EYFS 2022-2023
Class Archive
Butterfly Class News
Summer 2 end of term
Butterflies, what a super busy and fun end to the term we had together. You showed great mark-making skills drawing your maps of how you get from home to school, including lots of detail about what you passed and saw on your journey. We had lots of fun outside building, being in the sand and playing action games. You went on a tricky word hunt and copied Lego model instructions in one of your transition sessions with your new Year 1 teacher, Miss House. You all did such a beautiful job using the paint pens to decorate your butterfly sun catchers that you took home as a gift from us.
We also had our last go at our butterfly (photo inspired) drawing task following the release of our Painted Lady butterflies. This has been a great activity that we have been building on for a little while. Having had a first attempt, we talked about what 'feedback' was and how it can help us improve our work. You had a go at this with each other, first giving a compliment about something you liked about someone else's work and then giving them a feed back point of something they could work on to improve their drawing. You all came up with some really useful ideas; such as making the wings bigger / smaller / the same size each side (we noticed butterflies are the same each side and introduced the word 'symmetrical'), adding in detail on the wings or making the butterfly body thinner. This is such a lovely activity to introduce the idea of coming back to a piece of work and making improvements. 'Editing' work is something the children will start to experience later on next year.
You have all done so well this year. We can see how much you have grown and how hard to you worked to learn so many new things. We are all immensely proud of you for what each and every one of you have accomplished. Now it is time for a well deserved break! Enjoy your summer holiday, we hope you and your families have a lovely time together. To finish, a heartfelt thankyou from myself and the team for all of the thoughtful cards and gifts. We were really touched and grateful for all the kind words, it means such a lot. We will miss having you all in Butterfly Class, but we are so excited for you, for the new adventures you have ahead. Love from Mrs Wills, Mrs Mulley & Mrs Martin x
Summer 2 Week 5
As we continue our 'Wonderful World' topic, this week we have had fun with our minibeast theme with stories 'The Crunching Munching Caterpillar', 'Mad about Minibeasts' and 'The Bad Tempered Ladybird'. We have been on a bug hunt in our school grounds, released the last butterfly that had finally come out of its cocoon and we have found out more about the lifecycle of a ladybird as the children spotted a strange looking bug in the Wild Area during our bug hunt and were surprised to find out it was a young ladybird. We shared 'The Bad Tempered Ladybird' and spotted the similarities of the pictures with 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar - after introducing the new word 'illustrator' the children had a go creating their own bug illustrations - ladybirds being the clear favourite minibeast of the week!
We had a big push on checking everyone can use scissors correctly this week. We had lots of old paper from our vertical drawing walls at the start of the week and the children quickly started to experiment with what they could use it for - before long we had a class full of crowns and capes as the children's interest led us to outfit making using big bits of paper, scissors and sellotape. In our maths we revisited repeating patterns using colours, shapes and real world objects and there was fun with water at the end of the week to help us cool down.
Well done for a great week Butterflies, it is hard to believe you only have 2 more to go in Reception!
Summer 2 Week 4
There have been some big events for us in Butterfly Class this week. Mrs. Hellawell (our school ELSA) brought in her horse Wynne for us to meet. It was a lovely opportunity to spend some time with our Lion Buddies who came with us as we had opportunity to ask questions about the horse and got to give him a friendly pat!
We had our first Sports Day! It didn't go quite to plan, but a big thank you to all our families for their understanding as plans changed in response to a first aid emergency. Butterfly Class really enjoyed having our families back with us in the afternoon as we tackled some more sporty challenges! It wasn't until the class had gone on Friday afternoon that I realised our first butterfly had just emerged from its cocoon! We shall release it together on Monday.
Summer 2 Week 3
It was a busy week for Butterflies with maths enhancements forming a big part of our outdoor learning this week. The children have been learning about how to share fairly (equally) between groups and we have introduced odd and even numbers. Lots of Butterflies did a super job independently practising sorting numicon number shapes into odd and even groups and had fun sharing 'strawberries' (red maths cubes!) at a teddy bear picnic all within their own Discovery Time. We have been getting ready for sports day by having a go at some activities we will be doing on the day; standing long jump, bean bag target shooting and learning how to line up and run in the lanes have all been part of our PE this week.
We have also enjoyed the story 'Handa's Surprise'. It is a story with a lovely opportunity for the children to consider similarities and differences between themselves and a child from a different country. We also used it as an opportunity to taste some fruit that we may not have tried before! Papaya, passion fruit, pomegranate, lemon, lime, kiwi, plum and pineapple all gave the children opportunity to enjoy some fresh fruit and hopefully try something new. As part of our transition in getting ready for Year 1, Mrs. Shipley, who will be the TA with the class in September, came down to spend some time with butterflies, planting pumpkin seeds - these will be something you come back to in the autumn when you are Hedgehogs!
As always, the children had lots of fun leading their own learning in Discovery Time. Lots of imaginative building, collaborative group play (great for communication and language) making and drawing, you are a very creative bunch of Butterflies.
Summer 2 Week 2
Its been all about flowers this week! As we continue to look after our new garden plants and sunflower seeds to help them grow, we have been using our observational skills to see what we notice about some different flowers, using our time 'looking closely' to paint them, using water colours. We had 'From Sunflower to Seed' as our Book Talk text, a lovely information book showing the children a relevant non-fiction text example. This information book helped us learn that most plants have 'roots, stem(s) and leaves'. We used labels in the book to help us identify these different plant parts and we introduced the new vocabulary of 'lifecycle'. We looked at a diagram that showed us the seed to shoot, to plant, to the sunflower dying and harvesting the new seeds to grow new sunflower plants.
In our maths we have been practically exploring the mathematical concept of sharing. Initially sharing objects into 2 groups and then 4 groups, using maths stories and a 'teddy bear picnic' approach to putting this into context. We learned that groups have to be the same to be fair and that we can share systematically using a 'one for you, one for you' strategy. We finished by looking at how sometime we might have 'some left over' that we don't give out, if we cant keep the groups the same. We have also looked at 'ladder letters' for our handwriting this week, and had a go at writing a simple sentence to match a photo about our seeds. In PE we had another go at practicing running in a lane to help us get ready for sports day and then used our 'aimed' rolling skills to help us hit a ball on a target.
Alongside our directed learning tasks this week, the children have loved being outdoors building, exploring our new 'shop' roleplay corner (after the children showed a keen interest in coins at the end of last term) and burying themselves in the sand to keep cool!
Summer 2 Week 1
This week has been about planting! For our new topic 'Wonderful World' we have started planting some flowers into our Butterfly Garden area and all the children planted their own sunflower seed. We will be watering these over the rest of the term as we learn how plants need light, warmth and water to grow.
We had a delivery of sand over the half term for our sand pit which has been a firm favourite in the outside area, the children have learned how to write their name on the list for waiting to go in and take turns with each other. In PE we worked played treasure games running to collect different balls and then used these to practise rolling to each other. We also had our first go running on the running track to get ready for sports day - we might need to keep working on staying in our own lane!
We also had our first school trip to Hillier Gardens this week - lots of fun in the sun with some super outdoor activities including collecting scents to make 'smelly caterpillars', pond dipping and finding summer colours on our colour palettes. Not to forget getting on the coach to get there and home! Well done for a great first week back Butterflies.
Summer 1 Week 5
Butterflies have had a great week filled with gross motor development. Building thrones, airplanes (heading for Grant Canaria) and 'army dens' as well as tasting seaweed and scoring a goals as per our 'Incredible You' topic text, we have enjoyed being outside in the sunshine (and dancing in the rain as it started to thunder). We finished our family photo mosaic frames which have created a lovely display outside our classroom that the children can often be found looking at.
In maths we turned from addition to subtraction, again using fun stories to help us explore the concept. 'Kippers Toy Box' helped us start to use 'subtraction stories' to help us explain taking away - 'first there were 5 toys in the box, then 1 fell out, now there are 4 toys in the box.'
Summer 1 Week 4
It was all about the outdoors during this week, with some better weather we enjoyed taking lots of our learning outside. For our maths we have had a big focus on addition. Introducing key vocab of 'add', 'adding', 'addition' and 'plus', we used our class maths sessions to look at 'addition stories'. This is where we use the concepts of steps to tell the 'number story'. Do do this we use 'first' (we had..) 'then' (1 more came along) and 'now' (we have...). There are lots of lovely books we can use to help us put some context to the more mathematical themes such as number sentences for addition. We used 'Mr. Grumpy's Outing' to look at adding 1 more, adding one more to the ten frame in the same way that Mr. Grumpy kept having one more get onto his boat. We enjoyed practical adding racing games using our playground number track, using our subitising skills to recognise the value on the dice (subitising is to know a small number, usually no more than 5, through a visual representation rather than counting) and seeing who could get to 10 first.
Block play is still a big feature in our discovery time, using both the giant wooden block, but this week also the smaller version - building and stacking is a great fine motor activity. We also had some experimentation making different sounds with the 'boom whacker' sticks and a fantastic 'jumping' (fundamentals of movement) themed PE session experimenting jumping in different ways and then drawing round our bodies (super hero themed poses as an extra challenge) to see if we could 'jump' over ourselves and others!
Summer 1 Week 3
Its been a royal themed week of fun in Butterfly Class. From making crowns and learning coronation party songs to royal role-play and Union Jack creations, we have been up to lots during this short week! Butterflies enjoyed using their developing fine-motor skills to make 'Union Jack' sticks, by wrapping red, white and blue wool in our own designs, which we used to wave as we sang at the coronation family party on Friday. In the spirit of getting together and our class focus on 'families' this week, we invited Fox Class (Year 4) to come and join us with our making project, as there are a number of family links between our classes - Foxes were so good at helping us when we needed it. It was really lovely to see our classes enjoying spending time with each other as Butterflies continue to grow within our school family.
The children enjoyed showing family photos during Show & Tell this week, and we used the pictures to decorate with mosaic tiles and colouring pencils to make our own frames around our families. In maths this week we have looked at some simple properties of 2D (flat) shapes and introduced cubes and cuboids as 3D shapes that we can pick up. We've thought about straight and curved sides (2D shapes) and looked at shapes in different rotations and arrangements to match - it was particularly lovely to see lots of the children spotting shapes we had talked about independently around the classroom.
We continue to enjoy active play in both our Discovery Time and in more structured PE sessions. Lots of focus and attention during indoor PE navigating some new equipment to climb on, over and jump off, and, of course, lots of fun running games to finish the week - such as the 'silly and sensible cones' team game and a spot of classic 'duck, duck, goose!'
Summer 1 Week 2
It's been a busy week in Butterfly Class. We started with our focus story 'Rosie's Hat,' a rhyming book all about a little girl as she grows up. Linked to this, the children enjoyed looking at each others baby photos for Show & Tell, thinking about what was different between 'then and now', and how they had changed as they had grown. Butterflies were able to give great examples such as about their toys being different, how their hair had grown and things they didn't have or need anymore (such as milk bottles).
For maths, we worked on counting forwards and backwards from 11 - 20 and practiced our numeral recognition by playing bingo and spotting missing numbers on a number track. We also checked the children's understanding of careful counting, ensuring 1:1 correspondence when counting and looking at the cardinality principle (understanding that the last number they say when counting means there is that many in the group). We used counting bears, building up in groups of 5,10,15 and then 20 bears to count carefully each time. In Phonics, we continue Phase 4, looking at using clusters of sounds to help us read more efficiently. Following on from our portraits of King Charles, this week we explored drawing in detail by using mirrors, looking closely and sketching our own self-portraits. The class enjoyed learning and singing along to our Song of the Week 'The green grass grew all around' as well as learning songs for our Coronation Picnic with the rest of the school in our singing assemblies.
Discovery Time this week has seen masses of building, making and creating. Using small parts, junk modelling, small blocks and giant blocks, the class have shown bags of imagination and collaboration skills. Block play is a super way for younger children to develop their working understanding of shape, measure and space (considering flat and curved surfaces, surfaces that will allow movement such as by using ramps). It is also great for fine and gross motor skills development, and when in combination with working and playing in a group, block play allows for some super communication (and negotiation) skills.
Summer 1 Week 1
We have had a great start to the summer term and the children have enjoyed exploring the new classroom set up, with lots of opportunities for making, building, dressing up, writing and drawing and generally spending time with old, and new friends. This week in our Discovery Time we have had lots of 'show' and 'performing' themed play, not only in our new indoor 'Theatre' but also outside with some of the children building their own stage to perform on using wooden blocks. Giant construction has led to lots of lovely collaborative play, building obstacle courses, princess carriages and outdoor car tracks to name but a few of the children's ideas. We have shared our focus story 'Incredible You' in small group book talk and it was great to hear about all the things the class wanted to be when they are older! We also took part in the BBC Children in Need 'Royally Big Portrait' activity with the children having a go drawing a portrait of king Charles.
Butterflies had a fun indoor PE session working on balance and co-ordination skills through bench and mat work this week, with Mr. Murphy teaching us some new fun active outdoor games to help us build our 'body manipulation and control' skills this term. It was great being out in nature (getting just a little bit muddy) in our wild area time. The children played beautifully together using their imagination to cook a variety of mud-based pies, take turns using resources and work together to pull the trolley, load and drop the bucket pulleys as well as generally having fun jumping in muddy puddles and being outside.
Spring 2 Week 5
Another week has flown by! Our book of the week was Dogs don't do ballet, we watched some videos of dogs dancing with their owners. The children were inspired by this and were making up their own routines, drawing pictures of dancing dogs and writing about the dogs. During our phonics sessions we have been looking at longer words, compound words and the children are learning where to 'chunk' the words! In Maths we have been looking at the composition of 10, we are working towards automatic recall of number bonds to 10!
We had an exciting visitor for show and tell this week, an African Snail! We learnt lots of facts about them and how to look after them. The children were fascinated by the size of the snail and really enjoyed seeing it. Show and Tell is an important part of our week, and we all really enjoy hearing about the items which the children bring in.
We were so proud of all the children who did the Talent Show, the performances were all brilliant and it must have been a difficult decision for the judges to make!
Spring 2 Week 4
A short but very sweet week was had this week!
The children started the week by choosing a tricky word and writing a sentence with it in. I was pleased to see how well the children's writing is coming along and that the children are beginning to learn more and more tricky words! In Maths we are back to looking at numbers 9 and 10, counting backwards and exploring their composition!
On Friday we had a busy day filled with PE and going down to the Wild Area, the weather was lovely and the children had lots of fun finding worms, making homes for them and mixing mud pies!
Spring 2 Week 3
WOW, we are already half way through this half term! What an exciting week we have had, the snow was a welcome surprise and we hope you enjoyed your afternoon in the Snow. We took the children onto the field in the morning with the rest of the school to have a play and build some snowmen!!
The children continue to do some amazing writing, they are all super at using their phonic knowledge and sound mats to help them! Lots of children are starting to give writing a go independently during discovery time which is fantastic - keep it up Butterflies! In Maths this week we introduced the Part-part-whole model which the children took to so easily, it is a useful model for them to learn and they will use it as they move through the school!
The children have also been enjoying discovering learning tasks which are put out each day, sand trays for fine motor and phonics development, Peg boards for Maths development and inspired by our snow day pictures and talking about snowmen! Show and tell this was lots of fun, we loved hearing about pets or favourite animals, it is lovely to hear and learn about the children through this!
Spring 2 Week 2
Another busy week completed! We have done lots of lovely learning this week, we started the week with a book talk session in small groups and the children were introduced to non-fiction books! Some of the children were inspired to write their own fact files about pets and animals. The children are amazing during our phonics lessons, they are so engaged and love to point out digraphs, trigraphs, tricky words and what makes up a sentence! Maths we began our journey of 9 and 10, looking at representing and sorting! In PE we are continuing our learning of manipulation and control with Mr Murphy, this weeks focus was controlling a football!
World Book Day was the highlight for this week, the children all looked amazing in their costumes! Some children were inspired to write their own books during the day and during Show and Tell they loved the opportunity to share their favourite book!
Spring 2 Week 1
Pets!
The children have been really excited to begin our new Learning Journey about Pets! On Tuesday they were introduced to our new class pet and the children were given the opportunity suggest names, which we then whittled down to 2 names. From there they each voted for their favourite name, Bingo was the winner by 1 point! They were excited to explore our new role play area which has been set up as a Vets, it has been lovely watching them engage with each other in there and I think there are some budding nurses and vets in the class!
In phonics we continue review our phase 3 digraphs and work on blending longer words. On Wednesday we did an Anti-bullying day and the children wrote about what they could do to be kind to someone else. It was lovely to hear their ideas but to also see them using their phonic knowledge to help them write! In Maths we have finished looking at numbers 6,7,8 and we are looking forward to learning more about 9 and 10 in the following weeks!
As usual on Friday we headed down to the Wild area, luckily the rain held of long enough for us to get back into class! This week we were accompanied by the Yr 1s. This was lots of fun and the children enjoy spending time with the Hedgehog class!
Spring 1 Week 5
BLAST OFF! This week we blasted off into space and the children have done lots of exploring of our Space Station role play area. They have continued to do some fantastic writing, choosing a picture from the book and writing a word or caption about it, it is lovely to see their writing and them using their phonics knowledge. We also started to look at the planets and learn some names of them. In Maths we have been consolidating our knowledge of numbers 1-5 and exploring different ways to make them!
We were lucky to team up with our YR 6 Buddies again on Thursday afternoon to celebrate 'National Storytelling Week'. Miss Macleod hid some clues around our outside area and with our Buddies we found them and worked out which story we would be reading. After listening to a story, the children read to their reading book to their Yr 6 Buddy before listening to their Buddy read to them! It was a lovely opportunity for us to get together with them!
Spring 1 Week 4
This week we went up up and away in a hot air balloon! We followed Simon the squirrel in his adventures into space to go shopping, the children loved playing with the parachute pretending it was a hot air balloon. They each did some beautiful writing telling us where they would like to go on their hot air balloon. As the weather has been a little warmer we have been able to open up our outside area the children love interacting with our outside area and this week there was lots of ice around which gave us a great opportunity to learn about what happens to water when it freezes!
The children are still enjoying their PE lessons by Mr Mathews and Mr Murphy, in our indoor sessions the children are working on simple Gymnastic skills and in outdoor sessions we have been working on body manipulation and simple ball control!
Spring 1 Week 3
We have had another busy week in Butterfly class. Our Story of the week was Jack and Flumflum Tree, the children enjoyed the exploring and joining in when telling the story. We transformed the role play area into a boat and the children enjoyed going on adventures and making their own treasure maps! The children continue to progress well with their phonics and are really getting to grips with tricky words! As we were focusing on boats this week it gave us the opportunity to look at capacity, we explored this using water, pasta and lentils. We finished the week with a lovely trip down to our Wild area, they love spending time down their exploring the space!
Spring 1 Week 2
All aboard!! This week we took a journey on a train after Mondays assembly the children were given a train ticket and boarded the Butterfly express! We explored the book The Train Ride and this inspired discussions about journeys that the children had gone on and they got creative with Marshmallows, pretzels and cheerios to make their own trains. In phonics we are getting to grips with more Phase 3 sounds, the children are doing so well learning the new digraphs/trigraphs! We also enjoy playing games with the tricky words to help them learn them. We continue to enjoy our PE sessions with the Active 360 coaches supporting us!
Spring 1 Week 1
Welcome back! We have had an exciting start to the Spring term, the children boarded the Naughty Bus! Our new topic is 'On the move', we will be exploring different types of transport over the next few weeks. They enjoyed playing in our own bus in the role play area, doing maths with buses and passengers as well as designing their own bus. We also worked in teams to see which surface made our cars go faster!
Another exciting change for us is that we are having our PE lessons supported by Mr Murphy and Mr Matthews, the children enjoyed their outside PE lesson today. They learnt about moving in different directions, at different speed and spatial awareness. We are looking forward to our next lesson!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Class News Archives
Autumn Term '22