Reception - The Penguins: Blog items
Bring Yer Wellies!, by Mrs Thomson
Date: 24th Apr 2024 @ 2:46pm
What an amazing day the penguins had yesterday!
What do plants need to grow? Why is horse poo good for our grass? Why are worms important in our gardens? What is compost? How do we recycle? How can we work together to build a den? What makes great teamwork? What are herbs?
These are just a few of the questions that were asked yesterday. Nigel and Melissa were delighted that the children could listen so well and that they also had lots of their own questions to ask.
The penguins all planted their own lavender plant. They kept the soil fluffy and protected the roots. When they come to water the plant please remind them that plant needs just 'enough' water. Not too much and not too little.
I hope you enjoy sharing these pictures.
I have also included a picture from our RE session. We enjoyed a story called 'The Swirling Hijab'.
Trip Information, by Mrs Thomson
Date: 22nd Apr 2024 @ 8:21pm
What to wear -
School polo shirt and school sweatshirt / cardigan
PE kit joggers / leggings
Wellies will be taken off the wellie wagon and your child will change into wellies as soon as they arrive in school
Coat
(Waterproof puddle suits will be provided by school if needed)
What to bring -
The children have all ordered sandwiches of their choice from the school kitchen. Packed lunches will be provided by school. Each packed lunch will contain a bottle of water, pudding and a piece of fruit. (Two children did say today that they were bringing in their own packed lunch. This is absolutely fine but please send it in a named plastic bag. Lunch bags and boxes cannot be taken)
Water will be offered throughout the day.
Book bags are not needed tomorrow.
The water bottles that are brought into school each day, can be brought into school tomorrow and the children can bring them on the trip or leave them at school for when they return.
It will be a fantastic day!
Thank you
Mrs. Thomson
Chewy and Mr.Waddles!, by Mrs Thomson
Date: 22nd Apr 2024 @ 7:45pm
Today we had a lovely visit from Holly and her two lambs. One lamb was called Chewy and Holly asked for name suggestions for the second lamb. Mr. Waddles seemed to be the favourite which Jessica suggested.
The children had a feel of the wool and asked lots of questions to find out information about the lambs. Perhaps ask your penguin if they can remember what Holly told us about their oily wool. (Jumpers, carpets and soap!)
Tomorrow is our class trip. Packed lunches have been ordered. Please send your penguin into school in their polo shirt, jumper and PE kit joggers / leggings. They will all change into their wellies when they arrive at school. Please send a coat. No book bags are needed tomorrow.
Thank you
Super Scientists!, by Mrs Thomson
Date: 19th Apr 2024 @ 4:25pm
The penguins have been investigating the forces ‘pushes and pulls’ this week. As scientists we have discovered that we need to do lots and lots of testing. Therefore we spent the whole day testing everything that we used inside and out to see if it needed help to move and if it needed be pushed or pulled. We then made labels to show it had been tested.
We tested dominoes, bikes, prams, zips, doors, hair combs, Ker plunk, sweeping brushes, balls, bowling skittles and many more things.
Next week -
Monday - baby lambs visit to school.
Tuesay - Class Trip ( the children will change into their wellies once they come to school. If we do not have wellies in school for your child, please send them in on Monday so we have them ready for our trip the following day)
Please wear school polo shirt, school jumper and PE joggers for our trip as well as a coat.
Our theme of ‘Ticket to Ride’ started this week with a huge list of different vehicles and forms of transport. The penguins are creating a train in the construction shed and have completed some writing on ‘The naughty bus’. Next week we will be creating story maps for another story.
We now have new sounds starting in our phonics. Please, please continue to read each day so that the ‘old’ sounds and rainbow words are firmly embedded before the new ones are added. Books have been changed this week. If your child is on a new colour level please write a message in the record book to let us know how your child got on with this book over the weekend.
Thank you and happy weekend!
A great start to the week!, by Mrs Thomson
Date: 16th Apr 2024 @ 9:59pm
The penguins like to be busy and we have had an amazing start to our new half term. A wonderful theatre production of Alice in Wonderland, new art work to try, 3D shapes to explore and a naughty bus!
We have revisited odd and even numbers also this week. If you have a basket of socks that need pairing please ask your penguin to see if the amount is odd or even. The children are enjoying creating odd Bob aliens and even Steven aliens.
Mini beast hotels!, by Mrs Thomson
Date: 8th Apr 2024 @ 7:56pm
A few pictures to share from our amazing day spent creating mini beast hotels and also from the Easter bonnet parade.
After the holidays we will investigate our hotels to see if we have any mini beast visitors. We have our fingers crossed!
Eater Fun!, by Mrs Thomson
Date: 27th Mar 2024 @ 1:25pm
This week the penguins have had some Easter Fun. On Monday we shared the Easter story and then did an Easter hunt outside. Unfortunately I forgot to order lovely sunny weather but the penguins didnt seem to mind!
On Tuesday we spent the day outside creating mini beast hotels. Fantastic team work! We have hidden our hotels underneath the hedges and we will investigate them after the school holidays. We included leaves, grass, bamboo and sticks. Your penguin will enjoy telling you why we chose these things and explain how they made the hotels.
We have spent a lot of time talking about keeping ourselves healthy. Over the holidays if you have a spare minute I would love a photo of your penguin cleaning their teeth for a new class display. These can be sent back in the school book bag. Thank you!
Holiday Homework - Reading, reading, reading! Super amazing bedtime reading if your days get busy or every morning before your day gets started. It is really important to continue reading and looking at our sound cards everyday.
The 'All about Me' book has been returned - please add one or two pictures, tickets or leaflets from your school break.
Thank you for your help and support,
Mrs. Thomson
Friday fun, by Mrs Pratten
Date: 22nd Mar 2024 @ 1:53pm
Today we enjoyed exploring instruments in music, scanning QR codes in computing and mixing cold colours in art.
Have a great weekend :)
Spring Time., by Mrs Thomson
Date: 20th Mar 2024 @ 1:57pm
This week the penguins have continued their work on Spring time. We have planted herbs and also sunflowers which will link in with our maths work on length and height.
This week our homework will be to spot signs of spring. Can you please have a look in your garden or go for a walk and see if you can see signs of new life. Baby lambs, plants, buds, frog spawn or blossom. The children will have opportunities all next week to share their findings. Some children have asked if they can draw what they see or make a list. These ideas are perfect and we always try to include the penguins fantastic ideas.
Thank you for your wonderful support with reading. The penguins are also blooming! They are very proud and enjoy reading to us and our amazing parent helpers. Please continue with ten minutes reading each day.
This week we have had a couple of blips with school lunches! The children all choose their lunch as they arrive in class in the morning and this order is sent to the kitchen. We try to keep our lunch line organised but a couple of times the children have changed their mind at the kitchen hatch which has meant that other children have not got their chosen lunch. Please could you share the menu at home the night before so that the children have plenty of time to choose what they would like before the order is sent to the kitchen. Thank you.
I hope you enjoy some of the pictures from our week so far. The art work was completed after learning about a piece of art called 'Painting with scissors' by Henri Matisse. The penguins had wonderful patience with this task.
Something to work on - over arm throwing, looking at different ways of making 9 and 10.
Super Scientists!, by Mrs Thomson
Date: 13th Mar 2024 @ 10:02pm
Today was a great day at Imagine That! The penguins and the giraffes had a very busy and exciting time. Bath bombs, slime, magnets, dry ice and snow! Role play, treasure bags and lots of fun! Pizzas, hair cuts, building and shopping! Putting on a show, reading the news and delivering the weather!
The penguins worked hard and played together all day. They had their science hats on and asked lots of questions showing their curiosity. We had lots of sad faces when we said it was time to leave.
The staff asked the children to come back and visit them soon.
Reception Rocking!, by Mrs Thomson
Date: 7th Mar 2024 @ 7:37pm
What a great class of rock stars!
Thank you for your help with the amazing outfits! The children rocked all day!!
We enjoyed some new books today and a firm favourite was Pete the cat rocking in his school shoes! The children made reading dens and book marks before hearing another new story linked to our mini beast theme. Creepy Crawlies in a band!
We had a school assembly this morning and Mrs. Fletcher introduced a new story. However just as we were getting settled to hear it all, the story was stopped! The story went to year six who added another part of the story and visited every class before it headed our way late in the afternoon. The penguins had amazing ideas of how to end the story, their imaginations going wild! Please read the story on the blog. Our part starts after the sentence about the sneaky eky odd numbers hiding. The story was read in the afternoon assembly. The penguins were very proud of their ending to the story. I think they will enjoy sharing this with you and they will definitely know which part was from our class.
I have also added a short video of our days of the week song. We didn’t perform this at our assembly as we thought it may make it a little bit too long.
Class assembly, life cycles and celebration assembly in church, by Mrs Thomson
Date: 1st Mar 2024 @ 4:53pm
What a busy week! The super proud penguins just took it all in their stride!
We have been looking at how things follow in a sequence this week - our day, our week, life cycles and even how we make fruit kebabs. The penguins thoroughly enjoyed the blue berries, mango, banana and apple fruit kebabs they made for their afternoon snack.
The penguins were amazing during their first class assembly and they received two class compliments for amazing team work.
Fun with our buddies, by Mr Pearson
Date: 23rd Feb 2024 @ 9:04am
The Penguins and Koalas spent an hour together developing bonds on Thursday.
Welcome back!, by Mrs Thomson
Date: 21st Feb 2024 @ 9:30pm
It has been lovely to see the penguins back in school this week. We have started our new class topic ‘Round and round the garden’
We had a visit from the Penwortham fire and rescue crew on Tuesday morning. The children had some fantastic questions to ask and each had a challenge to remember three interesting facts. The children got to see lots of equipment stored on the fire engine and also got to sit in the cab before each having a turn with the fire hose.
We will be doing some special writing about the fire engine tomorrow as well as making a thank you card for the fire fighters.
Please remember to send your ‘all about me’ books back to school as soon as possible. The penguins are so excited to share these books with their friends but we have quite a lot to be returned.
Homework - this week the children will be bringing home a short writing task linked to our phonics. Please continue to read each day along with this.
Thank you
Chinese New Year, by Mrs Thomson
Date: 8th Feb 2024 @ 9:41pm
In the reception class we encourage the children to be involved in their learning. Last week we all enjoyed sharing our projects and the penguins were very interested in the Chinese dragon made by Evie. Therefore we have been looking at how Chinese New Year is celebrated and we have enjoyed learning facts about the celebration. Tomorrow we will be dancing to traditional music with our class dragon.
This afternoon we took part in a quiz to check our knowledge on Chinese New Year. We got top marks! Earlier in the week we enjoyed food tasting. We had hot spring rolls, sticky noodles and prawn crackers. Everyone voted for their favourite. Prawn crackers won closely followed by the sticky noodles. You will see from the pictures that many of the children enjoyed the spring rolls.
Welcome to our new penguin!, by Mrs Thomson
Date: 6th Feb 2024 @ 7:43pm
The children had a lovely day welcoming a new penguin into their tribe! Everyone had a lovely time showing Harry around our classroom, our school and our play grounds. Even Tiboo the triceratops was super friendly and happy to see the penguins being so caring and kind to Harry.
We have been busy preparing for Valentine’s Day, Chinese New Year and also following in the footsteps of Mary Anning. The children enjoyed making salt dough fossils.
If you have any socks just washed please ask your penguin to see if they can match them all up in pairs. They have been busy doing this today. I wonder if you have an odd one? The children have enjoyed looking at odd and even.
A rocking start to the week!, by Mrs Thomson
Date: 31st Jan 2024 @ 10:58pm
What a start to the week! We had an amazing time at the Rock Steady Assembly! We were very proud of penguin Isaac volunteering to join a band during the assembly! He did a great job!
We have had fun in the sun, lots of measuring and weighing in maths and we have been reading ‘sc’ and ‘sk’ words in phonics. We are working hard at writing our names and we are making sure that each letter is formed correctly with our beautiful swooshes and flicks.
Tomorrow the children have a surprise new area in the classroom and we have an afternoon planned where we will be very creative!
I hope you enjoy some pictures from our week so far.
Penguin poetry!, by Mrs Thomson
Date: 27th Jan 2024 @ 8:09am
This week the penguins received a very special delivery! We had a letter stuck in our tree outside! It was from the mother owl in our story ‘Owl Babies’. Mother Owl asked the penguins for help. She wanted the children to write her a poem which she could read every night to her baby owl, Bill. The poem would tell him why mummy went off hunting during the night and that he didn’t need to be scared of the dark wood or the noises he heard.
The penguins embraced the challenge! They had wonderful ideas, beautiful writing and were very caring towards our baby owl Bill. Mrs. Brown visited our classroom and saw the penguins super busy with this work and she awarded the class with a class compliment! Super penguins! The poem is already amazing but we have decided to put actions to it and learn it as a class. The penguins would like to perform it on the stage!
Homework - next week homework will be focusing on the formation of some of our tricky letters. Please refer back to the guide in your homework folder which shows how we swoosh up to start and then end each letter with a flick (ready to join onto another letter later in school)
Homework - the week after will be our last week of this half term. For homework we will send your ‘All about me’ book home ready for the next chapter. We really do appreciate your help and support with this book, thank you.
Thank you for the amazing projects sent into school. We did show and share on Thursday and Friday. We will also do this on Monday as we still have some projects to look at before they are displayed in the hall.
We have an exciting week ahead! We have a rock steady workshop, a school governor coming to visit our class, an afternoon of art with clay, a busy week with capacity and mass and to end our week we will be painting to music. We will listen to lots of music and express how it makes us feel in our painting.
Some pictures for for you to enjoy - water colour penguins, penguin habitat pictures using a variety of materials and our junk owls and penguins. DT junk modelying soon!
Special visitors!, by Mrs Thomson
Date: 23rd Jan 2024 @ 9:20pm
This morning Sergeant Jo and PC Kevin came to school to visit the penguins. The penguins had prepared lots of questions and were eager to find out all about their important jobs.
The penguins were shown lots of equipment that the police carry with them everyday. They looked at the uniform and talked all about how the police help us and keep us safe.
Sergeant Jo and PC Kevin brought lots of vests and hats for the children to try on. They also got to try out special penguin sized radios, handcuffs and batons.
Before the police went back to work everyone sat in the big police carrier van. The children got to see the big shields, the flashing lights and hear the three different sirens.
During our afternoon today we got to take part in a yoga class with Miss Danielle. The penguins had lots of energy whilst doing the exercises but managed to relax and enjoy the gentle music whilst they stayed as still as possible. I hope your penguin enjoys showing you some of the stretches from today.
Past and present!, by Mrs Thomson
Date: 19th Jan 2024 @ 3:07pm
The penguins have enjoyed revisiting lots of their past learning today. We looked on the blog at lots of pictures to help remind of us of how busy we have been.
We have had a great week with wonderful writing, marvellous maths and very excited vets! The children created obstacle courses which helped keep them warm and fit when they were outside.
We have been learning another poem this week and have started singing a months of the year song which you will find on this post.
We have been doing lots of activities to support our learning with number bonds. What different ways can we make 5? We have also been looking at one more and one less. Our homework next week will be working on this.
Next week we have an exciting week where we will have new animals to learn about.
On Tuesday we have the police coming into school to visit the reception class. They will talk to us about what jobs they do during the day and night.
Please send projects into school on Thursday. The children will have lots of time to show and share these before they are displayed in the hall. Some ideas - your project could be linked to our amazing animal topic, it could be linked to a hobby, an interest or even the season we are currently in.
A snowy start!, by Mrs Thomson
Date: 16th Jan 2024 @ 7:43pm
What an exciting start to the day! After register we headed out straight away for some snow fun! We built a snowman, made snow angels and you can imagine what happened when Mr. Brown appeared!
The day just got better and better when the penguins got in the pjs for their class compliment! They had hot chocolate, whipped cream and marshmallows followed by fruit and biscuits. They danced, played games and then watched the short film of our class story - Lost and Found.
Please do not worry if your reading book was not changed today. Mrs. Regan has changed half of the class today and everyone else will have their book changed in the morning.
Mrs. Thomson
Amazing Animals!, by Mrs Thomson
Date: 14th Jan 2024 @ 4:43pm
It was lovely to have the penguins back this week as we began our new topic of ‘Amazing Animals’. The children were very happy to see each other and we had to extend our sharing time to make sure everyone had the opportunity to talk about their Christmas and New year break.
Thank you for sending the ‘All about me’ books back to school. The penguins have enjoyed sharing these already.
Our week started with our story ‘Lost and found’. We have enjoyed adding speech to this story and by the end of the week the children had made their own story maps identifying the beginning, the middle and the end of the story. We have been learning facts about penguins and other animals that live in the cold.
During the week we froze some of our penguin toys and then tested where the best place was to help our penguins escape.
The children have enjoyed having water colour painting, new rainbow words, snowflakes to cut and going on a zero hunt.
Our wow words from this week have been - perseverance, liquid, solid, freeze, melt, help, zero, challenge and smile.
In phonics we have been reading words which have either the zz, sp or sl sound in them. Next we we will be looking at words that begin with sn.
Tuesday -
I am sure you will have heard the good news from your penguin that we have now achieved all of our class compliments (we achieve a star when visitors and staff around school see the whole class shining together) After a class vote it was decided that the penguins would like a pyjama afternoon and to watch a short film. We are planning to do this on Tuesday afternoon.
The children have asked to bring in -
warm pyjamas / onesie
slippers (optional as school shoes will already be in school)
Teddy (small soft toy)
Please send these in a named plastic bag if they will not fit in the school book bag.
January letter to parents - Penguins., by Mrs Thomson
Date: 7th Jan 2024 @ 11:06am
Christmas Week Pictures., by Mrs Thomson
Date: 3rd Jan 2024 @ 6:21pm
Some pictures for you to enjoy from our last week before Christmas. I hope everyone is having a lovely break - Happy New Year!
See you all soon, Mrs. Thomson.
Lots to share!, by Mrs Thomson
Date: 20th Dec 2023 @ 2:03pm
Tomorrow the penguins will be bringing home a bag of art and craft delights! They are very excited to share with you all the things they have done over recent weeks.
Your child will be bringing home two new reading books. In your reading record book you will find the two books listed. The first book will contain new sounds and words from this week in phonics. Please encourage your child to read this book several times over the Christmas holiday with you. This will help to consolidate learning of our phonics. We have worked with your child this week to spot any sounds that they may have forgotten.
The second book listed is one that your child has chosen as a 'sharing' book. This may be a trickier book which you can both share together.
I have included the Rainbow / tricky words for you to read with your child.
Happy Homework - The penguins will not be bringing home their homework bags this week. The 'All about me' book will come home for a picture, ticket or photograph added. The children are enjoying writing in the hundreds of Christmas cards that we had donated to our class post office. Perhaps they could write about a special highlight of their holiday in their 'All about me' books.
Please remember that your child will need to have a named carrier bag in school tomorrow morning. Thank you.