In maths, we have been thinking all about number 5 and 6. We have been subitising numbers 0-6 thinking about how the numbers are made up. We have then been using our stem sentences. for example, 2 and 2 makes 4. We invited our parents in to attend a maths workshop, which we really enjoyed. We shared our subitising knowledge with them and have taken home some homework to complete with our grown ups. 

In our space, shape and measures we have been using the balancing scales to describe items using heavier and lighter. We then used some cubes to see if we could balance different items out. 

In phonics we have started to move onto phase 3 and looking at the different digraphs and trigraphs. We are reading these in our collins ebooks and started to write short sentences using our phonics knowledge making sure we are spelling tricky words correctly. 

On Friday mornings, we are enjoying taking part  in forest school sessions with Miss Mantle/ Mrs Spencer. During this sessions, we have been on winter walks, looking at different animals who may hibernate in the winter and very soon we are going to be making our own bird feeders, made bird Feeders and even enjoyed looking for the signs of winter.

We are all very excited to be moving onto our new topic after half term where we have some visitors coming to see us and we will be going on a Trip on Tuesday 12th March. 

Spring 2

This half term our new topic was 'Spring and new life'. We started off our topic thinking about pancake day. We had a very exciting week, we made a list of pancake ingredients, next we got to make a pancake and then we could create a silly pancake face. Little Wandle loved our reception work so much they decided to send our photos to lots of different schools in the country!

In our second week we had the arrival of some new fluffy animals. We were very lucky to have an incubator and 10 eggs to be delivered to our school. We observed them very closely with the magnifying glasses and could not wait for them to start hatching. When we came to school on the Thursday we had 1 baby chick. All day on Thursday the eggs started to hatch one by one. As Friday came all 10 had hatched and we watched Miss Marshall move the chicks from the incubator to the brooder box and we watched them eating their dinner and drinking their water. As the chicks started to grow we had lots of cuddles with the chicks, and we started to think about the life cycle of a chick, we even made a mixed media life cycle. As the chicks came to their tenth day we had to say goodbye, they were getting too big for their brooder box so we rehomed them with one of our parents, Mr Neville. We are very lucky as he is sending us lots of updates on our chicks so we can observe how they grow.

Linking to our new topic of new life, we had our very first farm trip up at Beaudesert Park Farm. We spent the morning meeting some animals, where there were lots of goats, some cows and baby calf's and we got to meet 'The Little Red Hen'. We had the opportunity to have a piece of wheat and turn that wheat into flour. We also read the story 'Jack and the Beanstalk' where we planted some peas and a magic bean. A big thank you to Faye from Leaf education for making it a fantastic trip at the farm. After learning where flour comes from, Mrs Lichfield came into Reception to make some bread with us. It tasted delicious!

In our artist area we have been busy. We have had a go at making lots of observational drawings such as daffodils, crocuses, chicks. We even used our fine motor skills to create a beautiful flower card for Mother's Day.

In phonics we are coming to the end of phase 3, where we have learnt all of our digraphs/ trigraphs and phase 3 tricky words along with polysyllabic words. Well done to the 25/28 children who have been reading their ebooks. 

In maths we have been looking at number bonds to 10 in greater depth, and have developed our understanding of the term equal. Futhermore, we have developed our knowledge of pattern and 3D shapes. 

We are looking forward to starting our new topic in the summer term and can't wait to share our work with you.