Autumn 2: Fire Fire!

Week Commencing 6th December

2D shape! We have learned about 4 types of 2D shape. We know 2D shapes are always flat, and used the words "straight" and "curved" to talk about the sides. We also know that 2 of our 2D shapes both belong in the Rectangle family. One is a square rectangle, which has 4 straight equal sides (square), and one is an oblong rectangle, with 2 long straight sides and 2 short straight sides (oblong). We have also learned about triangles and circles, talking about how the circle has 1 curved side, and the triangle has 3 straight sides. We have to be like Thinking Thib and try really hard to remember to call the oblong rectangle an oblong. We have enjoyed Number Fun songs drawing shapes in the air, and then created our very own 2D shape pictures and pointed out which shape is which. 

Week Commencing 29th November

We loved our visit from Caroline and Andrew, who are both air ambulance paramedics. They taught us about their job and how they help people. They also showed us some of their equipment, and have even kindly let us borrow their helmet so we can take turns at looking and trying it on! It was very heavy. 

We have started to use the words “part” and “whole” to talk about objects. For example, a car is the whole - the wheel is a part. To explore this further, we made our own fruit kebabs where we spoke about what parts we had used to make our whole kebab e.g. 1 blueberry. The children were also excited to tell me about the parts of their snack! “Look! The stork is a part of my apple.” “My pear is in 2 parts.” Our knowledge of part-whole will help us when we start to understand and partition numbers and solve addition and subtraction problems. 

Week Commencing 22nd November 

Thank you Mrs Gould!❤️
We said a big thank you and farewell to our very own superhero Mrs Gould as she starts her maternity leave working from home. The children made a special card for Mrs Gould and said a big thank you for supporting us in our reception year! We can’t wait to meet Baby G! 🍼 

Real Life Superhero Day! 👩🏽‍🍳🕵🏼‍♂️👷🏼‍♂️👩🏿‍🚒

What a wonderful day we had celebrating the amazing real life superheroes we are so lucky to have in our community! Thank you to all families to helping your child to transform into their real life superhero! Our classroom turned into the world of work where they took on different challenges and worked towards a special certificate! We were postal workers, lollipop patrol, doctors, vets, shopkeepers, scientists, dentists and more! A super day for our RZ superheroes! 

The Great Fire of London! The children were extremely fascinated by the story of the fire. We re-enacted it. We know it started in the bakery, and spread quickly among the houses as they were built very close together and made from lots of wood. We know that the people had to pass buckets of water from the River Thames and throw it on the fire! We then re-enacted people running from the fire to escape the danger. They must have been feeling very frightened (our Ninja word!). 

We have been tearing to create a our very own fire flames. These are fantastic and will be displayed alongside our fire engines to celebrate and remind us of all of our learning this topic. 

We are learning to show increasing control over an object. This time, we used a tennis racket. It was tricky to control it so the ball was close to us. We pretended the ball was like a pet dog which we didn't want to run away!

We have been counting out objects. We had to take turns to roll the dice and place that amount of toppings on our pizza. 

Week Commencing 15th November

We had a visit from a Jewish lady called Amy. She taught us all about her faith, and the celebration of Hanukkah. She told us why the Menorah candle is special to Jewish people, and how it reminds them of how Jewish people fought for their right to be Jewish and practise their religion. We all made our own menorah candle by working with a partner. 

Children in Need - lots of spotty Pudsey themed challenges. 

Uh oh! A cat is stuck up a tree... we needed to work using our teamwork and problem solving skills to rescue the cat. Firefighter Martin told us that the fire crew at Clitheroe have only had to rescue two cats in the last ten years, however I know the children in RZ will be ready to help if there is another rescue needed!

Super independent artwork using water colours!

Super junk modelling to create our very own fire engines! We worked hard to paint our boxes red, and were then supported to add wheels using split pins which allows our wheels to move! We have all independently added ladders / sirens etc to our fire engines to bring them to life! They are fantastic! 🚒 

Our fascination for all things firefighters has supported our learning. 

This week is Inter Faith and Anti-bullying week. Monday was also a day to explore the PSED theme, “Valuing Differences”. We began these themes by talking about what makes us special, and then discussed the things about us which are the same and different. We recognised that it is good to be different, and we should celebrate our differences. We reiterated our very important message that no matter our differences, we must all have a kind heart. To share kindness, we drew messages outside for other children and families to see. We spoke about the warm fuzzy feeling we get inside when somebody is kind, and agreed that it feels good to be kind! 

Week Commencing 8th November

We really enjoyed our visit from Clitheroe Fire Station today! Firefighter Martin showed us the different equipment, and answered our questions! He even played the sirens and flashed the lights as he dro e away! What an exciting (and very wet!) afternoon. 

We enjoyed using our “People Who Help Us” puppets to talk about different real life superheroes and how they help us.

The children were curious to learn about Remembrance. Why do we wear poppies? We watched the CBeebies video to help us understand why Remembrance Day is so important. We practised different art skills to all make 2 poppies, one using watercolours for the first time. We had to use the brushes carefully to not mix the colours. The other way was by selecting different materials to create poppies - the children were very proud to see their poppies displayed in the window. They participated brilliantly in the 2 minute silence. 

We enjoyed a hedgehog hunt during Welly Wednesday, and learned a new hedgehog song. I was amazed at all the facts the children could recall about hedgehogs. 

Week Commencing 1st November

We have been learning about the Hindu festival of Diwali. We made puppets to retell the story of Rama and Sita. We designed mehndi hand patterns. We used chalk and objects to create rangoli patterns. it was great fun using the bells and sticks as we performed a celebration dance.

Our creativity task this week was to practise our printing skills. This time, we were printing to try and create fireworks. We practised printing onto different materials first, and then decided it would be best to print onto black card so the fireworks looked like they do in the night sky! The glitter was a super way to add a shimmer to our fireworks. At the end of the week, we added our bonfire poem to the back so we can sing our special song.

Wow! Thank you for all of your kind donations for the food bank! The children learned about where our food was being sent to, and understood that by donating things to those in need was a very helpful thing to do. There was 396kg of donations in total! 

We have been learning about the Bonfire Night celebration. The children were fascinated to learn about why we celebrate Bonfire Night, and all about Guy Fawkes. The children drew some excellent representations of The Gunpowder Plot and Bonfire Night. 

We explored what happens during Bonfire Night - such as fireworks, bonfire lighting and sparklers. We agreed that it wouldn’t be safe for us to have sparklers in school because there wasn’t enough grown ups to keep us safe, but we did make our very own edible sparklers! Can your child retell the instructions of how we made then?

In Maths, we have been learning about the composition of 2 and 3. We know that 2 is made up of 1 and another 1. We have also been representing 3 in different ways - we also know that 3 is made up of 1 and another 1 and another 1.