We have really enjoyed our topic 'Why do ladybirds have spots?' and we have spent time looking at all sorts of minibeasts like spiders and flies, to caterpillars and beetles. The children have spent lots of time investigating minibeasts in their natural habitats and have also learned how they are adapted to their environment by looking at their characteristics under magnifying glasses. At the beginning of May we had a school trip to Roath Park and had lots of fun searching for minibeasts in the trees, bushes and in the big glass conservatory. We topped off our topic  by presenting an 'Ugly Bug Ball' class assembly to our friends and family. We were so good at remembering all our lines and songs! And for a treat, we held our very own Ugly Bug Ball in the hall with lots of food and party music. It was great fun!

Our next topic for the last summer term is 'Who lives in a rock pool?'. In this topic we will be having a go at writing our own stories and letters, writing postcards and writing recounts of events. Our story books will include; Sailor Bear, The Bear in the Cave, The Little Rock Light and Animal Airways. We will also be getting hands-on by looking closely at crabs, fish, prawns and muscles and other creatures that live in the sea. We also plan to produce some beach art work by looking at the famous artist Andy Goldsworthy's beach paintings. We're going to have so much fun!

We wish you all a very happy half term break and we look forward to you coming back to school on the 6th June!

Welcome back to a new term! We hope you have all enjoyed your Easter break and you are ready for some more fun learning this summer term. We thoroughly enjoyed ending our last topic ‘Do cows drink milk?’ by visiting Greenmeadow Community Farm. We had so much fun feeding the animals, watching a goat being milked and even riding a real tractor!

This term our topic is called ‘Why do ladybirds have spots?’ and is a Knowledge and Understanding of the World focus. This topic will give us the opportunity to investigate mini-beasts and their habitats by looking around our local environment, comparing the similarities and differences between the each one, observing growth and change and identifying patterns and colours in our environment. We look forward to lots of outdoor learning in our outdoor area and woodland patch this term!

The homework for this half term was to make your very own mini-beast. This could be a mini-beast that you already like or even a new mini-beast designed especially by you! You have until the end of the first week back to bring in your mini-beast and we can’t wait to display them on our topic wall and topic table.

Just a reminder to parents, please remember to ensure your child brings their book bag to school every day. This is because your child could be called to read at any point to be listened to by a teacher or volunteer. We change books twice a week (Mon&Thurs – Mrs Jones’ class and Tues&Fri Miss John’s class) so it is particularly important to bring your book bags on those days.

We look forward to an exciting half term when we return on the 11^th April.

The Reception Team.

Wow! What a busy term we have had! We have thoroughly enjoyed our latest topic 'Will you read me a story?' which has all been to do with fairytales. We have read lots of different stories but we particularly enjoyed Jack and the Beanstalk, The Gingerbread man and The Three Little Pigs! We have grown our very own beanstalk cress, molded our own gingerbread men out of clay and made houses for the three pigs in our forest school area. We also enjoyed a Frozen afternoon where we led an investigation to find ways of melting Elsa's ice - we've had so much fun!

The children are really looking forward to our next topic 'Do cows drink milk?' which has a cultural focus on Wales. We will be looking at farms and how they operate and what produce they supply to our shops. We will be celebrating St David's day and what our local community has to offer us. We also can't wait to take a trip to a real working farm!

Have a lovely half term!

The Reception Team

We are looking forward to the Spring term. Our topic is called 'Will you read me a story?'and involves lots of dressing up and reading traditional tales. We are excited about our engagement day where we will all bring our home made dressing up costumes in and have a role play afternoon. We will be reading a wide variety of stories such as 'The Giant Quest' which is a very exciting story about a knight. We will be following our individual interests and will be asked what we would like to learn about. We will be given many topics to choose from; from castles to dragons and from giants to wands and wishes. In Literacy we will improve our phonics skills through the Letters and Sounds Program and will be enjoying brand new resources and games. We will be continuing our use of Bug Club and we encourage parents and guardians to utilise this online tool through www.activelearnprimary.co.uk.

We have had a wonderful Autumn term. We enjoyed our trip to Wiggley’s fun farm where we fed the animals and saw Father Christmas. We did very well in our Christmas concert and our teachers were so proud of us! Please see the photos and have a wonderful Christmas holiday.   

This term we have been learning all about how to be a good friend in school. We have been discovering that school can be so much fun when we have friends to share it with! Everyone in our class has found someone new to play with and we all are getting along so well. We have such a happy classroom!

We have all done well in learning about the school rules and we have been trying very hard to show good listening and good sitting to our new teachers. Ask us to show you our good sitting at home! We can even sit nicely in assembly. We have been told that we are even better than the Year 6s!

We have been on so many adventures this half term, we have been to visit our forest on many occasions. In the rain our forest is even more fun because we get to make a muddy mess by jumping in puddles! However, you must be quiet in our forest so as not to scare the birds. We have enjoyed listening to all of our school wildlife and have even brought baby bird back to our classroom. He likes watching all of the work that we do. 

We have read many wonderful books this half term. Through these books we are able to learn many things. We have learnt all about things of different sizes through reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears. This is a very good book for learning about words that compare, for example ‘bigger’, ‘smaller’, ‘hotter’, ‘colder’. We have managed to expand our language and think about how items can be different or the same. We even made our own venn diagrams with giant hoops to compare our toys.

We have read The Little Red Hen, this book helped us to think our friendship and sharing. We decided that even though the little red hen’s friends didn’t help her make the bread, she still should have shared it with them. Through the moral of this story we have undertaken many activities focused on empathy and understanding each other in school. We have also looked at colours and started to describe in Welsh.

We read the story of The Enormous Turnip, this helped us to focus on the idea of teamwork. We have really started to bond as a class and understand that the most fun way of learning is together. This book has also helped us to start considering types of food that are healthy or unhealthy. This is a topic which will take us into the next half term.

Regarding our health, we have also started our brushing teeth routine. It is so much fun! We sing lots of songs and do tooth brushing dances. Ask us what colour our Brush Bus is. Ask us what picture is on our brush. Ask us what songs we sing. 

We have had so much fun this half term, and it’s only the start of the year! We have so much to look forward to. Next term our topic will be called ‘Are we There Yet?’. We have already been telling our teachers what we would like to learn about for this topic, as it is important that we have a voice in our own learning. We have chosen what toys we would like to have available to us and what areas of transport interest us the most. So far we have decided that we will find out about how letters travel and how Christmas presents are delivered. Maybe we can post some letters to Santa!

Here are some photos of our time in school so far for you to look at. We look forward to seeing you all after the half term holidays.

Have a lovely holiday.

From the Reception team,

Mrs Jones, Miss John, Mrs Smith and Miss Gough. 

Croeso i Dosbarth Derbyn. Welcome to Reception!

Thank you for visiting our class page.

The staff in your class this year are Mrs. Jones, Miss John, Miss Gough and Mrs. Smith. We look forward to getting to know you all. 

This term we will be learning about friendship and settling into our new school routines. Our Cornerstones topic is called 'Do you want to be friends?' and has a personal and social development focus. We hope that through this topic your child will develop their understanding of how to play with their friends, how to co-operate and share with each other.

Last week we enjoyed a teddy bear's picnic, with biscuits, squash and cuddly toys. We read books and got to know one another.

Through our topic we will be learning our numbers, we will be going on number hunts in our forest school areas and making messy marks in our painting area to learn what our numbers look like. We will be learning about shapes and their properties, we are going to paint and collage giant shapes to make our classroom more colourful. 

We will be reading lots of books about friends and families, we will be finding out how our families are different. We have started to handle books for ourselves and discovered that reading is fun! We will also be making lots of marks with chalks, pens, paints and messy jelly. We want to inspire young writers through interesting activities to encourage making a mark independently. 

We are going to have lots of fun this year and can't wait to learn new things!