Foundation

Friday 28th March

This week has been very busy! We had our first visit from the therapy dog, Percy along with his owner Elizabeth. Only some of us met him this time as we didn't want to overwhelm and scare him! We learnt about how we needed to be very gentle and calm around dogs and that it's always good to ask permission before touching a dog. We're already excited for the next visit! In Maths, we have been learning the names of 3D shapes and their properties. We have been shape spotting around our classroom too! In Understanding the World, we have been learning all about how it important it is to eat a balanced diet, drink plenty of water and exercise regularly! 

Friday 21st March

This week we have continued to learn about plants, we have thought about what the parts of a plant are called: stem, roots, leaves, flower and found out what each part does to help keep a plant healthy. We've had a go at planting our own seeds and are excited to see them grow!

In maths, we have been consolidating our knowledge of number bonds to 10, our number doubles and odds and evens. Our fluency is getting stronger and stronger!

In Drawing Club this week, we read the story 'That's my Flower!'. We learnt the vocabulary words arrived, squabbled and protect and had a go at using these words in our play. We drew our perfect flower and used our phonic skills to write longer words!

Friday 14th March

This week we have been enjoying the sunshine in our outside areas, building greenhouses and tractors to role play planting and feeding the crops.  We have been learning to look closely at plants, labelling their parts and asking questions about how they grow, and what they need to stay healthy and strong.  In ‘Drawing Club’ we have been reading and writing about ‘The Bad Seed’ and we have learnt the meanings of the words glare, drooped and hollered.  Please ask us what they mean and get us to demonstrate the actions for them.  We have been applying our handwriting and phonics knowledge when writing independently and our achievements have been celebrated by our teachers and friends.  In art, we have been talking about how Yvonne Coomber’s paintings make us feel and we have used similar techniques and tools to explore paint and colour to produce images influenced by her style. 

Friday 7th March

What a busy week! We've been using the Hive to make pancakes! We followed a recipe by measuring out and mixing the ingredients together. We loved watched how the mixture changed in to pancakes as they cooked. Our favourite bit was getting to choose our toppings and eating our pancakes! We also have been checking on our eggs everyday and making sure they are okay and that the incubator is at the right temperature. Today we have been celebrating World Book Day! What amazing costumes the children all had today! We've had such a great day celebrating reading, sharing our costumes with each other and listening to some of our adult's favourite stories.

Friday 28th February

This week we have been learning about life cycles. We learnt about the life cycle of a frog and the life cycle of a chicken. Excitingly, we have some of our own eggs that we are keeping warm and safe in an incubator until they are ready to hatch! We can't wait to see them hatch into chicks!

In maths, we have been learning about time and have been sequencing every day activities using the words 'first', 'next' and 'last'. We sequenced getting up in the morning, going to bed, washing the dishes and brushing our teeth.

In Drawing Club, we read the story 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' and learnt the special words 'cocoon', 'hatch' and 'nibbled'. We had a go at drawing what kinds of food we would like to eat if we were the hungry caterpillar!

Friday 14th February

This week we have continued to learn about different types of transport and the invention of the aeroplane.  In Drawing Club, we have been reading the 100 Double Decker Bus and designing our own unusual decks to entertain the passengers. We have been reviewing trigraphs and digraphs in phonics and spelling tricky words in our best handwriting on our new white boards, sitting our letters neatly on the line. In Maths, we have been measuring the heights and lengths of the objects and people in the classroom.  We had a very exciting time at Bear Town!  Thank to all the volunteers that came with us.  We loved role playing in the hairdressers, jail, post office, café, mechanics, theatre, builder’s yard and supermarket.

Friday 7th February

This week we have been learning about different types of transport and how they have changed over time. We loved learning about horses and carriages and Viking long boats. We have had a go at labeling different types of transport, using our construction area to build boats, trains and cars and have enjoyed exploring rockets! In Phonics, we have been learning about how to read and write longer words. We have used the 'chunk it up' method to read and write words such as: farmyard, rabbit, carrot, bedroom, carpark and velvet. When writing, we have worked hard to think about our letter size, making sure our letters are on the line and that the correct letters are ascending (tall letters) and the correct letters are descending (letters that fall below the line). In Maths, we have been learning how to spot odd and even numbers by looking at the Numicon representations - we call them odd blocks and even tops! We have also been very excited to learn that even numbers have number doubles inside them! We cannot wait to go on our trip to Bear Town next week!

Friday 31st January

This week we have been learning about Exeter. We thought about the different landmarks that we have in our city and shared photos of ourselves in and around Exeter. We loved sharing these with our friends!

In maths, we learnt about the numbers 6, 7 and 8. We thought about the composition of these numbers and found different ways of showing them.

Foundation superstars have also now finished learning all of their Phase 3 phonics sounds! We now get to practise and embed these sounds, learning how to read and write even longer words!

In Drawing Club, we loved learning about The Naughty Bus! He got up to lots of very naughty things, including putting paint all over Miss Ballam’s office! We thought about all the other naughty things that he might get up to!

Friday 24th January

We have been loving Drawing Club this week because it has been inspired by the antics of Paddington! We have had some imaginative ideas about what happens next to the duffle coated hero from Peru! In Understanding the World, we have been learning about Homes and talking about their similarities and differences. We have even been designing and making our own out of junk modelling card. In Maths, we have been weighing different objects and comparing their mass, and using the words empty, nearly empty, full and nearly full to describe the volume of water in cups. In Art, we have been using Aboriginal symbols to tell traditional stories about Australian animals.

Friday 17th January

What a busy week! In Understanding the World, we have been learning about all the weather. We thought about what we might wear in different weathers, made junk model sunglasses and then had a go at presenting a weather forecast! In Expressive Arts this half term, we are learning about Aboriginal art. We learnt a little about the Aboriginal people, explored some traditional artwork and had a go at dot painting using 'earthy' colours. We have also been shown how to make our own playdough and have used our maths skills to help us follow the recipe.

Friday 10th January

Foundation have had a great first week back at school, we have loved having all of the children back and are impressed with how well they have all settled back into school this term.

We have been learning about weather this week – and what a week for it! We have been able to experience wind, rain, snow, sleet and ice in the space of this week! We have learnt about weather forecasts and had a go at creating our own. We have also explored weather symbols and had a go at drawing and labelling our own.

In maths we have been exploring number bonds to 5 and the different ways in which we can make 5. We’ve also explored some of our favourite nursery rhymes – 5 little ducks, 5 current buns and 5 little speckled frogs.

In Drawing Club we have read ‘The Little Raindrop’ which helped us learn about the cycle of rain. We loved thinking about where the wind might blow our raindrop and coming up with special codes using our newly learnt digraphs.

Well done Foundation!

Friday 20th December

Well done Foundation on your first full term at school! You have all been amazing and have already grown and learnt so much, we are so so proud of you!

We hope you have a lovely Christmas and that Santa brings you lots of presents!

Thank you to all of our families for you support this half term, we look forward to welcoming your little ones back again in January!

Friday 13th December

What a busy week we have had! Foundation have performed three fantastic Nativities. All of the children sang beautifully and showed all of our adults how much we had learnt and practised! The children looked amazing and did themselves and us so proud! 

I'm sure that all of the Nativity songs will be continued to be sung to all of our adults over the Christmas holidays as well! Thank you so much to St Leonard's Church for letting us perform there. 

Friday 6th December

We have had a very busy week this week! We have visited St Leonard’s church in preparation for our Nativity which is next week! We are very excited - we can't sit still! We have also been decorating a large star for our Nativity using lots of sparkly materials. In Phonics, we have been working hard on ensuring we are saying our sounds correctly and using them to write CVC words. 

Friday 29th November

This week, Reception have been enjoying the story of 'Jack and the Beanstalk'. We used our imagination to describe and draw what it might look like at the top of the beanstalk. We learnt the new words 'flung', 'thundered' and 'ginormous' and had fun making up actions for them.

We learnt how to weave in Art and used natural materials as the weft, which we wove under and over the warp on the loom to create patterns.

In maths, we explored the number 5 and the different ways in which we could make it using different coloured cubes and the part-part whole model.

Our bikeability sessions kept us fit this week. We enjoyed playing games designed to build up our balancing skills and help us navigate routes! We also met a special dog called Darcy who works for the police.

What a busy and exciting week! We are now looking forward to visiting the church next week.

Friday 15th November

This week, Reception have been busy exploring the story of 'The Three Little Pigs'. We retold the story and learnt some new words such as 'sturdy', 'bellowed' and 'scarper'. We build homes for the three pigs, thinking about which materials would be the strongest and how stable they would be.  We had a go at sorting hard and soft materials, to see which were the most appropriate for building homes.

We also learnt about the artist Andy Goldsworthy. We learnt about his transiant art and the materials he uses to create his sculptures. We then had a go at creating our own transiant art in the style of Andy Godlsworthy in the woodlands. We worked well as teams to plan and create some amazing art work. 

In maths, we explored the number 3 and the different ways in which we could make it. We had a go at 'subitsing' which means knowing and not counting. The children were amazing at saying how many of each item they could see, without having to count them!

Well done for another great week Superstars!

Friday 8th November

This week, we have been learning about the Hindu festival Diwali. We learnt the story of Rama and Sita, and how Hindu's prepare for Diwali. We also learnt a special Diwali dance to celebrate. In our play, we have enjoyed retelling the story of Rama and Sita, we decorated our home corner for Diwali, created powder paint firework pictures and also created our very own playdough diya lamps! In Phonics, we have spent the week reviewing some of the sounds we have already learnt, to ensure that we know them before we learn anymore! We had a wonderful week and are looking forward to next week's learning all about The Three Little Pigs.

Friday 25th October

This week we have been brainstorming all the things we know about Autumn. We have been on a spectacular Autumn Walk around the school, spotting signs of Autumn. In the role play area we have been cosying up in the Hot Chocolate Café, taking orders and welcoming in customers from out in the cold. Creatively we have been learning to draw around objects to make interesting shapes, positioning them in different directions and using language to describe them. We have also been working super hard to describe, name and sort 2D shapes in Maths! Well done, Foundation for completing your first half term of school. You’ve been amazing at demonstrating fabulous learning behaviours, kindness towards each other and your learning in phonics has been wonderful. The Foundation Team are so proud of you! Have a restful and fun half term.

Friday 18th October

This week we have been thinking about how we can be good friends. We thought about what we should do and how we can act to be a good friend. We made cards and certificates for our friends, made friendship paper dolls and made sure we were putting these skills into practice in our play! We have also been working super hard at writing some CVC words and our names - remembering to use our pinchy fingers and frog legs! In Art, we have been exploring some of the Autumn leaves that have fallen in our outside area and have been making leaf rubbings of them using oil pastels. Next week, we are looking forward to learning about what changes happen in Autumn.

Friday 11th October

This week we have been learning about people who help us in the community. We had some special visitors who came to tell us how they help. We loved hearing about how doctors can help us and use a stethoscope to hear our heart beats and might take an X-Ray to see our bones. We also heard from a speech and language therapist who talked to us about different ways to communicate. 

In Drawing Club, we read the book 'Lost and Found'. We learnt three special words: discovered -means found, ignored -means not listening and misplaced - means lost. We had a go at drawing some polar animals that could join us at a party and come up with our own special codes to make something exciting happen!

In maths we learnt about heavy and light and had a go at using scales to weight different items. We also explored capacity, learning about full, empty and part full. 

In phonics we learnt the phonemes e, u, r and ck.

Friday 4th October

This week we have continued to build up our phonics knowledge learning the sounds g, o, c and k. We have been blending our sounds to help us read words and we learnt the tricky word 'is'. In drawing club we read Dear Zoo, drew an animal we would like to receive as a gift and created a secret code to make something happen to our animal. Mr Fisher, Miss Ballam and Mrs Thompson came to talk to us about their role in school, we listened carefully and asked them questions about their job. In maths we compared size using the vocabulary big, small, long, short and tall.  In RE we continued with the creation story thinking about why Christians think God is special and how they say thank you to him.

Well done Reception another great week! 

Friday 27th September

This week we have been building up our phonics knowledge. We've learnt the sounds i, n, m and d.  Look out for our home learning that will support us with our phonics.  We have been enjoying our drawing club, where we listen to a story, act out some key words, draw a picture and create a secret code to make something unusual happen at the end of the story or to our characters.  The week we listened to The Tiger That Came to Tea. Our teachers are so impressed with how well we are lining up for assembly and learning about our school values with the rest of Key Stage 1. We have loved sharing our family photos and talking about our extended families and our amazing and unusual pets! In RE we have been creating story boards to represent the Creation Story.  Well done on another super week Foundation!

Friday 20th September

This week we have begun learning phonics. We've learnt the sounds s, a, t and p. They each have a special rhyme that helps us remember how to write them. We practiced saying the sounds, writing them, listening to the initial sounds in words and also played some blending games. Our teachers were so impressed with our super sitting and listening during our learning time. We have also been talking about the things that we like with our new friends. We thought about how we are all different and why that is what makes us all so special! We had a go at creating our own 'what makes me, me!' filling our outlines of all the things we like that make us, us!  Well done on a super week Foundation!

Friday 13th September

Well done to Foundation on their first full week! We have had such a great time getting to know all of the children, helping them explore the classrooms and playing in our outdoor woodland area. 

We read the story 'Perfectly Norman' and thought about all the ways in which we are special - the children came up with some great ideas such as 'I am special because I have a big sister' or 'I am special because I like swimming'. We then decorated our own feathers to create a set of class wings to show how we are all special - just like Norman!

Well done on your first week superstars!