Welcome to our Class Page
Please have a look at our curriculum map:
12th July 2019
What a lovely week! We have been so busy as usual.
Our caterpillars emerged from their cocoons and we had 5 beautiful painted lady butterflies. We have been drawing pictures of them and writing about them. We couldn’t believe all the beautiful patterns on their wings. We talked about how we should look after them including making them nectar from sugar and water. We all decided that it was best for them to be set free! It was a real awe and wonder moment watching them fly away.
We entered an RE art competition this week. The theme was “Where is God?” We really impressed Miss Massey with our thoughtful reasoning and explanations of our pictures. Miss Massey has turned these into a book for the entrance area of our school to share our amazing work!
We had a special visitor on Thursday, two Jewish ladies came to teach us about their religion and how it differs from Christianity. We enjoyed listening to the prayers in Hebrew and learning all the Sabbath.
We have been practicing our WOW assembly this week too. We have a real treat for you!
See you all at the Summer Fayre!
5th July 2019
What a beautiful sunny week! We have had lots of fun outside, we do love to be outside.
This week we continued learning about mini-beasts. Our caterpillar’s have turned themselves into cocoons so they are now hanging in the butterfly net and we are patiently waiting! In the meantime there were LOADS of bugs in forest school and our outdoor area to explore.
In our writing this week we have been focusing on adjectives to describe a caterpillar. We used the words we thought of to write sentences. We have also written fact-files about caterpillar’s including all that we have learnt.
We have looked at the life cycle of a caterpillar this week, it is slightly different to the chicken but we understand that they both continue round and round.
In maths we have continued consolidating our knowledge with a variety of independent tasks including more complicated patterns and taking away.
How is there only 2 and a half weeks left of Reception???
27th June 2019
4 days just isn’t long enough to have all the fun we need!
This week we started our new topic, we have some creepy crawly caterpillars in our classroom! We are going to observe them and watch them grow into butterflies (a lot less maintenance than our chicks!)
This week we wrote predictions about what will happen to the caterpillars. We also did some internet research to begin our non-fiction writing.
We have gone a little bit bug crazy and have been finding them in the outdoor area, Miss Massey made us some sheets so we could go to Forest Explorers on a bug hunt.
Around the classroom we have had lots of activities linked to the very hungry caterpillar including balloon painting.
Miss Massey had her new Reception class in to play this week so we were very helpful in tidying the classroom and showing them a real Clearwater welcome!
Today the sun came out so we all raced straight outside to continue our leaning the way we love to do!
21st June 2019
WOW! What a fun week, we have well and truly been enriched!
We couldn’t even pick a favourite out of all the activities we have done this week! (Miss Massey said hers was learning to juggle – although we don’t think she quite got it!)
There has been a lovely feel around the school this week of us all having fun and enjoying being together!
Please have a look at the photo’s on the main school news to see what we’ve been up to!
14th June 2019
This weeks been super speedy! We have achieved so much, I can’t believe it was 5 days long!
We’ve been reading the story of Little Red Riding hood this week. We re-told the story using pictures, actions and music. We wrote the story independently as a big write piece. Miss Massey was very impressed and said we are super duper ready for Year One.
In Maths we have continued to consolidate our knowledge of addition and subtraction. We have also been looking at counting in 2’s, 5’s and 10’s….feel free to be super duper impressed with us!
We have made our Daddy’s some very creative cards and we cant wait until Sunday to give them to them! (Daddy’s if you’re reading this please be surprised!)
In RE this week we began our new topic “Why is the word God important to Christians?”. We talked about what we thought this meant before talking about the Creation story. We talked all about what each day would look like and created collages to show them. They are now very proudly displayed on our RE working wall.
Our reading is coming along so well and we are very proud of ourselves. Can we show you this weekend?
Next week is enrichment week and we are SUPER excited!!
7th June 2019
What a speedy week! Miss Massey loved hearing all about our half term holidays. We completed our big writes this week telling the recount of our half term holiday (don’t they seem like a long time ago already?) We have continued to ride along with the Jolly Postman this week and landed in the story of Cinderella. We read and ordered the story writing the key parts ourselves. We loved the part where they live happily ever after!
This week we did some research about weddings on the internet and then used materials to design wedding dresses – this was super funny! When choosing this week we have been acting out weddings, making Miss Massey and Miss Cunningham laugh A LOT! In literacy this week we have been writing invitations to the royal wedding – Miss Massey was very pleased to be invited by some of us even if the wedding is taking place in the park!
We discovered paper-mache (sticky!!) this week and made carriages for Cinderella, we are finishing them off still so will show you the finished carriages next week!
In maths we have continued to learn about 3D shapes, it was Billy Bears birthday and we had to guess what was inside his presents by talking about the properties of the 3D shapes. We have also been consolidating our knowledge of adding and taking away – we are very good at this now, maybe we could show you at home?
Rain certainly hasn’t stopped us enjoying ourselves and we even found time to practice sports day when the sun came out!
• Please can you all read with your children this weekend, it is really important for them to be practising as much as possible and to continue to their love of reading.
• We sent a message about jumpers, please can you name your child’s jumper really clearly to avoid this confusion
Have a lovely weekend! Miss Massey
24th May 2019
Well the weather certainly hasn’t let us down! We’ve been pretending we’re on a mini holiday over here in Reception! We’ve had picnic snacks and lots of sunny fun.
On Monday we came into a huge surprise….a beanstalk had been growing in our classroom and we found some massive footprints. Turns out they were clues for our new story, Jack and the Beanstalk (Jack is thrilled to be in the story!)
This week we have been learning to follow and write instructions. We planted some cress by following instructions and looked at the important features. We then wrote our own instructions in case any one else needs to do it. We tested this out in the outdoor area writing instructions of how to make a den.
In maths we have been practicing more of our adding skills and some of us have even attempted missing number problems. Think we are ready for our smarty-pants now!!
We have talked about what plants need to best grow and thought about the life cycle of a beanstalk….after all Jack chopped it down so how will it ever grow again??
Sports Day practice was super fun this week. Miss Massey has been teaching us a sun dance so that we have nice weather on the day, your in for a treat if you can come and watch us after half term.
After all this I think we all deserve a week off and Miss Massey said we need to have loads of fun to fill her in on.
A few notes from Miss Massey….
– Thank you for another lovely half term!
– All the children have read to me this week and I have decided if they need to move up a book level
– Please practice tricky words with your son/daughter this half term (this can be in a fun way if you are feeling creative) as these make a huge difference to their fluency
– After half term we are finishing off our Jolly Postman topic before beginning something new and exciting
17th May 2019
What a beautifully sunny week! We have all decided (especially Miss Massey) that everything is better in the sunshine and this has been one of our favourite weeks of school so far! We have had lots of time to learn and play in the sunshine using all our new resources – the water pump is certainly a big hit with us all!
We have continued our journey with the Jolly Postman and have this week landed in the story of Hansel and Gretal. We used the pictures in the story to help us describe the Witch and her gingerbread house. We know that lists are always written to the left, each item needs a new line and that we should use our capital letters. We have also been talking about healthy eating; we designed the witch a new and improved house using lots of fruit and veg.
In maths this week we have been learning about 3D shapes and have been using our funky fingers to build cubes and pyramids. We decorated them by finding the faces, corners and edges. We have also been practicing more of our taking away skills, this time using even bigger numbers!
This week in RE we walked to the Church to meet Father John and talk all about St James Church and why it is special to Christians in Quedgeley. We were all super well behaved and didn’t even mind how hot it was (thanks for remembering our sun hats Mum’s and Dad’s that was a big help!). When we got back to school we used lego to build Churches and thought about the important features they need to make them special.
On Thursday Miss Massey’s Mummy brought us all a treat! We went up to forest school and found she had turned it into Australia! We talked about all the animals we might find there before going on a Koala hunt and eating gummy snakes – yum! We read a funny Australian themed story called “Jacko and the beanstalk”….we wonder if the Jolly Postman will go all the way to Australia?
Please come back Mr sunshine we have lots more fun to have!!!
10th May 2019
Four days is a lovely length for a week isn’t it?! We have fitted an awful lot in and showed Miss Massey our super-duper-ness time and time again.
This week we have continued to look at Goldilocks and the three bears. In pairs we changed the story and drew new story maps….some of Miss Massey’s favourites include “Bear and the three foxes” and “Rose and the three gingerbread men” what a creative bunch we are! Once we changed our stories we made our own stick puppets to practise telling it to one another before writing our new story opener.
In maths this week we have been solving problems. Miss Massey read out different word problems, we had to decide if this was taking away or adding and had to choose what we thought was the most effective way to work them out. Our strategies ranged from using dinosaurs to elastic bands to using our fingers to being able to count on in own heads! We have also recapped telling the time this week, silly Billy Bear made mistakes and we had to correct him!
We had a lovely time in Forest Explorers this week and definitely chose the best day of the week to go! We made furniture for the three bears using the natural resources we could find.
Miss Massey let us help her re-vamp our outdoor area this week. We helped her decide what areas we should have and where we should move them around to….we left her to do the sweeping though and went off to find some outdoor learning.
Miss Masseys said our reading is coming on leaps and bounds and that she is super proud of us!
• Next week we are walking to the Church on Wednesday to talk about this special place for Chrisitians. If you are able to come we would love for you to join us!
• Today we have moved some children up in the reading scheme, please don’t panic if they are finding it slightly more difficult as the children are coping with this really well.
Have a lovely weekend and I will see you all on Monday.
3rd May 2019
We have had a very exciting week this week. On Monday we found Baby Bear was in our classroom and he had spilt porridge oats everywhere! He wrote us a letter asking if we could help him learn to make porridge after that pesky Goldilocks ate all of his! We enjoyed making and eating our porridge (Miss Massey said we all have real sweet tooths!). After this, we wrote instructions so that baby bear would never have to go without porridge again.
Baby bear inspired us all to read the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. We drew story maps and made up actions before re-writing the story ourselves. We also used masks and small world toys to re-tell the story in our own language. We also learnt a song with actions to re-enforce the language of the story further.
Our number work this week has been super tricky! We had to look for number patterns and use number lines to help us work out what the next number would be, Miss Massey was so impressed with the way we used our learning powers and didn’t give up!
We learnt a super fancy word this week – symmetry. We have been making symmetrical pictures using paint, pens and natural resources.
In RE this week we began talking about special places. Miss Massey and Miss Cunningham brought photographs of their special places for us to see and we asked lots of questions. Between us we decided a special place is somewhere you feel happy and safe and often somewhere you have lovely memories in too.
26th April 2019
We have had a lovely first week back at school, feels like we’ve never been away!
After a good old catch up on Tuesday we got straight back to business as usual. It was St. George’s day so we read the story and talked all about England. We made shields featuring St. George’s red cross and coloured a picture from the fight scene in the story – we had all sorts of coloured dragons!
We launched our new topic this week (please have a look at our curriculum map to see what we will be up to!) Inspired by the Jolly Postman, we wrote letters to someone in our house. We really enjoyed writing our own addresses and attaching a stamp to the envelopes. We then enjoyed our (slightly wet) walk to the Post Office to post our very important letters. On the way we looked for important things to help us know which way we were going, such as, the shop, the tunnel and the park. At school we used the photographs to make a map of where we had been and directed a Bee-Bot to post it’s own letter in at the Post Office. We hope you enjoyed receiving your letters in the post and are impressed by how much our writing has come on!
To link in with our new topic we have a Post Office role play in our classroom. We have loved dressing up and exploring all the new resources. Miss Cunningham has been playing there with us this week helping us work out the change we would need when buying different items –we love looking at and using coins!
We also collaged a picture of the Jolly Postman to display in our classroom; he is decorated with lots of textures and colours – we will post a picture when he is complete.
In Maths this week we have been partitioning numbers in 10’s and 1’s, we are trying really hard with our counting in 10’s to help us check we have the right amount.
Can you believe we have done all of that in 4 days?!
• It sounds like you all had a lovely Easter holiday and it’s nice to see how many of you completed some of our family homework
• We will continue to work through phase 3 and 4 phonics this term, anything you can do at home will hugely benefit your child so please let me know if you would like any advice or anything providing
Have a lovely weekend – try not to blow away! Miss Massey
5th April 2019
HOPPY EASTER EVERYONE!
We have had a lovely last week at school filled with Easter treats and fun! Miss Massey brought the chicks back safely from their sleep over last weekend so we have been able to hold them lots (some chicks are more pleased about this than others!) and have been taking care of them including feeding them and cleaning their brooder box.
Our writing this week has focused on finger spaces. We built sentences and were the finger spaces; this really helped us to remember them when we wrote descriptions of the chicks.
We have completed lots of Easter-y tasks this week, including making bunny ears and baskets for our egg hunt, decorating eggs by weaving and printing repeated patterns and making our Easter cards (we hope you all like them!).
We were very proud of our WOW assembly on Thursday, it was really fun to show off our learning and independent work. Thank you all for staying.
A few notes from Miss Massey…
• This week we completed assessments on the children’s phonics and maths – I am very proud of how well the children did, they are a real credit to you!
• I have sent the children home with two books each for the holidays but please don’t feel like you are limited to these it’s important for the children to experience a wide variety of stories so I would love to hear about any reading they do!
• Have a lovely Easter and I hope you all get to spend lots of lovely quality time together!
Miss Massey
Clearwater Family Homework Easter 2019
29th March 2019
We have had a very busy week!
On Monday something very egg-citing happened and our eggs arrived! We waited very patiently and on Tuesday they began to hatch, what a time for a shellebration! We now have 8 extra members in our class (somewhat fluffier than our original members!!) As we are sure you have seen on the School Facebook page the chickens have brought lots of egg-ceptional learning with them. We researched eggs on the internet finding out which birds come from eggs, which were the biggest/smallest and what different colours eggs come in. We have also learnt about the life cycle of a chicken and egg. We have loved looking at our little friends and the changes that happen in front of our eyes; we have completed lots of observational drawings, painted pictures of chicks and created textured collages. Next week our chickens will be feeling stronger and will be ready for us to hold them (we will have to be egg-tra specially careful!)
This week in Maths we have been looking at time. We completed different exercises and talked about which took us the longest or who could do things the quickest. Miss Massey then showed us a clock, we talked about the numbers around the edge and all different types of clocks we might see around us. We learnt to tell the time to the O’Clock, we drew a huge clock on the playground and lay down to become the hands, we also made our own clocks and helped each other to practice this skill.
We are very excited for Mother’s Day and Sunday and can’t wait to give you the cards and gifts we have made.
A few notes from Miss Massey…
• We have been practising very hard for our WOW assembly on Thursday and can’t wait to share our learning with you. Please do come along if you can.
• If you can stay afterwards it will be a lovely chance to look through your child’s independent work (I’ll get some hot cross buns in for you all to enjoy too!)
• We have been working really hard on our cursive letter formation in school, if you do any practicing at home please bring this into school so we can celebrate together.
Have a lovely weekend, one more week to go!
Miss Massey
22nd March 2019
Well what a SUPER week!
This week we have been working hard creating our own Superheroes. First we needed a catchy Superhero name, then we designed our capes, masks and badges. To colour our capes we experimented with tie-dye (this was super fun as we had to wear gloves like scientists!) – a very special thank you to Darcie’s Mummy for sewing our capes too! We used our designs to create our badges and decorate our masks. We wrote speech bubbles to put our characters in their own comic. Their entry noises (KAPOW, BOOM, BANG) gave us a really good opportunity to practice our capital letters. We posed in front of a skyline to really show off our Super hero skills….we hope you like our pictures!
On top of all of this we still found time to complete our big writes this week based on our new versions of Supertato. Miss Massey was super impressed with the way we could apply everything we have learnt independently.
In Maths this week we have looked again at taking away, we made a giant number line and talked about jumping down it to find how many less we needed. We are becoming really confident with the concept of taking away and all the different ways to work it out.
Now it looks like the weather is FINALLY improving we went and spent the afternoon in Forest explorers. We made superhero caves and traps to catch the baddies – we were really strong moving the logs and even thought about moving parts we would need.
Miss Massey’s Mummy brought her pet chicken Annie to meet us this week. She was super friendly and soft, she let us feed her corn and we looked at an egg she had laid that morning. Seeing a real chicken helped us think about why we have Easter egg’s and the way they represent new life.
We are really sad that we have finished our Superhero topic but we have learnt so much! We look forward to sharing it with you during our WOW assembly.
A few notes from Miss Massey…
• Next week the Chicks arrive in our class on Monday, keep your eyes peeled for our chick diary on Facebook.
• Our WOW assembly is on the 4th April – you are welcome to stay after this to look through our Learning Journeys and enjoy some Easter treats.
• Have a lovely weekend!
15th March 2019
What a super scientific week!
This week we have been working hard to achieve our “Early Years Explorer Award” during British Science Week (we will be bringing our certificates home tonight!). The national theme this year is journeys so we have been exploring Space. We started the week with some rocket experiments! We have also made lava lamps and played with space slime. We imagined we were space men and wrote a list of all the things we would take on a rocket and used our funky fingers to make Astronauts to use on the small world table. Miss Massey taught us all about the Solar System and the planets and we learnt lots of funky facts.
In Literacy this week we changed the story of Supertato and story mapped our own versions, we can’t wait for you to read Super-sausage and Super-bacon! Our sentence writing has really been coming along lately and we have been taking all our new challenges in our stride!
We explored the term “half” this week and chopped up various foods into two equal parts. We have been using this to re-enforce our work on sharing numbers. Miss Massey set us a problem solving challenge this week where we explored animals feet and how we could combine them to make 5 and then 10, we worked so well in pairs and Miss Massey was very proud!
PHEW…what a busy week! Next week is the final week of our Superhero topic and Miss Massey has a very exciting landing planned!
A few notes from Miss Massey
• Pyjama day for Comic Relief was a total success, thank you for your support, once we’ve got a final total we will let you know!
• We have now begun Phase 4 phonics so we will be looking at consonant clusters e.g. “fl” and “gr”, there will be no new sounds in our Letters and Sounds books but feel free to keep practising as practice makes permanent!
• We love celebrating children’s success so look out for any excuse to write a WOW voucher this weekend, if you’ve run out please let me know
• We have a date for our WOW assembly on 4th April, I hope you can all make it
• Have a lovely weekend!!
8th March 2019
This week has absolutely flown by! Another week of lots of fun and laughter in Reception that’s for sure!
This week we have been writing the story of Supertato, we really impressed Miss Massey with the way we remembered everything she has taught us and applied to our writing. We have also been focusing on using our writing more independently around the classroom and have been planning what we are going to make in the construction area before we begin building.
We have been really busy in maths this week looking at capacity and sharing (not at the same time of course!) Billy Bear threw us a picnic and helped us understand how much water each of the bottles would hold by counting how many cups they filled. He threw us ANOTHER picnic later in the week (aren’t we lucky) but this time we had to share the chocolate equally between different amounts of friends.
On Tuesday it was Shrove Tuesday so we began talking about lent. We know that Jesus was tempted in the Desert so at this time of year we give something up to become the best versions of ourselves. Miss Massey made pancakes for us and year one (she was really good at flipping them!) and Miss Cunningham chose lots of yummy flavours for us.
We had a wonderful story filled day on Thursday for World Book Day! We started with our time at the library and continued the fun at school, making bookmarks, sharing our stories and drawing pictures of the front covers for our favourite books.
A few notes from Miss Massey….
A huge thank you to all of you who came to parents evening it is always lovely to talk to you about the children.
Please can I ask that you read at home at least once this weekend. The difference it makes to the children’s reading and confidence is enormous.
1st March 2019
Welcome back!
We have had a super fun first week back in school – it feels like we have never been away! On Tuesday, we wrote the snapshots of our holidays, it was lovely to hear each other’s news and ask each other questions. Miss Massey and Miss Cunningham had a bit of a move around in our classroom over the holidays so it has been fun to explore all the new areas and resources.
On Wednesday we came into a crime scene! There were vegetables in trouble, we had to look for clues and write down what we could see. We soon discovered Evil Pea had been up to no good and we would need the help of Supertato this half term!
This week we have made wanted posters for the Evil Pea to make sure this doesn’t happen again! We are learning the story of Supertato and will be becoming Superheroes ourselves!
In maths this week we have been looking at doubling – we used a mirror to help us discover how much of something there would be if we had double the amount. Miss Massey said it would be awfully loud if we were to double ourselves! We also consolidated our knowledge of weighing and used a balancing scale to find all the things heavier than a book in our room.
Wasn’t it lovely to have a few days of sunshine this week too? We made the most of it and went in our outdoor area a lot! Miss Massey said we need to do a sunshine dance every day to try and bring it back for good!
• We have now finished all our Phase 3 sounds (these are in our letters and sounds books) so next week we will be consolidating what we know before moving onto Phase 4.
• Please keep an eye on the newsletter for upcoming dates including British Science week and our WOW assembly
15th February 2019
This week has absolutely flown by! We cannot believe it’s time for our half term already!
We have really enjoyed our topic of Pirates and have learnt so much! Our Pirate Day was the perfect way to celebrate everything we have learnt and to finish the topic having a lot of FUN! We found some treasure and had to experiment with what we could take on the boat by seeing what would float and what would sink. We also used instruments to make the sounds of the sea and flew our Pirate flags on the ocean.
This week we have learnt 4 new sounds – ur, ow, ear and oi. We are getting really confident at using these sounds but this is a very tricky skill so we will definitely keep practising.
This week we have been writing independently, Miss Massey wanted to keep in mind everything we know about sentence writing to make this work the best it can be. It’s been super tricky but as usual Clearwater children do not give up. Do you think we could write some sentences together over half term?
This week the whole school has been focusing on acts of kindness (thank you to those Mummy’s who wanted to spread this to the teachers too!) Our class decided to make valentines cards because it’s kind to show those we love that we appreciate them. We also made friendship bracelets because we are all friends in our class and it was kind to take a moment to think about that, some of the reasons we gave for choosing our friends really made Miss Massey smile!
In RE we continued to look at special stories. This week we focused on Hinduism and the different religions special story of Rhama and Sita. We talked about the messages behind the story and made our own Diva lamps to remember that light will always beat the darkness.
A few messages from Miss Massey…
• If you haven’t signed up for a parents evening appointment there is still time after the holidays
• Thank you for your continued hard work with reading at home, it makes a huge difference so please keep it up
• Have a lovely half term and come back rested for more fun and learning.
8th February 2019
KUNG HOI FAT CHOY! (Happy New Year!)
This week has been very different to our usual week as we have been learning all about the Country of China and how they celebrate new year. There were lots of unusual activities around the room including the writing of Chinese numbers and words, using chopsticks to put coins into red envelopes and the imagination station was full of Chinese restaurant items. We had a really good go at nearly everything!
Miss Massey read us the story of the Zodiac, we enjoyed hearing about all the different animals and the big race. We each chose an animal and made a mask to re-tell the story (poor Miss Cunningham got left with the pig mask!) We had to think about how our character would move and remember the right order to give out the positions. This helped us with a cutting and sticking job where we had to order the animals and their positions correctly.
On Tuesday we had a really big treat, Miss Massey helped us to make a stir fry and brought other yummy treats (prawn crackers, sauces and spring rolls) we also tried a Chinese cookie and read our fortunes from inside.
Amongst all this fun we still found time to continue our work on taking away. In maths this week we have also been talking about longer and shorter, we each built a “great wall of China” and compared the lengths.
Of course we still found lots of time to go outside and explore.
A few messages from Miss Massey….
• There are 4 new sounds in letters and sounds books please keep working on these at home. We are really focusing on including our cursive handwriting (wooshes off the line) so please practice this at home as much as possible to improve the children’s confidence.
• Please make sure children have gloves etc. in school so that we can enjoy the outdoors regardless of the weather
• It’s pirate day next Friday so the children can wear something Pirate-y to finish off our very exciting topic
I hope you all have a lovely weekend and I will see you for the last week of fun on Monday!
1st February 2019
We have had another lovely week of learning in Reception!
We have been taking away in maths this week (that can be SO tricky but you know that at Clearwater we never give up!). We made a trampoline for our teddies and took away how many fell off, we have also been taking away from 6 and 10 and looking for patterns in the numbers we take away. We know that if you take away more the amount you are left with is less.
Miss Massey has been setting us challenges to make us more independent, this week we made a shape penguin, coloured by shape and matched some captions to the pictures.
This week we read “The story of Pirate Tom” we made up actions to help us remember it (nearly word for word!) and drew a class story map. Next week we will begin re-writing the story! How exciting!
In Forest Explorers we made some Pirate Potions, we had to move around a lot to find the ingredients because it was super chilly brrrrrrrrrr.
We have still been using the outdoor area, we have been seeing how we can change the ice e.g. smashing it or melting it. We have also been using ice in our mud kitchen delicacies.
We have learnt 4 new sounds – ai, ee, igh and oa and have been using these to write new words. Miss Massey has introduced a phonics area in our classroom for us to practice these skills on our own!
Next week we will be taking a small break from Pirates and are going to explore Chinese New Year!
25th January 2019
This week has really flown by! We have been super busy as usual and think we deserve a well-earned rest this weekend!
We have been reading “The Pirate next door”, we found all the rhyming words and continued our own rhyming strings. We also looked at the pictures in great detail and used our phonics to write a description of one of the characters – Miss Massey was so impressed that we used our new digraphs (ch, th, sh, ng) and that we wrote full sentences she had no choice but to cover us all with stickers!!
In maths this week we have been continuing our 2D shape journey, we sorted them according to different properties, for example if they had two sides or not. We have also been ordering our teen numbers and are becoming very confident with knowing how many one’s go along with the ten.
We used our boxes to make Pirate Ships this week, we had to think about our designs and use the different resources appropriately. We thought about the different aspects that a Pirate ship needs including a sail and an anchor. All our Pirate ships look different and it was so much fun! We can’t wait to take them home to show you!
We have continued thinking about special stories in RE this week, we know that special stories for Christians can be found in the Bible. We explored the story of Jesus walking on water but you’ll never guess what….we couldn’t walk on water! That story must be one of Jesus’s miracles!
On Thursday there was a very exciting visitor in school – he brought his very red and very noisy fire engine with him! We enjoyed listening to all the fireman’s experiences, trying on his uniform and having a go at squirting some water (it’s a good job Miss Massey’s car needed a wash).
Miss Massey has been buying some new resources for us this week so we have had a lot of fun exploring them both inside and outside; the marble run is a particular favourite of ours!
A few messages from Miss Massey…
• Thank you for sending in your boxes this week – the children are SO creative!
• Please keep reading lots at home (especially if your child still has a picture book)
• Next week we will be going to Forest Explorers again as usual, please can your child have a pair of gloves in school on Thursdays
Have a lovely weekend! See you on Monday
18th January 2019
We’ve had a very fishy week in Reception this week!
The aquarium trip was a huge success, we had so much fun, saw lots of different fish and learnt more about Pirates, we especially loved the seahorses and even got to find Nemo and Dory!
Miss Massey likes to think she is a professional photographer so we have some lovely pictures to look at to remember our trip. We ordered some of the pictures and wrote some lovely sentences or words to go alongside them.
We have continued to learn our purple sounds (phase 3) we now know j, v, w, x, y, z and zz. Next week we move onto some tricky digraphs, how exciting! We have some more work in our letters and sounds books to do together.
In Maths we have been completing some Pirate addition, we used treasure chests to find out how much the pirates had altogether and used our fingers to double check if we were right. We have continued to practise our teen numbers understanding that they are made up of 10 and more 1’s. We have also begun our 2D shape work, so far we have met Rozzy the Rectangle and Sally the Square, I wonder if we can find any of these in our houses?
This week we explored information that you can find on the internet, we came up with lots of questions about Pirates and learnt some new facts, did you know Pirate’s didn’t really wear hats they preferred bandannas to keep the sweat out of their eyes?
We have been using our funky fingers to make some lucky fish this week, it was very tricky to fold all the scales but we used our learning powers and didn’t give up!
We’re very excited for another week of fun next week! 😀
14th January 2019
We had a fantastic day on our first ever school trip to Bristol Aquarium!
11th January 2019
We are so happy to be back! We all came straight in with big smiles on our faces on Mondays and have settled straight back into school.
On Monday we wrote thank you cards to our Mummy’s and Daddy’s for all the lovely things we had for Christmas and did over the holidays, it was lovely to look at the PadLet and see what each other had put.
On Tuesday there was a bit of a commotion…a Pirate had been in our classroom! Pirate Pete left us a letter and a treasure map. We followed his map and went over all the obstacles until we found the treasure chest! We guessed what we thought was inside and drew detailed pictures of it. The treasure was our favourite kind of treasure….chocolate!
We have been completing Pirate jobs all week including making 3 step Pirate patterns, directing a BeeBot over a treasure map, decorating fish and making our own treasure maps. Such busy little people we are!
In Forest Explorers this week we climbed a tree (Miss Massey thought we were super brave but Miss Cunningham was a little bit nervous!)
We wonder if Pirate Pete will come back next week….
A few little reminders
• Monday is our trip to Bristol Aquarium, please can all children be in their school uniform and bring a packed lunch (that they can carry themselves) We will be leaving about 9:15 and will be back for normal pick up time.
• We have begun phase 3 phonics this week so the children will start having work in their letters and sounds books again from today.
I hope the children have enjoyed their first week back as much as I have!
Miss Massey
21st December 2018
Clearwater Reception you have just completed your first full term of school! Congratulations!
I have absolutely loved this week with you all! You have really kept me smiling and kept me going so thank you so much! Your enthusiasm for everything at school has not stopped at all, your imagination has continued to amaze me in the imagination station, your reading skills continue to knock my socks off, you have written cards for each other, me and the elves constantly and you have all finished some Christmas maths challenges this week….wow!
The Christmas party and jumper day was a total success, the children made me laugh with their dance moves and behaved amazingly in the hall really doing Clearwater proud! This was finished off with a yummy Christmas dinner – I have never seen some of you eat so much!
This week we have finished off all our Christmas bits and bobs including reindeer food, Christmas cards, tree decorations and calendars. I hope you enjoyed looking through your Christmas folders with your little ones they were all very proud of themselves. We have also made some Christmas cakes – yum! We have also used a repeating pattern to create Christmas lights.
On Friday we went on the apparatus in Hardwicke hall, it was lovely to see the children having a go at new things and enjoying themselves so much.
Thank you for coming to our learning journey session this week, the children always love showing you around their classroom and sharing their work with you, all your comments were really useful too!
Our Christmas PadLet is now live, it would be lovely to see what all of you get up to over the next two exciting weeks! (I have emailed you the link and password) I promise to show you all my festivities too.
I hope you all enjoy a well-earned rest (I certainly plan to!) and that you come back in the new year ready for lots of PIRATE fun – ahoy mateys!
Finally, a big thank you to all the parents for welcoming me to Clearwater Academy it has been such an enjoyable first time!
See you in 2019, Miss Massey x
We will be very sad to see our Elves go….we think they might miss us too!
20th December 2018
That Billy Bear isn’t as innocent as he looks, we caught him and Stripey having a snow ball fight in our classroom!
Chocolate saved us his brussel sprouts from yesterdays dinner 😮 (phew they are only chocolate sprouts!)
19th December 2018
The elves are ready and excited for today!
18th December 2018
Looks like Stripey has been working hard all night to catch Chocolates best side.
17th December 2018
Chocolate has been super kind this weekend getting all the bits and bobs ready for our Christmas cards and party hats….Stripey however has been practicing his wrapping up!
14th December 2018
We can’t quite believe how quick time is flying! With only one week to go we are really feeling the Christmas fever!
This week we have written letters to Santa Claus (completely independently, won’t Santa be impressed!) and we have continued to post him lots of pictures in our magic letter box. Miss Massey has also assessed our phase 2 phonics knowledge ready to teach us phase 3 after Christmas – not to blow our own trumpet but she said we picked it up as quick as lightening and were some of the most clever clogs children she has ever taught!
This week we had a reindeer factory with lots of play-dough and other resources to make reindeer’s in all sorts of ways.
Our cheeky elves have certainly kept us on our toes this week, they left us lots of ingredients to make our Christmas Tree decorations (but shhh we aren’t telling you what we made because that’s a Christmas secret!). We have also been copying their mischief and made some paper chains to decorate our classroom.
We walked to the library with year one this week and although it was super chilly our little legs kept up all the way there and all the way back! We had some lovely Christmas stories read to us and explored the shelves of the library (thank you to those Mummy’s who came along and made sure we got there safely). Some people take books home from the library but at Clearwater we chose to take home a huuuuge “holidays are coming” truck for our classroom…how exciting!
Miss Massey has been teaching us lots of Christmas songs and dances this week (we are starting to think she likes Christmas ALOT).
The elves have been busy over night trying out our funky fingers jobs!
13th December 2018
These elves are always up to mischief….
12th December 2018
Did no one ever teach Stripey not to play with his food?
11th December 2018
Chocolate was looking very pleased with himself this morning and brought us lots of things to make tree decorations with….Stripey thought flour angels looked more fun.
10th December 2018
Look like stripey has had a fun weekend in the construction area…I wonder if we could help build a Chocolate sleigh today too?
7th December 2018
The elves have certainly got the Friday feeling today!
HOW AMAZING WAS OUR NATIVITY??
What a lovely Christmassey week!! As I’m sure you’ve seen we have had a few visitors in our room this week. We have had so much fun looking for the elves mischief and showing them around the classroom, lots of us have been teaching Chocolate to read and write (Stripey just seems to want to have fun!).
This week we have been writing our CVC words, Miss Massey has been super impressed with the way we stretch the words to hear all those sounds. The snowman set us all a challenge to fill his snowballs with sounds to build words….challenge accepted!
In Maths we have started to look at money. We created some coin rubbings of UK coins (1p, 2p, 5p, 10p) and we talked about what we could see (some decided that Miss Massey could be on the back of the coins, what a great idea!) Billy Bear then opened a Christmas shop and we had to pay for some Christmas toys before we could wrap them up.
We have had a lot of fun in our Christmas Classroom which has given us a lot of chance to use our funky fingers wrapping presents, decorating the tree and writing cards and gift tags.
On Friday we went to watch Hardwicke’s nativity, it was lovely to watch a different version of the Christmas story.
We cannot wait until next week!!
Just a few reminders….
– On Thursday (13th) we are going to the Library (if you can help please let me know)
– Our parent learning journey afternoon is on the 17th at 2:30. It will be lovely to see as many of you as possible
– Our Christmas jumper and Christmas party day is on the 19th 😀
Have a lovely weekend,
Miss Massey
6th December 2018
We think Stripey was missing the North Pole today, we caught him making lots of snowflakes and he stuck them all over our window. We wanted to make him feel at home so we helped him make some too.
Cheeky Chocolate went missing this afternoon (look at our super shocked faces!) but luckily we found him in Forest School, we had a very fun game of hide and seek!
5th December 2018
We caught Chocolate writing us a lovely good luck message today but it looks like Stripey got carried away with the pens!
4th December 2018
The children voted and decided to name the elves “Chocolate” and “Stripey”.
Last night they turned our reading garden into a winter wonderland…we came in to find Chocolate reading Christmas stories to Santa and Stripey.
3rd December 2018
Our cheeky class elf has arrived ….
30th November 2018
Can you believe November is over already?
We have had another lovely week – made even lovelier by some lovely news of our school move to Olympus Park!
This week we finished our topic on Autumn and hedgehogs, we discussed hibernation and went to Forest School to make some homes/habitats for the hedgehogs to spend their winter. Next week we begin all preparations for the big C (sorry Mum’s and Dad’s!).
We have written some captions this week in phonics using shared writing. We supported each other to write simple sentences to talk about a picture. Can you believe we can do that already?? We also labelled a picture of a hedgehog (obviously using our new favourite word “snout”) Miss Massey was amazed at how confidently we could stretch words to hear all the sounds we needed to write.
We have also looked at the days of the week, we learnt a song to help us remember the order and made posters of what we do on different days. We independently carried this on to make paper chains in the correct order.
We have continued to talk about the importance of the Nativity and the very first Christmas in RE. We have made story maps to help us remember what happened and used Miss Massey’s Nativity set to re-tell the story.
• Thank you for sending your costumes in for the Nativity – if you haven’t already done so please can we have them on Monday
• Don’t forget we are at the church on Monday (children only dress rehearsal) and Wednesday for our proper show.
Look out for our ‘Elf’ tales next week. Have a lovely weekend and I will see you all on Monday! Miss Massey
23rd November 2018
Road safety week has been SO much fun!
On Monday we discussed everything we already knew about how to be safe near a road, we watched a video and used all this information to help us make some road safety poster so other children can learn from us – I wonder if you saw them in the tree in front of our school?
On Monday afternoon the school playground transformed into a road! Miss Massey and Miss Bratt got all geared up and took us outside. We had to each play a different role to help keep each other safe, some children were cars, some were traffic lights, some of us got on paper bikes, some of us were lolly pop ladies and some of us just wanted to cross the zebra crossing! Miss Massey and Miss Bratt looked very silly showing us how to put all our gear on.
Tuesday was wheely day, it was the by far our favourite day of the week! Miss Massey even rode her bike to school so we could follow her around the playground and race her. We wore our helmets to keep us safe. In maths when thinking about the concept of time so we timed each other to see how long it took to gear up for a safe bike ride and how many times we could go up and down in the playground in 10,20 or 30 seconds.
We have enjoyed practicing more of our Christmas songs this week, we think we are really going to impress you in a few weeks!
In Forest School we built some dens and made some roads using natural resources.
In RE this week we used Miss Massey’s Nativity scene (it’s made of pot but we were SO careful Miss Massey said we can use it on our own!). We started to explore the characters and we listened to the story of the very first Christmas straight from the Bible.
• We have now finished all our phase 2 sounds, there is no new addition in your green books as we have covered the diagraphs ff, ll and ss this week. We will continue to re-cap our sounds and develop our confidence when blending before Christmas.
• It’s lovely to see so many of you engaging with the wordless reading books and the change in the children week on week is clear to see so thank you very much!
• Don’t forget our new PadLet will remain live so you can post about your exciting weekends.
• I hope to see lots of you at the Christmas fayre tonight (Miss Cunningham and I will be the ones dressed as Elves!)
I hope the children have enjoyed this week as much as I have! Have a lovely weekend and I will see you on Monday.
Miss Massey
16th November 2018
We hope you enjoyed our assembly this morning – thank you so much for coming!
As I’m sure you could tell we are BUSY at school 😀
This week has been really fun, we have developed our imagination station, we have different resources now, we especially love the crates that we can can build with!
In our maths work we have completed some simple addition, we know this is putting groups together (this is a lot less fun than finding one less by eating a chocolate button!) Miss Cunningham introduced us to the fancy word “Capacity” this week, I wonder if we will be able to tell you at home?
We are super readers now and used our sounds to match words to pictures – lots of us even did this independently.
We have been developing our spoken sentences this week – Miss Massey and Miss Cunningham made some silly ones up and we had to help them make sense. These teachers can be so silly you know!
– Thank you for all your reading and sounds work that is being completed at home! We have nearly finished phase 2 so then we can work on consolidating these sounds and developing our blending more
– As you will have seen in your letters and email we now have a continuous PadLet to keep up to date with each other (if you need the details of this please just ask)
– Next week is road safety week so we will be teaming up with year one for a variety of activities
Have a lovely weekend,
Miss Massey
9th November 2018
Well that was another lovely week in Reception at Clearwater Academy!
On Monday we celebrated Bonfire Night, we made popping rice crispy cakes and used various resources to create some firework pictures. We used these and a video of some fireworks to help us come up with lots of describing words and used our phonics to write them.
We have carried on our learning about ‘the prickly hedgehog’ and explored texture this week to decorate pictures of hedgehogs…Miss Massey said we used more porridge than she would at breakfast! We also recreated the story in Forest School making journey sticks of everything autumnal.
We are getting so good at understanding more than and less than and this week even had a go at some word problems. Miss Massey said she needs to buy some new socks because we keep knocking them off!
This week Miss Massey set up our new area “the imagination station” we get to choose what we play, making props, making up games and becoming different characters. We really are a creative bunch!
Just a few reminders….
– Our WOW assembly is on Friday 16th – the children have been working really hard and are really proud of this so it would be lovely to see as many of you as possible
– Your child will now have a book (picture or simple words) please work on these together at an appropriate time over the weekend as this will really help their confidence
– Thank you for coming to parents evenings it was lovely to catch up with you about your little darlings!
Have a lovely weekend, Miss Massey 🙂
2nd November 2018
Was that week really only 3 days long? We have managed to fit so much in!
We looked at our Padlet together on Wednesday – thank you so much for sharing it all, it was lovely to see and to talk about their holidays with the children. We took part in a big “class draw” to show what we have been up to.
This half term our topic will be “Autumn”. This gives us a brilliant chance to explore outside and notice lots of changes. We have already looked at the leaves (of course we threw them in the air!) and created some leaf printing art work.
We are reading the book “the prickly hedgehog”. We have looked at the beautiful pictures in detail and talked all about the characters, settings and any unusual words. In Forest School we created some clay hedgehogs focusing on their prickles and their snouts.
With Mr Barrowcliffe we have been looking at ‘one less’ and we will continue this concept next week.
There is no letters and sounds work in your books this week because we have spent a lot of time recapping what we already know.
Have a lovely weekend – try and keep warm!
Miss Massey
19th October 2018
I can’t believe I am writing this already, we have finished our first half term! It has been so lovely to get to know you all and begin our exciting journey together!
This week we have been super busy yet again! We have learnt 2 more sounds, “k” and “e” and we have also learnt the diagraph “ck” – we will tell you what this very long word means Mums and Dads don’t worry!
We have also travelled further into our number journey exploring all the numbers to 10 in detail and looking at one more. Maybe we could do a ‘one more’ hunt at home like we did at school with Miss Massey?
This week we have talked about how to be a good listener, we know that you need to look at the person who is speaking, sit still and think about the same thing that they are talking about (Miss Massey said it’s not easy to not think about our lunch but we really need to try!).
We always enjoy being outside and this week has been no different despite the chilly weather! We’ve been to Forest School with Year One and helped Miss Massey create new areas in our Outdoor classroom.
• We have now finished our topic “Marvellous Me” with a circle time all about something special to us. Thank you for sending these in!
• Next half term our topic is “autumn” we will get lots of opportunities to go outside and explore and talk about the changes in our environment.
• Our WOW assembly is on Friday 16th
• Some of you have already tried our Padlet so please keep going and we can enjoy looking at this together when we are back at school.
Have a lovely week and a well-earned rest! See you in a week for more fun and learning.
Miss Massey
12th October 2018
Harvest week has been a total success!
We read the story of The Little Red Hen. We talked about the different characters, seasons and the process to make the bread. We made up some actions to help us remember the story and then made a story map to help us more. On Thursday we copied the hen and made some of our own bread. Miss Massey told us about a magical ingredient called yeast that helps bread to grow, we just weren’t ready for quite how big the rolls became! We enjoyed sharing the bread and took this opportunity to think about Harvest time and what we were grateful for.
This week we have also been talking about different fruit and veg and explored them further with some observational drawings.
Thank you for coming to see our Harvest Festival, we hope you noticed our textured scarecrow and enjoyed our singing and dancing. Miss Massey and Miss Cunningham were super proud!!
Amongst all this fun we still found time to continue with our number work and phonics – we now also know g, o and c.
We talked some more this week about our can do attitude by singing the Incy Wincy spider, we talked about how he didn’t give up even when things got tough and what things we could also not give up on. We made a display on the back of Miss Massey’s desk, feel free to come and see our progress!
Have a lovely weekend, try and stay dry!
Miss Massey
5th October 2018
We have had a really lovely week this week! Our classroom and outdoor area have been full of smiles, laughter, fun and learning! This week has flown by!
We learnt 4 new sounds this week – i, n, m, d. Miss Massey set up lots of different mark making opportunities for us to practice our letter formation rhymes but our favourite was definitely in the d-d-dirt with a d-d-dinosaur tail. There are more sound sheets in our letters and sounds books today but Miss Massey says we are not to worry and can do them together when we have time and when we enjoy it! We have continued our number work this week, we are now all confident with ours numbers 0-5 and we understand what these numbers really mean. On Thursday the numbers hid outside and we had to go on a number hunt before we could order them.
We have been thinking about our five senses this week, Miss Massey put our jumpers around our eyes so we couldn’t see what we were touching, smelling, listening to or tasting! Some of us were very brave and tasted a lemon but none of us could tell it strawberry mousse until we had a look!
We had another lovely time in Forest School. We made our faces using clay and all natural bits and bobs, when these are dry we will bring them home to show you.
This week we had our first ever school photographs. We kept clean all morning to make sure we look our very best – we hope you are as excited as us to see the big smiles of our little class!
We were super excited when we found a caterpillar outside this week, it gave us a great chance to talk about how we care for things in the environment and what he would need to survive. We decided that he would be happier if we set him free rather than took him inside at the end of the day but we will keep our eyes peeled to see him again.
We can’t wait to see what next week has in store!!
A few little reminders…
• Next week is our Harvest festival (Friday 12th at 9:15) we would love to see as many of you as possible
• Please send your child into school in a coat whilst we have this unpredictable weather
• I have sent an email today clarifying your Letters and Sounds books but please come and see me if there is anything you don’t understand.
Have a lovely weekend, I have a few surprises up my sleeve for next week!
Miss Massey
28th September 2018
WOW! What an amazing busy week we have had! We stayed all day this week and haven’t even said we are tired, we have just been having SO much fun!
Miss Massey has helped us with lots of fun things in the mornings and afternoons. We looked at our body parts by learning a song. Then we drew around Holly and labelled the different parts of her body – she said it tickled when people drew under her arms! We then went outside and carried this on with our chatter chums, Miss Massey and Miss Cunnigham even let us draw around them.
We did some more RE this week and talked about how it was special to belong. We know we belong to our families, our friends, our class, our school and our community. We decorated a jigsaw piece each and found that we all fit together!
We went up to Forest School with Year 1 to explore this week – it looks different in the sun compared to the rain! Miss Massey took some lovely pictures of us, we hope you enjoy having a look.
This week we began our phonics journey, we learnt 4 new sounds – s,a,t and p – we could teach you the songs and actions at home if you ask us very nicely!! Will you please help us with our phonics book as well?
Thank you for a lovely week Reception, see you on Monday! Miss Massey
21st September 2018
We have had another super busy week of mornings in school this week. We have experienced lots of “firsts” this week, including our first assembly with Mrs Moss, our first lunch at school and our first trip to Forest School. We are settling in so well!
To start our first RE topic this week we have read the story of Elmer and talked about being special just like him. We mixed lots of colours together to help us to decorate him. We are working our way through a collection of Elmer stories during our snack time.
We have sung lots of new songs this week too and learnt some funny dances for our “wake and shake”. We have spent a lot of time exploring inside and outside again and have been trying very hard to help at tidy up time. This week we have been trying really hard to have a “can-do” attitude with our friends Marshall and Skye….we promised Miss Massey we will carry this on at home and let her know anything amazing we do!
Next week we are full time and we cannot wait!
– Next week we will begin learning our sounds in phonics, a ‘letters and sounds’ book will be sent home on Fridays including our four new sounds. Please can these come back to school on Thursdays so we can get the new sounds stuck in.
– We really enjoyed Forest School this week and can’t wait to go again, if you haven’t sent wellies please send them by next Thursday.
– Thank you to those of you who already completed your marvellous me books – we really enjoyed looking at them ?
I hope you have a wonderful weekend – see you bright and early on Monday.
Miss Massey
14th September 2018
We have had an amazing first week at school!
We all turned up looking super smart in our new uniform and have settled straight into our new classroom – it almost seems a shame we have to go home for the afternoon! Miss Massey is very proud of us all and told us she is the luckiest teacher ever!
We have been super busy making lots of new friends this week, exploring our new classroom and the outdoor area…we even found time for our first PE lesson! We hope you enjoy looking at our pictures and can’t wait to find out and show you what next week holds!
A few little reminders….
– The children are staying for lunch next week so home time will now be 1.05
– We will begin Forest School next week so please can you bring a named pair of wellies into school
– Please make sure all jumpers/cardigans are named
– Please have a look at the Home Learning Grid above
Thank you for making this first week so enjoyable! Have a lovely weekend!
Miss Massey ?
7th September 2018
Welcome to Reception!
It was lovely to meet you all at the home visits. We are very excited to start what will be an amazing school year! The Classroom is set up ready with lots of exploring opportunities for the children to engage in independently, with their friends or with an adult.
We will start the school year with the topic “Marvellous Me” (for more information about what learning will be covered this term, please take a look at the ‘Curriculum Map’ link above). This topic is a lovely way to get to know each child individually as they explore their body parts and senses whilst talking about themselves and their families. Throughout the year new topics will be based around the children’s interests to keep it fresh and exciting!
Just a few little reminders….
– Can children please bring their book bags everyday to start a routine as we mean to go on
– PE will be on a Friday morning so please make sure all children have their PE kits and daps in school ready for their second week
– Friday will also be mine and Miss Bratt’s PPA morning which creates a lovely opportunity for Reception and Year one to spend some time together
– We will be taking part in Forest explorers most Thursdays so please send a named pair of wellies into school at your earliest convenience, we have suits for the children to wear to protect their uniform
I look forward to getting to know you all more. If you have any questions please do come and see me ?