Welcome to our wonderful class. I have been so impressed with how well the children have settled into full days at school during their group visits. Mrs Elliott and I have spent time really getting to know the children, learning about their families and most importantly playing with them! The children are beginning to learn the rules and routines at school and are practising their listening skills too. 

The children have especially loved exploring our amazing garden. Over the holidays we had a very talented carpenter build some amazing new resources to help us play and learn. These included an art easel, gravel pit, mud kitchen and dining table, sand pit, construction box and a fantastic shed for us to store all our lovely resources. We are waiting for a new cascading water play and are in the process of creating a music wall and stage. 

I am really looking forward to welcoming the whole class into school on Friday! 

We have had a wonderful first full time week in school. The children have been really enjoying time in our garden and on the play trail. We have begun our maths learning and have started 'subitising' quantities of 1, 2 and 3. We have also made our own repeated patterns too. 

We had a truly wonderful start to the spring term. The children have loved learning all about garden birds and spotting them in our outdoor garden. We really enjoyed joining in with the Big Schools Birdwatch and looking through our binoculars to identify as many species as we could. The children made a variety of different bird feeders to encourage birdlife to the school. We read lots of books about birds and particularly enjoyed retelling the story of ‘The Little Red Hen’. The children were really interested in learning about Chinese New Year and exploring Chinese culture, we learnt the zodiac origin story. Of course, we always look forward to play and learn time where the children demonstrate such independence, concentration and collaboration with their friends. They are really developing the characteristics of an effective learner and it is such a joy to be a part of!

The children have been trying so hard in phonics. We have now learnt all our phase 3 sounds and are becoming more confident blending them to read words. We have been practising our hard to read words which has helped us to increase the fluency of our reading. The children have been trying so hard with their writing skills too. We have been using our spelling sequence in phonics alongside widget symbols to help us to write simple sentences. This is something that the children are really developing confidence and independence with and I am so proud of them!

In maths we have been developing our subitising skills (seeing the quantity without counting). We have also been doing lots of counting to find out ‘how many’ objects there are altogether. We noticed when quantities are equal or unequal and used lots of talk to help us explain our mathematical thinking. I am really looking forward to another brilliant half term learning all about space!

Have a look at all the exciting things that are yet to come. We really do have the best time in Elmer Class!