Our first term at school so far

10th October 2022Charlotte Burn

We wanted to start our first blog with a little poem.

We understand that you are scared to wave your child goodbye and leave them in a teacher’s hands – don’t worry if you cry!
We are used to weeping parents, it’s hard to leave I know. But it’s time to share them (just a bit) to help them learn and grow.
Let us reassure you that we’ll give your child our best, we’ll wipe their tears and soothe their fears!
If your darling child is full of cold, we’ll blow their nose all day, just like you, we’ll care for them in a special way.
We’ll treat him like we would our own, we’ll catch them from a fall and if there is ANY problem, we’ll be sure to tell you all.
It’s true they’ll grow to love us, they’ll talk of school a lot, it doesn’t mean they hate you and that you should lose the plot!
We’ll tell you a secret… That when your child is here, they talk to me as much of you of this please have no fear.
You’ll always be their parent whilst teachers come and go, to them you are their number one, this I truly know.
Soon you’ll see some changes, in your little girl or boy, they’ll become more independent and to see this, it’s a joy!
We’ll teach them all we have to give, to share, climb and to write, but to you they safely will return to tuck them in at night.

The children have settled in amazingly well and you should be so proud of them! Their first term at school has almost come to an end and we are going to share some of the fantastic things the children have been working on.

In the mornings the children have been working on their fine motor skills.

   

 

 

Bead threading and necklace making

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Playdough shapes to strengthen their finger muscles

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pencil control worksheets

 

 

 

We have introduced our daily phonics Read Write Inc scheme where the children have been learning a new sound every day. They have also met Fred the frog who helps them to hear the sounds in the word to support their reading. On our school website you can find helpful links to videos on YouTube to support your child/ren to understand the Read Write Inc scheme in more detail. So far, your child would have been introduced to the sounds m,a,s,d,t,i,n,p,g,o,c,k

RWI Speed Sounds Lesson 1 – m – YouTube

What is Read Write Inc.? – YouTube

We have also been decorating the initial sounds of our names and thinking of things that begin with the same sound.

In Literacy the children have been reading Traditional Tales. We have been looking at Goldilocks and the three bears, The 3 Little Pigs and the Gingerbread Man.

There have been some strange things happening in our classrooms and if you check the school Twitter page you will be able to see some of our crime scenes.

Here’s Goldilocks and the three bears.

The children were shocked to see there was someone in our class that had broken a chair, had eaten a bowl of porridge and was still sleeping in baby bear’s bed!

 

As you may have seen in our garden area, we have been planting some Daffodils, we would be extremely grateful for any donations of plants or herbs that we could plant for the children to see grow over their year in Foundation or if you are green fingered and could lend a hand helping keep our garden lovely for our children.

Our topic is all about me and our families. We have been sharing our family photos with our peers and using mirrors to draw self-portraits of ourselves. You may hear the children singing this song too and they love it! Good to be me – Sing Up – YouTube

During October we have been celebrating Black History Month. Our key person is Garrett Morgan, who helped to design the yellow part of the traffic light. This was to improve road safety. We have been looking at people who help us around the school including the Lollypop person Mr. Paul.

Finally, the children celebrated Hello Yellow day! We wore something yellow and talked about our positive mental health and how we feel. The children celebrated their achievements on I can, and I am happy when… stars, decorated biscuits with yellow icing and smiley faces as well as finding as many yellow objects as they could hidden around their classrooms.

We would like to thank you for supporting us so far this term. If you have any donations for our outside area or would like to make any contributions to the Foundation fund, please see the office or your child’s class teacher. We look forward to continuing to enhance your child’s learning journey with us and are looking forward to parent’s evening next week.

 

A celebration to remember

16th June 2022Charlotte Burn

We had a fantastic time celebrating the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. We decorated flags, made bunting, designed and wore our own crowns and got to wear our red/white or blue clothes.

We had a delicious picnic and decorated cupcakes to eat with our friends.

The Queen even came to join us for our royal tea party at lunchtime.

For our Talk for Writing our new Story is The Gruffalo . The Mouse left the children a letter and we went on a woodland walk to find the characters in the story.

 

In Maths we have been working on doubling, halving and sharing.

We have started our enrichment sessions by designing either a pizza, a stone or a t-shirt. The children are very excited and cannot wait to make their final products. Keep an eye out for the finished pieces!

When we went down to the woods

20th May 2022Charlotte Burn

We went to the woods and we were surprised to see Little Red Riding Hood. She explained to us she was picking some flowers on the way to visit her Grandma but she was hiding as she had seen a wolf. She asked us if we could keep an eye out incase we saw the wolf on our walk back . Thankfully we didn’t! This is the start of our new book ‘ Little Red Riding Hood’.

In Maths the children have been finding one more and one less of a number to 20 using 10’s frames and cubes.

We have been very lucky to have some guinea pigs in to visit us . The children got the opportunity to stroke them and feel their soft fur.

Watch this space when we will be finding out about our exciting animal visitors coming to visit us on 14th July!

 

Next week we are having a Jubilee themed lunch for the Queen on the field depending on the weather. We are very excited and have started making gold and silver crowns to wear at our picnic! We can also wear non uniform on Wednesday 25th May and try to come in wearing clothes that are, or have, red, white or blue in them.

As the weather has been getting warmer can we remind you to send your child in to school with a sun hat. Please could you ensure your child has sun cream on before they come to school on really hot days.

Don’t forget to check our weekly tweets on our Twitter page @WigmorePrimary !

 

 

Welcome to our Summer term

29th April 2022Charlotte Burn

We are very lucky to have a beautiful blossom tree outside our reception area. We have been looking for signs of Spring and the children collected the fallen blossom leaves and created their own Spring tree.

Also looking at different photos of Spring flowers and drawing our own pictures.

 

In the outside area we made a large marble run on the playground using guttering and stands for the children to roll balls down and catch them inside the tyres. They experimented with different angles to see how quickly or slowly the ball would roll down.

In Maths we have been looking at repeating patterns and subtraction.

The children have been learning the rules of bowling and have had fun playing outside in the sunshine. One child even got a strike! This links to our number bonds to 10 as well as the children understanding how to write subtraction sums. E.g. We have 10 skittles, 3 fall down how many do we have left standing ?

10-3= 7

The children have been using different media and objects to create repeating patterns of their own choice.

In English we had a special visitor on our playground. A tiger came to join us for a tea party and even brought us some biscuits to eat. The tiger ended up being really friendly but he ate all our biscuits, drank all the water from the tap and all our milk and fruit from snack time. Before the tiger left he read us a story called ‘ ‘The Tiger who came to tea by Judith Kerr’ .

Our topic is Animals this term and we have started by looking at the different pets that we have at home. Mr Johnston brought in his dog called Maggie for us to meet.
The children asked questions then drew some pictures of Maggie.
We are looking forward to meeting some more pets in the next few weeks.

Enjoy your bank holiday weekend and we look forward to seeing you on Tuesday 3rd May.

 

A giant visitor

24th March 2022Charlotte Burn

Foundation have had a visit from a very tall, stomping giant this week who was looking for a boy called Jack…. He wasn’t able to find him but instead left the children some beans to plant and a story for the children to read called Jack and the Beanstalk.

We have planted our beans and have made diaries to record what happens to them over time and hopefully we might have some beanstalks for our outside area.

Then in Science we looked at parts of a plant, labelled and drew them as well as doing some still life drawing of Pansies and Daffodils.

 

We also planted cress seeds and have watched them grow over the past week. We are going to harvest the crop and put in a sandwich for the children to taste.

 

 

In Maths we have done the number bond rap to 10  Let’s all do the 10 dance (number bonds to 10 song) – YouTube
I Know My Number Bonds 10 | Number Bonds to 10 | Addition Song for Kids | Jack Hartmann – YouTube
and using the part, part whole model and a tens frame to help us work out the number bonds to 10. E.g 8+2=10, 7+3=10.

 

Earlier this week we wore odd socks to celebrate awareness of Downs Syndrome day. The children decorated some brilliant odd socks too.

The children have enjoyed riding their bikes and scooters around the Key Stage one playground this week for our Big walk and wheel event. This will continue into next week.

 

Coming up in the next few weeks we will be looking at different Easter activities, Mother’s Day cards and looking for signs of Spring in our local woodland environment.

 

We hope you all have a wonderful Easter break and the sun continues to shine. Thank you for all your support over the past term with your child/children’s learning.

 

 

 

Busy little bees this term!

3rd March 2022Charlotte Burn

This term has been so busy and exciting for the children with Pancake Cake and World Book Day all in the same week! Read on to see what else we have been up to.

 

We have been looking at how we change over time. The children have loved guessing who the baby pictures belong to. We have had some great discussions about what we are able to do now that we couldn’t do as a baby or a toddler.

In Math the children have been investigating measuring. We have had lots of fun measuring different things around the classroom and also each other! We have looked at key vocabulary such as longer, shorter, taller, wider, rulers and measurements.

This week has been full of extra WOW days including Pancake Day and World Book Day.

The children enjoyed tasting pancakes and learning about why some people celebrate Pancake day/ Shrove Tuesday. They designed their own pancakes and we discussed what type of toppings they love to have on top of them. The children were lucky enough to taste some traditional pancakes in the classroom with some lemon juice and sugar. The overall outcomes was that the children thought they were delicious!

For World Book Day the children and staff came dressed in some fabulous costumes. The Foundation Stage staff came dressed as characters from The Little Miss and Little Mr Men book series. I wonder if you can name us all ?

We also had a brilliant time inviting our parents and carers in to share The Very Hungry Caterpillar story with us and to be involved in some activities alongside their children. The children went to a great effort to dress up and also brought in their favourite books to share with the classes.

The Winners of our best dressed costumes were

two very hungry caterpillars, a gingerbread lady and the bad tempered ladybird!

Foundation 11/2/22

8th February 2022Charlotte Burn

Reception have had a really busy term. We have welcomed back Miss Burn from Maternity leave who is now in Pine Class as their class teacher along with Mrs Lim. 

We have been on a lovely but chilly winter woodland walk looking for signs of spring around our school environment. The children spotted some flowers starting to bloom, a lot of trees still bare and we even saw a red kite flying over our playing fields.

The children had the opportunity to celebrate Chinese New year and tasted prawn crackers. They made some Chinese lanterns, decorated tigers and learnt to write their names using the Chinese alphabet.

 

We have finished our story ‘The Sleepy Bumblebee’ and have rewritten it ourselves changing the characters, the children had some fabulous ideas to really enhance the story. 

Taking part in internet safety day this week has been a great experience to find out about families we facetime that we can’t always see and how incredible the internet is allowing us to share and see families across the world. It has also shown us how important it is to stay safe online and to be aware of what your children are accessing on phones and tablets. 

 

After half term we have a new exciting topic of ‘Growing’ and we can’t wait to share all our wonderful work with you.

Have a fun filled February half term ! We can’t wait to hear all about your adventures!

Foundation Blog 14th January 2022

21st January 2022Margaret Lim

Welcome back to school! The children have settled back happily after the holiday.

Our focus in English this term is the story of the Sleepy Bumblebee, thinking about the noises that kept the bumblebee awake. The children will become familiar with the story, joining in with the repeated language and eventually will create their own story by changing certain aspects of the story, such as the noises which keep the sleepy bumblebee awake.

We are continuing our daily phonics learning and handwriting.

You will have received a letter about home reading. Please can we encourage you to read with your child daily  and write a comment in their book.

In Maths we have begun to learn simple addition such as 3+2=5, 4+1=5, etc.

Our Topic this half term is Journeys. The children will be exploring their route from home to school and attempting to draw a simple map. We are also looking at different forms of transport and places we might visit.

In Music we have introduced the children to percussion instruments and they had great fun playing glockenspiels with the song ‘If you’re happy and you know it!’

We are looking forward to continuing with our excellent learning as we read other stories alongside ‘The Sleepy Bumblebee.’ These will include ‘Owl Babies’, ‘The Gruffalo’  and ‘ Whatever Next!’ Our Maths focus will be counting objects to 10 with related practical activities.

Year 1 Blog January 2022

20th January 2022Ben White

We have been working really hard on our reading and writing in Year 1. With the help of Fred we are starting to use our sounds to build words when we are writing. Some of us are able to write our own sentences with capital letters, finger spaces and full stops! We have had a very naughty goblin in our classroom who keeps throwing our teacher’s things everywhere! We are hoping to catch him soon so we do not have to keep cleaning our classroom. We are all enjoying learning our sounds everyday and are all looking forward to getting our certificates for reading at home.

We are Math Superstars! We have been naming 3D shapes, we have been on a shape walk around the school and we could find lots of cylinders and cuboids around our school. I wonder which 3D shapes we can see on our way home from school? We are now looking at adding numbers to 20. We are using number lines, ten squares, cubes and even our fingers. We are trying to add them as quickly as we can.
Do you know about houses and homes? We are thinking about our homes and why they are important to us. We have been looking at different types of houses in the area, we know about semi-detached, detached, terrace houses, flats and bungalows. We have been looking at what kitchens looked like in the past. Did you know that people in the past did not have an oven, they had a range with a fire in. Everything came from the fire!

This week in Art we have linked our learning from Topic through the work L.S Lowry. We have created our own interpretations of ‘Coming Home from the Mill’.

We have learned how to draw buildings and ‘matchstick’ people. Take a look at some of our pictures.

Ella Rory Rocky  Alex

Maryam

 

In the next few weeks:

Coming up, we have an exciting week of looking at a surprise story, we cannot wait!

We will be looking at subtraction in Maths – taking away numbers within 20 and going onto looking at numbers up to 50.
We will be learning the story of Handa’s Surprise – acting it out, eating fruit from the story and doing lots of wonderful writing!

We will be learning what our address is and thinking about why our address is important. We will also be looking at why we do not share our address with strangers.

Foundation Stage Autumn 2

10th December 2021Margaret Lim

The children have been very busy preparing for their Nativity performance and did very well when they were recorded. Thank you to parents for providing costumes- they looked amazing!

 

We have been looking at the story  ‘Journey’ by Aaron Becker and imagining opening a door which takes us into a different place. The children have written sentences about this and the places they would like to go to.

With Christmas coming up everyone has been busy making decorations and having fun!

 

In Maths the children have been learning about positional language, e.g. next to, in front of, on top, etc. They have also been practising finding one more and one less than a given number up to five.

Next term we look forward to exploring the story ‘The Sleepy Bumblebee” in English. For Maths we will be looking at how a number can be made up in different ways, e.g. 2+3+5. 4+1=5, etc.

Our topic will be ‘Journeys’ and we will be finding out about different kinds of transport and interesting places to travel to, such as Arctic regions and jungles.