WELCOME TO OAK CLASS!!

We are the reception class at Waterfoot Primary School! We love to learn through play and hope you enjoy looking at lots of the lovely learning we do in this part of the website. Here is some information about the class. Scroll down for photos of our learning! 

                   Mrs Holt                                        Mrs Edwards

          Miss Tattersall                                         Miss Ward                                       Miss Hindle

               Mrs Wisedale                                          Miss Nisa

Classroom Information:

P.E Day: Thursday

Your child can come to school in the active uniform or a more traditional uniform on non-PE days but please ensure your child comes to school wearing their active uniform on our PE day.  Please refer to the Uniform Policy if you are unsure.

Homework:

Homework is handed out on a WEDNESDAY and returned the following MONDAY.  You will receive Maths homework one week, phonics on the other. 

Topic Homework:

Each half term, a grid is sent out within each key stage which links with the topic, their learning and our school value focus for the following half term. Within each key stage the pupils are recommended to complete a number of their chosen activities and each completed activity is rewarded with house points. The work is put in our 'Look what we have done at home' display board in our cloakroom area as you first enter the classroom! These homework grids will be sent home on a piece of card but are also available on our website in the 'Children' section or click the link below.

March 6th - March 10th! Our journeys learning now focusses on boats!

Well the snow prevented this post being made on Friday but here we go! Oak Class have been reading the book 'Who sank the boat?' in Literacy lessons this week. The children have been learning how to label and picture and write captions. Continuing with our water/boat theme we have also begun learning about floating and sinking and trying to work out why some items float and some sink. In our woodland session, Blue team learnt about journey sticks and collected items for their stick on their journey around our woodland to use to tell the story of their journey! Two more of our key worker groups have been baking their love heart biscuits for our Mum's for mother's day. We hope some of our Mums are getting to at least try some of their biscuits! The children have also been continuing with their learning about features of our local environment which we have been doing every week. This week we had photos of different parts of Waterfoot taken many years ago which the children had to match with the photo of the same area taken a few weeks ago! The children then described how that place had changed and how it had remained the same. On Wednesday we had a special RE day to celebrate the Hindi festival of Holi! The children learnt about the Hindu story of Prahlad and Holika to learn how Hindu's celebrate good triumphing over evil. The children then retold the story, decorated biscuits with different colours, throw coloured powder at a drawing of a person on the wall, dressed in Hindi clothing and we made our own little temple where the children pretended to enter a Hindu temple by touching the bottom of a statue, removing their shoes and praying like the Hindi children in our video clip had done. During our PE lessons, the children have begun controlling a ball with a bat to move around obstacles to add to their impressive set of physical skills!  Enjoy the photos and don't forget it's our Mother's Day tea party next Friday 17th at 2pm!

February 27th - March 3rd - Our journey learning continues and World Book Day!

Our journey learning has continued this week with our story 'The train ride' and discussions about different journeys we have been on. Miss Ward and Mrs Edwards have done their talk time with their key children and more key groups are set to do their talk time next week! The children have been exploring what the best surface is for a car to roll down quickly in the outdoor area and the blue team have been playing with the small world set - Happy Street. Red team have the small world train track at present and we will soon be swapping over so that everyone gets to play and learn with the different small world sets. Blue team have done some more work on messy maps this week. We went out into our woodland area and drew simple field sketches of what we could see in the distance on the hills and down in Waterfoot. Then the next day we made messy maps to depict what we had seen again, The children had seen windmills, electricity pylons, houses, farms, sheep, a mill chimney and lots of trees!

During our baking sessions, we have now begun baking love heart cookies for Mother's Day - apologies Mum's you are getting your cookies staggered through the whole half term! The children made plenty of cookies so that they could eat one themselves and give one to mum. Let us know Mum if any of you got one! So far half of Miss Ward's key children have done their baking. Next week it will half of Mrs Holt's key children and Miss Hindle and Miss Nisa's key children! 

On Thursday, it was of course World Book day! We all had so much fun all dressed up and our learning centred on the Mr Men and Little Miss Stories! We painted Mr Men, made them out of playdoh and created our own characters as well as writing about them! Red team also had surprise visits from Mrs Giomarelli and Mr Windle who both came to read them stories. In Blue team we had visits from Mrs Shorrock and Miss Gooding. We hope you enjoy looking at this week's photos.....

February 20th - 24th - Oak Class are talking about journeys!

We are back! After the half term holiday break the children have been raring to go this week!  We began talking about our new learning on Monday and discussing how we will enhance our areas of provision. The children have set up a train station and train in the role play areas and have begun reading the story 'The train ride' in Literacy. On Tuesday , we went off topic briefly to celebrate lent! The children all had fun making (and eating!) pancakes throughout the day and Miss Ward snuck a couple of pancakes down to class to keep Mrs Holt fed too!! The children also wrote about what they would give up for lent, we had pancake races outdoors and we have a 40 day countdown on the wall that the children cross off each day to give them a sense of how long 40 days is. On Wednesday it was back to our Journeys! Our final cooking group have made their leek and potato soup so next week we start making love heart cookies in our key worker groups. We have been drawing simple maps of the things we see on our way to school and the children have then created messy maps to represent their journey! We have also looked at a satellite picture of our school and made a messy map of the grounds!  The children have begun learn how to program a robot called beebot to send him on a journey  and we have even begun learning to use the beebot app on the ipads too! As always, we hope you enjoy looking at this week's photos!

Week 6 - 6th-10th Feb - The Gingerbread Man learning continues!

Our gingerbread man learning fun has continued this week! We started the week by baking our own gingerbread man and planning how we were going to design them once they were baked! Once baked, we created our design for real and reviewed our planning as we went along, considering any improvements we may wish to make as we created the real thing! The next day, we wrote our own gingerbread man recipes!  We have also tested what would have happened to the Gingerbread Man if he had fallen in the river by submerging some gingerbread men in different liquids - milk, water, vinegar and oil. We found that the Gingerbread man in the water quickly went soggy and fell apart so no wonder he didn't want to fall in the river! The children decided we must help him to cross the river. They designed their contraption first then began building! We had hot air balloons, under-water tunnels, submarines, bridges and drones to name but a few! On Wednesday all of Oak Class went into the woods together. We went foraging for sticks that we whittled down with potato peelers and learnt all about campfire safety around the fire. Once our sticks were whittled, we toasted marshmellows and crumpets on the fire. Yum! Mrs Edwards and Mrs Alderson's key children have been cooking this week and have continued to develop their skills with peelers and knives to make their leek and potato soup and in Maths lessons, Blue team have been learning about 2D shapes, decorating the gingerbread man with the shapes and naming them and creating shape patterns! At the end of the week, we had three maths superstars who have moved up to the next level on numbots and received their numbots certificates! Don't forget that you will have full access to numbots, bug club and teach your monster to read over the half term holidays! Your login details for each are in the front cover of your reading record books. I have moved everyone up to the 'fun with words' level now on teach your monster so that you are practising the phase 3 sounds we have learnt at school. We have also sent home next half term's topic homework card so that you can start having a look at those and thinking about a journey you have been on (perhaps during this week off?) for our keyworker talk topic. Have a lovely half term everyone!! 

Week 5! The Gingerbread man and number day! 

Oak Class donated loads of coins for our coin trail today in aid of the NSPCC! Thank to all our kind families for their donations! We had lots of fun playing different number games and wearing our numbery clothes! Our coins filled a massive capital N on the hall floor! Earlier in the week, our learning has moved onto 'The Gingerbread man!' Blue team had a day left of learning about the Chinese new year left to do too so they have continued with junk modelling dragons, painting what they have learned about the Chinese new year, playing in our Chinese restaurant and talking about (and drawing) how different new year's are celebrated. During our Gingerbread man learning the children have been retelling the story with puppets and masks, describing characters and writing what they might say! We have already read several versions of the GIngerbread Man and talked about the similarities and differences between different versions. There will be lots more Gingerbread learning continuing next week! 

Finally, we are coming towards the end of our cookery sessions making leek and potato soup! The other half of Mrs Holt and Miss Tattersall's key groups were cooking last week and next week it will be Mrs Edwards and Mrs Alderson's key group making their soup. Then one more group in the first week after the half term holiday! However as we are reading the gingerbread man at the moment there will be some extra baking taking place next week!  

Week 4 - Chinese new year! 23rd - 27th Jan

There's been lots of chinese new year fun this week! We've been making dragons on sticks and measuring which are longer and shorter, making good luck money packets, enjoying chinese food in our role play restaurant and making happy new year cards! We have learnt to say happy new year in Mandarin Chinese too - pronounced Kung Hi Fat Choy! We have also made a large chinese dragon and have begun junk modelling our own chinese dragons! During Literacy lessons we have learnt the story of the Great race and written about what happened in the story. We have also written about what we have learnt about how people celebrate the chinese new year and talked about similarities and differences between how the Chinese new year is celebrated and how new year is celebrated in the UK. 

Our food topic learning - week 3! 16th - 20th January

It's been another super busy and fun week! Oak class have learnt about the artist 'Arcimboldo' who made portraits using fruits and vegetables! The children then created their own pictures using fruit and vegetables - we have had cats, dogs, dinosaurs, houses and much more! During our Literacy lessons, we have continued with our story of Handa's Surprise which has also led us to learning all about healthy foods and how to keep our bodies healthy! The children have cut and stuck items to create their own healthy meals and we have played the 'Greedy Gorilla' game where we sorted healthy and unhealthy foods! We have continued with our key worker groups cooking leek and potato soup and learning to peel and chop different foods. This week it was the turn of half of Miss Tattersall's and Mrs Holt's key children The other half of our key groups will also cook soon! Next week Miss Hindle and Miss Nisa's key group will be cooking on Tuesday and the second half of Miss Ward's key group will make their soup on Thursday.  Our learning this week has included us learning about how to look after our teeth and keep them strong. We have some budding dentists in the class and a few 'fillings' have been given in the role play area! Finally, we have explored our school environment and looked at photos of our local area then compared them with the Kenyan environment. We have watched our 'Barnaby Bear' DVD where he visits Kenya. We hope you like our photos!

Our 'food topic learning! - Weeks 1 and 2!     Jan 4th - 13th

What a busy and exciting start to the term we have made! Our topic is food and the story we have been reading is 'Handa's Surprise' where a little girl travels to her friend's village with fruit in her basket that she carries on her head. As she walks, the animals take one fruit away from her basket! We have used this story in all our lessons and have been finding 1 less using the story in our Maths lessons! The children have explored lots of new, exotic fruits such as papaya, persimon, mango, avacado and passion fruit! They have been using their senses to explore the fruit at the investigation area and using a digital microscope to look closely as the insides of the fruits. We have also been using knives safely to cut fruits and eat them! Our families will be glad to hear that we had lots of children who thought some fruits would be yucky then they loved them when they ate it! Our first keyworker group has done their cooking session this week too - we are making leek and potato soup in our key groups and all the children will have made their soup by the end of the half term! This has included using our tools for peeling and cutting too! The children are so sensible with the sharp tools! Finally, on Thursday the 'Fun Food Chef' visited school! We made a fruit smoothie and pizza and the chef also treated us to healthy pot of granola, yoghurt, raspberries and honey! We hope you enjoy looking at our photos! 

Our 'Stay and Play' Christmas workshop!

Thank you so much to all the family members who were able to come along to our Christmas workshop this afternoon! The classroom was packed with happy smiling faces and the glitter will be sparkling in the carpet for months!! We hope you enjoyed your visit! Take a look at some of the photos taken....

Oak Class' Xmas party!

We all had so much fun at our party this afternoon! We played musical bumps, Christmas corners, pass the parcel and ate party food before a special visitor came to give the children presents! Take a look at our photos!

Our trip to the Boo theatre!

Oak Class had a wonderful time at the Boo theatre watching the show 'Christmas in the Valley' about Emmeline who was a Scrooge character. She was visited by three ghosts who taught her how to be kind at Christmas and the ghost of Christmas present asked the children to help him show Emmeline how to celebrate at Christmas with putting food on the table and dancing to Christmas music! At the end of the show Emmeline wished everyone a happy Christmas from her house and it snowed down on the children and we had a good dance! We also coloured our own ghost and put it on a stick! We hope you like our photos!

Oak Class learn about wind!

The children have been exploring Wind this week! The children have had so much fun exploring how the little men fall down to ground with and without a parachute and we had running races up and down the playground wearing resistance parachutes! We have learnt that the 'drag' slow us down!! We particularly enjoyed playing the class parachute and running underneath it!  We even managed to have a couple of days where there was enough wind to get the kite flying! During our Literacy lessons we have also read 'Elmer in the wind!'  We have sequenced the story using the storyboard and by cutting and sticking the pictures and we have written words to describe Elmer!

Our Autumn learning!

We have learnt so much about the autumn time! We started off by going on a colour hunt in our woodland area! The children found lots of reds, yellow, oranges and browns! We learnt that the leaves drop their leaves in the winter to save energy cause there is not as much light in the winter for them to make their food. The children also learnt that some trees are used to these conditions so they don't need to drop their leaves. These trees are called 'evergreen!'  We brought the leaves back to class, stuck eyes on them to make them into little characters and practised our scissor skills to give the leaves a haircut!! Oak class have also been learning about how hedgehogs and other animals hibernate in the winter until the spring! We have made hedgehogs from dough and found different resources to create prickles, eyes and a nose! The children have continued to perfect their collaging skills by collaging a hedgehog and they have been writing about what they have learnt about autumn at the message centre! During our literacy lessons we have read a non-fiction book about hedgehogs! The children now know that a non-fiction book doesn't tell us a story, it tells us information! We have used the non-fiction book to write our own information about hedgehogs! On our second visit to our woodland area we looked for different shapes of leaves this time and learnt the names of the trees they had fallen from. The children have also had conker racing fun with the guttering and have been exploring how to make the conker roll further by changing the gradient of the guttering, they have made pictures with the autumn materials outdoors, stuck the correct number of prickles on the hedgehog to practise our numbers and counting and printed leaves on an autumn tree! Phew! We have done so much!!

Our bonfire night activities!

We have been exploring oil pastels this week to draw fireworks in the sky! The children compared using the oil pastels to using pencil crayons on black and found that the oil pastels were much clearer for creating effective pictures! We have also been creating 3D fireworks! The children have loved exploring what the best way is to cover the cardboard tube to make it bright and colourful like a firework! Then they have selected the resources they think is most appropriate to create the fire coming out of it and how to make a pointy bit on top!! During our Literacy lessons, we read the story of Henry the Hedgehog who was disturbed from his hibernation by a bonfire night! He went to see the bonfire and the fireworks then the children wrote words to show the noises that fireworks make and we have even begun to write our first sentences!! Take a look at our photos!

Our teddy bear's picnic! 

We had a lovely picnic out in the woods today with our teddies! The children made their own sandwiches and for the picnic and we also had crisps, cupcakes, biscuits and juice before playing a game of teddy bear corners!

World Mental Health day

Oak Class read the story 'Conker the Cameleon' today about a little Cameleon who could change colour when his emotions changed. Conker learned that he didn't need to change colour to show his feelings. He only needed to talk about his feelings with his friends! The children painted and coloured pictures of cameleons and talked about what makes them feel happy, sad, angry and frightened. We also did some cosmic yoga and kept our balances well when holding different yoga poses!

Adventures in Red Team

We have had a very exciting few weeks in Red Team.  First we found a lost teddy in our Woodland Area and so made posters to find the owner.  A friend saw the posters and sent us a letter to tell us they had seen a book about a lost Teddy that may help us.  The book was called 'Where's my Teddy?' which is set in the forest.  We went into our own forest to use our senses to explore what being in a forest is like.

The Minpins have moved to Oak Class! 

The children were very confused when a Cornflake packet appeared in our classroom this week! We thought the teachers had been eating their breakfast in class! However inside the packet (now known as 'The Curious Cornflake packet') we found a message from some little creatures called the Minpins! They love music and live under our superstar stage!! They even sent us an email on the minpinternet to introduce themselves! The children have loved searching for the minpins, writing messages to them, making them presents and playing them lots of music which we know they like! Evie has spotted the Minpins everywhere she goes!!

We have started school!!

Our new reception children have spent their first week in school! They have been settling into school so well and have been learning how to use our different areas of continuous provision to play and learn! Take a look at our photos from week 1!