Reception - Elephants
Dates for your Diary
Phonics Club After School Club - Every Monday from Monday 25th April to Monday 23rd May 2022
Multi-Sports After School Club - Every Monday from Monday 25th April to Monday 23rd May 2022
May Day Bank Holiday - Monday 2nd May 2022
The Queen's Jubilee Celebrations - Friday 27th May 2022
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Important Information
Reading
We love to read together in Elephant Class and have lots of opportunities to read and share stories throughout the day. We have a voting station in our classroom, where children are encouraged to vote for the book they would like to share at the end of the day. The children enjoy taking part in this and are getting much better at voting fairly! We also have Bradley bear, who lives in our book area. He waits patiently for a child to share a story with him every day and loves it when he receives a cuddle from them too!
Your child will be sent home with a book and reading record. Children will begin with picture books and progress towards books with words, which match their phonics teaching and learning. Please share these books with your children at home as often as you can. You can comment on the book and ask your children questions about what is happening or what might happen next. Please record any comments in your child's reading record.
Remember! The more your child reads at home, the closer they will be to achieving their bronze, silver or gold reading awards and will be displayed on our trophy wall in class!
Uniform
The children in Elephant Class look so smart in their school uniform! We know how expensive they can be, so we kindly ask you to label your child's uniform to eliminate the risk of any items being lost. Children can also bring in a named water bottle for use throughout the day. Children in Reception have P.E every Friday. Please bring the appropriate P.E kit into school in a labelled bag. The children should wear a plain white t-shirt, black jogging bottoms or leggings or black shorts in appropriate weather and black P.E pumps or plain black trainers.
Homework
Children will be sent home with a writing book and name card to practise forming their names correctly. These do not need to be handed in, your child can keep them at home or in their book bags.
We will also send letter sounds and CVC words for your child to practise at home. Please encourage your child to practise saying these sounds as often as possible!
In addition to this, a homework menu will be sent out every half term with a variety of learning activities for your child to choose from. The activities aim to compliment and consolidate learning that has taken place across the half term. To showcase this, we would love for you as parents to send us images or videos of the children's learning. The EvidenceMe app on your mobile phone is the place for this, simply take a photo or video and upload this to the app with a comment about your child's learning.
If you have any questions, please feel free to ask the Reception staff.
Thank you for your support with this.
Celebrating Achievements
W/C: 09.05.2022
Our 'VIP' this week is: Lacie-Marie
Our 'Maths Mind' this week is: Kishan
Our 'Writer of the Week' is: Tia
Our 'Sports Person of the Week' is: Moneeb
A big well done to you all for working so hard to achieve your goals this week. We are very proud of you all!
Our topic this term is...
During this term, we will be thinking about the question, 'Can a plant grow in the dark?' We will be learning about the natural world around us and discovering the things that plants need in order to grow healthily. We will be learning about plant life cycles and growing our own fruits and vegetables. Look out for the wonderful photographs of our experiments and discoveries!
Our Summer Term Gallery
Our topic this term is...
The children will learn about maps and using a map to identify where we live, explore our local environment and identify special places in the community. We will also look the similarities and differences between Town and Country as well as the similarities and differences between life in England and in other countries.
We can't wait for you to see what we have learnt, look out for pictures of our fantastic work!
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Clean Hands and Teeth Nurse Visit
Sports for Champions 2022
World Book Day 2022
Our Spring Term Gallery
Focus Rhymes
Learning and singing rhymes and songs is very important in the development of early language and literacy skills. We love to sing in Elephant Class and practise our focus rhymes daily. Click on the links below to hear some of our focus rhymes from this term.
Winter Focus Day
On Friday 7th January, we learnt all about the season of Winter!
We talked all about the changes we could see outside and what the weather might look like. We even discussed that the ground outside was slippery and frosty outside!
In the afternoon, we developed our painting skills by making our own snowmen. We used care and control when painting our snowmen and their features.
Take a look below at some pictures of our amazing work!
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Our Christmas Gallery
Children in Need 2021
Thank you to parents and carers for supporting such a worthy cause! The children had a fantastic day dressed up in their favourite costumes.
Star of the Day!
Each day, teachers will be looking out for the children who consistently exceed our expectations. These children will be awarded our 'Star of the Day' certificate. Star pupils from w/c 22/11/21 and 29/11/21 were:
Mehvish, Ahmed, Lonimi, Mohammed-Zakariyya, Levi and Rohaan.
Well done! We are so proud of you!
Our Autumn Term Topic
Marvellous Me!
During our first term in Reception, we have been learning about how wonderful we are and have thought about the question, 'Are we all the same?' We discovered that we all have similarities and differences and this makes us unique! We learnt about the human life cycle and a real baby came to visit us. We were so welcoming and asked the baby's Mum lots of insightful questions.
We learnt about the famous artist, Giuseppe Arcimboldo and created our own fruit portraits! We have also been taking part in celebrations, recently learning all about Diwali and Bonfire Night.
Take a look through our gallery to see our learning in action!
Our Autumn Term Gallery
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End of 2021/2022 page.
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Our new topic for Summer 1 is 'Exploring Change'
We will be learning all about life cycles, seasonal changes and planting.
In Elephant Class, we currently have some caterpillars. At the moment we are watching them grow and develop - they are getting bigger and bigger each day! We are looking forward to watching them spin their cocoons and turn into butterflies 
In Expressive Arts and Design, we learnt about the artist Kandinsky. We learnt that he liked to paint using different colours and shapes. We carefully mixed primary colours to create the colours we wanted to use. We then painted a small circle in the middle of each square and painted bigger circles around each one.
Don't you agree that our art work looks fab?!
The children have enjoyed exploring and playing in the milk bottle igloo.
Welcome back to school, Elephant Class!
It is so lovely to see you all back in school. We are so proud of how well you did on your first day back after lockdown; you have all been absolute super stars! Keep up the good work! 
Mrs Norton, Mrs Stevenson, Mrs Buthelezi, Mrs Kaur and Miss Tiwana.
Please meet your new Class Teachers and Learning Support Practitioner (LSP).
ACADEMIC YEAR 2019 - 2020
Update 12.6.20 Hello Elephants! Just a quick update about what we have been learning in Elephant class at school and what has been made to support learning at home. If you go to the PARENTS section on the school website, then click HOME LEARNING, you will find the Reception section with a weekly plan and resources. The work set is based on a theme and a story. Over the next few weeks we will cover all the learning areas in the Early Years. This week our focus was physical development. At school the children completed some of the activities which are on the home learning plan. We had great fun in school this week and I have received some great pictures of home learning on 2Simple, FANTASTIC!. Thanks for sending in the pictures using 2Simple and please continue to do so. I have been really busy preparing activities for each week. They are all on the HOME LEARNING page. If you prefer a paper copies, they can collect be collected from school each Monday. Continue to keep in touch by using the class email.
Keep Safe and Keep Learning!
Mr Wilkes
For help, advice and queries, you can email your child's class teacher at Elephants@reddalhill.sandwell.sch.uk and they will assist you as soon as they can.
11.05.20 Reception home learning ideas and resources
WB 20.4.20 Hello everyone, Click on the links below to download the Reception ideas for home learning for the next few weeks. Paper copy packs will be available from school.
WB 20.4.20 Paper resources to support home learning. Theese resources can be requested from school. Feel free to contact using the class email.
Hello Elephants, I hope that you are all keeping safe and enjoying time at home with your families. All of the adults are missing you!
However, we can still have lots of fun learning new things. Here are a few ideas.
Keep practising the days of the week by singing our favourite song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKqAblcwFOA
You can also learn the months of the year using the song that we sing in maths.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5enDRrWyXaw&list=PLqv4y60m_3_BsDssdzvrCueiho5Tc-1j8
Telling the time video- Keep learning o'clock and half past times.
Phonics
Practise reading words and match the words to the correct picture.
https://www.phonicsbloom.com/uk/game/match-cards?phase=2
Practise building words playing Forest Phonics
http://www.ictgames.com/mobilePage/forestPhonics/index.html
You could download the app "Mr Thorne Does Phonics" or watch clips on YouTube. He teaches children how to segment and blend sounds together to form words. He is really good.
Maths Activities
Practise ordering numbers playing the Caterpillar Sequencing Game or Coconut Ordering on Top Marks.
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/ordering-and-sequencing/caterpillar-ordering
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/ordering-and-sequencing/coconut-ordering
Practise making repeating patterns.
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/ordering-and-sequencing/shape-patterns
Remember to keep an eye on the weather each day. Sing our weather song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD6FRDd9Hew
Maybe you could keep a weather diary. Here is an example
Update-The caterpillars have made their cacoons and are now in the Chrysalis stage. I will keep you updated and send a video when they change into butterflies. Mr Wilkes
The Very Hungry Caterpillar.mp4
Other useful sites...…….
www.phonicsplay.co.uk username: march20 password: home
https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/games?page=3
https://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/for-home/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/stories
Please look after yourselves over the next few weeks.
Upcoming Events
Remember every Monday we have a Parent Workshop at 2.30pm.
Elephant Class enjoyed dressing up for World Book Day! We celebrated the day with activities about different book characters!
The children enjoyed investigating what minibeasts they could find in the soil. They found millipedes, beetles and worms.
During the Spring term, we had a visit from "Spike" the Animal man. The children learnt about the different animal groups and enjoyed touching the animals.
Winter Focus Day
On Friday 10th January 2020, Miss Phipps and Mrs Beard taught us about winter. We also practised our scissor control when making snowflakes and snowmen.
Yoga
Today, we have been exploring Cosmic Yoga with Mrs Beard. Look at our moves!
We had a great time at the Reception Christmas Party! Thank you for the donations to the party.
We had a great time on our trip to Ash End Farm! We weren't lots about farm animals and we even saw Santa!
PE day for Elephant class is on a Friday afternoon.
Please make sure that your child has the correct PE kit.
This consists of a white T-shirt, black or navy blue shorts and black plimsoll shoes.
Our PE lessons will be focused on "Movement and Dance" during this term.
On Wednesday 26th September the children enjoyed taking part in Rubgy Tots.
Thank you for all of the homework that has been sent to us so far. It is lovely to see how busy the children are at home. Remember you can email us photographs or videos at any time. Just photograph your child learning or playing at home and email it to the address that we have provided. Remember to add a comment to explain what your child is doing e.g. Tim enjoyed writing his name using chalks on the garden wall. Remember to use the email address that you have registered with your child's 2 Simple account.
Each week we celebrate our successes in
'Praise Assembly'.
We have a Writer and Reader of the Week,
Maths Mind, Sports Player and a VIP!
Our Very Important Person this week is....
CONGRATULATIONS
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2018-2019
We had a great time during the Friday Fun Day!
Thursday 11th July-The Parent Inspire Workshop. Everyone enjoyed making fairy gardens!
On Monday 8th July, we went to Haden Hill Park for the day. The children took part in a nature hunt and played with lots of sports equipment. The children really enjoyed playing in the playground and eating lunch together. Everyone had a great time!
On Thursday 27th June, we had a great time at sports day. Well to done to all the children who took part and a big "THANK YOU" to all the parents!
On Friday 17th May the children went on a trip to Cradley Heath Library. They enjoyed listening to stories and looking at lots of books. The children were given their own library card so they could go again and take books home to read.
We all went to the school hall to look at the new mosiac. The children enjoyed talking about the mosiac and they asked the artist questions about how it was created.
On Tuesday 19th March we had a visit from the Animal Man. We learnt about different types of animals. We enjoyed touching an owl, a snake and a salamander. Miss Hardy was very brave to hold the tarantula.
Talk For Writing
From March 1st 2019, we have been focusing on
'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' in our Talk for Writing lessons,
in preparation for writing our own stories.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Handa's Surprise .mp4
On Thursday 6th December, we went on a trip to Ash End Farm. We had a fabulous time and met Santa!
The children enjoyed taking part on World Mental Health Day on the 10th October. We talked about keeping our minds healthy and tried out some "Cosmic Yoga" moves.
EYFS Maths Inspire Workshop
On Wednesday 10th October, we enjoyed our first Inspire Workshop. The children really enjoyed learning to read, write and use numbers to 20. Take a look at the fun we had!
