Reception Newsletter 30.04.19

Term: Summer 1                                 Date: 30.04.19

Dear Parents and Carers,

We hope everyone had a restful holiday and is recharged for the summer term. We look forward to hearing about the children’s holidays. This half term is a short and busy one, we have sent home a list of key dates so you know what is happening. The children will now be choosing their lunch each day by writing their name under the coloured lunch option. Please feel free to help your child if they need support in doing this.

This week we will be reading ’Jasper’s Beanstalk’ as we begin our Growing and Changing topic. We will be planting our own beans and observing them grow over the next few weeks.

Communication and Language
We are encouraging children to use talk to organise, sequence and clarify thinking, ideas, feelings and events. The children will also be encouraged to discuss and share about their holidays.

Physical Development
As we continue to develop the children’s fine motor strength we are now also focussing on their letter and number formation as well. Particularly encouraging and correcting backwards formed letters and numbers.

Maths
We will begin the term recapping our number recognition to 20. We will be practising ordering numbers 0-20 as well as saying one more/less than a given number to 20.

Literacy
We will be writing recounts of our holidays as we as writing about our ‘dream week’. We will be focussing on writing simple sentences that we can read back, as well as spelling our red words correctly.

Understanding the World
The children will be planting their own beans this week. We will be caring for these beans and observing them grow over the next few weeks. The children will aslo be looking at the different parts of plants.


Learning Challenge
Each half term we will be setting our pupils an optional challenge related to their learning. We believe that it is important for us to provide guidance for parents on how their children's learning can be extended at home.

The learning challenge will include either a nursery rhyme, famous person, illustration or a piece of music. Please talk to your child about the challenge and help them to engage in their learning. The children can choose how they present their learning challenge outcomes to their teacher or class. Please find some ideas in the table below.

Person: Mr Bloom

Piece of Art: Eric Carle - illustrator

  

Illustration by Eric Carle	Person: Mr Bloom
1.  To find out facts about the illustrator. 2. To make a collage of one of his illustrations. 3. To choose a favourite illustration and talk/write about why you like it.	Draw a portrait of the person. Find out facts about the person. Watch the person in action.

Key Dates

Monday 6th May	Bank Holiday (School Closed)
Tuesday 14th May	Apple Central Park Trip (PM)
Thursday 16th May	Alder Central Park Trip (PM)
Friday 17th May	Aspen Central Park Trip (PM)
Monday 20th May	Apple Campfire 2.15pm
Tuesday 21st May	Aspen Campfire 2.15pm
Wednesday 22nd May	Alder Campfire 2.15pm
Thursday 23rd May	Polling Day (School Closed)
Monday 27th - Friday 31st May	Half Term

If you would like to contact a member of the EYFS team via email the address it is: eyfs@broadford.havering.sch.uk.

Kind Regards,
The Reception Team

Nursery Parents - Bring in your recycling!

Please bring in any clean recycling you have for the children to use for junk modelling. You could bring cardboard tubes, boxes, bottle lids, empty bottles... the children will find uses for most items!

Thank you. 

Nursery Newsletter 30.4.19

Dear Parent/Carer,

We hope you all had a lovely Easter break and look forward to welcoming the children back on Tuesday 30th. We are welcoming a few new children and families into our Nursery this week so encourage everyone to say hello and give them a warm welcome to Broadford life. 

A list of Key Dates for this Half Term:
Monday 29th April - Inset Day - School closed for children
Monday 6th May - Bank Holiday (School closed)
Wednesday 22nd May - Stay and Play session - Parents are invited to stay with their children for a session based around 'Knowledge of the World'.
Thursday 23rd May - Polling Day (School closed)
Friday 24th May - Break up for Half term. School re-opens on Tuesday 4th June.

Our story this week is: Bumble bear and The very lazy bumble bee. This week we are creating our own junk models. Could parents please bring in clean recycling so we can use them in our designs! Egg boxes, cardboard, plastic bottles etc are all very useful! 

Maths

Wooden bees and dice - Roll the dice and count the bees . This is to encourage and develop one to one correspondence and accurate counting.

Creative

We will be junk modelling this week and learning how to join materials.

Communication and Language 
We are listening to animal noises and identifying sequences of noises. 

Knowledge of the World
We have a bee themed Tuff Tray for the children to learn more about bees and how important they are for humans. We have non - fiction books with lots of images, a bee hive game and model hives for the children to transfer 'honey' to.

 If you would like to contact a member of the EYFS team via email the address is  eyfs@broadford.havering.sch.uk.     

 Kind Regards,

The Nursery Team

Melt, Mix and Stir - Nursery create Easter Nests

We tested our new cooking facilities before Easter and made some delicious Easter nests. The children were encouraged to follow the picture recipe and discuss steps together, as a group they crushed, counted, stirred and mixed. The end result was delicious chocolate goodness!

Sometimes we made a few mistakes when cooking and had to adapt plans;  we counted the wrong amount of chocolate squares for our group so had to melt more, we didn't stir the chocolate enough whilst heating so we had to start again, we stirred too slowly so the chocolate had cooled and it was trickier to mix. We always try to teach children that their abilities can be developed through effort, persistence, trying different strategies and learning from mistakes. The process of cooking is always as important as the product!

"It won't cover it... shall we make some more?" Hope
"Crush it all really hard!" Jack

Reception Awards!

The children in Reception have been working really hard, both at school and at home. We are very proud of all their achievements and below are the children who received certificates last week.

Alder Class
Bronze Award- Asher
Silver- Asher, Gorege, Areya
Gold- Camila
Resilience- Ruby

Aspen Class
Silver- Liam
Happy Teacher Award- Aida
Star Writer- Charleigh
Resourcefulness- JJ
Reflectiveness- Liam
Resilience- Ali
Reciprocity- Miraz

Apple Class

Bronze Award- Chisom

Silver- Oliver, Lillie
Gold-Kenzie
Platinum- Aisha
Star Writers- Karimah, Max

Keep up the good work!

The Great British Worm Hunt

Following our enjoyment of Julia Donaldson's 'Superworm', Reception have been engaging in our very own Great British Worm Hunt. We have been investigating our immediate environments to observe worms in their natural habitats. 

We have discovered the dampest, darkest corners of our outdoor area, uncovering rocks, tiles and logs in our quest to find worms. We noticed that the worms like to fester underneath things where the soil is damp and therefore easier for them to make their little worm paths.

We enjoyed discussing our observations, commenting on the appearance and movements of the wriggly, wiggly worms. 

Abdulkarim: "It's all wiggly!"

Dominic: "A wriggly worm!"

Eric: "It is superworm!"

Scarlett: " I am scared of worms. Actually, I love them."

Vanessa: "I like to hold them."

Ruta: "I am not scared of worms."

Alex: "Look, there is a pink one!"

Eleni: "And a black one!"

Ali: "A big, fat, purple one!

We can't wait to continue learning about the world around us when we come back from our Easter holidays. 

Hip, hip hooray for Superworm! 

Nursery Newsletter 8.4.19

Dear Parent/Carer,

Thank you for your patience whilst we have moved the Nursery. Staff are very excited for the children and parents to see the new environment, we are very sure the children will love the added space and make fantastic memories there in their last term of Nursery.
This week our story is 'A little bit brave' a story about a little rabbit who finds some courage and has an adventure. It takes the children on a journey through lots of different settings introducing new vocabulary on the way.

This week we will be re-establishing routines in a new environment and ensuring the children understand how to use and put away the equipment properly. However we also have lots of enhancements for the children to extend their learning with us throughout the week.

On Monday it is Nursery and Reception's turn to pick litter. We will talk about our environment and why it is important for us to look after it.  Each year our school council commits to raising money to sponsors young lady who lives in Uganda. This sponsorship is facilitated through the organisation Watoto. Watoto is a family of people from all over the world who are working together to ensure that the forgotten have a place to belong.
On Wednesday 10th April, we are fundraising to raise money to cover the cost of Brandina’s sponsorship. We are asking children to come to school dressed in one of the colours of the Uganda flag - red, yellow or black. This could be a t-shirt or jumper, scarf or pair of socks. We suggest 50p per child towards the Watoto charity for the occasion.

Maths

As it's almost Easter time the children will be encouraged to count the Easter bunnies carrots for him. They will be able to match or write the number of carrots for the bunny.


Communication and Language 
We will be discussing our story of the week in small groups as part of our language activities this week. The children will be encouraged to answer questions including who, where, what and why about the story. 

Knowledge of the World
As it is nearly Easter the children have lots of Easter themed stories and props to explore including 'Peter Rabbit A Pop up Easter Egg Hunt'. They have chicks and shells to count and sort independently.

Snack
The children are also using our brand new cooking facilities to create their own Easter nests this week. They have picture cards to order and will be encouraged to work as independently as possible.

 If you would like to contact a member of the EYFS team via email the address is  eyfs@broadford.havering.sch.uk.     

 Kind Regards,

The Nursery Team

The peas are out of the freezer!

As part of our work on the book Supertato by Sue Hendra, we froze some 'escapeas' in ice cubes.

We then talked in partners about how we could get them out and came up with lots of ideas.

Ethan- "Lets put it in the sun."

Faramade- Lets shine a torch on it!"

Ryan- "Hold it really tight in your hands."

And then we tried some of them out.

Billie- "It's so cold, I don't want to touch it!"

Larissa- "It's all dripping down my arm!"

Asher- "Look, it's working!"

By the end of the lesson we had 'escapeas' all over the class room!

Nursery - Closure for moving day.

A reminder for Nursery parents that Nursery will be closed for children on Friday 5th. This is to enable staff to safely re-position furniture, unpack resources and create a lovely environment for children to return to on Monday. We look forward to showing the new Nursery to parents and children next week!