Welcome to Oak Class!

We are a class of 45 fabulous reception children! Here are our teachers..

• PE is on Tuesday - make sure you attend school in your active uniform on a Tuesday. Here is a link in case you wish to check the school uniform list - https://www.waterfoot.lancs.sch.uk/uniform-information/ 
• Library day is Friday - please return your library book to school each Friday in your bookbag so that you can choose a new book. 
• Home reading books are changed every Monday, Wednesday and Friday as long as you have signed in your book to say the book is read.  You also have reading books to read online using your bug club account. Your login in details for bug club are glued inside the front cover of your yellow reading record book.  
• Homework will be sent out on Wednesdays (maths every other Wednesday during the autumn term then Maths one week, phonics the next from January) and must be returned to school the following Monday.
• Children will also receive a topic homework card each half term where you can choose from a grid of activities which to do! House points are awarded for each completed activity. Should you loose your topic homework card, you can find an electronic version of the card on the school website here.  https://www.waterfoot.lancs.sch.uk/half-termly-theme-homework/

Remote Education 

If your child is self-isolating at home (due to Covid symptoms or a positive Covid test result) but are well enough to continue with their schoolwork, then we will support them by providing remote learning through our online platforms and MS Teams. For detailed information on the policies and procedures we follow in such cases, please refer to our school website-key information-remote education section.

Art Diversity Week

During Arts week we studied India.  The Artists from the Horse and Bamboo started off our week by helping us to make a large elephant banner for our parade. We looked at the country of India and how it is different from England. We looked at religion and dressed up in traditional Indian clothes and dancing.  We used a variety of media to create individual and collaborative art pieces.  We had a lady come in to read us an Indian story and she made us a delicious dahl to try too.  We ended the week in a whole school parade- wearing the hands we had made and playing the drums we constructed in class.  It was a wonderful celebration of diversity!

Stick Man adventure

The children in red team had been making stick men in the Creation Station to we decided to follow their intereset further. We read the story then Mrs Eastwood showed them how to use the potatoe peelers to whittle some carefully chosen sticks.  We then added features and clothes to their characters and gave them a name. 

Then for the fun bit- we took our Stick men and women for an adventure in our woodland.  What fun they had- the children had some great ideas for stories and adventures! 

Blue team on their bear hunt!

Blue team have written their own version of the Bear hunt story this week! After getting to know the story well last week, we went on our own bear hunt and found different hurdles that we needed to cross! We had hurdles like... "Uh Oh! A shed! A large, wooden shed! We can't go over it, we can't go under it, Oh no! We've got to go around it!" We also found a den, a spikey leafy den. We had a firepit - a hot, woody firepit and many more! 

Red Team on a Bear Hunt

The Red Team went on a bear hunt this week.  We retold the story and used our senses to experience the 'swishy- swashy grass' the squelchy mud, the creaking forest and 'splished sploshed' through the river. We learnt new adjectives to describe and finally we hid from the bear under our covers- We're never going on a bear hunt again.!!

Our visit from the Faith Visitor

Today Oak class had a visit from a Jewish lady called Amy.  She told us all about her faith. We learnt the men and wear cover their heads to remember that god is above them.  We learnt to say a prayer in Hebrew and looked at the Hebrew alphabet. We also learnt that Jewish people bow when they pray and go to the Synagog. We also found out that Jewish people don't celebrate Christmas but have Hanuka where they decorate their houses with a 9 stick candle. We then celebrated with a special Jewish dance whilst Amy sang a special song!

Follow the Trail

Today the Red Team went in search of treasure.  Our letter told us we must hold on to hoops to keep safe and it would help us find our treasure. We followed the trail marks and found lots of pirates clothes, inside, between, above, behind items in the yard.  At the final destination we found a box of treasure left by Pirate Pete.  He had left us some grog and some oat biscuits. Mrs Eastwood said we must tap the biscuits first to knock the maggots out!!!

Back in Class we drew round Bodie and then used the clothes to dress him like a pirate.  What fun we had again with Ranger Eastwood!

Hunting for clues in the forest and a fire!

Today the children went out looking for clues as we had heard there were pirates in our forest.  They followed the trail and found a map, a telescope, a pirate and some treasure! 

The children were then taught to cut wood with the axe with Mrs Eastwood and make a fire to toast marshmallows.  What fun we had- though we were very sticky and smelly at the end of it.  We learnt all about being safe around the fire too.

Take a look! 

Forest School Fun

We are having lots of fun exploring the forest this term.  For our first session we got our safety helmets on and went to explore the outdoor area on our bikes. We had lots of fun practising our skills and rewarded our hard work with a drink and a biscuit.

Chinese New Year

 As a celebration of the year of the Tiger the children in Oak Class have been learning about the traditions and festivities of the Lunar New Year.  Have a look at what fun we had!

Fruit tasting!

We have been trying lots of new exotic fruits that we may not have tried before! The children were very keen to taste the fruits and lots said they had found a new, healthy fruit that they will now enjoy eating at home! We tried kiwi fruit, persimon, mango, cantelope, pineapple and papaya!

Handa's Surprise

This term we are reading the delightful story- Handa's Surprise'  We have talked about where the story is set and learnt that it set in Africa- we have looked on a map and seen that Africa is a much bigger country than England and a lot hotter too! We are learning to retell the story with props and puppets. In the story Handa takes a basket of different fruits to her friend.  We hadn't heard of all of the fruits so we brought them in and used our senses to investigate the new fruits. We liked some more than others and some of us discovered that we liked fruits we hadn't tasted before!

We have looked at traditional clothes and jewellery of Africa and some of the celebratory dances they do.  This week we have been learning about African dances and looking at the masks they wear.  We have been designing our own masks and learning our own dance moves too.  We have played African instruments and investigated different ways of playing them to make them sound like different animals too.

Christmas dinner time and sneak preview of us in our costumes rehearsing our nativity!

Anti Bullying Week

This week we have been promoting kindness in Antibullying week.  On Monday we wore odd socks, danced to Andy and the Odd socks and talked about how its good to be different.  Many of our children were caught being kind and received a special green certificate from the adults in school.  We designed our own odd socks and celebrated being unique and special. We drew ways we would be kind to others and talked about some of the things that are special about us.

On Wednesday we had a special Sikh visitor in school.  We learnt about the special items Sikh's carry, what they do at the Mandir and the rules they live by.  We then learnt a special dance to celebrate everything we are lucky enough to have.

Oak Class celebrate Diwali! 

Oak Class have been celebrating the Hindu & Sikh festival Diwali! We started by learning about celebrations that we may have experienced and how we celebrate. Then we moved onto to learn how people celebrate Diwali! We have been making Diya Lamps from clay and then we painted them, rangoli patterns, we made a temple to visit and made sweets which Hindus give to each other and present to the Goddess Lakshmi. 

Halloween learning fun!

Oak class had fantastic fun using halloween to learn! We turned the mud kitchen into the witch's kitchen and we mixed different coloured potions to make spells, we used tweezers to collect items for a spell to develop our fine motor skills and used our maths to read how many of each ingredient was needed using the 'recipe!' The children also enjoyed exploring the insides of the pumpkin using their senses and talking about what they noticed. We also turned our role play area into a pumpkin and potion shop, there was dancing and dressing up on the stage to the halloween music and we listened to the story 'Room on the broom' at the listening post in the story snuggles corner!

We've now completed our first half term!

Our final week of our first half term has been a super busy and productive week! The children have been engaging in lots of 'star challenges' revolving around the story of 'Goldilocks and the three bears.' We've had some fabulous acting in the role play area and the children have been designing and building new chairs for baby bear! We've also been practising spelling words at the phonics area, embedding our maths skills of tallying in the forest by making a tally of the different leaves that we found in our school forest and we've had some lovely Goldilocks paintings! Lots of the boys and girls have been going onto the silver and gold light! Well done everyone!

Today in forest school we went in search of different coloured autumn leaves.  We used our fine motor skills to thread them onto a stick to make our Leaf Kebabs.  We then went back to Base Camp to enjoy a well derserved treat-Hot chocolate with marshmallows and a choccy biscuit!

Friendship necklaces

This week we talked about our friends and family and what we like to do with them. Then we made friendship necklaces for our friends with our names on! Here are some friends who made necklaces for each other!

Baking fun!

Baking is done on Mondays and Thursdays with our key person in groups of 5 children at a time. So far we have baked with 4 groups of 5 children. We have had lots of fun measuring the ingredients, using equipment such as sieves and whisks and most importantly licking the spoons after all the mixture has gone into the cake cases! See some of our photos from our baking sessions so far! 

Take a look at how we developed our own learning!!

We started off by reading the story of the 3 little pigs and we had been encouraged to retell the story using the finger puppets in the story snuggles corner! Then Imogen had a great idea! She went to the message centre and made tickets for the show! She gave out her tickets for her show and the children pulled up chairs to watch her. This was when we decided to get out our 'talking and thinking floorbook' where we discussed how we could develop Imogen's idea even further! We decided to move the puppet theatre onto the stage where we had more space, create a banner for the show, spotlights for the stage, make a ticket office and sell refreshments such as popcorn, biscuits and drinks! Louis even suggested we have fireworks going off after the show then he made his own fireworks! The boys and girls made the refreshments at the playdoh area and even wrote the price list for on the ticket office! Take a look at our ideas from our floorbook to develop the show and our photos to create it!

National Poetry Day

We had a wonderful time on National Poetry Day. We chose some of our favourite rhymes from the magic bag and had fun singing them. We also learnt a new poem and performed it with actions. It was all about the three bears that Goldilocks had been to visit. We even found out that the person who writes a poem is called a poet.

2 weeks of full time school!

The children have now completed 2 weeks in school of full-time schooling! This week we talked about how we look and how we are different from each other! We painted self-portraits of ourselves which are now proudly displayed on the wall! We even played with dressing up clothes to change our appearances and learn to take photos of each other in curiosity corner! We also talked about how we are special and made portraits using natural materials in our woodland area! Take a look at our photographs!