Thorney Close Primary SchoolWillow Class 2023-2024
Teacher: Miss Craig
Year Group: Reception/Year 1
Welcome to our class page for this academic year. Throughout the year we will populate this page with our learning and experiences. Please check back regularly for updates and our latest news.
Belsay
We have had a great day at Belsay Hall, Castle and Gardens. We explored the gardens, where we found a tree that looked like an Octopus! Then, we had a look inside the castle. After lunch, we spent time in the playground, which all the children really enjoyed.#
Exploring
We have had a wonderful afternoon outdoors with Beech Class. We’ve been exploring a lot more together in preparation to merge into our new classes.
Life Cycle
We have been looking at the life cycle of a butterfly. We watched a video of the life cycle, the children were all engrossed watching the caterpillar turn into a butterfly. Then, we made our own butterfly life cycle using different pastas to represent the different stages.
Mini Beasts
To continue our topic on Mini beasts, Mrs Mustard kindly allowed us to have a look at the caterpillars from Nursery!
‘Mini beasts- Where do they live?’
Our topic this week is ‘Mini beasts- Where do they live?’ We went outside on a mini beast hunt. We had a checklist and if we found a mini beast, we ticked it off. We found worms, snails, ants and an earwig!
Sports Day
Well done to all the children for taking part in sports day! They were all amazing and had lots of fun! Everyone was really brave and climbed up the climbing wall.
Beach School
Willow enjoyed their first Beach School Session. We explored the beach, searching for shells and sea glass. Then, we ventured into the rock pools and were fortunate enough to discover a crab, many more shells, and even a clam! We returned to school with an abundance of treasures. The children's pockets were surely filled with shells, rocks, and sand.
Balancing Skills
We spent part of the afternoon in the Early Years garden, where the children enjoyed playing on the climbing frame and practicing their balancing skills.
Knights, Dragons and Castles
We have been learning all about knights, dragons, and castles. We even made our own shields so we could pretend to be knights!
Hansel and Gretel
We've been reading the story "Hansel and Gretel" and can now retell it. While discussing the story, we talked about forests and the animals that inhabit them, as well as those that don't live there and where they reside instead. The following day, we expressed our creativity by painting our own forest scenes and our favorite forest animals!
Outdoor PE
As we are getting ready for Year 1, we had a go at putting on our pe kits independently. Then, we went outside and played lots of games!
In Maths, we have been looking at numbers 11 to 20. We represented the numbers using the numicon. We used a ten numicon to represent tens then we found the correct numicon to represent the ones.
Every week, we participate in a "Little Dribblers" session where we collaborate with Sunderland AFC to practice our ball skills.
We have spent some time in the Early Years garden. We have enjoyed climbing, jumping and making our away across the obstacle course and we made our own obstacle course using the crates. We have explored the mud kitchen, water area and we built the three bears cottage using the big building blocks.
3D Shapes
In Maths we’ve been looking at 3D shapes. We were looking at whether the shapes roll or slide. We predicted which shapes would roll and which would slide, before we pushed them down the pipe.
Height
In maths we looked at height. We have used vocabulary such as highest, shortest, higher and shorter. We measured random objects using cubes, to see how tall each object was. Some objects were 3 cubes tall or even 12 cubes tall.
