Our class is called ‘Pendle’ after Pendle Hill, which is close by. We always have great fun learning and growing together. We follow a creative curriculum led by the children’s interests, which allows the pupils to access all areas of learning in an engaging and interactive way.
Please click the link below to see our Intent, Implementation and Impact statements for the EYFS.
CLICK ON OUR WELCOME VIDEO FOR OUR RECEPTION CLASS STARTERS. WE LOOK FORWARD TO WELCOMING YOU TO OUR WONDERFUL SCHOOL
Nativity Songs!
We’d Like To Tell You A Story
2. Little Grey Donkey
3. Down In The Stable
4. Such A Perfect moment
5 The Angels Song
6. There’s A Razzle And A Dazzle
7. Wonderful Camels
8. A Miracle In Town
10.11.23
Another incredible week in Pendle Class. We would never want to show off buttttt, we have started our phase 3 vowel sounds this week! I think you will see the range of books and language we use will grow exponentially now. Children have made mini booklets and multiple sentences on our strange animal templates; inspired by Patricia Cleveland-Peck. It is truly magical to see our little writers share their own ideas and apply their new phonetic knowledge. In mathematics our number knowledge continues to go and we have worked hard on our growing number bonds, subitising and how numbers are interlinked to make each other. Children have needed a keen eye for counting and an even keener one for measuring – accuracy is key! We move onto a very special part of our week, Remembrance. We have worked hard together to understanding the meaning of a Poppy, where the money goes and the sacrifice that men and women made and continue to make for us. Pendle Class created a wreath to go to church for Remembrance Day along with our friends throughout the school, well done everyone. The Nativity is in full swing and children are creating a show that we will never forget! Thank you to Pendle and Parlick Class for working so hard on positing, choreography and singing. Thank you to everyone who is working hard at home too, it is a massive help. If you need any of the songs please see the list above. Today was our very first Judo lesson with Dan. It was great to see everyone working so hard and working as a team. It was especially nice to see Pendle Class working together at the end for Coach Dan to return his mats – teamwork makes the dream work. The cherry to finish is the wonderful Mrs Luke worked with Pendle Class to create our nature portraits. Children had to work together, gather materials and embrace their natural artistic side, thank you Mrs Luke. Thank you all for a wonderful week, I hope you all have a marvelous weekend together and see you Monday.
20.10.23
‘That is sooooooo Yummy!’ When you hear that you know the Gruffalo crumble went down well. The children worked brilliantly together to create a delicious crumble. Children were shown how to pour, mix, knead and measure ingredients and then let loose. The team work on display was fantastic to see and having our Buddies to eat some crumble and watch the Gruffalo together was the cherry on top! Thank you to our school chef Tim for cooking and trying our crumble, he was very impressed. This week I have had the joy of meeting you all again and it sincerely was a treat celebrating all the milestones made. The children have gotten off to an incredible start and we certainly mean to carry on. We now say goodbye to Julia Donaldson and our All About Me topic and hello to Patricia Cleveland-Peck and transport. As a class we discussed what we would like to learn about and came across transport (cars, busses, race cars, tractors, diggers etc) we cannot wait. This wonderful new author is going to help us explore the topic of Wheels, Engines, Tracks and all things that go vroom. Thank you all for a wonderful half term. I have you get to spend some quality time with each other and have a safe Halloween. See you all soon!
29.9.23
Just like that we say goodbye to September and an early hello to October. We will hear sleigh bells before you know it! The children have come across a digraph for the first time and we are trying our best to spot them in a range of words we come across. This week to really showcase our writing we have tried to write our very own sentences! We have used a phoneme frame to help us segment the words and a sound mat to support our phoneme grapheme correspondence independently. We are delighted at how hard we are all working and Miss Deakin even got to have a sneaky peak at our writing. In mathematics children showcased their incredible number ability to subitise and instantaneously recognise 1-5. We are now exploring these numbers to see how they are made up for instance; did you know 4 can be made with 2 + 2 AND! 3 + 1 – who knew! Now to a personal highlight of the week of mine, the harvest assembly. What a time to celebrate harvest together. I sincerely hope you enjoyed our musical performance. I know how hard the children have tried and seeing an audience that big would make me nervous, let alone our Pendle Class team. Well done everyone, I am very proud of you! What you did was incredibly tricky and you all did your best – thank you. I need to finish on a sombre note as we say goodbye to a beloved member of St Francis – Mrs Tyrer. Thank you for everything you have done for the school and the children. I know you will be missed by everyone and we all wish you a very happy retirement. You are a truly wonderful person and an incredible friend to us all. I am sure we will see you again soon. Thank you Pendle Class for another wonderful week. I hope you all have a lovely weekend and see you all Monday.
22.9.23
It’s raining, its pouring, but we are certainly not snoring. What a week it has been! I must start with the incredible phonics that is going on in this classroom. The books are a blur of letters and even CVC words – WOW! Children are trying their best to write on the line, keep our letter formation as neat as we can and most importantly be brave and try your best! In addition to that, it is incredible to see the amount of reading that is going on at home. I cannot overstate how happy it makes me to see this – thank you. In mathematics we have come across mighty number 5 and worked on our subitising skills. It certainly is tricky to instantly recognise a number and quantity; but Pendle Class are working hard to do it. We are learning about our kind and caring hands and how we can use them in our daily lives, at school and home. Pendle even made their very own creation wheels to go with the story. I would love to finish with an enormous thank you to our buddies. I have seen with my own 2 eyes how loving each buddy has been and how much your children love them. Thank you Beacon for all your love and support for our new students, they truly think the world of you. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend together and keep reading. Attached below are some wonderful pictures of buddies and wonderful mini people.
8.9.23
Well the sun is shining, the birds are singing and another incredible Pendle Class has arrived – Fannnnnnnntastic! I think you will all have a very quiet night tonight as the children have worked their socks (and jumpers) off. We have started our phonics journey and even started our brand new phonics books. Children have worked their robot arms as we have come across new sounds and CVC words. It truly is a magical time where the love of reading and writing is started. We created our very own cross/crucifix to go into our R.E books and discussed it 1-1 and as a class. We have learned our lunchtime prayer and are working together to make the sign of the cross and pray together. I am delighted by how sensible and respectful of how these young children are of each other. In mathematics we have been number made and encountered from numberblock friends. We have finished the week by looking at using our stampers to make our friends independently and completed some subitising challenges too – wow! The children have transitioned back into school life brilliantly and have fallen into the school routines too. A huge thank you is needed to Mrs Luke and Mrs Tyrer for all their support during this transition period – it has worked to perfection. To all parents new and old this week has been a wonderful one and I would earnestly like to give you all my heartfelt thanks and want you all to know how privileged I feel teaching your children. The children have come back enthusiastic and ready to learn. In your learning log bags, your children have selected a book from our library to take home. Please do not feel obligated that your must read it, it was just another way to promote a love of reading. I hope you all have a lovely weekend together and I will see you Monday.
31.3.23
What a baaaaarilliant week we have had! I will start off by saying a huge thank you to all the wonderful parents and friends of the school that have supported our Farm topic this term. It has really inspired our children and taken their learning that extra step. A huge thank you Chris Airey, Lucy Walling, Luke Walling, Chris Mclvor, Marika Eccles and Nicholas Eccles who brought animals and machinery and were asked a plethora of questions. I and the children really appreciated your time and knowledge – thank you! During this fabulous week, we have had our incredible visitors brining in a calf, lamb and tractors and trailers. Our trip to Wild Board Park was a brilliant one and we managed to get our very own tractor tour, saw a huge range of animals/ minibeasts and learned about how we care for the animals and kept them safe. A personal favourite of mine was seeing the piglets and going on the bumpy tractor tour. We managed to write about our incredible farming adventures this week, talking about what we learned about and what we enjoyed best. In this crazy busy week we also celebrate our schools holy week and children in Pendle class preformed the Last Supper brilliantly in front of a packed hall. Well done to each class that took part. We have filmed 2 takes 1 on the day and 1 with the full casts. I am having some difficulty sharing it with you at the moment, I will notify you when it is done. I am delighted to say our next topic will be Traditional Tales and children will be exploring a fantastical and wondrous world. Matty Long will be our author study and his books just ooze fantasy. I hope you all have a wonderful Easter together as a family and see you all in 2 weeks.
24.3.23
I must! Must! Must! Start off with our brilliant day in the deep, dark woods. Our outdoor day in glorious sunshine, howling winds and drizzly rain was amazing. Thank you very much to Lisa coming in ensuring we have a marvellous day and thank you Pendle Class showing once again how amazing you all are – Lisa loved you all! We went on a bird hunt and created our own bird nests using only our nippy fingers (like a birds beak) played games together while gathering firewood, ensuring it has a nice snap, created clay minibeasts and creatures, played in our own DIY mud kitchen, read books, learned about fire safety, used a flint and roasted our very own marshmallows. Action packed to say the very least! This week we did our very own dress rehearsal to Parlick Class and showed off our costumes, acting and singing. It is never easy standing in front of people and performing and I could not be more proud of you Pendle! Our Oh No! Oh Me! My Pie! Stories are stupendous and during next weeks parents evening I cannot wait to show you how much your children have developed in their writing. Next week I will message out, double checking times and dates with everyone. I will privately message you these messages and if your circumstances have changed, we can rearrange a time that works for you. Our next topic is going to be Traditional Tales and the children are preparing to build our very own castle in the classroom, our fairy tale clouds and much more. I hope you all have a lovely weekend and are ready for an action packed week for the end of our farming topic.
17.3.23
Another week that has flown by and it was filled with Science, fun and strawberries. Pendle class have done something rather unique, we extracted DNA from strawberries. Children were simply given the instructions in their pairs and told to crack on. As a team they has to mash and mix, measure liquids, pour, mix and the filter the lumps out of the concoction. After the mixture sits, you can gather the strawberry DNA. It looks a little like pinkey white slime. We then discussed what DNA can be used for and a good reason we learned is the police (defectives) can use it to help them solve mysteries and catch bad people. In our phonics children have completed another story Mummy, Do you Love Me?’ and children are coming up with ore unique ideas to put into their stories and change them even more, creating a new, unique story. In mathematics children have been flying with their subitisng, number bonds and sums. We even created our own number patterns with each other and created our own ways to make 10 and beyond. Children are working very hard to practice their Last Supper Performance and are singing/ performing the actions beautifully. We even have prepped our costumes and if you are reading this, please send your child in with a labelled and named carrier bag for their costume to go in. Children have also worked on their incredibly secret and important project, their Mother’s Day cards and keyrings. Each child has been enthusiastic and eager to celebrate Mother’s Day with you. I hope you all have a very special weekend together and see you all Monday.
3.3.23
What a week! When Cruella De Vil makes an appearance you know it will be a well-remembered week. Luckily for us, she was leaving the Dalmatians alone and more focused on celebrating World Book Day! It was incredible to see all the children in their World Book Day costumes and it may be considered biased (and definitely is) but I thought Pendle Class looked the best. Even though everyone though everyone was mistaking my costume for a cow – A COW! Moving on from that terrible insult to my incredible Dalmatian costume, the children have completed another story and are beginning the process of including our weird and wonderful ideas into are writing. This gives us even more opportunities to have unique vocabulary into our work, sentences and experiment with more sounds and HFW. In mathematics the children opened their very own shop to purchase and sell their own produce. This week it was our class mass service and the children behaved impeccably as always. We are continuing to learn about the Easter story and Father reminded us that Jesus died for our sins and explained that the Easter story can be very sad. We met the lovely Taffy Thomas this week and he showed off his stunning story coat. Taffy Thomas told us several great stories and a riddle. The riddle was ‘I have 7 daughters and each of my daughters has a brother. How many children do I have? One clever clogs in Pendle Class figured it out first time – wow! Taffy explained to us that in stories we can be relaxed with our words, in riddles, strict. To finish he gave us this fantastic poem to finish on. Books are cool, books are great, reading them will make us great!’. To top off a great week, Pendle Class have started creating their own crazy cress heads. We all planted our very own cress seeds and began the careful process of making them grow. The children are working very hard to care for our plants and helping them grow. What a fantastic week yet again. See you all Monday!
24.2.23
Poof just like that one week has gone. This week has been one to remember as we have gone pancake mad. The not so mischievous Mr Wolf made his very own pancakes this week. Alas, his neighbours were not particularly helpful and downright rude at times! Their comeuppance was swift as they were all eaten by Mr Wolf in the end – firm but fair I say! It did give us a great idea, to write about how to make a delicious pancake and if you have to write about it, you need to make one! So we did with a huge variety of delicious toppings and it went down a treat. For Ash Wednesday the children behaved impeccably and really demonstrated our brilliant St Francis values. They are becoming much more confident each visit and really try at everything. In our mathematics we had our first in-depth look at money and we visited Mr McGill’s shop. I had no change so the children have to find the correct coin for the price tag. We had to think hard about the different coins and how many pennies each one was worth. Children have worked very hard on their Steven Brown projects and will carry on to do so in their art. I think it has been one fantastic week in Pendle Class and our topic was launched with a huge bang as we have a few very little farmers in Pendle Class! One even made a farm presentation about her home, animals and equipment – she is practically farming royalty. She even answered lots of questions and inspired our children to learn more. I could not ask for more! Have a lovely weekend and see you all Monday.
10.2.22
The official half way point of the year – unbelievable! What an incredible week to finish with. This week we had Safety Week and the child had a blast. We were lucky enough to work with our friends in Parlick Class and together we ran workshops on safety in the home, personal hygiene, germs (hand washing), online safety /stranger danger and we even became mini safety officers. We even them presented what we learned to our friends in Fairsnape and Beacon class. They shared with us the dangers of electricity, peer pressure and the importance of speaking to a trusted adult. To continue this fabulous week, children also had a visit from paramedics, Thank you! They explained the difference between a big hurt and a little hurt and when it would be appropriate to call 999. We were all given a special homework task from our friendly paramedic visitors and that was to learn our address. So if we ever needed to call 999, we could tell them where we lived to get help as quickly as possible. In even MOREEE safety news, we even had a visit from RNLI who gave us some brilliant advice about staying safe near water and some important signs and flags to look out for. To finish off a brilliant week even enjoyed and took part in the school carol concert; amazing work once again St Francis. Last week the children has a wonderful time at the Manchester Science and Industry museum. Thank you to the amazing staff, you were all so friendly and amazing. Well done to both Parlick and Pendle you all behaved impeccably and showcased the school brilliantly – well done. We are coming to an end of our dinosaur topic and it is safe to say it has been a success. At the start of this term we had 1 passionate paleontologist and now we have a class full of them. The children have decided our next topic will be farming and our author study will be on Jan Fearly. Thank you all for a wonderful year and fingers crossed the second half will be just as good and a little bit warmer. I sincerely hope you all get to spend time together as a family. See you all very soon.
6.1.22
HAPPY NEW YEAR! I hope you all have had a wonderful festive period as a family. I can think of no better way to start this off by saying a huge thank you and well done to Poppy, Bethany and Annie for coming 1st, 2nd and 3rd in our reading competition. Thank you to everyone that took part in the competition. I will hand out prizes to our winners and everyone else that took part on Monday! If anyone wants to take part over the weekend, I am more than happy for late additions, I just wanted everyone to enjoy reading over the busy festive period. We have started our number bond work and even got to use a STAMPOLINE! It was messy fun and our Numberblock friends were very helpful. We aim to develop our numberbond knowledge to 10 and recall it quickly. We have started off with our dinosaur descriptive booklets and will be reading the Dinosaur that Pooped a Planet next week, even writing our own story book! The incredible nature loving Miss O’Kane helped the children create their own bird feeders this week to help our hungry birds (and probably a few squirrels). To accompany our book we explored what a dinosaur is and what happened to them. He children loved the fact we got to peak back our space topic to look at the meteor that is thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs. To finish a fantastic week we had our Epiphany Mass. The children behaved impeccably and are becoming braver when calling out the chants such as making the sign of the cross; who would have thought, to quiet would be an issue. Thank you all for a brilliant week, keep up and hard work and I will see you all Monday!
16.12.22
Oh my goodness! Just like that it is all over and we will do it all again next year. I must, must, must! Start off by saying a huge thank you to the children, parents/families and Mrs Tyrer. It has been an incredible first term and I am extremely proud of how well the children are doing. The secret mission of Christmas crafts was well under way and I hope you enjoy your calendars and Christmas cards. I can say the children worked exceptionally hard on them and sincerely went that extra mile for you. This week we watched the Pre-school Nativity and the KS2 Church service and they were fab too, not Reception and KS1 level of brilliance – but what is? We have completed our phase 3 journey and where appropriate children will be solidifying phase 2/3 knowledge and then moving onto phase 4 when ready. We are aiming to push narratives into all of our work so our writing is going to grow exponentially. We have continually revisited the cardinal number rule and where appropriate made links, in preparation for our number bonds work next term. The children have decided our next topic is going to be dinosaurs – great choice! Our author study will be on Tom Fletcher & Dougie Poynter, I cannot wait. I hope you all have a lovely Christmas and New Year together. I would like to thank you all once again for your cards and gifts, they are never expected but truly appreciated. Thank you and see you all in 2023!
9.12.22
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas! The weeks are truly flying by and it is that brilliant festive period. I would like to start off with a huge thank you to all the parents/ guardians that have supported the children learning their lines, singing, costumes, actions and timings. I am so proud of how well everyone did – thank you! A huge thank you is also needed to Mrs Tyrer, Miss Forshaw and Mrs Davies, the show would have simply not been what it was if not for their huge contribution. A final thank you is needed to all of the incredible children in Pendle and Parlick – well done team, you all did a great job. If you think that was the best part of you week you may be wrong. I was lucky enough to speak with Miss Deakin and the children were desperate to read with her and show off their incredible reading/phonics – they are flying. Miss Deakin could not resist the opportunity to read with our lovely children and I do not think they would take no for an answer. Each child managed to get their very own head teacher award sticker – amazing! In our phonics we have completed our phase 3 journey and have been addressing any gaps in our learning and building up our confidence. Where appropriate we will continually return to phase 2/3 sounds and words, but after the Christmas breakup, we want to start phase 4. In mathematics we have been looking at addition and subtraction; we do love hard work in Pendle class. We have been using mathematical symbols, and recorded our own working out; some children have even been writing number sentences – WOW! On Christmas jumper day we topped off a brilliant day of rasing money for those in need, with a fantastic band performance, well done to everyone involved. Finally, to top off a brilliant week we have been writing our first story booklet, and there is no better place to start than our Nativity story. Thank you all for a wonderful week and see you all Monday. Where does the time go!
Please enjoy our Nativity songs below!
1. The Big, Big Story!
2 A Big Adventure
3, Knock, Knock! Who’s There?
4. It’s Gonna Be Great!
5. We Are Wise Men
6. Here To Worship Him
7. Sing The Good News
18.11.22
Our week started off with the national bullying assembly for anti-bullying week. We have looked at how our behaviour can impact upon others, how we can help children who feel alone / frightened and what we need to do if we are feeling bullied. We even got to meet Captain Positivity who gave the children a great pep talk and talked about the power of positivity. He told us, by saying kind things to our friends will make the world a better place. We had our first joint nativity practise this week with Parlick Class and it is all starting to come together, we will share the songs with you at home for you to practice at home, so we can give 100%. In mathematics we created our very own number lines and experimented with 1 more and 1 less to get our math brains working and used our key vocabulary. Our journey in phonics never seems to slow down and the children continue their brilliant attitude towards writing and reading. Seeing these sentences cropping up independently is wonderful and their own ideas are starting to get put onto paper so it truly is a wonderful time in Pendle Class. This week we have been looking towards the stars and the constellations to learn about and power our art work. We even made our own star from catch a Star. Finally! Thank you to all of Pendle Class for your amazing pyjamas, you looked great and together we raised money for a truly brilliant cause. Thank you to the parents/guardians for your donations. Our story next week is Meanwhile Back on Earth, I hope you all have a lovely weekend and see you all Monday – I can’t wait.
11.11.22
This week we have had a big focus on Remembrance Day and what it is about. Together we created prayers for our soldiers and asked God to protect them and help make the world a more peaceful place – we even made our own mini poppies. On Tuesday we went to our first personal class mass. The children behaved impeccably, working hard to listen, sit beautifully and do the required actions. We even got to sing He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands to the congregation and they were amazing – I am so proud of you all! Pendle Class have even made a remembrance wreath for mass this Sunday, I hope you can attend. In phonics we have started phase 3 sounds and the children are working very hard to implement them and their tricky words. I believe you will really notice a difference in reading at home and the complexity of books. If you need any support, please contact me. In Mathematics we have used 2d shapes to make an array of pictures and continue to build up our understanding of shapes and their identifying features. We even worked on spatial awareness and had to describe where we or the teddy bear was hiding; using words like: in, on, under, behind, between and through. Our topic has come to fruition and are planets are ready! We have a great range of planets to show off, please see the pictures below, we have the rings of Uranus using wire and a can do attitude, Mars, Neptune, Mercury, Saturn and our very own earth in all its splendour. Next week we will be reading How to Catch a Star. I hope you all have a lovely weekend and see you Monday!
4.11.22
What a spacetastic first week we have had! Our first story from Oliver Jeffers ‘Here We Are’ is about our wonderful universe and our world. The children have been particularly impressed with Oliver’s fab illustrations. We used these illustrations to fuel our writing for this week and write about our world, or space or both! In phonics we looked at our end phase 2 / beginning phase 3 digraphs. We are also going to move onto phase 3 sounds while continually recapping phase 2 sounds and tricky words. You may notice another jump In reading books going home; if you need any support , please let me know. An interesting fact for you all is that it took 5 millions years for the earth to form, which is roughly how long it seems to take our children to paper Mache their own planet. However, the independent cutting, gluing, smoothing, ripping and shaping speaks for itself, so I am sure it is worth the wait. On Monday we aim to begin the painting process of a planet we would like to recreate. The children have loved exploring planets. What a create topic they have chosen for us. In mathematics children have been exploring 2d shapes and used these shapes to create their own 2d shape pictures, we have had rockets, animals, houses and self-portraits, a true mix. Next week we will be reading The Way Back Home. I hope you all have a lovely weekend and see you all Monday.
21.10.22
Just like that the end of our first half term. Pendle Class has truly gone from strength to strength this term we had to celebrate this week with a party. There was dancing, snacks and a movie – what more could you want! Phonics slows down for no one and this week is no different. Children have capped another cracking week with their independent writing, some even doing their own independent sentences. We even discussed as a class that we can create our own weird and wonderful sentences soon too! In mathematics we combined our literacy, communication and language and maths to make our very own Gruffalo Crumble, I hope some of it managed to make it home to you. I promise no Gruffalo’s were harmed in the making of it. We used of love of baking to help inform our writing and write about the process of making our crumble. I am delighted to announce that Pendle Class have decided on our new topic and it will be Space! I think we need to give Mrs Silvester a massive thank you for this inspiration; space week clearly has had a huge impact on us. I would like to issue my first huge thank you to Beverly Jones and the Sports for Champions team, it has been a brilliant experience for all children and staff – thank you! Another thank you is very much needed to Ruth Pattern who kindly came in and explained brail and the tools used to support people who are visually impaired/blind. Thank you for your time in raising awareness for something so important. My final huge thank you is to Pendle Class children and parents! This term has truly flown past and it has been a joy for me and Mrs Tyrer. Thank so you much for your hard work and support. It is truly appreciated. I hope you all have a lovely break and see you on the 1st!
14.10.22
Can we all say SMELLY TOESSSSS! It has been another fun filled week. I do not to shock anyone but this has been our 6th week – where does the time go! A very special thing happened this week, as it was our class photos for the local newspaper and our school photographer. We had a full class and the children remained mess free (mostly) and I most importantly looked incredible – you are all very welcome. Sentences are becoming a daily thing in Pendle class now and I could not be more proud. Children are extremely keen to work on so many elements of our Literacy/phonics work- it is wonderful. Pendle class are even using their keen eyes to spot all the phase 2 tricky words, what more could a teacher ask for. Over the past couple of weeks we have looked at Barack Obama for Black History Month, he was the 44th President of the USA and we did an art collage of him. We even made one for the whole school display – it looks fab. Children finished off our pattern/number work with their very own nature patterns and they look as unique as they do. This week we got to show off our incredible signing accompanied by our incredible actions in the school concert. I must say the hall was very busy and full of faces, however, I thought the children did brilliantly and as a big thank you from me, we all went into the prize box. I hope you are all proud of yourselves Pendle! For our final week we shall be reading the Gruffalo’s child, the children have loved our topic all about me and our author study of Julia Donaldson. I better get my chef whites ready for some Gruffalo Crumble! Thank you all and have a lovely weekend.
30.9.22
Rain, rain go away! Even though today was a particularly soggy day, the children continue to remain in good spirits and do me and Mrs Tyrer proud. Today something particularly amazing happened; we have been to our first Golden Assembly. The children really showed what a mature group they are as they behaved impeccably. Pendle Class continue to astound and amaze. Miss Deakin so impressed with Pendle Class she asked us to visit her office and give each children a special head teacher certificate – wow! I have told the children this will be a special onetime thing, so please check bags; the elusive certificates are not easily obtained. In phonics we have dived into the wonderful world of tricky words head first. We have been trying to spot them in our reading books and now beginning to write them. Some children even tried to write their own independent sentence – just wow! In maths we are making fantastic progress with our groupings, pattern work and sorting. Children not can only complete these tasks put explain them to a friend or me. In P.E children have become so independent when it comes to tackling the circuits. From day 1 they have always been a brave bunch when perfecting our balance and frog landing, however we have a great degree of confidence and finesse when landing. The hall sounds like gentle tippy taps of mice and no longer the stamp of baby elephants. I hope you all enjoy Bug Club, if you are having any problems at home please let me know. I hope to see ass many of you all at possible this Sunday at our mass. Next week we will be heavily involved in Black History month and Science week – what joy! I hope you all have a wonderful weekend together. I will see you all Monday!
23.9.22
My breath vanished, my vision blurred, I stood nauseous; there, in front of me, someone wearing an Arsenal shirt – the horror! Thankfully, seeing plenty of Manchester United kits kept me going. Joking aside, I would love to start off by saying a huge thank to everyone. It has been amazing seeing children wearing their sporty attire today. Your generosity has been incredible and a heartfelt thank you in necessary – THANK YOU! In our learning journey we are now learning about Tricky Words, the words we will be keeping a close eye on are I,to,the,go,no, they truly are a tricky lot. We are also continuing our phonics journey and to start us off next week will be a digraph (2 letters that make 1 sound) we do not wait around in Pendle. In mathematics the paints have been brought out for the children to make their very own shape patterns. They have worked extremely hard in class worship and our Creation Story work. We have discussed the story together as a class and ordered the story together. Pendle Class also attended their very first whole class mass together this week and behaved impeccably, Miss Deakin even came in and told us all well done. Today we ventured into the lovely library and took home our very first library books to develop that love of reading we want to nurture here at St Francis. Children have loved the Highway Rat and making Rats tails. Next week we will be reading the incredible Zog! Have a lovely weekend and see you all Monday – I cannot wait.
16.9.22
Like that we are 2 weeks down and we show no sign of stopping! Our phonics journey has continued and the children continue to fully embrace it. Every child is taking great care with their books (both phonics and reading) and the work they are producing is making me extremely proud and I am sure it is going to make you extremely proud when you see it too. In mathematics we have worked on numerical, shape and size patterns. It is always a complex thing to understand at first but by the end of the week children have gotten a good understanding of it and impressively making their own patterns! In R.E we took part in the CAFOD assembly and learned about the challenges people around the world face and how we can do a small act to help make their lives better, through donations of food or raising money for a good cause. We even visited the church today and held our class worship in church where the children behaved impeccably and learned what was going to happen on Tuesday; when we visit for our first school mass. As a class we have discussed our families and who we live with (pets and occasionally plants included) and how we show we care for our family and friends. So far the children have loved the Julia Donaldson author study so I hope with the tale the Highway Rat will be a winner! I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. Thank you for another fantastic week and see you all Tuesday!
9.9.22
What an incredible week we have all had in Pendle Class. This week has ended with a bittersweet note with Queen Elizabeth passing and our thoughts and prayers will be with her family at this hard time. Pendle class from day one have blown away all my expectations. This week we have worked together to make our classroom rules, started our worship and began learning the creation story. We are learning about our beautiful world and who created it. Children even started their R.E books! We gave an example of our kind hands and a kind things we have done. We even had a go writing it; they just work that hard. The children are quickly learning my love of phonics and writing and they have not disappointed. I think I will need to increase my sticker budget 10 fold as I am giving them out constantly for hard work, perseverance and children trying their best – what more could I possibly ask for! Children have begun working on the basics for reading, how to look at a book with care, use our following finger and basic blending and segmenting skills. We have worked hard on a few activities for our baselines. All of the children have worked to their potential and I am extremely proud of them all. The children have been very keen throughout the week, worked hard and their behaviour has been brilliant. We even have our own special spaces on the carpet, ready to learn and sit in our rows. Today we had a 2 minute silence in memory of Queen Elizabeth and their behaviour was impeccable throughout. Thank you all so much for a fantastic week. I hope you all have a lovely weekend together and get plenty of sleep for another fun filled week. Our story next week is going to be A Squash & a Squeeze, I cannot wait.
1.7.22
What a fabulous week we have had again! Facts, fun and adventuring. This week we read the incredible Animal Jambaree book. We decided to create our very own non-fiction fact books. We researched pictures for our book, illustrated the book and then learned some incredible facts to write about – great stuff team! In mathematics we were rolling dice galore, using spotty nice and number dice. We generated our own sums and always more incredibly, we did so independently. What more can I ask than a classroom of children who love independent math? – FANTASTIC! Combining with our literacy we researched our very own animals, learning facts and getting pictures for them – they look amazing and the children loved writing them. Next week we will be reading Elephant me – what fun. Finally, you all will surely know about that our current receptions visited year 1. I have been told they loved their time with Mrs Davies. They enjoyed music, drawing, writing and Ipad work. To my new and current parents please enjoy the pictures below of the stay and play sessions. I am looking forward to the next week already!
10.6.22
We begin our final stretch of the year – GOODNESS GRACIOUS! Pendle Class decided our final topic should be on Jungles and what a topic it is going to be. To accompany our brilliant topic we need a brilliant author and we have one – Giles Andreae. He has a huge amount of incredible stories to accompany our topic and a real love of all creatures great and small. We have started on the incredible book Rumble in the Jungle. Children have been working furiously this week on their phonics, mathematics and music. We have had a blast with our phonics and mathematics disco. Nothing has been more fun than grooving and showing off how brilliant and clever we are – fantastic. In R.E we have finished off our fish and bread baskets for our miracle work and discussed the story. In music we worked on percussion and playing out the rhythm using a beater and blocks and then using the C key on the large note maker. We hope to use our very own glockenspiels and showcase what we can really doing – it should be amazing. Pendle class were delighted to get back into the library once again. If you have any stories in bags you want to return to the library, please give them directly to a member of staff when dropping off. Next week we will be reading Rumble in the Jungle and showing off our stories to our buddies. I hope you all have a lovely weekend and ready for a fun filled week! Take care and see you all soon.
22.4.22
We are back! Once again the children are rested and ready for another wonderful return to school and have done me and Miss Gardner and Miss Salmon proud. I would like to thank everyone for all their efforts for the Bug Club challenge. This week we have started our Farming topic with the one and only Farmer Duck by Marin Waddell. I think I go to sleep here ‘How goes the work?’ QUACK! The children have loved the story and even wrote a story to accompany the book. The children began by retelling the story but during this term we hope to add our own unique narratives to the stories we create to showcase our imagination and magnificent ideas. In mathematics children have worked furiously hard working on numerical patterns and learning about doubles under 10 and how these numbers have relationships together. In our wonderful topic, we have looked at the range of baby animals and Ridgeway farm was still fresh in our minds. Looking at animals and their baby equivalents. We even created or own Farmer duck and a farmer ducking to join him. Next week we shall be reading the story All Pigs Are Beautiful. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.
1.4.22
The sun is shining and another glorious week has happened at St. Francis. I must share with you the wonderful news of Jungle John the Bugman! He told us many a fascinating fact about minibeasts, he also showed us his very own collection. Some very lucky (brave) children were selected to hold a stick insect, hissing beetle, butterfly and even his snake ‘Monty’. We did not get to hold his pet tarantula, however, John did show off her sheded skin – very cool. The incredible children in Beacon class helped us investigate the wonderful world of minibeasts, using magnify glasses and magnification pots. We even had a little recording sheet with our buddies to help tick off our discoveries, we even used Ipads to document our discoveries. We then went to the garden to plant our sunflower seeds to take home and sow a variety of seeds in our planters. We have already shown we have green fingers with our wonderful cress growing skills. In even more wonderful news children adored going to Ridgeway Farm and Farmer Helen was wonderful with both Pendle and Parlick class. We investigated things that grow on the farm, explored the farm and learned about different elements of the farm and learned how Helen cares for her animals, we even got to feed for them which was amazing. Children continue to astound and amaze during our Lego Coding sessions with our buddies really showcasing their incredible building and teamwork skills. We have looked at the brilliant astronaut that is Tim Peake and the international space station. On a very special note a huge effort has been spent on our Mother’s Day preparations and it is always heart-warming to see how determined and passionate about making their cards. To finish off our final week of the term Pendle Class took part in the whole school walk for Ukraine. A reflection walk is always tricky, however, our incredible buddies in Beacon came along with us to help. I hope you all have a lovely Easter Break together.
11.3.22
You are all going to be very jealous of our week! The children have been working extremely hard in their phonics and are going to try the jump for phase 5! Children will still continue to use their phase 3 knowledge where necessary. In mathematics we have hopped, jumped and ran a marathon creating our extended number lines is hard work and involved lots of moving around. We had to find specific numbers, spotting patterns and discovering more and less than a given number. On Tuesday we had a lovely afternoon with our buddies! To make it even more special they helped us with magic Lego – amazing! Our buddies explained to us that we call is Lego coding and we use the Ipad to talk to the Lego and tell it what to do. We built our creations as a team and then showcased them all to each other, it was great fun. I will have to tell you the next part in the strictness confidence as we began our crazy cress heads. Currently, there is not much to see but over the next few days/ week we should have a headful of crazy cress hair in time for science week. Today was an We also had the treat of hearing about the amazing success of the school’s choir team and the whole on Pendle class stood up in assembly and sand to our friends, it was very special and I am delighted that we can share this moment with you. If that was not amazing enough of a week on top of our usual brilliance, the author Dan Worsley came in to read us one of his own mini tales and tell us how he got into writing –WOW WOW WOW! He was such a fantastic story teller all the children and staff were enthralled. Thank you Dan! I hope you all have a lovely weekend with each other and I shall see you all Monday.
4.3.22
Well, well – how much time do you have? These past 2 weeks have been action packed and filled with learning and fun – just how we like it. I would love to start this off my sharing the tremendous news about our riddle competition. Last month Pendle class entered a riddle competition where they submitted their own riddle and everyone was granted a certificate and an offer to publish their work – simple amazing! The children were delighted to receive their certificate and bookmark and were delighted to show it off to you. If you would like for your child to have their work published simply follow the instruction on the letter and hand it in. Our space topic is going down like a dream and children are loving learning about space, we even learned a little about Tim Peake and are wanting more – so more is what we shall get! This week children behaved impeccably during our Ash Wednesday service and I was so proud of our performance, the children worked extremely hard on singing at an appropriate level in church to knock socks off but not literally blow you away. Thank you to everyone who could attend, any that could not I will attach some pictures below, it was a wonderful service. It is not every day you get to steal you fiancés eye liner, but world book day is that day. I was delighted to see everyone in an enormous range of topic and genres, having fun and most importantly enjoying books. We even adventured to the year 5/6 classroom to read our rocket list to our buddies and they even read us a story, it was as magical as it sounded – thank you. I would love to introduce you to the wonderful Miss St Valle-Salmon who will be joining us a student teacher in Pendle class for 12 weeks and I could not think of a more wonderful class and school for her to be learning in. Next week we shall be reading The Dinosaur that Pooped a Planet – how wonderful! I hope you all have a peaceful weekend and see you Monday.
4.2.22
Ni hao everyone! As I have seen from so many of you at home you have learnt about Chinese New Year this week. We have learned a small piece of Mandarin Ni Hao to say during registration which is used as a way of saying hello. It can be literally translated as ‘you good’ as a friendly way to check in with our friends – which we all loved. We almost worked on numerals and the animals from the story. We did search for our signs and some children were born under a different signs in our classroom as some were part of the dog or cockerel zodiac. We helped find out Miss Gardner’s sign and she was born during the year of the snake and I was born during the year of the pig. I did then explain to the class that you unfortunately cannot choose the animal you like best, you get what you get – even a pig. In mathematics we tested our wits in a multitude of ways helping complete calculations and then creating their own number bond patterns. In P.E the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk was on the loose today as children had to climb beanstalks and steal gold. Children had to work in teams to free their friends from the giants by giving them a high 10, we had to hold a beanstalk pose which was very handy for are pencils roles! Pendle Class worked in secret this week to create a thank you card for the wonderful Ruth, Amy and David that came and showed off their ambulance. The school are extremely grateful for your time so and a huge thank you for what you do in our community you are all superheroes. We have one final week of our traditional tales topic with Sleeping Beauty – I simply cannot wait. I hope you all have a lovely weekend and see you all Monday.
28.1.22
Can you believe it, another Faaaaaaaantastic week! We have ventured back into the deep dark woods with Goldilocks and the 3 bears. Pendle have been pushed to use prompts of the story to help them write it independently, thinking of their own sentence and applying their phonetic knowledge. Some children even thought of a silly ending to their story to make it funnier and more unique. My favourite tweak was Goldilocks staying and have a tea party with the bears. Our incredible number bonds work is clearly showing as Pendle have shown they are number bond experts. We have used frames to create as many number bonds to 10 as we could think of; then matched them with our numercon pieces just to make sure we were correct. To test our fast thinking brains, we even have to share our number bond knowledge before breaks and choosing time to get them ready to roll off the tongue, if we ever get stuck are fingers come in very hand too. Pendle Class learned about the story of the Good Samaritan this week and noticed that the person helping at the end was a Samaritan and the story was called the Good Samaritan, we quickly understood why it was called that. We then linked that to our neighbour work and thinking what Jesus would want us to do, we decided he would surely want us to help anyone who needed it. Throughout the week we have been going safety crazy for Safety Week! We learned about Pantosarus, Home Safety, Handwashing, Personal Care and Road Safety. We even presented all we found out to the rest of the school in our groups so we could share our knowledge. Fairsnape and Beacon helped us learn about the dangers of electricity, train and water safety. Finally, if this week could not get even better, Amy, Ruth and David brought an ambulance in for us to look at and explore, a huge thank to them all as the children thoroughly enjoyed what you discussed and were mesmerized by the ambulance. Thank you all for a wonderful week and see you on Monday.
21.1.22
Goodness gracious this have been a brilliant week to remember! I must start with what has been the talk of the week – Lancaster Castle! The children loved visiting the castle and it was clear to tell by the wonder on their faces, the amount of questions, discussions generated, our fabulous guide Cameron and how quiet the bus was coming back from the castle – lots of walking is required when exploring a castle. Both KS1 and Reception classes behaviour was fantastic and I am exceptionally proud of them both. Thank you to the team at Lancaster Castle for helping us have such a lovely trip. We have not slowed the pace when it comes to our phonics and writing, as the children are writing full books now and the children love to write in them. We are working on generating longer sentences and eventually branch out and change the story in bizarre ways to create a different narrative. The children have been working tirelessly on number bonds working to 5 and 10 and are showing that they can quickly recall and vitally show off their understanding. We also learned about the miracle of Jesus turning water into wine. The children asked lots of questions and then we examined the word ‘miracle’ to better understand its meaning. We also applied the teachings of Jesus learn about Martin Luther King and how he fought for justice and equality while practicing none violent protest. I was very proud by how mature and caring Pendle class showed themselves to be and connecting links to Jesus as we progressed. Next week we will be reading Goldilocks and the 3 Bears. I am sure it is going to be fantastic.
7.1.22
What a fantastic first week back at school I have had – thank you Pendle! It was delightful to hear about Father Christmas visiting all of you and spending lovely time together as a family. This week we read the exciting tale of Jack and the Beanstalk – it was brilliant. We used this beanstalk themed fun to write our very own mini Jack and the Beanstalk story, we worked on thinking of our own sentences relating to the story, handwriting, phonics and reading our work back as if we cannot read it, other will struggle. If you are writing about jack and the beanstalk a giant certainly has to feature so we created our very own giants, some had scary eyes, some had big busy beards and others even had a hairy back, just like daddy – which was too much information for me and Miss Gardner, but a nice detailed feature regardless. In mathematics we created number bond rainbows to account our giants in the sky and our story. The purpose of the rainbow if to see how these bonds interlink with each other and spot patterns, we hope to build up this knowledge as we progress this term. I am delighted to say we went to church together as a class to attend a church service lead by father Sony and the children behaved impeccably as usual – great stuff Pendle! If you have not paid already for the Lancaster Castle trip, the portal is open for you to pay on Parent Pay, please do so ASAP. I hope you all have a lovely weekend and see you all Monday.
17.12.21
IT’S CHRISTMASSSSSSSSSSSS – nearly. It might be easier to discuss what has not happened this week, but let’s give it a try. I first must discuss the show all the critics are raving about, our Nativity. A huge thank you must go to all the members of staff who went above and beyond to make the show what it is, the parents for helping at home and the stars of the show themselves the children – thank you! This week we have been revisiting phase 3 sounds that children found particularly challenging and trying our best to remember and apply them in our reading and writing. We are also building up our bank of tricky words to apply to our writing, which will be so much fun when we start our traditional tales topic next term! In mathematics we prepared for our new mathematical challenges and looked at links between numbers which was made easier by all of our subitising work. A large chunk of our afternoons were spent reviewing the Christmas story and breaking it down in groups or 1-1. We discussed even though Christmas is a very special time because we get presents, there is a reason behind them. The celebration is down to the birth of Jesus Christ and that is what we are celebrating. We also explored that fact that some children are not as fortunate as us and may go without presents or a delicious Christmas dinner. Fortunately, Christmas Jumper Day gave us an opportunity to do a little bit of good in the world and share some Christmas cheer. The children also managed to finish off their secret Christmas packs (which might not be that secret now) and are ready to bring you all a little Christmas cheer. I can sincerely say a genuine effort went into each and every craft, as they were for you. As a class we went back to school and recorded our part in the Christmas Story for Miss Deakin’s special school Christmas video, we cannot wait for you to see it. To finish a brilliant week I must say a huge thank you to Miss Gardner, as we are blessed to have a member of staff so dedicated and passionate in Pendle Class, thank you for all you do. To everyone, I hope you all have a fun filled Christmas and get to spend lots of quality family time together. Take care and I shall see you all in 2022!
It has been stupendous to see all these woolly jumpers today and great to hear about the children wanting to help those less fortunate. This week as expected we continue to work our socks off. There will be nothing left of them at this rate! Using our phonics book we have been focusing key sounds that the children find particular tricky and applying them as much as possible in are games, reading and writing. We are now into the thick of trying to memorise our phase 3 tricky words and work on strategies to recognise them. In mathematics we have been applying our subitising skills in various ways to help reinforce our learning. We used different sets of random objects to combine which was a particularly tricky. We did need to use words like altogether, add and equal to help reinforce this understanding. As you can probably can imagine, we have gone Christmas crazy this week as we have been in full swing for our Nativity, we have even completed our very first dress rehearsal with a mini audience. The children smashed it and I hope they can do even better when you see it on Monday – we cannot wait! If you have any questions about the Nativity please get in touch with me or Miss Taylor. Finally, we have been furiously working away on our various secret projects that can be unveiled at the end of next week. I can only reveal a few key details, as it does involve writing, shaping, sculpting, painting, cutting and gluing. I hope you all have a lovely weekend and see you all next week for a magical week.
3.12.21
Well thank you Pendle class for another brilliant week, it is great to be back into the groove of things. We began this week with a story about a rather sad looking bear called Albert Le Blanc. Thankfully for us, he was not a particularly sad bear, he just looked sad. We really enjoyed the story and it was great that they children were picking up on the narrative, they never spoke to Albert and never let him speak. In our phonics we have reached the end of our phase 3 sounds, however that does not mean we are done as they are vital for our writing and reading. We will work to continuously use these sounds to try and apply them in our independent writing to really showcase what we know and include more tricky words into our work. In mathematics it is official that we are subitising superheroes as we work to be a quick counter. We have used flash cards, dice and random objects to support this. We even used our Christmas tree to test our counting and then worked on taking away sums with the decoration and recording our work. As you know we are hard at work for our Nativity. As we got to wear our costumes this week for a mini dress rehearsal, we recreated our characters in clay and they look awesome. We began preparations to create our Christmas cards for you all. The first stage was using our funky finger skills and chopping out our very first snowflake which was just as unique as a snowflake should be. Thank you all for a fantastic week. I hope you all have a lovely weekend.
5.11.21
The race to Christmas is very much upon us! For our first week back we finished off our Stickman story and are ready to read One Snowy Night by Nick Butterworth. We looked at the beginning phase 3 sounds and continued to revisit phase 2 sounds as we cannot forget them! If that has not impressed you enough, we have even written several sentences using phoneme frames this week! In mathematics children continue to work hard on number formation, counting and strategies to help us be even quicker. Children competed against each other to be the quickest counter and neatest number writer – it was great fun. This week we learned about Diwali and created a Diya (lantern) to guide Sita and Rama home. Next week we shall decorate them as they needed to set and they can go home as a memento of this week, you will even be able to light them. In R.E we are learning the Nativity story and in very exciting news we are beginning to learn the songs for our performance and they children are doing brilliantly! To finish off with even more brilliant news, Pendle Class have had their first whole school Golden Award assembly today and they behaved brilliantly throughout. As usual, I am so proud of them all. Thank you all for another glorious week, keep up the hard work and have a lovely weekend.
22.10.21
Just like that 8(ish) weeks have flown by – where does the time go? To begin this wonderful week we made 3! 3! Gruffalo Crumbles to celebrate a wonderful Julia Donaldson inspired topic ‘All About Me’ and finished with the Gruffalo’s Child. As a class we decided our next topic should be ‘Winter Wonderland’ as so many children are so clearly enchanted by this magical time. We will begin our topic with the Stickman as the children were very excited by the prospect of the story and then we will move onto Nick Butterworth. In mathematics we went on a number hunt for not only number cards, but numbers in our outside area and around the school! We even created our own numbers to hide on sticky notes and got our friends to find them; we did have to ensure they were as neat as possible. In phonics we have reached the end of phase 2 sounds and the children have shown great understanding and a very mature attitude towards reading. This does not mean that we will forget about them, we will constantly revisit them during the next half of the term, highlighting key sounds to focus on. Not forgetting tricky words too – we cannot let them tricky us! We have completed looking at the story of Creation and learned about a few key features of our religion. We know have our eyes fixed towards Christmas and I truly cannot wait. Thank you all for a wonderful half term and a huge congratulations to everyone in Pendle Class as you have worked so hard! Well done, keep up the hard work and I hope you all have a wonderful break together.
15.10.21
Ready, steady, bake! On our snail and whale adventures we have created our very own mini snail to accompany us on our journey. We made it using salt dough we have made from scratch ourselves, following the recipe and using our listening ears, as we do not want it to be a gloopy mess; it is clear we have some bakers in the class! As expected we keep on trying to reach new heights in our phonics and learned another digraph ‘qu’ which we have applied not only in our writing but our reading too. As we continuing our pesky phonics work we are noticing these pesky tricky words cropping up in our books and we will not let them tricky us! In mathematics we used our keen hand and fingers paints to make our very own numberline. We worked especially hard on number formation and matching the number to the correct hard – great work team! In our every growing art books we created our very own picture Piera Mondrian picture to go in our art books and they look stupendous. They really speak volumes of our love of art. With all this sun and rain it certainly helps the garden grow and we used our planting station to do that and grow some beautiful plants for God’s beautiful world. Thank you once again for a wonderful week. I am looking forward to chatting about your child with you next week. We will be finishing off our Julia Donaldson ‘All About Me’ topic with the Gruffalo’s Child – I cannot wait and I hope you have a hungry tum for some CRUMBLE!
8.10.21
To infinity and beyond! This week has been a brilliant space adventure and we have the earth, moon and rockets to prove it! During space week we have been looking at women in space and our focus was on Mary Jackson. She was the first black engineer to work for NASA and we would all like to be a little bit more like Mary as she was a brilliant mathematician. A way we thought to celebrate Mary Jackson was to draw a portrait of her in our art books. We also created a very beautiful earth and a moon picture to show off our funky-fingers and incredible art skills. We then added some string and balloons to make our rockets blast off! A special thank you to Miss Silvester who organised this school wide science day and our school assembly where we could show off our creations and learn from others classes – great fun! In this action packed week, we went to our very first church service for the Feast of St Francis, the children did brilliantly and afterwards we explored the areas set up and met Father Sony, he was his usual smiley and friendly self and we were delighted to meet him. Thank you all for a wonderful week and see you all Monday.
1.10.21
Now the time is really beginning to fly! Children continue to work hard in all areas of their learning. A very special message to begin with is that we once again visited the church in classes in preparation of the Feast of St. Francis. The church was looking more beautiful and tranquil than usual as our wonderful community decorated the church ready for this celebration. We would like to invite all parents to attend the service on Saturday between 1.00am -2.00pm for drop in celebration and to bring your own creation to add to the stations. I would like to thank Mrs Tyrer, Miss Gardner and the KS1 team that made this another incredible week for my reception class. We carried on with our phonics and I am delighted to see how hard we are all working, not just at school, but home too. Thank you for all of your support. This week we have created the mighty Zog, and in a brilliant coincidence met a furry friend too – Oaty! He was not the same dog from Zog. We would like to give a massive thank you to Lancaster Animal Centre and Michael Jones for visiting our school and explaining how to care for animals, provide a loving home and some great learning games. In mathematics we created our very own number lines to accompany the ones in the classroom and to help with our counting and overall understanding of numbers. In R.E we created out crosses and with help wrote our first prayer together. Next week we will be reading Squash and Squeeze. Thank you all for a wonderful week, take care and see you all Monday.
24.9.21
Well that was one knock your socks off week. The children are in full swing and are really loving Julia Donaldson and her books. To celebrate our love of her books we decided to use clay to create our very own protagonists from her tales, I have seen a ladybird, dragon, cat and even a Gruffalo! We finished off our minibeast hunt and unbelievably we discovered the millennium was covered in fairy houses and circles. This obviously blew our socks off and really helped us understand how to care for the habitat we were in. We wanted to handle our environment with care and ensure all of God’s creatures were looked after. In mathematics we used some very helpful ladybirds to help us quiz our number knowledge and using our fingers to paint on our spotty ladybirds. Pendle class continues to work hard in our phonics and we have come across our very first digraph this week ck! Which shows how hard the children are working, we know we need to continuously recap to retain this ever growing range of sounds, so they can stay fresh in our minds. We even began to label our very own ladybirds, drawing from the sounds we already know. In R.E we are learning about God’s love and how we can show this ln all aspects of our life, not just to each other but the world around us. We managed to visit our beautiful church and find Mary, Jesus and even a statue of St. Francis! We discovered lots of crosses around the church and even said a prayer while we were in the church. Thank you all for a wonderful weekend. Next week we will be reading the fiery ZOG! Thank you all and have a lovely weekend.
17.9.21
Say cheese! The camera must clearly love us as we have had our second set of pictures. I know reception year is such a milestone and a year to cherish so the pictures are in your child’s bags. Our phonics adventure continues and children are building up their bank of sounds. Children are really picking up on how to use their robot arms and the processes of segmenting and blending have already begun. As our repertoire of sounds continues to grow the range of books we send home will too. We have also launched Bug Club Online this week and please feedback and let us know how you get on. Just like your home reading books we will update the books online with the sounds we have completed in school. Currently we have looked at S,A,T,P,I,N,D,M,G,O once again this list will grow very quickly so read as much as you can. In mathematics we have had some number races with a friend as we had to match the quantity to the number, it was great fun in having some speedy math sessions. After the children’s brilliant ideas we decided to turn our rack into a petrol station show and at these prices I would be tempted. At the moment we have some fresh fruit and vegetables, car wash and petrol station, open to any well-mannered paying customer. We have created our very own brooms for Room On A Broom and tied them up to the wall, as we cannot have broomsticks flying all over the place! We even entered the deep, dark wood and kept an eye out for the Gruffalo on a minibeast hunt, some children even claim to have seen/heard him, I will leave that up to you. Next Week we will be reading, What The Ladybird Heard – great stuff. God bless and see you all Monday!
10.9.21
Well! Well! Well! I could not be more proud of Pendle Class as they have not only shown what a great reception class they are, but what caring individuals they are too. We carried on our phonics journey this week learning a range of sounds, segmenting words and even trying to blend – WOW! We have used our phonics books and children are showing real pride in their work. In mathematics we used our numbers to help us organise fish, dinosaurs and animals; trying to correctly match value to number. We looked at The Creation story this week and learned who created the world. We looked at key values and our kind hands was something we discussed as a class. All children fed back to the group with a wonderful example of how we can use our kind hands and what we would consider unkind hands. With the help of Miss Gardner the children were supported with how to use MiniMash, the children made their own animal creations to get put onto our display in all of their glory. Thank you all for the wonderful work that is coming in via Seesaw, it is a joy to see. Every Thursday please hand in your Learning Log to me and we shall send them back out on Friday. Have a lovely weekend together, next weeks book will be Room On The Broom.
3.9.21
Welcome Pendle Class 2021! We have had 2 action packed days which I am excited to share with you. It was a real treat that everyone came in with a smile on their face ready to start their reception adventure with us. As you can expect we went over the classroom basics, pegs, bathroom, class rules and started to breakdown the areas of our classroom. It is great to see the children feel so comfortable and begin to gel with other so quickly in a new classroom. This terms topic is ‘All About Me’ and the author study is Julia Donaldson – children love her tales! We have explored the classroom in all of its glory. Unfortunately, for me I have been told that I have several witches in my classroom, however, they are nice witches which I was pleased to hear. Next week we will be reading the Gruu, Gruu, GURFFALO! It is going to be a fab full week, so I hope you all get some rest. I would like to wish a sincere welcome to any new parents starting with me and welcome back to parents of older siblings that I have taught (where is the time going!) my door is always open for you. I update the Pendle class page every Friday with pictures, what has happened and any other weird and wonderful things that may have happened in the week. Please remember your P.E kits for Monday, they spend the day in the kits so you do not need to pack any school uniform. Finally, thank you so much to Miss Gardner for all your help, the children already adore you and another big thank you to our buddies for helping us at lunch and break time, you are the talk of the town. I hope you all have a safe and relaxing weekend together and see you all Monday – God bless.
16.7.21
So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, good night! Like that another year is over and I am sure you are all thinking where has the year gone? This week may have been a crazy old week, but Pendle Class kept up their phonics work and continue to do themselves proud. You all need a lovely break but please do not leave it 6 weeks to pick up a pencil or book! Keep it up team and you will hit the ground running in September. I have put a little resource pack together for you to do with your children if you so choose. This week we completed our map treasure hunts, had ice cream and partied liked it is 1999 which pains me to think is not even close to my current classes date of birth. A special thank you to the wonderful Miss Gardner who has been incredible this year, the children love you and supported everyone in this class. Thank you to Mrs Tyrer for all of your love and support also throughout this school year, the children will love seeing your familiar face throughout the year in Parlick! A sad farewell is needed as Miss Woodcock is leaving to join another extremely lucky school, you shall be missed. Thank you Pendle Class you have been a delight throughout this busy year. Finally, thank you to all of the parents support and understanding throughout the year, you have played an enormous part in your child’s success. I wish you all a safe and happy holiday and hope you all get to spend to much deserved time together and families. God bless everyone.
9.7.21
What an action packed week we have all had! As you can imagine Sports Day has been a key focus this week and we have been working very hard on our preparation to tackle any challenge. I promised Pendle Class that if they have their listening ears switched on they will have a brilliant day and they did not disappoint – well done Pendle! In our last P.E session it was great to see children give it their all and we went a little sticker mad, but the children loved it and why not! The story we read this week was Mr Wolf and the enormous Turnip, it was a short funny tale the children enjoyed this busy week and a great way to get some unusual vocabulary into our writing. We returned to the Millennium to finish our maps and take more photos, the photo aspect of our map is completed all we have left to do is complete the labels and painting which will be done next week! A special thank you to Miss Gardner and Mrs Tyrer who worked especially hard and make sure we were ready for Sports Day! Mrs Davies was full of complementary adjectives for her new years 1s, she has very kindly provided me with pictures for you to look at. To any new parents looking below I am delighted to tell you all more of the same, a wonderful, fun-filled morning – thank you. I will attach some pictures below for you. Thank you all for a superb week and see you Monday for 1 more week – unbelievable.
2.7.21
What a FANNNNtastic week! We continued applying all our phonetic knowledge in our phonics and in literacy tasks. The wonderful story this week was ‘What the Ladybird Heard’ and children thoroughly enjoyed it. We wrote one of the versions we chose and worked very hard at expanding upon what we have written to add more flavour to our writing and draw from our every growing vocabulary. A prominent feature of these tales were the hapless Hefty Hugh and Lanky Len as they used a map to carry out their daring heist. This gave us an idea to create our very own map. We ventured into the Millennium to look for key features that we would remember on a map, to figure out what we meant by this we instructed others to stand by certain areas, after that we made our own plan using felt pens and card to create a practice map. Our own maps are prepped and are ready to be created next week. The children became mini photographers with Ipads and took pictures in pairs of places of interest too; we will use these pictures to help our drawing and reference points for our maps -how fun! Pendle Class have worked very hard on their Big Bear Funk musical and are fantastic with the quick actions, song and rhythm with or without the glockenspiel. The St. Francis’ Car Wash is going well and children are now creating their very own shops for items around the classroom to their peers. Strangely, tea bags became a big feature in the classroom for our tea rubbings, but the children especially loved the water blowing art and with practice it became a beautiful work of art. Thank you to Miss Forshaw and Mrs Davies who showed Pendle class a wonderful time this Friday as not only was I delighted to hear that all the pupils did the class proud, but that had lots of fun and set an amazing standard for next year when they are in year 1 – unbelievable! A very special treat for me was that my new Reception students came to me today and we had an amazing morning together. We read stories, painted, wrote, counted, chatted, played and met our new friends; it was a real delight for me and Miss Gardner so thank you to everyone that came, I cannot wait to see you all next week! If I do have any new parents reading this, please look below to see pictures of the morning. I cannot wait to start another week – take care everyone.
18.6.21
Quack! How goes the work? Very well thank you. This week we have loved the tale of Farmer Duck and although he was weepy and sleepy that did not last for long. The children completed their Farmer Duck stories with their usual enthusiasm, it is fabulous to see all this hard work on their handwriting paying off. We are continuing our journey with phase 5 sounds and our tricky words where we can refer back to another phase 3 sound independently if needed. All children are making great strides in their independent writing and are building up their stamina as it will soon be time for them to leave and join Parlick – unbelievable. In mathematics children have applied their knowledge not only with 1p coins but expanded it to other coins, trying their best to understand that a 5p coin is worth the same a 5 pennies. When purchasing items, you do not want to over or under pay! Especially at the St. Francis’ Car Wash; I hear the owner is a real stickler for the correct amount. Our farming topic took us down a very interesting path of Fairtrade and what it means. I was blown away by the understanding of what ‘fair’ means and what that looks like. We understood that farmers deserve a fair price to buy things we can easily take for granted like clothes, shelter and even food! We also got to see farmers all around the world. The lovely Ruby Red Slippers came into our school this week and spoke to Pendle Class about History – how exciting! Ruby helped us understand what a timeline is and how that organises things in relation to time E.G. morning, afternoon and night. This is given context by thinking about when we were little and even much further back, exploring dinosaurs, which we were experts about. Next week we shall be reading All Pigs Are Beautiful. I wish you all a wonderful Father’s Day and a peaceful weekend.
11.6.21
It is great to have you all back and ready to finish this year on a high! We started off our topic with the familiar face of Winnie the Witch. Unsurprisingly, a spell that Winnie had cast had gone awry and ended with a gigantic pumpkin! The children thoroughly enjoyed the story and loved independently writing their Winnie books. It is delightful to see our writing come together so beautifully and you cannot help but reminisce to how far each and every child has come. We shall keep up the handwriting and the hard work! In mathematics we are beginning to have an in-depth look at money and to begin with; we need to understand what a penny is. We have discussed this and made some mock shops and car washes to experiment with purchasing and counting out the correct amount. We also made the links that a 5p coin has 5 pennies hiding inside it and a 10p coin has 10 pennies hiding inside it etc, so we could understand the value of these coins. You cannot read a Winnie story and not look create a broomstick and/or magic wand! The children gathered the resources they needed to create their wands/broomsticks and with tape, string and teamwork managed to create their very own broomsticks – great work. After we created our broomsticks we needed to decorate them and they are going to look stupendous when finished, waiting for paint to dry is never entertaining. We also went on a minibeasts and bird hunt to see what we could discover and we found a range of birds and minibeasts to draw and write about- putting our clipboards to good use my little scientists. Thank you for a fantastic week team. The story for next week is going to be Farmer Duck – it is going to be quacking! I hope you all have a lovely weekend and see you Monday.
28.5.21
Sophisticated, elegant and dignified were just a few words that were not used to describe me in my crayon outfit -strange. Regardless, World Book Day was great fun and it was fantastic to see the variety of costumes everyone had on. The Day the Crayons Quit was a lovely story and it was great to read it as a class and to hear Miss Deakin read it too. We created our very own bickering crayon story with a variety of colours complaining to Duncan about a particular issue e.g. Yellow thinks he is the right crayon to colour the sun, when it is so obviously meant to be orange; or so orange tells me. Our handmade clocks proved incredibly useful to help us tell the time. We experimented with a range of times on the clocks and made a clear and obvious understanding between the minute and hour hand. Great work team on such a tricky topic, we will keep an eye on time as we explore money next term. This week was our first ever school assembly in which Fairsnape (3/4) presented to us and Parlick about seed dispersal with some great visual and interactive props, the exploding seeds proved to be very popular and the balloon and glitter demonstration went down well. We have made some astute observations about our tadpoles and noticed they are growing legs! As a class we decided they needed to be put into the rill as when they turn into froglets and cannot stay in the water permanently. We placed rocks in the rill for the tadpoles to use as hiding places from predators and put the last bit food in for them. We also loved the great eruptions we got some our island volcano, underwater volcano and mountainous volcano, a great bang to end a fun filled topic the children helped build. Pendle Class would like to give a massive thank you to Timothy Knapman who joined us on our world book day and read a range of his dinosaur stories and answered some questions from the class – thank you Tim! The class also got to use the Chrome Music Lab for the first time to create their own mini beat and thoroughly loved using it, we shall continue using the music lab to create more elaborate and interesting pieces of music next term. I hope you all get to spend time with each other during this half term. Take care and see you all soon.
21.5.21
1 Week left to go! I said that the time will fly by. We have had a wonderful time creating our incredible dinosaur investigation work and Miss Silvester was impressed with them. To finish off our dinosaur topic with a bang we are going to erupt our volcanoes with Fairsnape. To help excite us and continue investigating and learning about dinosaurs, we shall share our facts with Fairsnape and ask them for a question to further our learning. This week we have had a slight twist to help us with learning about time – The Hungry Caterpillar. We used to story to help us sequence days and order time that way. We also created 2 clocks to accompany our story. 1 basic clock so we know how a clock should be structured and an individual clock fit for a time telling expert. We shall use these clocks to help with our learning. In phonics we are solidifying our knowledge and working towards writing independent sentences. It is incredible to look back at the start of the year and see the progress we have made – well done everyone! As a class we continued to learn about The Good Samaritan and what a dilemma is. Individually we were presented with a dilemma and had to break it down and resolve the problem with understanding and compassion, using the teachings of Jesus to guide us. Thank you to Mrs Tyrer for your support in helping the class with their Chranga music session as they were fantastic singing and preforming the actions. To let you all know our rescheduled World Book Day is next Wednesday (26th) and you can come in your world book day costumes, my character might be feeling a little blue. We have started Fair Trade Friday again to purchase something from the shop. Please can you bring in the correct amount of change to minimise the handling of money. Please place the money in an envelope with a label stating what your child would like. I hope you all have a lovely weekend and I cannot wait to see your costumes – take care.
15.5.21
This week we have had a blast as we prepare for our eruption next week! The children continue to work hard on their handwriting and phonics. We continue to draw on a wide range of sounds and work on the tricky words and sounds we do not know. Our brand new phonic books help us keep track of this and we get to celebrate every achievement and know our next target – great fun. In mathematics we continued to work on time and I am delighted to see the progress we have made. Next week to really demonstrate our time keeping skills we decided to create our very own clocks. It is wonderful to see children coming in with watches and proudly discussing time with me and showing their peers. In R.E continuing are dilemma work we revisited the story ‘The Good Samaritan’ and will break down the dilemma’s of that too, and why the Samaritan acted with kindness. The class dinosaur booklet and final art pieces are ready for the big unveil and we will be showing the wonderful Miss Silvester to show off our dinosaur knowledge. We also entered a competition to create our very own stamp for the Royal Post Office. We will keep you updated so please keep your fingers crossed! Our design was on a local superhero like a nurse, firefighter, shop keeper etc. We had a wonderful treat on Thursday as we had the wonderful chance to read with Miss Deakin again (distanced) as Miss Deakin read 1-1 with children on the story bus outside, The children adored reading with Miss Deakin and she loved reading with us – thank you Miss Deakin. We did have to say farewell to our dear friend Mrs. Proctor as she is leaving the school in her official role to be with her family. However, she has promised to not be a stranger and will return for visits and school trips! Thank you for all of your love and support Mrs. Proctor, you will be missed. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend together and I shall see you all on Monday!
7.5.21
It was fab to see so many numbers on show today. Thank you to everyone who donated, we are very thankful for your support as always! This has been a rather special week as we had a special guest come to St. Francis’ and film parts of our school. It was a privilege to show off our school. None of Pendle class students were in the shots, but they upheld our high standards and I am very proud of them for it. During this week we created our salt dough dinosaur fossils to accompany our dinosaur investigation. They are now baked and ready to be painted to make them really stand out and further inspire our dinosaur fossil writing booklets. In mathematics we put a wide range of time skills to the test as we worked on recognising the time, drawing hands on a clock, sequencing events and discussing and ordering events that we do regularly. We are continually drawing from our phase 3 knowledge and really showcasing these skills independently when playing in areas of provision in the classroom. It is amazing to see a few phase 5 digraphs sneak into our work too. The final joyous piece of news I can share with you is that we have a couple of wonderful additions to the St. Francis’ family! Pink and Lavy are the flamboyant names of our wonderful chickens at school. Just to let you all know while the chickens are settling in to begin with, please be considerate around them as we want them to feel safe. I hope you all have a lovely weekend and see you all Monday.
30.04.21
Another week goes by like a flash – 4 weeks to go. Before we begin a huge thank you to you all at home, as it is fantastic to see you all reading; it has a massive impact so please keep it up. As we continue our journey through phonics we are solidifying our phase 2/3 phonics and moving onto phase 4/5. The class have started our own handwriting books to take our writing to another level and hit the ground running in year 1, it will be here before you know it! In mathematics we are using key vocabulary to organise and sequence events e.g. first, second, next and last. These words can give us an idea of where specific routines/events of the day happen. We continued with our work with clocks using IPads to help us position the hands precisely to really understand the movement of the clock and see that happening. We are creating our very own dinosaur egg to accompany our fact file, it will be our show stopping piece and we have a few exciting ideas to accompany this too. It was fantastic putting our musical skills to the test with everyone using an instrument. We worked on keeping a beat together and then experimented with the tempo of the music. We had snail for slow, elephant for steady and cheetah for fast. We experimented with the different sounds we could make with the beaters and combined those as a class. In P.E we had a competitive edge to it this week as we pitted team against team in a variety of games. The children not only responded well to the challenge but celebrated the win or took the loss well. We also combined into 1 big team to support each other and beat me. It pains me to say they beat the clock and won – darn and blast! Thank you to Ms. O’kane who helped us with potting the school plants. The children worked together to repot the plants and are ready to look spectacular once again. Unfortunately, it did not require any watering as we had plenty of that, but we did not let the rain keep our spirts down. I hope you all have a lovely long weekend and see you Tuesday!
23.4.21
The sun is shining, oh what a wonderful week we have had. As we continue to delve into the wonderful world of dinosaurs with Ian Whybrow, we decided to make our very own non-fiction dinosaur booklets. They contain a huge amount of brilliant facts. As a class we worked together as a team to find in our books. After we found a fact we thought was interesting we had to type it up on an IPad. Please have a sneaky peak below to see what they look like at the moment. We have continued looking at and learning about time and we started that by sequencing a day. They ranged from our school day or our complete daily routine, the essential part was making sure it followed in time order. We also looked at half past as a class and are getting much better at understanding the positioning of the hands and where they go. We are very quick at O’clock right now. Unexpectedly, I never knew we had wild parrots in Preston but currently we have a very interesting feathered friend. Unsurprisingly, we know it will be a beloved pet so if you could share the post the school shared to try and track down the owner, we would greatly appreciate it. The children have enjoyed our feathered friend this week and we have provided him with food and water too. In P.E we have applied a range of skills and even added a team element to these games where we have to rely on our listening ears. We have had a few suspicious attempts at our skills race, but the children gave it 100% and had lots of fun trying their best. As we are continuously watching our tadpoles grow and caring for them we created a water colour picture of them. The aim is to label our paintings and better observe the changes in the lifecycle of a frog. It is truly fascinating. I hope you all have a lovely weekend and see you all Monday – take care.
16.4.21
The first week is down and 6 more to go, as we know it will fly by! Pendle Class received a lovely letter in the post this week asking us to enter a riddle competition. Of course we entered and have risen to the challenge! We have had riddles about, unicorns, jaguars and tractors to name a few. It will end with a very special surprise at the end of term, so I shall have to keep you all in suspense. Miss Deakin shared the story of ‘Doubting Thomas’ this week and we have tried our best to break down a tricky story together. We used some of the striking art work related to the story to illustrate a key part of it and then wrote about the scene we created. We are loving the tales of Harry and the Bucketful of Dinosaurs by Ian Whybrow, we even created our own version of his tale this week. In mathematics we have really hit the ground running and children were looking at the key features of a clock. Once the clock was understood we decided how to create O’clock for a specific time. Ensuring that children realise that the minute hand completing one full rotation is an hour – tricky stuff. A massive thank you for Mrs Foy for bringing in tadpoles and feed for us, they have captivated the class. They have the joy of spending the weekend at my house, I am sure my partner will be delighted. In P.E we are moving onto key fundamental balls skills, not just with our hands, but our feet too. We all had great fun dribbling, throwing and pinching a dinosaur egg through obstacles. To cap off a brilliant week, we used Ipads to begin our research into dinosaurs and labelled key features of them, we will be using this information next week – I cannot wait! I hope you all have a lovely weekend and see you all Monday.
26.3.21
Just like that the second full term is over – time truly flies. We continued with our phonics jumping feet first into tricky word sentences independently. It is truly delightful to think back to September where we were covering beginning phase 2 phonemes and graphemes and now we are writing full sentences – WOW! We will continue to work at key writing principles such as letter formation, fingers spaces and capital letters and begin to expand our knowledge with phase 4 tricky words as we move onto phase 5. Please remember to read your books over the Easter break and continue to work on your sound mats; it is so important. In mathematics this week we have worked with a partners to double and half, as the principle works very well when you compare with a friend. To keep our noggins continuing to tick with numbers, we used spaces hoppers for a number race, call, find and 1 more and 1 less. Our frogspawn have been a great source of inspiration for our writing. We sequenced our own lifecycle of the frog, painted a frog or a tadpole and broke down each step of the lifecycle of a frog with a sentence. In R.E we have had the joy of writing a prayer to make the world a better place and tried our best to understand the importance of Easter. Thank you all for your hard work this bizarre term. I hope you all have a lovely break and see you all soon!
19.3.21
We have had another glorious action filled week. To begin we have been bombarded by brilliant jokes all in the name of Comic Relief. I am delighted to say we have raised £100.20 – thank you! Thank you for everyone who donated and told a joke; you made the whole event what it is. As we had jokes on the brain we all decided to write our own joke down and tell it to a friend (we especially liked this part). In mathematics we have worked very hard on all of this terms key skills of sharing, halving and doubling. We have put a multitude of our mathematical skills to the test in our mini math quiz and I am so proud of how hard you all worked. We have been continuing to learn about the important story of Easter. The class painted Jesus on the cross, which was an extremely sad part of the story, but a very important one. The children’s pictures are stunning and I hope you enjoy looking at them all. We have also created our own salt dough eggs which we have made from scratch. Children had to follow instructions to create their own salt dough to use to mould their egg. it was good, messy fun. Thank you so much to Mrs. Foy who donated tadpoles for us to watch them grow, we greatly appreciate you thinking of us. We also have 2 lovely additions to the St. Francis family as we have 2 female Guinea pigs. They are yet to be named so feel free to think of your name suggestions. Thank you for another great week. We just have 1 week left to go and I cannot wait!
12.3.21
We are back! This has been a truly wonderous week and I would like to start off by saying a big thank you to Miss Gardner, parents and my incredible class. We have not missed a beat this week and I have loved everyday! For our first week back during phonics we are continuing to recap our sounds and tricky words. Our big challenge in our phonics lesson was applying these skills in our sentences that we create on our own and using finger spaces. We also used a timer to keep us focused and trying to beat our previous record. The stupendous Miss Silvester organised our British Science Week and we choose to create our own invention or machine to ‘help’ someone. The ideas are as bonkers as you can imagine, from an animal feeding machine on a farm to a classroom building robot. Please enjoy the pictures below and the accompanying sentence. In mathematics we used our halving mats to halve numbers and share them out. We are working at noticing patterns with numbers, especially between odd and even numbers and thinking about it if will be shared evenly. For our big write we have sequenced the Easter story by using comic strips in which we have illustrated and wrote about key parts of the story. To finish we have been working on something very special this week as we prepare for a wonderful Mothers Day. Children planted daffodils last term in preparation for this and as a class we have cared for them. You will also find a card made by some special hands just for you. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and see you all Monday.
Jack and the Beanstalk Please click the link to access additional Jack and the beanstalk resources.
5/1/21
Resources Click the link to access Goldilocks and the 3 bears resources.
18/12/20
IT’S CHRISTMAS (holidays) !!! Just like that we have completed our first term – congratulations to Pendle and a special thank you to parents and guardians for all your support through these strange times. I would also like to thank Miss Gardner, Mrs Tyrer, Mr Howath and Miss Forshaw for their support this term. This week as you can imagine has been even busier than usual. I am glad to see that the Nativity was thoroughly enjoyed by you all – well done to Pendle! It is not easy to remain focused for all that time and I thought you all did brilliantly. As you will all know from this term, time certainly does fly and we did not waste a moment of it. This week in phonics we brushed up on our phase 2/3 knowledge and tricky words and put them into a sentence. In mathematics we completed an SSDD challenge where we put our addition and subtraction skills to the test in slightly different ways. As we recorded our Nativity it seemed only fitting using a picture of ourselves to break down the Christmas story and all the key individuals that were involved in the birth of Jesus Christ. We hope you enjoy looking through your Christmas hamper bags; they are full of little treats for you and a tasty one for your children. Thank you for all your feedback about reports and as always, come to me if you need any support or guidance and I shall do my best to help. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and New Year! Stay safe, care for each other and stay away from the sprouts – vile things if you ask me!
4/12/20
It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas! The tree is up, tinsel is everywhere and a bright star can be seen, we must be getting closer to our Nativity. Thank you all for your positive feedback, it is great to hear (and see) how much your children have loved working on Purple Mash at home. As Christmas is unique with the type of excitement and wonderment it can bring we have selected a range of Christmas stories to excite us in our Literacy and wider learning. This week we read ‘Dear Father Christmas’ where we made our own list for Santa and told him what we wanted. These lists provided us with a wonderful range of words we can try to apply our phonics to. I have seen trampolines, Spiderman figures, quad bikes, sweets and chocolate and a talking dog to name a few. Santa certainly has his work cut out. In mathematics we had our very own Christmas tree to help us with some subtraction sums. We started with 2 numbers, decorated the tree with the biggest number and then take away the smaller number. What we were left with will be our answer and it is great fun decorating a Christmas tree. In R.E we sequenced the Nativity story and talked about key characters. We have thoroughly enjoyed looking at the wide range of animals recently and we had a special look at where those animals live. We noticed patterns with how an animal looked and where it was likely to live. We then designed our own and thought about where to should live too –it was fab. It is great fun singing our Christmas songs during R.E and understanding who all these key characters are. The book we will be reading next week will be ‘The Christmas Bear’. Thank you to everyone for working so hard on your songs at home, you are all doing great. Have a lovely weekend and see you all Monday.
20/11/20
Where is the time going? We only have 4 weeks left of the 2020 at school! I have had to hold my socks firmly this entire week as the children have tired to knock them off with fantastic addition. We have used random numerals to generate our own sums this week and tried a variety of ways to record our findings. The children brilliantly combined 2 numbers and counted what that number has now become. We drew the numbers as counters and recorded them this way and to really show off we attempted to use the + = in a written calculations and read it as a number sentence we could understand – tricky stuff. Our writing has been barrels of fun this week as we managed to create and draw our own mythical creatures. To begin with we discussed what we wanted to make, sketched and then painted it. After we had it painted there was only one thing left to do, write where it lived and what it looked like. I am not a fan of the teacher eating unicorn for some reason. Please see the pictures below. This week we have learned about Diwali and the story of Rama and Sita. We learned it is a happy festival of colour and light, where we give presents and spend precious time with our family. Pendle class liked the custom of giving sweets to make someone think sweet things about you. We even made Diya lanterns out of clay, we will send them home next week as little tealights for you to remember the Festival of Lights. The Christmas preparations have gone into full flow and we are working hard to learn all of the songs and actions to them. Please use the link below to practice your songs at home. Next week we will be reading; Salty Dogs. Have a lovely weekend and see you all Monday!
How on earth did Holy Quackamole not win? This week has been another busy one and that is just how we like it here! I would like to begin by saying thank you to everyone who sent in money for the British Legion for a poppy. The children worked very hard on their Remembrance Day poppies and prayers. It was great for us as a class to reflect on each classes work to understand the importance of a poppy and what it means for us to wear one. It was brilliant to see the whole class in their own clothes or spotty outfits too. A special thank you to everybody who took part in the Duck Race to help us raise additional funds. The school will announce the total figure on Monday. In mathematics the children worked very hard on their subtracting skills; completing several subtraction challenges all slightly different to truly test their skills. In phonics we have worked our way through the beginning phase 3 sounds and will continue to move along. We are beginning to formulate and write sentences ourselves and adding in our own unique vocabulary to it all. Learning these phase 3 sounds will only continue to help further our understanding and broader our writing. As we have come across a huge amount of strange and wonderful creatures and animals in the Super Happy Magic Forest and the Slug of Doom we decided to create our own in MiniMash, coming in all shapes and sizes. All of your Purple Mash accounts have been created and I will be sending them out via Seesaw on Monday. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and see you Monday! The book of the week will be Super Frozen Magic Forest, which is fitting if you ask me!
06/11/20
Where do fish keep their money? In a river bank! It has been another stupendous week. The children have picked up where we left off and made a seamless transition back into normal routine. Thank you to everybody who submitted something for the talent show next week. It was great to see how amazing you all are. We have had magicians, comedians, artists, dancers, singers, footballers, musicians and a horse rider so far. From 2 – 11 we have it all and it has been a treat! This week we dived into phase 3 and this is where our vocabulary will start to flourish. We have used phoneme frames to help us with sentence structure and apply our new phase 3 knowledge. In mathematics we have had a great time with play dough, creating our own questions for us to work out and check. We will continue to hone our skills in mathematics to help us improve and become more independent. Who knew addition was such fun? In preparation for Remembrance Day the class has started making poppies, it was great to see that the children could remember the meaning behind a poppy and the significance of them. This will be key preparation for Remembrance Day as we will be making our own prayer for soldiers while planting our wreath by Hill Chapel. We had 2 special adventures in the outdoor classroom this week. We made our own chalk bonfire pictures which look very charming. We tried 2 approaches to it and discussed our favorite; next week we do hope to use paint. We also got to use our coding penguins for the first time. We need a little bit more practice before we become professional penguin herders. The children loved Super Happy Magic Forest and certainly did not want to wait till next week to read Super Happy Magic Forest and the Slug of Doom! I cannot wait to see you all next week. We will be hearing jingles bells before you know it!
Where have the 8 weeks week gone? I must start this message with a massive thank you to all the parents, you have been a delight to meet and the support you have given your children has allowed them to make great personal milestones in all areas of their learning. Well done to everyone in Pendle class, I am extremely proud of how hard you are all working and how far you have come in such a small space of time. To see us off on our wonderful ‘All About Me’ Topic we read the final Julia Donaldson book ‘Squash and Squeeze’. The children loved the story and we even made our own clay animals to get us excited to write. They came in all weird and wonderful sizes to an elephant to a duck and her eggs. To really show off how much we have developed this week we wrote 2 sentences in a phoneme frame. We were given a sentence and had to fill in the blank phoneme frame using our own phonics, we could rely on a phonics mat and the children did brilliantly. In mathematics we used the large number line outside and found resources to correctly correspond to that given number; to make it even more exciting we used a timer to add an element of competition. Interestingly, it made for a great addition number sentences too. In R.E we painted a picture of St. Francis’ and spoke about the life he lived. We used this opportunity to have some ‘I wonder’ moments and reflect as a group on the many questions and thoughts we had. When we return back to school we will begin phase 3. Children have shown how much they love reading, writing and what brilliant work they can produce. Please use the half term as a chance to rest and recuperate. However, it is still important that you read regularly at home over this break too. It has been a lovely talking with you all this week during parents evening. Please do not hesitate to get in touch with me if you need any help or guidance. We are always here to support you. As a class we have decided our next topic will be ‘Castles, Princesses and Mythical Creatures’ which sounds amazing! I luckily knew the perfect author for this – Matty Long. Please feel free to give his books a peek. Have a wonderful break and see you all soon.
16/10/20
What an exciting week! From buddies to messages from China and whatever could be imagined in-between, it has truly been a great week. A major milestone has been achieved as all children managed to write their own simple sentence, next week I hope to push them even more and include tricky words. We used the Stick Man as inspiration to write our sentence and if you are writing about the stick man you need to make one. The obvious material to make a stick man when you are surrounded by trees is … pipe cleaners and lollypop sticks? An effort was made to use sticks but they were not as robust as I (and the children) would have liked and broke very easily. In mathematics we used a range of resources to count up to a specific total. I was amazed to see such a wide range of resources such as tractors, buckets and bones – Great work team! In R.E we used our reflection time to discuss kind actions we have performed or kind actions others have done for us. It was a really heartwarming opportunity for me to see how much each member of the class cares for each other and appreciates the things they do. Thank you for bringing in your wellies as we once again ventured into the deep dark wood and made our very own Autumn art and leaf rubbings, it was a great adventure and thank you to Mrs Tyrer for all you help. In P.E we changed up the routine slightly and worked as a team to ‘tidy our bedroom!’ which has a big focus on underarm throwing and spatial awareness. We had time for a game of snatch too which is all about speed. Can you believe 7 weeks down 1 to go! Where has the time gone? Our final week we will be reading A Squash and a Squeeze. Have a lovely weekend and see you Monday! A special thank you to Mr Jackson and his class for our special hello, we hope to speak to you again soon!
9/10/20
Nihao! It has been Science Week and we have looked at satellites and what they do and how they get into space in the first place. We thought it would be a wonderful idea to send a message to a Chinese school and pass a hello around the world (Mr Jackson and his class) who teaches in China who will send us a message back, allowing us to learn about another language and culture. On Monday we should have a message from the school, I will put the video below for you to see. Thank you for all the resources you brought in for our junk modelling, the satellites have been made and look fab. Some even have rockets attached to get them into space and astronauts to pilot them. In Phonics we are trying to continuously expand and grown our vocabulary. We have been recapping older sounds to strengthen our ability to segment when writing independently. In Mathematics we have gone back to the shop to test our counting skills and spend pennies to actively think about how much money we have and need to spend. In R.E we have been learning about the wider world and how people live different lives to us, sometimes more difficult lives. We discussed what little actions we could do to make the world a little bit of a better place for everyone and will hopefully manage to organise something as a class (and school) to make a small difference. As we could not have an assembly for the Harvest Festival we have filmed our performance of the Dingle Dangle Scarecrow for you. However, the brilliant idea of using the greenscreen, speakers and stage was brought up and is too good not to. So if you bare with me we will record it again for you for next week, it will be worth the wait! Next week we will be reading the Stick Man. I hope you all have a lovely weekend.
We have certainly not have had many puppy dogs tails but a plethora of rats ones! As we enjoyed the ‘tale’ of The Highway Rat we had the disgusting task to making 3 rat tails! 1 big, 1 small and 1 medium. We then used counters to measure the length of the tail and recorded our findings. In phonics we continue to put our segmenting and blending skills to the test and our vocabulary grows ever bigger every day. The children are showing they are capable to apply their phonics to a range of news words. It was lovely to be able to work together to write our own prayers, the children decided if that wanted to give thanks for something or ask God to help them rise to a tricky challenge. We used the outdoor easels the paint the cruel Highway Rat and it is fair to say the children loved painting him. The buddy cards are finally finished and the children have worked so extremely hard. Mrs Rossal will be getting a surprise Monday morning as they will be placed in her classroom with our personalized messages and handwritten cards. We have also finished off Zog’s eggs which look stupendous; make sure you keep an eye on them so they do not hatch, the dragon may not be as kind as our friend Zog. Next week we will be junk modelling our very own satellites for Science Week so any plastic bottles, cardboard etc. would be great appreciated. We should also be receiving a very special message from some new friends. Thank you for a fantastic week, see you all Monday!
25/09/20
4 weeks down 4 to go! To continue our amazing phonics work we have delved even further and are not only building up our understanding of sounds but tricky words too. We have had a broad look at all phase 2 tricky words with the tricky word song. As a team we worked on breaking down tough sentences and spotting tricky words that are trying to trick us. As a class we decided it is rubbish that we could not meet our year 5 buddies so we decided to make them something special. We managed to give you a sneaky peak of our message to our buddy which is always tricky to record yourself speaking. We hope to accompany ourselves with a card and a picture. Currently we have done the front cover and a page inside, we just need to finish off the letter; I cannot wait to show it off. The loveable Zog story has gone down a treat and we are now creating our very own dragon eggs. The final layer has been put on today and it should be dry by Monday ready for us to get it painted. In the story of Zog we encounter a very helpful princess who showed how to be a loving friend. We took this message into our R.E work and discussed how we can use our ‘kind hands’. We had several great suggestions about what we should not do ‘push, hit, snatch’ and more importantly things we can use them for ‘ share, help , love.’ which sums us up here at St. Francis’. The children are becoming more more independent when using Minimash on a Ipad and using a mouse on a computer which is amazing too. I have to say a huge thank you to everyone as it is a joy to see every parent reading at home and I cannot tell you the difference that will make over the course of the year- keep up the hard work. Next week we will be looking at the Highway Rat, lets hope he does not want to eat any dragon eggs! Have a wonderful weekend and se you all Monday.
18/09/20
Like that and another week goes by! We continued our fun journey into phonics and have learned 5 new sounds and lots of new words to accompany them. On Monday we will be encountering our first digraph ‘ck’. I am sure we will be able to rise to the challenge. Throughout the week we have continued to show off our brilliant counting and pattern making skills. Using counting bears we made patterns using colour and size, we then took that 1 step further and made a 2 or 3 part peg patterns; here we had to choose our own colours and placement. Using the outside area we had had great fun playing phonics hopscotch and finding out the word at the end. To add an additional challenge we would write the word and then a CVC word we could think of. The class learned about Jesus and his miracles and the detail the children could go into was amazing. As we unpacked the various stories we all answered an ‘I wonder’ question which gave a unique perspective on things. One that stood out to me was that ‘if Jesus can walk on water can he walk on wine?’ – what a thought. Children created the wonderful Tabby McTat and he his proudly up on our working wall display – whiskers and all. The children took it another step further; once again applying their phonics and wrote the word cat. A special thank you to our head girl who gave the whole of Pendle class the converted Head Girl Award for ‘settling in so well into St. Francis’. Thank you all so another brilliant week. The story for next week will be Zog, I cant wait!
11/09/20
This week started off where we left off, loving learning and having fun. We continued our journey into phonics and worked hard at learning how to segment and blend more words. During phonics we have been working on our letter formation and writing CVC words. In guided reading we have done brilliantly with following the story, understanding what might happen next and share our own unique ideas. We have jumped onto phase 2 stories and this will provide you an opportunity to see how far they have come and to continually practice their segmenting and blending skills. We went on an adventure to the deep dark woods and kept a watchful eye out for the Gruffalo of the Gruffalo’s child. As we had a mini adventure in the millennium we split into 2 groups. One group worked with me on a bug hunt, exploring habitats and seeing what we could find and another worked with Miss Gardner creating hammer art. With bugs on the mind we also did some bug counting and placed them in our jar and we played number hopscotch to keep building up our understanding of numbers. We have looked at religious symbols this week and worked on our crosses. The first piece of work we put in our book is a beautiful watercolour painting that the children have painted of a cross or crosses. Children continue to become more confident with Mini Mash and I will be sending out the logins soon. The photographs were taken today and somewhere out there a flying pig will be found, as I do not thinks there was a muddy mark or smudge of paint on anyone – hallelujah. Thank you for another fantastic week, see you all Monday!
04/09/20
What a week! I have to begin by saying thank you to all the children, parents and grandparents, it has been a wonderful week. To begin we had a visit from the G-G-G-G-G-Gruffalo! The children really enjoyed the story and almost voted to have it again -it came down to 1 vote. Throughout the week we have started our exciting journey in phonics learning to use our robot arms for segmenting and blending and focusing on the sounds ‘s’ and ‘a’ to start the week. You will be amazed to see how quickly your children move through phonics so please support them at home with their reading books. We have made a Gruffalo and a cross out of clay and they looked fab, we hope to paint the crosses next week. In mathematics we have been looking at numbers and practicing our counting. As we get to know the children even more we talked about our family and the people we live with, after we discussed this 1-1 we thought about how would could represent that by painting. We looked at how to hold the brush, use it on canvas and experiment by using different colours, someone even made a beautiful sunset background for their picture. It was great to see the children writing for the first time and trying their best to write their own name – what a moment! I personally loved taking them to the library for their first guided reading session, we had great fun. Today topped off an already super week as Miss Deakin gave everybody a special Headteacher Award sticker. I would like to say a special thank you to Miss Gardener who is the TA in the classroom. The children already think the world of her and she will help all these children grow over the course of the year. I cannot wait to see you all next week! Please enjoy the pictures below.
27/7/20
Stay and Play
What a day! It might be easier to say what we have not done, but I will give it ago. Today we had a go painting our first picture in Pendle Class which will be displayed for all to see on our art wall. We also got some pictures of our super selves took, so I could ask what they like and get to know them a little more – great fun too! The children had a great understanding of why we need to wash our hands and did so thoroughly throughout the day. During the day children played in all areas of the classroom which was brilliant to see. We enjoyed using the paints, writing area, small world, role play, reading area, construction, number stones, train tracks and computers. I can say I am thoroughly delighted with all my wonderful new class, as they showed time and time again their marvelous manners and caring nature – Thank you! Our picnic outside did not go exactly to plan as nobody wants soggy sandwiches, so we spread out in the hall and enjoyed our dinner distanced but together. Thank you to everyone for bringing your child, it was excellent to have a full classroom and if you have any questions please get in touch – enjoy the pictures below. Finally, a special thank you to Mrs Luke who came in not only to be a friendly face to the children on a special day; but an excellent help too. See you all in September!
All home learning tasks are sent through Seesaw every week
8/6/20
Please find this terms Topic Map and Home learning menu. As always ,if you have any questions for me please get in touch. The topic and author study is a suggestion to make writing varied and enjoyable every week. For all the Supertato resources, please use the link below titled ‘Supertato’.
Please find this terms topic map and homework pick and mix menu. All you need to do is click the link below. If you have any questions at all, do not hesitate to get in touch with me via seesaw. Thank you for your continued support. Keep up the hard work Pendle Class – we can do this!
It is fair to say it has been a funny old week! To begin the week children finished off their character books and they are brilliant to read! From the tales of Cat Boy to the adventures of Angelina Ballerina, it is fair to say that we have a diverse range of stories. We also managed to fit in our slime making this week which was a resounding failure in making slime, but provided some other opportunities for learning elsewhere. I imagine you will all be devastated to find out that threw away the slime instead of sending it home, as I thought it would be too messy – apologies for that. Children enjoyed painting their volcanoes after giving a brilliant demonstration of an active/dormant volcano to the rest of the school. We have also worked very hard at taking away this week looking at different strategies to take away and record our working out. To continue our theme in R.E we continued looking at the Easter Story and why people wanted to hurt Jesus. Today we had a ‘Agadoo Fun Day’ and we enjoyed some games and dancing outside in which ‘Agadoo’ starred. To finish the day the rest of the school cheered on the Y6 children in the teachers vs staff netball competition. Thankfully the world hasn’t gone completely upside down yet and ‘teachers’ won! Please contact me via Seesaw if you have any questions; silly questions don’t exist and I am here to support you all. I will share any resources or useful websites on Seesaw for you. Thank you for the brilliant year so far and I hope to see you all soon.
Both Phonicsplay and Twinkl are offering a month free to support you at home, I would recommend them.
https://new.phonicsplay.co.uk/
https://www.twinkl.co.uk/
13/3/20
We started our week searching through bushes and nooks on our bug hunt and ended it setting off volcanoes – so it must have been a good one! We had a spectacular week during British Science Week and a big thank you to Mrs Silvester for organizing such a fab activities. To begin our science time we looked at the world around us and the small habitats that bugs call their home. On this hunt we found a lot of worms, slugs, snails, ants, woodlice and a small frog – fascinating! After we explored these areas we drew what we could see and wrote small details about what we could observe, such as where they were and what they looked like. From the beginning of the topic we had a fascination of volcanoes and the link to British Science Week seemed a perfect fit, over the week children covered and painted their volcanoes and on Friday we showed them off one group at a time. We used words like magma, larva, active, extinct and dormant to describe our volcanoes. I am pleased to say that we had plenty of active volcanoes and a couple of dormant ones – luckily none were extinct! In our phonics children are continuing applying their phase 3 sounds into their writing and phase 4 HFW. Children are progressing well into phase 5 and the books they are reading are evidence to their hard work and love of reading – keep it up! As a class we are making books about the characters we were on World Book Day with a beginning, middle and end, we also have an exciting opportunity to enter a writing competition next week; which I am sure we will jump at the chance to do. In mathematics we have been using a blank tens mats for addition and subtraction sums, the children enjoyed it so much we even went into teams and made a game of who is the quickest, which required teamwork, good counting and good understanding of addition and subtraction. In R.E we continue to learn about the story of Easter and the children are becoming more aware that it is about remembering Jesus and the sacrifice he made for us. I hope you all have a brilliant weekend and see you all on Monday!
6/3/20
The sunshine is on the way and we have had another action packed week! To begin our week We finished off writing and illustrating our dinosaur books. Today we even got to read them to our buddies, it was great fun to hear their feedback and see that they enjoyed our dinosaur stories, ranging from a dinosaur dentist to a dinosaur making friends with a cat (and everything in between.) Children have been looking at odd and even numbers and understanding that odd numbers can not be shared evenly but even numbers can. We tried this a couple of different ways and eventually children really grasped the concept, understanding that the number would become smaller when shared and to be truly even you would have to have the same amount as your partner. During P.E we worked with Jack from PFC and he not only warmed our bodies up but our ears too, while we listened to his instructions and ran to where we had to go. Later Jack showed us how we can move like animals and then we showed him how to move like an animal, the tiger was my favorite. To finish the session we had the hoop and spot challenge which meant every time we encountered a spot or hoop we had to move or preform a specific action such as hopping or jumping, we may have got hot but it was great active fun all round. Thursday must have been the highlight of the week as children dressed up as their favorite characters from books they have read. The range was magnificent to see; thank you to everybody who helped with your child’s costumes as a clear effort was made with every single one! Next week is going to be a particularly exciting as it is British Science Week, I will not spoil too much of the surprise just yet but if you have any plastic bottles you could donate to school (Pendle class) on Monday I would greatly appreciate it. Thank for Pendle class for another brilliant week, I look forward to seeing you all on Monday, have a wonderful weekend.
28/2/20
I am glad to hear that the children have had a fantastic holiday and they seem primed and ready for the next half term. The dinosaur topic is a massive hit with both the boys and girls and Harry and the bucket full of dinosaurs has got our imagination running! our author study is on Ian Whybrow and Adrian Reynolds so if you have any stories written by them please bring them in or any other dinosaur themed books too! To begin our week we have started to write our very own dinosaur books and by this time net week we hope to have completed them and we will then read them to our buddies – it should be magical. We have had great fun carrying out our own sum games and had even more fun using the numicon to double a specific number,children really showed a great understanding of doubling seeing the number literally be doubled before their very eyes. A special thank you is needed to Mrs B.M as she wanted to celebrate Pancake Day with the whole school and cooked pancakes for Pendle class, allowing each children to decorate their pancake. Sadly there is no photos of the pancakes as they were simple devoured – testament to Mrs B.M baking I think! On Wednesday we went to church to celebrate Ash Wednesday where Father Sony spoke to use about the sacrifices Jesus made and his time spent in the desert, he then made the sign of the cross on our forehead with ash and gave each child a blessing. Finally a massive thank you to everybody who has supported the recent bake sales and provided money for the NSPCC as over £700 was raised – thank you all! I hope you all have a lovely weekend and see you all Monday!
Poof! … and it’s gone! Another brilliant week has flown by before our eyes and we also wave good bye to Percy. The children thoroughly loved learning about the ‘Great Outdoors’ from habitats to growing. We have had huge amounts of fun learning about the beautiful world around us. Pendle class has voted and selected the next topic, it will be ‘Dinosaurs’. Every child has already given their ideas about what they would like to do pertaining to the topic. This fantastic week has had treat after treat! To begin safety week off we had a visit from Mrs Lancashire who is a nurse and gave brilliant safety advice to all the children in the KS1 and Reception. Mrs Lancashire even showed us how to put on slings and bandages and explained what they were used for. We then had a visit from Fireman Dave who gave important advice on fire safety and showed us the unique and interesting equipment he used, some of Pendle class even got to wear his helmet! As a class we discussed keeping ourselves safe and learned the important message Pantosaurus gave us which was ‘pants cover up our private parts and if someone asks to see them tell them no!’ A simple but important message for children to understand, here is the link for anybody who wishes to know a little more http://www.itsnotokay.co.uk/professionals/pantosaurus/. The final exciting visit was from Dogs Trust and we were told the 5 golden rules about dogs, 1. Stay away when they are eating 2. Stay away when they are sleeping 3. Don’t hug, stroke instead 4. Do not take, but swap 5. We must always be quiet around dogs. Thank you Dogs trust for that fantastic visit. In P.E we went over key ball skills, throwing, catching and we even used a football to dribble around cones, trying our best to keep it close to our body. We have had the brilliant success of our cress heads this week, so we decided to document the process and write our own cress head diaries, the illustration and writing is great! Returning back to safety week, we thought it would be great fun to paint or make our own underpants and write about them, please look at the pictures below as they do come in all shapes and sizes. In mathematics we had great fun creating our own play dough and independently measuring our ingredients, children really impressed with their understanding of the whole process. Some children have started playing the dice game to create their own number questions independently – outstanding! I would also like to give a special thank you to Lewis, Oliver and Hugh who are 3 boys from a local high school on work experience. It is great to see 3 young men showing an interest in education, the children thought you were amazing and we all wish you every success in your future. Have a lovely half term everyone and see you all soon.
7/2/20
How can we beat last week? Add sunshine of course! To begin our brilliant week we had to get our tool belts on as Percy was in need of a new shed. Children worked in small teams to create a shed for Percy, they were left to complete this task independently to show off their skills at thinking through ideas (what would make a good shed?) and working well with each other. Please find the pictures below as all the sheds built have very unique features! Once our shed was built we then used our writing frames to draw and then write about our very unique shed. Enjoying this fabulous week and using our keen eyes to measure, children worked in 2s to draw round and measure themselves which they thought was great fun, either using teddy bears or sticks to record their height next to their outline. As a class we discussed feelings and what kind of emotions we could experience, after talking about the multitude of emotions we can experience we then discussed what we could do to address the more unpleasant emotions we fee’, such as talking to a friend or an adult. Number Day from the NSPCC was also great fun and the children got to make their own Number line in our outside area using the materials from outside and chalks. In Phonics children have been working extremely hard to form their own sentences independently using tricky words and the brilliant unique / independent sentences are truly amazing to see. In the art studio to get all hands on we used our fingers to paint out a recurring pattern, we had great fun putting our hands into the paint and then counting out the certain number of spots we needed. To top off a wonderful week Pendle class got to go and read with Miss Deakin and she is amazed to see how well all the children are getting on – FANTASTIC! I do not believe we only have 1 week left, the time really does fly! I look forward to seeing you all next week for parents evening, have a wonderful weekend and see you Monday!
31.1.20
Make way January, February is almost here! We have had a brilliant (but wet) week and the children have loved it. We are continuing with Percy’s tales and are helping Percy plant and grow a multitude of things. This week we returned to the Pod with our writing tool belts to document and write about the planting process and make sure our parsnips, cabbages, carrots and peas are flourishing. We thought it would be an excellent idea to make Percy Cress heads and put them in the Polly tunnel, which was great fun making our pot and then planting and watering it independently. We had great fun at the beginning of the week learning about Chinese New year and found out the various years can be named after certain animals, currently it is the year of the rat. Children listened to the story and made their own masks. To finish off in P.E we had our own race with our animals masks on and we noticed that it was very different to the original. In mathematics we have thought about 1 more and less and the tricky skill to pick the larger number out of a set of 3. If unsure we have built it up with blocks to give us that visual representation, which is brilliant for counting and helps estimation and measuring too; this helps us make more informed guesses. We had a lovely guest from the NSPCC to inform us about possible dangers in the wider world and how we can protect ourselves by talking to an adult at school. We were the very kindly given Buddy, who is a speech mark and reminds us to talk to someone and not keep worries and concerns bottled up. We have got creative with our green fingers and made patterns to celebrate Chinese New Year and some potato pattern printing also, which worked very well with our High Frequency Word dotting which children are slowly getting the hang of. To finish up on Friday we are going to try and write our own stories at the end of the week about anything that has excited us, we have had such a great mix today from stories about our family, Frozen, tractors and even a Thomas the train / Avengers crossover which was a very interesting mix. I hope you all have a lovely weekend and see you on Monday. Any questions about NSPCC please do not hesitate to get in touch via Seesaw or just pop in. Thank you as always.
24.1.20
What a glorious week we have had together! To start out week off we took our measurements/capacity to another level and measured a larger range of items comparing and making estimations to go with it. Children also became scientists this week making observations about our planting project; we planted a range of seeds, cabbage, parsnip, carrots and pees! As a class we went back the following day with our writing tool belts and clipboards and wrote about what we have been up to. We decided to keep them in the Polly Tunnel to start off with so they have a fighting chance! We have also had the opportunity to go into the Millennium and do a range of tasks and explore the beautiful world Percy works in. We split up into 3 different groups and rotated as the morning went on, we used Ipads to take pictures of habitats and the environment, leaf/tree rubbings rubbings and finally using natural materials made our own collages of the animals that feature in Percy’s tales. To top it all off we even made our own bird feeders to go into the millennium and place them around for the hungry birds to eat, children had a great time thinking about where they could place them. I hope you all have a lovely weekend and see you all Monday. Please enjoy the pictures below.
17.1.20
2 weeks down and 4 more to go , where is the time going? We have had a brilliant week as always and children continue to show off their love of learning. A particularly delightful treat has happened this week which is, every 2 weeks Miss Deakin will read with Pendle class -AMAZING! Not only did Miss Deakin read with us today but she gave out headteacher award stickers/slips to everybody for phenomenal reading as they have come such a long way already. We have managed to write up about what we have made Percy and I think he would be delighted with seeing what we have made and wrote about, we have also began writing a story about our friend Winnie the witch. We have been planing what to plant outside and we are now in teams to work together and plant Percy some fruit and vegetables, we had all sorts of ideas and we are going to give a few ago. We discussed as a class the weather might be a problem so we will plant some outdoors and some in the Polly tunnel and observe what the difference is with them. Children had to estimate in mathematics which is particularly tricky when you are a perfectionist like some members of Pendle and they simply did now want to guess but to get it right, however, getting it wrong is never a bad thing! After we discussed it as a team we then went about finding an object to weight, estimate how many blocks it would be and then tests out theory with a weighting scale, to finish we drew our results on a whiteboard. We will be taking part in national Bird Watching weeks next week and hope to be inspired by the beautiful wildlife around us. I hope you all have a lovely weekend and see you all Monday.
I hope you all have had a wonderful Christmas and New Year. Just like that are first week of 2020 has flown by! We have thoroughly enjoyed Percy Park Keeper this week and started our week off with the Fox’s Hiccups to get us into the spirit. Children how kept up their reading over the holidays and it has really shown- thank you. Children are beginning to move into phase 4 and spell longer words ‘CVCC’ and beyond which will build up their vocabulary and provide ample opportunities to implement and solidify their phase 3 knowledge. Throughout the week children have worked on the Numberwall, matching number to amount and in some cases experimenting with 1 more and 1 less. We have also baked this week making our very own salt dough from scratch, which was brilliant as I had to do nothing other than read out what to do next, Pendle class worked in pairs and not only showed great teamwork and sharing of roles, but a keen eye to measure and count to the stated amount, resulting in great salt dough. After we made our salt dough we fashioned them into things Percy might want or need, such as tools, food, or even sculptures of himself, they look amazing! To get children in the mindset to read and write their own books we gave each child their own Goldilocks book to write themselves and it really showcased some brilliant segmenting and blending skills, not to mention some fantastic phase 3 knowledge, at the end children could colour them if they wanted and Goldilocks did become purple/green/bluelocks in some cases. We have also been helping Percy outside in the Pod and the planting area, currently we are weeding and tidying it up to try and grow our very own plants, we discussed as a class what we would like to try and grow, children came up with many ideas and they were very enthusiastic with the whole process – born gardeners! 5 weeks left and I know they will fly by! I hope you all have a lovely weekend and see you Monday.
17.12.19
Are you not entertained!? I thought our Nativity was knock your socks of brilliant! Thank you to Mrs Tyrer, Mrs B.M and Miss Woodcock for your support with the Nativity as it very much was a team effort. Thank you to all of those who could attend, for those who could not attend please find some pictures attached. This week we have continued our brilliant sentence writing and the digraphs are appearing more and more often in our work, which is fabulous. Today I have sent extra books home and allowed the children to pick their very own books (I have ensured they are suitable for the child) which has got them excited as they are talking about their Christmas books; I appreciate Christmas is a very busy time but please ensure you do some reading over the holidays. Children have used the computers for mathematics, dragging shapes that they are familiar with and discussing/explaining how they know what certain shape is, using key vocabulary like faces and identifying 2d shapes that make up these shapes. It is brilliant to finally reveal our Christmas crafts that we have been making in preparation for Christmas, I will be amazed if any of the children have kept them a secret, but I hope you were thrilled to see them as they children were delighted to make them for you. I must say that me and Mrs Tyrer are extremely touched by all the cards and gifts we have been given and from the bottom of our heart – thank you. I hope each and everyone of you has a wonderful Christmas and New Year together and I know you will not all have 2 weeks off, but pray that you will get to spend some time as a family over Christmas. Stay safe, avoid the brussel sprouts and see you in 2020!
13.12.19
What a glorious week we have had! We have been treated to not 1 but 2 shows this week – marvelous! To begin our week we were invited to watch KS2 Christmas performance and not only did they sing like angels they read their scripts superbly. After we thought the week could not get any better Y5/6 invited us to go and see their performance of Oliver Twist and it was riveting; all the children thoroughly enjoyed it and at the end a few were even singing along. Thank you so much KS2 for all your hard work, you should be extremely proud. I am pleased to say that it was not just a 1 way street and we had the brilliant opportunity to perform our Christmas Nativity to them and I am chuffed to say that they thought it was ‘amazing’ which I personally feel is a understatement, but we have a couple more days of rehearsing to make it perfect. Children continue to demonstrate their amazing phonics skills and nearly all of the children are writing sentences with minimal support, some completely independently. With the children making this brilliant progress in phonics we will be starting phase 4 after the Christmas break, in phase 4 you learn no new sounds but greatly broaden your vocabulary learning new tricky/ high frequency words and apply their phonics in longer words, we will be sending home sounds and tricky words makes to help them retain and build up their vocabulary. In mathematics children thoroughly enjoyed drawing faces on the sides of 3d shapes, then identifying the 2d shapes that make up 3d shapes. Thank you very much to everybody that donated a Christmas costume it has been particularly helpful. Just a friendly reminder that the Christmas Performance will be on Tuesday 17th December and we will have 2 showings 1 at 14.00 and another one 18.00. I hope you have a lovely weekend and see you all Monday.
6.12.19
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas! With the talk of advent calendars, Christmas trees and our Nativity, it most certainly is beginning to feel like Christmas. The children have worked extremely hard for the last few weeks; we have finally had a chance to put our Christmas outfits on and rehearse and we sound the part now. Children continue to apply their key phonics skills (segmenting and blending) in all areas of the classroom and continue to amaze with writing words or even sentences. In mathematics we have used our brilliant minds to model 3D shapes with magnets and used the feely bags to use our other senses to think about what shape might be hiding inside. In P.E children continue to work on key gross motor skills such as jumping and hopping to navigate spaces and balloons to use all parts of our bodies to keep our reflexes sharp and keen. Thank you for your feedback with regards to the travelling Nativity bag, it is great to hear that they children have been enjoying it and another big thank you for your opinion with regards to the new style of homework, I will pass on any and all feedback during our staff meeting. Thank you for a lovely week Pendle class, I hope you all have a brilliant weekend and see you on Monday.
29.11.19
I hope everybody has their chocolate calendars primed and ready to go, as 1st December is this Sunday – where did the time go? This week children continue to work very hard on rehearsing our Nativity and learning new actions to the songs – we are looking fantastic. We have managed to get almost everybody sorted for a costume, please can we have a carrier bag with a name on so we can keep the costumes well organised. Pendle class has been pushed very hard this week in phonics trying to write their own sentences with tricky words, once we have a few suggestions it really got us thinking and there was no end to the weird and wonderful sentences we could think of. In mathematics this week children used their brilliant knowledge of shapes and grouped various shapes by the amount of sides they have, constantly using that key vocabulary and careful counting. Following on from our brilliant elephant creations we have made monkey sock puppets, we have also described our own monkey using a monkey writing frame or a template, we will be attaching these templates to our puppets for a real WOW factor and they will be put up in our story kingdom. I have just received 2 travelling nativity bags which will be sent out daily to a different child, each bag contains a nativity set and some instructions to go with it, it should be an educational and fun experiences for everyone involved. Our big challenge this week in P.E was to keep a balloon in the air with a different parts of our body, while staying on one spot – how tricky! After we became more comfortable with the process we then played bib tennis with somebody holding a bib with 1 hand and using the other hand to hit the ball over, children had a blast playing this game. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and see you Monday. 3 weeks to go – I cannot believe it!
22.11.19
Where has this week gone? To begin this fabulous week we had a visit from Bike Ability and over the course of the week some children have managed to ride a balance bike from scratch and even ride a bike completely unaided – Outstanding! We also had a visit from our friendly police men/women and they taught us about road safety; we even were allowed to drive cars around to get a better understanding of how to walk across roads and various crossings – thank you Preston Police department. To continue a glorious week we have used 2d shapes to create a shape pictures, which went down and treat and children show a brilliant understanding of key vocabulary. Pendle class has been working particularly hard this week for National Nursery Rhyme week, they produced their own elephant and wrote a little piece about it, thank you to everybody who could attend and do not worry if you could not make it, Mrs Tyrer filmed our performance and put it on Seesaw. The children continue to work unbelievably hard during our nativity rehearsals, we had our first ever church rehearsal today and it went brilliantly just a little bit of polishing to go! I will message out next week and let you know what parts your superstar children will be playing (if they haven’t already told you). I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and see you all Monday!
15.11.19
We are on a roll Pendle class! This week we have had 3 very important themes this week with Anti-bullying, Children in Need and Remembrance Day. We learnt as a class what bullying is and how we can stop it. As a class we discussed how we can be great friends with each other during our worship and discussed why we are great friends; wonderful examples such as ‘helping someone who is upset or playing with each other’ came up and key words such as kindness and love were used to describe a ‘great’ friendship. The children wore their spotty outfits with pride this week and we are just waiting on the final total to see how much money we have raised; a special thank you to everybody who donated money or cakes – it is greatly appreciated. Children continue to delve deeper into phase 3 and are showing great understanding with the digraphs and trigraphs we come across. When we have completed all of the phase 3 sounds we will begin to write independent sentences and further down the line stories! Please keep up the reading at home, it is the catalyst that has helped the children make this amazing progress. We went on a shape hunt this week and hunted for 2d shapes armed with our ever growing vocabulary and when we found a shape we could identify we drew it on our boards, we hope to continue this next week and use the whiteboards independently. Jack came in from Preston F.C and together we worked on our agility, from navigating tight spaces, avoiding obstacles, reactions to a hopping/jumping race when we had to steal the oppositions bugs (beanbags). As a class we are steaming ahead with our Nativity and children we aim to set the bar high, we will be letting you know what roles your children will be playing as we continue to source costumes with plenty of time. The Tinga Tinga topic is going down a treat and we have planned something special to go with Nursery rhyme week next week, if you are interested details are on seesaw. I hope you have a relaxing weekend and see you Monday.
8.11.19
What a wonderful week! To start our week we had a very interesting assembly by the school council and they informed us about parliament week, we learned about our local MP Ben Wallace, democracy and the importance of voting. We continue to delve deeper into the phase 3 and children continue to work hard at implementing their phase 2 knowledge. Please enjoy the writing below to get a glimpse of what we get up to in our phonics lessons. We are extremely lucky at the moment as we have a coach from Preston FC to come in and help with our P.E lessons, we moved in a particular way the leader told us to, we practiced our position pose and then split up into teams and had a race – great fun! Children are amazing me and Mrs Tyrer with their amazing knowledge of shapes and they are using the key words such as because to explain and think through their answers, we are also independently identifying sides and corners – wow. Pendle class have worked extremely hard at creating poppies for our remembrance reef that will be passed on to church, the class even came up with the idea to attach a prayer for our soldiers. To finish the week children enjoyed exploring our outside area after we changed and implemented their suggestions and painting our poppies on our outdoor easels. We also flexed our muscles and had a go at hammer art which was great fun. I hope the new style of homework is one you all like, please let me know if you need anything clarifying or any suggestions for the future, as always I will happily listen. I hope you have a lovely weekend.
1/11/19
Welcome back! I hope you all had a lovely break. We started off the week right and got straight back into our phonics, we are now on phase 3 and will continuously come back to phase 2. It is all about practice and perseverance and we always come back to those 2 main skills segmenting and blending. We applied our brilliant phase 3 phonics in another phoneme frame coming across ee in words like monkey, as we encourage children to apply their phonics when writing, the aim is to be phonetically plausible which doesn’t always translate to the correct spelling, but do not worry, it is what we want. We have enjoyed learning about shape by making 2d model rockets and taking away our sight and using our hands to discuss shape using those key words we have introduced, we had to think logically about what shape may be contained inside. We thoroughly enjoyed our tree planting mission and learned about the important role trees play in the environment, thank you to everybody who donated seeds, they will be kept in the pod and used throughout the school for future projects. The children attended the church service on All Saints Day and received a blessing from Father Sony, thank you to all who could attend. I hope you all enjoy the new style of learning log we have created after receiving your feedback, please hand them in on the final week of term, I will send our a reminder so do not worry, as always any questions please ask. Have a lovely weekend.
7 weeks! Can you believe it? It has been a wonderful week as usual in Pendle class and it was truly amazing to show off your children and celebrate their every success with you. Thank you to everybody who came, it was a treat to talk to you and please do not forget if there is anything I can help you with or you have a question, please do not hesitate to get in touch with me. We had a blast completing our phoneme frame sentences, it is truly remarkable to think we have completed phase 2 and will be now entering phase 3! Please continue the amazing support that is going on at home, it is helping your children to thrive. We had great fun showing off our brilliant mathematics skills using the SSDD challenge and I look forward to exploring shape with Pendle class. We managed to partner up with Pre-School and entered the millennium to explore and take part in a wide range of activities such as, tree art, boat making, leaf threading and we even had time for a snack and hot chocolate around a campfire – splendid. We completed our earth, sun or moon and I think they look amazing, please enjoy the pictures of them below. We also learned about the amazing bravery of Rosa Parks and how she changed the lives of many people by simply sitting down, in memory of her and her remarkable bravery we made a clay model of her face. To think about Diwali and the light of the world celebration we discussed as a class what brings light and joy into our lives, we started off in the outdoor classroom and then to the playground to show off our amazing art skills. As a class we discussed what author/book we want to kick start our next topic and Tinga Tanga tales was something that greatly excited the children, so that is what we will be doing (Animals/Africa). I hope you all have a lovely break with your children, see you all soon.
11/10/19
What a lucky bunch we all are! On Monday children worked on their planet, they also had the option to make the moon or sun too. The whole class discussed and talked about their own values which are important to them. They are strongly linked to our school values and I am immensely proud of the maturity the children showed with their values. The children have got off to a flying start with their phonics and we have almost completed phase 2! They are all very excited about getting a certificate when we have finished. We completed a whole sentence using a phoneme frame which is amazing! We have tweaked our math area and now have a scrapbook wall which is partially filled with an assortment of 2d shapes the children have made using lollipop sticks. Tuesday was our official Space Day and we discussed how the earth, sun and moon all interact with each other, we learned what rotate means and even found out that Pluto is now called a dwarf planet because it is too small to be called a planet. The following day we had a special visit from the Harris museum who brought in a sculpture for us to look at and inspire us, which it certainly did as we made our own angel sculptures out of clay. Another great lesson we had together was our autumn colour hunt when we made a collage of the leaves we found outside, I can honestly say each one is unique. Next week we will be saying goodbye to lovely Winnie and discussing our new book to inspire us and take our learning that extra mile next term, so it should be a very exciting and fun packed week. Thank you for arranging a parents evening appointment with me, I think you will be overjoyed to see how far they have come. Have a lovely weekend and talk to you all soon.
04/10/19
Where is the time going? Another week has simply flown by and it has been an action packed one. To begin this brilliant week we read another Winnie the Witch story and made our own magic wands to help fuel our writing, apparently some children have even fought the urge to eat their magic wand, which is amazing because I failed in that regard. I am delighted to hear the children use terms like bubble friends and digraph, it shows tremendous understanding at such an early stage of the year and this understanding corresponds to their reading and writing. Children continue to impress with regards to their counting and have demonstrated this with counting the spots on their ladybird that they they put on, it was great fun. French day was an absolute blast and the children had a busy/interactive day where we looked at and made the iconic Eiffel Tower, painted our own pictures inspired by Claude Monet and made own own French Flag on an Ipad. We were even lucky enough to be invited to Beacon class and sample French music, food and even learn a few French words. I was immensely proud of how hard the children worked in the run up to Dingle Dangle Scarecrow and that hard worked paid of, as the performance they put on today was incredible! They showed great confidence to sing and preform the actions in front of the whole school, well done everybody! Next week we will be celebrating Space Week and on Wednesday we have the special treat of a sculpture being brought in by Harris museum. Next week our book will be Winnie in space which seems very fitting, I hope it will be a blast! Have a wonderful weekend and see you Monday!
27/09/19
What a brilliant week! We started off our week with a visit from our great friend Harold the Giraffe. Harold helped us learn about our body, how it works, how to look after ourselves and what we can do to make sure we can stay happy. Harold had lots of brilliant of ideas from dancing to talking to a friend/adult., thank you Harold I hope you come back soon! We continued this amazing week with a visit to our beautiful church here at St. Francis’, we looked around the for key religious symbols: we found, crosses, an altar, a font, candles, rainbows and we were very impressed by the stain glass windows, so we decided to make our own and we are currently planning them. We started to make our very own sound stones to help us remember our sounds in the class and the children are excited to take their books home and read which is amazing. We have progressed so quickly in phase 2 and some children even attempted to write a simple sentence which is fantastic, keep it up team! We continued exploring numbers and using that important vocabulary like more and less, add and take away, is so important and Pendle class did brilliantly with 1 more and 1 less. Today we had a coffee and cake morning to raise money for Macmillan nurses, thank you to everyone who came and donated cakes and money to it. The concert was brilliant and really showcased the unique talent we have here at St. Francis’, please enjoy the pictures below. The children are prepared and ready for our harvest festival next week, below is the song Dingle Dangle Scarecrow, please start it at 10 seconds and end at 1.25, the assembly will be on Friday 4th October and we hope to see you there. Next week we will be reading Happy Birthday, Winnie! Have a lovely weekend and see you Monday.
20/09/19
The days are simply flying by! To begin the week we have continued to show off our brilliant phonics skills, we even came across the digraph ‘ck’. The children had a great time applying their newly learnt phonics into their writing, Pendle Class are even beginning to write words completely independently – outstanding! We have continued our counting in the classroom and are now learning how to read and write numbers. We have also used our keen eyes to spot patterns, either by colour or even size. We then got to make our own! Some children wanted to do a 1-2 pattern and some showed amazing symmetry, it was great fun to do with our friends. We have really shown off this week by making Winnie’s broomstick, we even had ago trying to write stick on a card and label it, using scissors and masking tape sensibly will help us in the day /weeks to come when we need to be hands on. To finish off our writing we also played a game with our friends which involved writing a word onto card our friend picked, to test out our phonics skills. The new book for next week will be Winnie’s New Computer, I hope you all have a lovely weekend and see you Monday. Thank you to all the parents who came to the phonics evening, do not worry if you could not make it; if you need any support/advice simply ask and I will happily sit down and discuss it with you.
13/09/19
A good week is a busy one and we certainly have had that. The children continue to enjoy reading books about Winnie and they have all become comfortable with the classroom routine – which is brilliant. We continue to fly through our phase 2 sounds which further expands our ever growing vocabulary! We have had great fun building Winnie’s tower, counting up all the resources we used and then writing down the total on a whiteboard. We have thoroughly enjoyed our worship time and children have even started to look at the story Noah’s Ark where we discussed key points of the story, children then drew a picture to go into their ever growing R.E book, along with a split pin cross which the children made and decorated themselves. Mrs Woodhouse brought in her musical instruments for her Zumbini lesson and every child got to use a specific instrument, it was fabulous. I hope everybody enjoyed getting their child’s school picture, I cannot believe every child remained pristine throughout the morning so they were looking fab for their photos, a minor miracle if you ask me. Just to let everybody know that on Wednesday 18th September we will be holding a small phonics assembly in the hall at 3.30 to help everybody better understand how we teach phonics; everybody is welcome to attend and at the end I will be around for anyone who wants to ask questions. Next week the class will be reading ‘Winnie’s flying carpet’, I cannot wait for Monday. I hope you all have a lovely weekend with your families.
06/09/19
Week one has flashed before our very eyes, just like this year will! Me and Mrs Tyrer have simply fallen in love with our new class – they are amazing. To begin the week we read ‘Winnie the Witch’ which instantaneously got everybody excited as lots of children have read or seen the books before from home. Next week we will be reading ‘Winnie’s Midnight Dragon’ if you have any Winnie books at home please feel free to send them in for show and tell, as the children are very excited about the prospect of bringing in their favorite books. This love of books/reading is a fire we will happily fuel here at school. The children in the classroom have all made a Wilbur themselves and we will be making him unique just like he was in the story. Children are already trying their best to write their own names and we continue to work hard at our new sounds, we seem to have some phonics experts in the classroom, which is brilliant! We have worked very hard seeing how far we can sequence numbers and then count that specific amount. Pendle class used the magnetic mats to trace around shapes and some children even attempted to draw them independently. We had or first worship and used prayer to talk to God and discuss what we have enjoyed this week, not to mention rehearsing our dinner time prayer too! The class have had a go at ‘Mini Mash’ which is a VLE for the children to explore and create in, it is so multifaceted the fun will never end, children are even navigating it independently – just WOW! Zumbini was great fun for all the children and a very special thank you is needed for Mrs Woodhouse, we will be treated to that every Wednesday. Even though the weather has tried its best to keep us indoors we have had a opportunities to go outside and learn and explore, from the Gnome Garden to the Math Nook. Our large scale junk modelling is currently trying to build Winnie a new castle, the children even swept up! Thank you for a brilliant week back, I am looking forward to the next one. Please enjoy the pictures below.
So long, farewell, Auf wiedersehen, goodnight! Just like that our exciting adventure in reception has come to an end; however, a new one begins in Year 1 with Mrs Davies! Everyone in the classroom found it very emotional saying goodbye to the year 6 children, as they have been fantastic role models for all of the children at St. Francis’, you will be truly missed! We did have an exciting treat when we got to sign the shirts of the year 6 leavers, which was a very fun way for us all to say goodbye. Congratulations to Felix and Kitty for receiving the head boy and girl awards and congratulations to Thomas and Emily for receiving the deputy role, I am sure you will all do a brilliant job. Myself and Mrs Tyrer are overwhelmed with the gifts and cards we have received over the past week, thank you so much, we are very grateful. I would like to say that it has been a delight to work with your children for the past 2 terms, I have been amazed by how much each and everyone of them have grown and developed, well do everybody I am extremely proud of each and everyone of you; please do not be a strangers, that goes for parents to! From day 1 I have felt I have had the support from each and everyone one of you and for that I am extremely thankful. I hope you all have a wonderful summer and get to spend it together as a family as much as possible. Thank you and good luck.
12/7/19
1 week left, how on earth has that happened? To begin the week we listened to a very important assembly about Rhinos and their plight. We learnt about how they are hunted and treated in such a cruel way. During the presentation we also got to see what the organisation involved, is doing to help protect the rhinos. We learnt about how we can help, by raising money by doing simple things like buying a cake from a sponsored cake sale. The bees are completed and they look amazing! Every child has worked extremely hard on their bee and the fact file wings really help to make it a fun and holistic activity. The story books are extremely close to been finished; if possible I will upload everyone to Pobble for you to enjoy, they really are a treat! We enjoyed the performance of the ‘Sherwood Hoodies’ they had us laughing from start to finish. A big thank you to the year 5/6 class, you are amazing. To top off another fantastic week, the current reception class went into year 1 and enjoyed baking and dancing; However, we got to plant some basil seeds and meet and play with our buddies, so another brilliant morning! Once again, welcome to any new parents visiting the page, please enjoy the pictures below to get a small glimpse of the morning.
5/7/19
What a brilliant week! This will come as a surprise to nobody as the trip to Blackpool Zoo was a resounding success. Children loved seeing the animals and I do not know many 4/5 year old children that get to feed a giraffe! We have been treated to gorgeous sunshine throughout the week and luckily it was around for Sports Day. Thank you to everyone who could attend, it was a great day and the children had a great time too, tacking some very tricky challenges. The cheers were greatly appreciated and it really motivated us all, thank you. We have sent our arts and crafts entries of to the Longridge and Goosnargh show, fingers crossed we hear back from them soon! Please enjoy the pictures below. The children are working very hard on their own personal books, we have anything from diggers, to mermaids to road safety. So a comprehensive list if you ask me. I also had an extraordinary treat this week as Pendle class went into year 1 for a taster day and I got to meet my new class for September, it was a magical day! To any new parents to the page welcome! Please enjoy the pictures below. I cannot believe we only have 2 weeks left! I will do my best to make sure they are amazing and fun packed!
28/6/19
The buzz around the classroom has not stopped yet! Children are well underway with their bee projects. We are hoping to get them painted very soon! To accompany our bees, we have made wings for them. However, these are not just any old wings, they are our fact wings. If you look very carefully, you will be able to see that they have sentences on them, with information about bees. We will also be patching up and painting our salt dough creations ready for the competition. We decided that if we continued to leave them to air dry, they might be ready by the time we get to year 6, so we popped them in the oven to speed it all up. Miss Silvester came into our class and helped us conduct a vote for school and ECO council, by doing a democratic vote. Congratulations to John who is now the the on the school council and Scarlett who is now on the ECO council. I am sure you will both do a brilliant job. The rainbow fish stories have been a treat and it is one of my favorite stories to read. The range of language used is extraordinary and I am delighted to see everyone so excited about writing, and I really do mean everyone! Talking to the children in these mad upcoming weeks, we came up with the idea to make our our own book, so we have a big exciting project to keep us going until the end, feel free to brainstorm ideas about it at home and keep up the amazing work everyone!
21/6/19
We are the champions, my friends! It is official, we have the results back and have been awarded certificates for each child that entered into the riddle competition. A huge congratulations to all the children that took part and a huge thank you to Mrs Tyrer and Miss Taylor who helped with it, a great team effort. The book ‘Somebody Bigger’ was a brilliant success and sparked an important conversation about going into year 1, as time is flying. Some children expressed what they were looking forward to going, but others stated they were a little worried by the move. So we will continue to discuss this to the best of our ability, as we want everybody to be enthusiastic and happy about next year. I have set the homework to be related to this to allow children to give their thoughts on it, in a more concise manner. We have had great fun colouring in mathematics, trying something a little bit different with colouring our sums in. Children engaged really well with the activity and continued to demonstrate and solidify how well the children understand the questions, and the concentration/ability to take in information, for what is a difficult task. We have also been very busy bees making flowers for our new God’s garden and of course looked at the brilliant bee and how they pollinate the plants, create honey and how they live. Next week we will be reading the story the ‘Rainbow Fish’ I can’t wait! Have a wonderful weekend and see you Monday.
14/6/19
We really are cooking with gas now!Children are flying through phase 3,4 and 5! It is a testament to all the hard work that goes on at home, I am truly grateful for it. The book we had this week was ‘My World, Your World’ it is a truly beautiful book, where children get to see other children from around the world. We came across some unfamiliar names and at times we were given the opportunity to change some, because that is what writing is all about, making something unique and enjoyable. We also used a few phoneme frames to allow some children to write what they’re passionate about, what fun! 3d shapes have been truly explored and experimented with. We made 3d shapes with magnetic bars, building things with 3d shapes and the junk model sculptures people brought in were fantastic, thank you! We hope the cards and frames we made for you all are enjoyed for Fathers Day. All of the children really wanted to put their heart and soul into it, which shows how much they value their family. I hope everybody has a wonderful weekend and thank you for your amazing support!
7/6/19
We are off! What a busy, busy week we have had. Everyone has come back in great spirits, I hope it lasts until we break up, 6 weeks left now, Unbelievable! To begin the week we have read and written the story Noah’s Ark. Children have blown us away with their enthusiasm and determination with very few needing any support. Children are now beginning to read each others work and identify areas to improve. We have entered the Goosnargh and Longridge Agricultural show. Children have created a unique piece of work with the salt dough we made. We have had a busy week playing the game, will it roll? Discussing the properties of 3d shapes and then building junk models out of 3d shapes. We have been learning about the Creation story in R.E this week and will continue this learning into next week. I hope you all have a lovely weekend and rest up, see you Monday!
24/5/19
Where have the 5 weeks gone? This week has been a blast from day 1. We had an unbelievable treat this week as Emily from Camera Club came in. Emily showed us how to set up a camera, choose the correct setting and most importantly take some great pictures, IN FOCUS! We had a marvelous time. I hope we have some young photographers joining the after school club, after the half term. This week we have thoroughly enjoyed ‘All pigs are beautiful’ learning about pigs and how they are to be cared for. An amusing but questionable moment for me, was seeing the word ‘boobees’ in a child’s book. Although, we did not use that word to describe a piglet suckling. The thinking and more importantly the writing was flawless, so a pleasant and innocent surprise. It always amazes us how independent our writers have become in a short space time, please keep up the amazing effort at home too! We have shown a great understanding of the story David and Goliath, demonstrating that God gave David the courage to face such an enormous foe. In our math work, we had to transform into builders, (which was particularly easy) and fill buckets to the correct amount specified. We also came across the word symmetrical and worked on making our very own symmetrical pattern. I hope you all have a wonderful break with your children. The next topic will be ‘God’s Beautiful World.’
17/5/19
What a busy week! To start the week off as usual we have our exciting writing. This week we have been writing about ‘Farmer Duck’. We have had our very own duck here at school, making a nest and laying 3 eggs, what a lovely coincidence! The children flew through their stories and we love how they are evolving each week. You can really see the new vocabulary and the continuation of their phonics. Cobble Hey farm was a brilliant success. The children had so many learning opportunities it would take me all day to summarize, so please view the pictures below. They are a treat! We also went to church to explore and discover key items. We discussed the purpose of them and even found additional items / symbols. Such as the Virgin Mary and the bible. Children continue to impress by demonstrating their understanding when it comes to key mathematical terms such as sharing. They worked with numbers below 20 and did a fabulous job doing so. I cannot believe it, but next week will be the final week of this term, FRIGHTENING! The final book will be ‘All Pigs Are Beautiful’. Have a lovely weekend and see you all Monday.
10/05/19
With the wet and windy weather this week, it was glorious to see the array of beautiful flowers on show. Thank you to everyone who donated flowers to give to Mary, and also attended. All the children are very excited to attend Cobble Hey this week, (Wednesday 15th May) please ensure a pack lunch is provided and suitable clothing is worn, it will be a great day, regardless of the weather! This week we have had great fun with Winnie the Witch and her pumpkin related problems. The books are fantastic and we are in the process of putting work on Pobble. You do not have to do a thing! You will receive an email to view the fantastic writing, you may wish to write a comment too. Children have also blown us away, with their knowledge and understanding with regards to making the sign of the cross, and their understanding of religious symbols during this spiritual time. Currently children are working with halving numbers, which they are making good progress with. You would not believe how many children are already writing written calculations independently, (A year 1 target!). Next week we will be reading ‘Farmer Duck’, with the books already hot off the press. I cannot wait for next week, it is going to be a blast! Thank you everyone for your continued hard work at home, it really does make a huge difference.
3/05/19
I cannot believe that 2 weeks have gone by already! This weeks story ‘What the Ladybird Heard’ was fantastic. The Children love the unique story book they get to write in and decorate at the end. We continue to improve each week and are delving deeper into phase 5, which is unbelievable! We absolutely loved Nina who is a filed nurse and farmer. We had so many question for her I am surprised that she ever got to go home. Nina brought in a range of things from her farm, such as hay, straw, grass, feed, silo, eggs, feathers and milk. She then explained what she uses these items on her farm for. We even got to keep the eggs to decorate. Thank you Nina! Children have shown once again how amazing they are with sharing, sharing pennies up to 10 with ease. We are also enjoying fencing and are really getting the hang of it, you would be amazed to see how quickly the children are picking it up. I have also sent home letters for Cobble Hey farm, if they could be returned ASAP that would be fantastic, it would help us get organised sooner rather than later. Thank you and enjoy the long weekend.
26/04/19
Welcome back! From the sounds of things everyone has had a lovely holiday, and nobody knows where the time has gone! The farms look amazing and the children clearly have had great fun creating them. The farming topic is very popular with everyone and we are looking forward to this fun packed term. The children have shown off their amazing phonics straight away, writing a story to go with ‘Mr Wolf and the Enormous Turnip’. The books speaks volumes about how well they’re doing and the passion they have for writing. I am overjoyed to hear about how much each child has read over the Easter Break, it is truly heartwarming to see how far they have come. This week we had our first every fencing class and the children simply blew me and Mrs Tyrer away, they were stupendous! Next week we will be reading ‘What the Ladybird Heard’. Keep up the hard work everyone!
05/04/19
Can you believe another term is over? Our traditional tales topic has gone down a treat and the quality of writing really speaks for itself. All children have fully embraced the topic and thoroughly enjoyed it. To finish off the topic we read the story ‘Sleeping Beauty’ and it was enjoyed by everyone. Children also demonstrated an amazing understanding when it comes to doubling, fully embracing all the challenges and fun that comes with it. To celebrate the massive achievements the children have made this term, we had a party on Thursday to reward the hard work and determination shown by the children. Our next topic is going to be ‘Farming’ and we are hoping to arrange trips and visitors to make the learning as fun and engaging as possible. I understand that farming is deeply connected to a lot of parents/children, so the topic makes great sense. I would like to thank you for your continued support and hard work at home, together your children are truly blossoming. Thank you for everything and I hope you have a great holiday with your children.
29/01/19
I cannot believe it is Friday already! The Princess and the Pea tale has gone down a treat. The amount and more important, the quality of writing is outstanding. The children really are going from strength to strength in all areas! The Princess from the story has been truly spoiled from the plethora of beds we have to offer her. The vocabulary that children are using to describe 2D shapes is incredible, we are all so proud, keep up the amazing work. For the final week we will be reading Cinderella,what fun! Thank you for your continued support and I hope you all have a wonderful Mother’s Day. I cannot wait for Monday!
22/03/19
What a fabulous week! The class have had a great time writing their Goldilocks and the 3 bears book. We had an immense amount of fun, creating our very own monster that BURST out of our egg! Our monsters came in all shapes and sizes from 5 legs to none at all, they were a treat and showed off the creative minds we have in our class. We then put our descriptive powers to the test and used these adjectives to describe our monsters. Children have been demonstrating amazing understanding with phase 4 phonics, using the new Ipads, we had a blast playing on various phonics games. We loved the challenge of reading/spelling long words like ‘chimpanzee’ or ‘windmill’. Next week we will be reading Princess and the Pea, have a wonderful weekend.
15/03/19
Another Week, another wolf! Children have loved the story Little Red Riding Hood. Our children have worked extremely hard on their story books. However, they do come with a bite! Science Week has been such great fun too. With our green fingers, we are trying to grow our potatoes using the amazing guides we have done for our homework. Children also enjoyed making slime and we had a great discussion about the feel/texture of it. We also loved exploring the habitats around us during Science Week and we made a habitat for the frogspawn we were generously given. Next week we can all look forward to Goldilocks and the 3 Bears, I cannot wait!
08/03/19
What a joyous week we have had! World Book week has been a tremendous opportunity to work with other classrooms and really enjoy reading and writing stories. We had a special opportunity to go to church and attend the service for Ash Wednesday. Father Sony made the sign of the cross on all of our foreheads with ashes, which sparked a great discussion. Children have worked extremely hard this week writing a story for the ‘Three Billy Goats Gruff’ and their own independent story. Children have enjoyed writing and illustrating their own books. We even manged to read our stories to a buddy, they were kind enough to give feedback. Thank you Beacon class! Next week we will be enjoying the tale of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, I am sure it is going to be another amazing week, Thank you! Please enjoy the pictures below.
01/03/19
What a great first week back we have had! Our topic is ‘Traditional Tales’ and we are loving all the writing opportunities it offers. We have several themes going on and children have been making a bridge outside (still under construction) -they’re perfectionists! You will be able to see children creating a house of bricks and sticks outside, with a chimney. Some children even had the brilliant idea to build a car to simply drive away from the big bad wolf- genius! Our math work has had us looking at measuring various objects we have found around the classroom and some children even used a ruler to precisely measure. We had a very special visitor this week too. A nurse came in and talked about hygiene. We used a special machine to see if we have been washing our hands properly and luckily we were on top form. I cannot wait for next weeks adventure!
Spring Term
Thank you to the police team for visiting us and letting us explore their police car. It was very loud but very exciting! We have been learning outdoors, finding exciting clues to what our next topic could be and much more. The children are amazing us with their reading skills and Miss Deakin is still in awe of the children’s progress as she reads with all every Friday. Writing skills have exploded in the classroom and we are currently setting up ‘story stations’ outdoors with many creative templates for the children to show us what they can do in many areas of the classroom. A large egg is about to land outside and big nest has already been prepared in anticipation for the egg landing! You will find out all about this next half term! The Land of Pure Imagination is being transformed into a huge scale fairy tale land- full of new zones, tasks and areas carefully set up to inspire our little learners. Have a great half term break-we will see you all on Tuesday 26th February.
What a super ‘Safety Week’ we have had! Thank you to Mrs Lancashire, who taught the children all about first aid aid and keeping ourselves safe. The children learned all about germs, water safety, stranger danger, being safe with technology and who to tell if they are upset about something.
This week, we have enjoyed National Storytelling Week and our children have been involved in a wide variety of activities linked with books. We are transforming outdoors into a huge ‘Traditional Tales Story Land’ and the children have been pairing up with older children in school to share their stories. The children have made treasure chests and other special things in which to store treasure and they have tucked their little adventures inside with some treasure maps. The children are still eager to read to Miss Deakin in their guided reading groups every Friday (likewise she is still eager to listen to them read!) and they are wowing us with their phonic knowledge and on sight word recognition. I have sent home some ‘wow moment’ slips for you to fill in at home. We will read these with your child when we share your child’s learning log work and we will pop these into their ‘wow work’ books. The children love the ‘Phonic’s King’ challenge area and table top writing station. We are amazed at their enthusiasm for the challenges. The children have a ‘chilli challenge’ panel on the wall and they push the picture associated with the areas of continuous and enhanced provision to find out the challenges of the day/week. The vehicle exploration table has sparked huge interest-especially with the boys writing. It will soon be an MOT centre area! There is a tractor under inspection this week and next!
We have had a wonderful week in class learning all about Supertato. We have been sequencing stories, used pennies to buy items from the grocery store, been writing in speech bubbles and making our own puppets and supertatoes! Have a look at the pictures below.
HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL!
Our new topic to start the Spring Term is called, ‘Winter Wonderland.’ We have so many exciting things planned; take a look at them here…
Schools of the Diocese of Lancaster have been invited by Bishop Paul to observe a ‘Year of the Eucharist’. We talked about the Monstrance, went to see it in church and have painted our own. They are beautiful.
Preparing our own lunches
The children had fun preparing their own lunches in class. They chose from a selection of sausage, egg, tuna, cheese or ham and made delicious sandwiches.
Teaching that love of writing…
Writing is not all about sitting at a desk. Making a little den , we taped paper to the underneath of a table, put in some cushions and became creative.
Christmas has arrived in Pendle Class!
This half term is such a wonderful time in school and a privilege to share with the children. We have been learning all about the journey Mary and Joseph made to Bethlehem and the birth of baby Jesus in the stable. During the day, the children can be heard retelling the story to each other, making stables from construction and making their own links with the songs in the nativity.
Here they had joined hands and formed their own little stables.
Nativity – A Miracle in Town
The Reception and Year 1/2 children worked so hard to bring together their Nativity, ‘A Miracle in Town’. It was full of wonderful music, songs and actions and yet again, we were filled with pride. Thank you to everyone who came to watch them; they were so excited knowing they had friends and family in the audience and I know there were quite a few proud tears shed. I’m sure we will be hearing the songs for a long time to come.
The children have decorated our Christmas tree together and have started to create some wonderful Christmas crafts. Their independence is lovely to see and they are enhancing their skills.
The children chose what shape they wanted to make their snowman…super cutting!
We even manage to get 2D shapes into a Christmas crafts session. The children have each made a spiral Christmas tree. To decorate it, they have cut out shapes and positioned them as ‘baubles’. They look lovely.
Story time is such a lovely time in class and there is nothing nicer than introducing the children to a new story. I think this one will become a new favourite…The Wonky Donkey. We had such fun with it and it is amazing how quickly they join in with repetitive phrases.
The children enjoyed making their own little den in the classroom working together as a team to secure the ‘roof’. They had lots of fun, taking inside story books, their own little books they are writing in and of course…torches!
Fire Safety
Fireman ‘Dave’ visited the children in Pendle Class and shared with them the importance of Fire Safety. It was such a lovely and valuable visit. The children joined in with an interactive quiz – they were super, and got to try on a fireman’s uniform.
Thank you so much Fireman ‘Dave’…the children will always remember your visit.
2D Shapes
Shapes are everywhere! We have been investigating shapes and going on shape hunts around the school. We even peeped into Beacon’s Class to see what we could find.
National Road Safety Week
We talked about Road Safety in class. The children were told how they have to think about where is safest to cross the road with an adult, holding their hand. We looked at videos and pictures and discussed what the dangers on the road could be. We named lots of different traffic. We decided it is safest to cross where you can clearly see in all directions and where drivers and cyclists can spot you. We know we have to look both ways and listen.
Number Fun
We had a lovely maths sessions exploring the number six. After doing some classroom work around the number and what six of something means, we went on a very successful number hunt. The children went in and out of rooms in the school and then out in to the grounds.
The number six was everywhere!
There is just so much to do when you are four and five…
Remembrance in School
In Pendle Class, we talked about why people are buying and wearing poppies. We visited the church and looked at the beautiful displays created by the Parish. During the week, we made a piece of artwork together and watched a BBC Children’s Remembrance animation about the war, as experienced by animals in the battlefield. We talked about how music was used in the film and the children had some wonderful ideas.
Diwali
As a class, we looked at the celebration of Diwali. We watched a short film about Princess Sita and Prince Rama and how the nasty King Ravana kidnapped Sita. We finished the afternoon making lovely Indian sweets.
Winnie the Witch…
We’ve really enjoyed reading the Winnie the Witch stories in class. However this afternoon, the children had the opportunity to make their very own broomsticks. They collected all the resources they would need, for example, twigs, leaves and twine then had a very productive afternoon. We finished off the day watching a Winnie the Witch story on the screen.
As Bonfire Night is approaching, we thought we would talk about keeping safe around fires and fireworks. We then watched some competition firework displays and listened to the noises the fireworks made. We went in to the sunshine and produced are own beautiful fireworks in the playground.
The children also produced wonderful bonfire pictures in class.
Our role play area is now a Post Office and it must be the busiest Post Office in Lancashire!
The children are busy mark making, sending letters, buying stamps and of course, filling our post box. Throughout the day we hear, “Mrs Kerr, Mrs Tyrer…we need more cards/writing paper/envelopes…” Through this area we will be wrapping boxes for presents, using scales to weigh them, creating labels, writing messages and learning about money. If you have any envelopes or cards you haven’t used, you know where to send them.
Following the children’s interests…Numicon tubes are not only useful for counting, they apparently fit nicely on your fingers and when you click them together they make a wonderful sound like castanets. This led to a discussion about castanets and who uses them. We put some Flamenco Dancers on the screen and the children created their own movements to the music.
Gosh, the weather is starting to change. At 2.00 pm, the children were surprised to see that their water trays were still frozen. Where things had been frozen in the ice, the children tried to work out how this could happen.
Holding the ice up to their faces, they said it was a cold window.
A little Halloween number fun. The children have been counting spiders hiding in the pumpkin coloured rice. There are a few bats lurking in there too!
This week we have been reading Winnie the Witch stories by Korky Paul and Valerie Thomas. The children enjoy holding up their imaginary wands and joining Winnie casting spells…
Autumn Term 1
I know I have said it before and I know I will say it again and again…but what a beautiful environment our children are growing up in. Today, we took a moment in the October sunshine to watch the farmer at work. Some of our children are very knowledgeable about the tractors and trailers they see and are little educators to the rest of us. I just had to capture this moment.
Number problems today caused quite a discussion.
Today we looked at the work of the famous British sculptor, Andy Goldsworthy. Goldsworthy makes beautiful pieces of art using natural resources. First, the children discussed what natural resources could be, then we went out to collect them. We found beech nuts, conkers, feathers, moss, twigs and leaves. Having looked at examples of Goldsworthy’s work, the children worked in small groups to create their own amazing pieces of art. As you can see, they are wonderful.
Enjoying the beautiful October sunshine…
In the Land of Pure Imagination, anything is possible. Today, we helped teddy fly through the trees on his very own zip wire. The children quickly realised they had to hold on tightly to the end of the string to help him on his journey.
After a lovely day, the children created their own puppet show performance. What a super audience.
We have been measuring ingredients in class – We’ve made Hedgehog Bread Rolls!
Our book this week, ‘A House for Mouse’ has given us lots of opportunities for learning. Mouse carries around with him an apple as he looks for a new home among the other forest animals. He can’t quite find a house big enough for himself and his apple. We have looked at animal homes and created our own little mouse houses in the classroom.
Following on from this, we decided to do an experiment. What would happen if we left two apples in the classroom until half term? One apple is whole, the other has a bite taken from it. The children had some fabulous discussions and made predictions.
We will wait and see.
Forest Schools: Clay Snails
After collecting some conkers to use for our snails shells, the children had a piece of card to decorate with autumnal colours. These were used to form a base for the snails. The children then had to manipulate a lump of clay each and form it in to a snail shape. When happy with the shape they’d formed, they added antenna, a smiley face and the shell for its back. The children then went searching in the garden for some lovely leaves to stick to the card for the snail to sit on – a habitat. Some of the snails were given names and they have all gone home with the children. The excitement these snails have caused has been infectious!
Learning about number at this age, shouldn’t be about sitting down at a table with worksheets. We have been out in our grounds collecting conkers, sorting them, counting them and placing them in to groups of ten.
Forest Schools: The children are absolutely loving our Forest School afternoons with Year One and Two and getting so much from them. First of all talked about the rules we must always follow in the woodland. Then we explored our environment. How lucky we are to have all of this in our grounds. We have looked at nests and built our own from twigs and moss. We’ve collected autumnal leaves, conkers and acorns to match paint swatches, we’ve hunted for mini-beasts…and found a tree frog! (we honestly did) and we’ve giggled at the cows who found our activities very interesting.
The Life Education Caravan always guarantees a fun learning experience. We got to meet Harold the Giraffe and learn about keeping our bodies healthy. The children were amazing! Hard to believe we have only been in school a couple of weeks. Just look at all those hands up volunteering to answer questions.
Schools are wonderful places where you learn to quickly expect the unexpected…so when one of your four year old children introduces himself to the Judo man and the Judo man asks would he like to help… Wow!
What a beautiful, caring school we belong to. The children in Year 2 gave a helping hand when we played on the trim trail. This was without any adult input…Well done Parlick Class.
Now the children know how to mix colours, they have been having fun with paint and chalk outside in the garden and play area.
Today the children enjoyed their P.E lesson – Teddy Bear Tennis. First, they moved like different animals around the hall then then they had to control the ball along the floor with little taps before throwing it over the net…in to a bucket.
Learning about colours and mixing our own paints:
We talked about colours then the children had a go at mixing different powder paints together to create a new colour. Super concentration and lots of discoveries.
What a fabulous start the children have made to school life…they are amazing!
We have settled in and enjoyed exploring our new classroom and visiting Miss Taylor in her office and Miss Deakin. Miss Deakin presented the children with a special Head Teachers pencil each.
Messy Play: We had lots of fun measuring out our own flour, water and salt to make Play Dough then joined in ‘Dough Disco!’
Lunch time: We talked to the children about their lunch options and about the different foods they could choose. They know where to line up, collect their food, add extra salad independently then sit down to eat…and it’s not even the end of the first week! So independent. We have lots of smiley faces and lots of clean plates too.
After a story, the children played outside in ‘The Land of Pure Imagination’. Yes, we all get messy, but that is what learning and exploring is about.
The mud kitchen and digging area are always popular and what better than a real frog for inquisitive minds.
Buddies: It was lovely for the children to have a little time to play with their buddies who visited them in the classroom before playtime.
A little role play: Who is hiding behind the mask?
——————–
2017 – 2018
Our whole school trip to Lowther Gardens and Lytham beach
Pendle class thoroughly enjoyed exploring the beautiful gardens at Lowther park, learning all about how the rangers care for the plants and maintain the grounds. The children had a go making a bird feeder using recyclable materials and before leaving enjoyed a yummy ice cream. In the afternoon Pendle class had lots of fun playing on the beach.
Our exciting judo classes
Senses investigation in science
Our super maths!
Summer 2 Topic Map- Oceans and Seaside
Wow! where has the year gone. This is our topic map for our final term this year. The pupils have worked so hard this year and we’re looking forward to all the exciting events in our final term e.g. sports day, whole school trip, St Francis Got Talent, Judo and many more…
Pendle class have had so much fun this week, exploring our impressive outside area. It’s such a delight to watch young minds create, problem solve, play together and use their imaginations. Pupils are developing skills for the future without realising it, the pure magic of play. As Einstein once said,
“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.”
Heavy or light? That is the question
Pupils have been very busy this week learning all about weight. Children have used their problem solving and critical thinking skills to compare, sort, order and measure weight using non-standard and standard units.
Jungle Animal Creations
In our art lesson this week we embraced the sunny weather, and ventured out to the millennium. We had some fantastic help from some YR3/4 pupils to make a jungle animal, using natural resources found in the environment. Pupils worked in groups to take turns, and share ideas to produce some wonderful creatures.
Our Rainforest Explorer’s Centre
Welcome to Summer term!
Our topic this term is, ‘The Great Outdoors’. We have a Rainforest explorers centre in our role play area, where children can be immersed in learning all about jungle animals and insects. The children have began their enthusiastic learning by creating animal fact files and producing some wonderful animal poems, and descriptive writing based on the stories, ‘Rumble in the jungle’ and ‘Monkey Puzzle’. Please see below our topic map for our areas of learning this term in literacy, maths and topic.
Wow! What a week we’ve had. The children loved their bouncy suprise on Monday, their reaction was priceless! They danced non stop on Tuesday in our Just dance marathon, and they finished off the week with the hundred mile run, which every child performed outstanding!
Science Week fun!
Pendle class have had a fantastic time this week, being enthusiastic scientists. We created a superhero headquarters science lab in class, to discover the best superhero powers. The children explored the following: exploding coke (flying power), dancing raisins (bubble power), villain slime (fighting power), gloop (hero defence power) and magic rainbows (blending power).
Road safety and Sirens!
Pendle class enjoyed a special visit from PC Banks this week. The children learnt all about how to stay safe crossing roads. They know to STOP, LOOK and LISTEN. PC Banks allowed all the children to have a go being a Police officer, switching the flashing lights on and sirens in his Police car. The children absolutely loved driving the electric cars around a pretend village in our school hall.
Fire, fire, fire!
Key stage 1 had a very exciting visitor today for our superhero topic, Firefighter Dave Gilmour. Children learnt all about fire safety and what to do if there was a fire in their own homes, and how to prevent a fire happening. The children loved hearing all about the role of a firefighter, and how they save lives on a daily basis. The children thoroughly enjoyed dressing up and playing with the fire themed activities. I think we have some enthusiastic future fighter fighters in the making!
Our fantastic World Book Day costumes!
World Book Day Fun
Pendle class enjoyed a wonderful book activity organised by Beacon class. All the pupils in Beacon class painted a beautiful story pebble, and hid it in our garden of pure imagination. Pendle class pupils had to find 18 pebbles, with the help of their buddies, and guess the story painted on the pebble found. The children loved every minute! A big thank you to Pendle class for organising a fantastic pebble hunt!
Supertato to the rescue!
Superhero Maze Challenge
Pendle class took on the ‘Superhero Maze Challenge’ in maths this week. Moving forwards, backwards, left, right , under, over and many more positions and directions. They had to save a superhero by following instructions from their partners, but they had to be careful of the fire, water and mud. The children enjoyed a fun interactive maths lesson dressed as a superhero.
Nurses in the making. Having badges of fun!
I would like to say a huge thank you to Mrs Lancashire for visiting Pendle class yesterday. She taught the children how important a nurse’s role is in helping people, and showing the children how to put a badge on, which most children kept on all day. Poor Miss Taylor was worried when she saw most of Pendle class with bandaged hands, she was relieved to find out they were pretend.
Jesus and the Fishermen
In R.E. we have been looking at the bible story, Jesus and the fishermen. We have learned how Jesus chose his disciples and how his disciples believed and trusted Jesus. Pendle class enjoyed creating fish using different types of media. In our daily worships we have been thinking about our friends, asking each other what makes our friends special to us and sharing our favourite times.
Our fabulous world of pure imagination area
Children have thrived exploring our new outdoor area this week. Putting their wellies on and get stuck in! They have made potions in the mud kitchen, stirring the chocolate river with the Giant’s spoon, jumping, splashing, bird watching, digging and many more. We had fun bringing onomatopoeias to life in literacy; splashing, banging, whooshing, spinning etc. to inspire our comic book writing. Year 1 also made arrays using multiples of two’s and five’s using sticks and leaves in maths.
Architects in the making!
Wow! Is all I can say about these half term projects. The effort and time that has gone into these 3d church models is outstanding! A huge thank you to parents and pupils for the beautiful detail and creativity.
Superhero Headquarters
Children have had endless fun in our new exciting role play area, Superhero Headquarters. They amaze me everyday with their imaginative ideas and hard work. Each child has grown in confidence and challenges themselves, completing tasks independently. Please see below our creative learning this week.
Welcome back to spring 2 term.
This term our topic is ‘Superheroes’. We have lots of exciting activities and visitors planned for Pendle class. We will be looking at fictional superhero characters and real life superheroes that help us in our local community. We have organised a Police man, Nurse and fireman to visit Pendle class, and tell the children all about how they help and save lives everyday! Please see below our topic map for this terms curriculum focus.
We had a fantastic time at Clitheroe Castle last week. The pupils were thrilled to take part in two workshops; Castles and Keeps, and Myths and Legends. Pupils had a brilliant tour around the castle and learnt all about how and why castles were built, and what materials were originally used. Pupils had an engaging hands on experience of building their own Motte and Bailey castle with sand, and using lolly pop sticks to make a fence and bridges. Pupils loved listening to the story about the Clitheroe dragon, and learnt the skills to defend themselves against a real dragon, practicing their sword skills. I’m very confident we’ll be very safe if any dragons decide to come near St. Francis school with our expert knights!
Our budding gymnasts
Story telling week
Pendle class have been very busy writing their own version of the story, Princess and the pea. We have enjoyed listening to a new story everyday in class, and using our story boxes and stick puppets to bring the stories we’ve heard to life. We had a wonderful afternoon on Friday when the pupils from Fairsnape shared their twisted fairy tale stories with us. A real treat to hear such amazing story writing from both classes.
Jesus light of the world
In R.E. we have been learning all about, Jesus, light of the world. We have been looking at different symbols, signs and objects that are used in church and special occasions. Children understand that a candle lit represents Jesus is with us and listening to our prayers. We have been learning all about Baptism, and how we are all part of God’s family. Children have made their own candles, and used clay to make a tea light candle holder. During worship we shared our thoughts and feelings to Jesus, and discussed how he gives us strength. We then used our candles to sing along to the hymn, ‘This little light of mine’.
From seed to plant
Pendle class have been enthusiastic gardeners this term, watching their cress seeds blossom into cress plants. The children have been learning all about what a plant needs to grow; sunlight, air, soil and water. They have enjoyed watching the process of how a tiny seed grows into an edible plant. Pupils are now confident in labelling parts of a flower; stem, leaf, flower and roots.
Jack and the beanstalk
Key Stage 1 had lots of fun in music this week, acting out the story Jack and the beanstalk. The children listened to different pieces of music and matched them to the correct event in the story. The children explored different ways of moving in response to the music, to bring the story to life! Some very scary Giant’s…so watch out!
Exploring the outdoors
This week we have been utilising our wonderful Millennium woodland area and creating some environmental art. Children were put into groups and given the challenge to create the Giant’s castle, and the beanstalk using; twigs, plants and any natural materials found. The finished art work was fantastic! We also went on a leaf walk around school to research all the different types of leaves. We brought some back to class, to use for our leaf rubbing pictures.
Our enthusiastic pupils working hard…
Welcome to Spring term!
This term we are finding our green fingers and learning all about plants and growth. We will be looking at Jack and the beanstalk and many more traditional tales. Please see below our spring term topic map.
Pupils getting into the Christmas spirit in class this week, making salt dough Christmas tree decorations. Can’t wait for you to see them, they are beautiful!
Our very own jousting competition! Pendle class had lots of fun re-enacting the role of a medieval knight in our P.E. lesson this week using their handmade shields.
Pendle class’ magical fairy village. Outstanding efforts from homework, so adorable!
The Good Samaritan
Pendle class had lots of fun in our R.E. lesson this week making a Good Samaritan toolkit. Children had the opportunity to make a clay coin, sew a bag, paint a promise pebble, write their own Good Samaritan stories and make a friendship bracelet. Lots of very busy children and exciting learning going on.
Our collective worship led by Pendle class and our new break time group, ‘Bible Buddies’
Look out! Our very own Pendle Castle and Knights, there also might be some dragons lurking, so watch out!
The children had lots of fun painting their own class castle and making a working draw bridge. We have been busy creating lots of dragons in the Art Studio and in Literacy using adjectives to describe our dragons. In maths we have been busy measuring dragon footprints using cm and cubes.
Castles, Dragons and Mythical lands
Please have a look at our exciting Autumn 2 Topic Map of what Pendle class will be getting up to this term.
Pendle class have enjoyed a variety of activities the last week. Pupils immersed into learning all about endangered animals for ‘Wear it Wild day’ participating in mask making, painting, print making, animal hunts and many more exciting activities.
The children have been very enthusiastic in music classes this term learning all about tempo, rhythm and following a simple melody using their voices and percussion instruments.
Lastly, Pendle class planned their own prayer and liturgy about caring for animals which they delivered beautifully. They gathered together using music, reading prayers, placed special objects on their worship cloth and shared their thoughts with their special pebble finishing with the Our father…so proud of them!
Welcome Assembly
We had a beautiful assembly this morning for our new Reception starters led by our Year 6. Reception’s buddies from Year 4 gave them their Golden award certificates and to finish the assembly Reception sang ‘He’s got the whole world in his hands’. Wishing you a fantastic year of fun and lots of exciting learning.