Blakehill Primary School

Spring Term

Understanding the World - History

LO: Talk about members of their immediate family and community.

LO: Comment on images of familiar situations in the past.

Over the Christmas holidays the children were set a task to complete with their families. We have shared the home learning challenge information as a class and enjoyed finding out about school life over the years. We have looked at photos, images and real-life items from the past, for example: blackboards, milk bottles, reading books, the cane and talked about the similarities and differences of school life today compared with their parents/grandparents time. We have displayed the information on a simple timeline within our classroom which the children are enjoying talking about.

Reception Reading Café

This term we have started our Reception reading café. Reception children and their parents are invited every Wednesday at 8.30am to enjoy a special reading session where they can share stories, practise reading their school book and enjoy a biscuit and juice.

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Ticket to Ride

Our first book focus for this half term is ‘Snail trail’ by Ruth Brown. We made predictions, looked at the vocabulary of the story and learnt about snails. Children have drawn their own snail trail routes to retell the story and have also had the opportunity to sculpt their own snail from clay whilst discussing the different features that snails have.

Rosie's Walk

This week children in Reception have been looking at the book Rosie’s Walk. Today we created the journey that Rosie went on in our outdoor area. We retold the story by walking across the yard, around the pond, over the haystack, through the fence and under the beehives!

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Our Sensory Walk

RS went on a sensory walk around the grounds of the school. We walked through gates, up stairs, past trees and the bike shed, down a ramp and over an outdoor stage. Children collected different items on the walk and helped to take pictures so that we could draw a map of our journey when we got back to class.

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Bhangra Dancing

Punjabi Roots Academy delivered a fantastic Bhangra dancing workshop to the children in Reception. Bhangra is a celebratory folk dance that welcomes the coming of spring. They had lots of fun learning the moves and putting them to music.

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Weight

(WC: 23rd January)

This week reception have been using balancing scales to measure the weight of things in our classroom. We have used the key vocabulary: heavy, light ,heavier than and lighter than. The children have enjoyed exploring the weight of items in provision and discussing with their friends what has happened to the balancing scales.

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Capacity

(26th January)

In maths today reception have been learning about capacity. We took our maths lesson to the sandpit to explore and describe the amount that a container is holding. We discussed the key vocabulary: full, empty, nearly full and nearly empty. Then we had a go at filling different containers to match the given label.

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The Train Ride

Over the past 2 weeks children have been busy learning all about trains. We looked at the story ‘The train ride’ by June Crebbin. We made predictions about the journey, retold the story and have had lots of discussions about train journeys that the children in RS have experienced. We were lucky enough to be able to have a real paddle in our role play train station as well as tickets and leaflets that were kindly given to us from Northern Rail.

Amazing Aeroplanes

Our train station was transformed into an airport as we looked at the book ‘Amazing aeroplanes’ by Tony Mitton and Ant Parker. We have been learning lots about where we can travel to outside of the United Kingdom. It has been lovely to listen to the children talk about places that they have been on holiday and / or where members of their family live.

Measuring height, distance and capacity

(WC: 30th Jan)

This week RS have been focussing on measuring height, distance and capacity. We started the week by measuring the height of children and teachers using the crates in our outdoor provision. We made towers that were the same height and counted how many crates tall that person was. During this activity we discussed what we meant when we used the key vocabulary taller and shorter.

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Our lesson focusing on measuring distance also took place outside. Every child was asked to throw a bean bag as far as they could. We looked at the key vocabulary: further, closer and nearer to discuss how far the beanbags had been thrown.

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To look at how we measure capacity every child took part in making playdough. We continued to use the key vocabulary: full, empty and half full. We used fives frames to help measure the correct amounts.

We measured:

2 full cups of flour

Half a cup of salt

2 tablespoons of cream of tartar

2 tablespoons oil

2 full cups of water

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Personal, Social and Emotional Development

Children's Mental Health Week

Every day we began by completing a BBC Mood Booster session. These are fun curriculum-linked resources to inspire children to get moving for mental health and wellbeing. The children have listened really well to each program and followed the instructions. We have spoken after each session to ensure the children have understood the focus. Here is a link to just one of the activities we completed:

Power Off with Dr Ranj Singh

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Understanding the World - Geography

LO: Draw information from a simple map.

LO: To explore the natural world around them.

LO: To recognise some similarities and differences between life in this country and life in other countries.

LO: To recognise some environments that are different from the one in which they live.

We have enjoyed exploring maps, globes and information books to find out about our local area, Bradford as a city, England as the country we live in and locating it on a world map. We have talked about hot and cold places in our world too.

RE - Special Places

What is a special place?

“Disney Land”

“Gulliver’s Valley”

“I think something is a special place that I went to when I was 1 years old.”

“My special place, on holiday. I went to Turkey.”

“Swimming”

“I go to mosque.”

What makes a place special? Have you been to a special place?

One child said that they have a prayer mat and they have to take their shoes off

“It was sunny, it was in Crete and I saw a picture of Mary holding Jesus. I went to 3 churches in Crete.”

“No but it’s like a church because you get to say prayers in front of a candle, like a fair place because there’s hay and some tractors there. Nana from London came with me.”

“When I was a baby, I went to a church and I saw toys.“ (playgroup)

“I went to a church it was quiet.”

“There were baby toys there.”

“I know that Jesus is God’s son.”

“Do you know I went to a church before there were lots of living rooms.”

"My Daddy goes to the mosque."

Where are special places for me at school and/or in my community?

“Church”

“Mosque”

“My special place is, I went to mosque and I saw all the boys there.”

“When I go to school, I got to see Grandma and I have ice cream.”

“I like school.” Do you think school is a special lace? “Yes”

“My grandma’s house.”

“I’ve been to Grandma’s house.”

After our discussions the children were shown pictures of different special places belonging to various religions. We challenged the children to use Lego to build some of these which can be seen in the pictures below.

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We continued learning about special places by going on a virtual tour around Otley Parish Church and a mosque.

Otley Parish Church (matterport.com)

What happens in a Mosque? - YouTube

The final type of journey that Reception discussed during our Ticket to Ride topic were journeys into space. We looked at the story 'Whatever Next!' by Jill Murphy. The children had lots of fantastic conversations about what they thought they would see on a journey to space, which planets they would like to visit and why.

Phonics

(Wc: 6th February)

This week children have been practising how to use the /ch/ /sh/ /th/ and /ng/ digraphs. We have spotted the sounds in words, played roll and read and had a go at writing words using our phoneme fingers!

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Maths

(Wc: 6th February)

Children have been looking at the different ways that we can make 6, 7 and 8. We played bunny fingers where children had to hold up a certain amount on their fingers, looked at dots on dominoes and matched number pictures. We even played a memory game where the children had to work out how many objects had gone missing.

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Our completed journey ...

World Book Day!

Children in RS enjoyed dressing up for World Book Day and sharing their chosen adjective with the class during circle time.

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It was lovely to see lots of children join us in the evening for our Bedtime Story night to end our day of celebrating reading!

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Holi and Spring

The children in RS have been learning about the Hindu festival Holi. Holi is a festival to welcome in spring where people share a special feast and throw coloured powder in celebration. The children all had a go at throwing coloured powder as well as creating some beautiful spring paintings of daffodils.

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What an exciting start to our new half term!

First giant footprints appeared, then some very large clothes were left in the home corner and a beanstalk grew in the classroom. When we left a note to find out who had been doing this to our classroom, we received a very giant note back. Here are some of the predictions children made when we discussed the key questions:

Who do the footprints belong to?

Where did they go?

After working out it was a giant, we were left the book ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ by Mara Alperin. The children have loved learning about the characters, retelling the story, building castles and beanstalks.

Maths

(WC: 27^th Feb)

This week we have been focussing on ordering numbers to 10. We spotted mistakes on number lines and used the language one more / one less to talk about where numbers were placed. The children had fun using the Numberblocks to understand that when we count in sequence, we add one more each time.

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Maths

(WC: 6^th March)

Children in RS have begun to explore 3D shapes this week. We have focussed on cubes, cuboids, cones, cylinders and spheres. The children have played matching games, made prints in playdough and had conversations about where they might have seen these shapes before.

We introduced the children to the key vocabulary: faces, edges and corners so that they could describe the 3D shapes.

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Life Education Visit

Reception had a visit from Harold the giraffe who talked to them about how we can keep our bodies healthy and ourselves happy. They learnt about the function of their heart, lungs and stomach and how we can look after them. We got to see inside Harold’s washbag for his sleepover to learn about how we can keep ourselves clean. At the end of the workshop the children said goodbye to Harold and gave him lots of hugs to help him feel happy!