Robin Class

Welcome to Robin Class!

In Robin Class we are in Year reception and Year 1.
 

Our teachers are Miss Knight (Mon-Wed) and Mrs Gillon (Thurs & Fri).

We have lots of other grown-ups helping us in Robin Class throughout the week including- Mrs Singer, Miss Wenlock, Miss Clayson, Mrs Vranch and Mrs K.

Learning in Robin Class:

In Robin Class we have play-based learning environment. Our Year Reception children follow the Early Years Statutory Framework (EYFS)  and are busy working towards their early learning goals (ELGs). Our Year One children follow the National Curriculum for Year 1. The Year one children enjoy spending time learning in Blackbird class with Mrs Mee with their Year one and two peers as well.

STEAM WEEK: 

This week we're enjoying celebrating STEAM week as part of our STEAM curriculum. 

On Monday we explored the 'T' in steam- technology! We explored the different types of technology available to us in school. We had a go with the B-bots, computers and Ipads.

On Tuesday we explored the 'S' in steam- Science! We made the most of the sunshine exploring shadows! We played shadow tag, drew around our shadows, learnt about why shadows are made and experimented with changing our own shadow. In the afternoon we made shadow puppet shows!

On Wednesday we explored the 'A' in steam- Arts! We enjoyed some experimentation with musical instruments and made some nature paintings, carefully thinking about colours!

On Thursday we explored the 'E' in steam - Engineering! We engineered handmade paper flowers and placed them in water to observe how they bloomed. We talked about the science behind the magic! Then we repeated this with paper of different thicknesses. We found that tissue paper bloomed the fastest and cardboard the slowest. We discussed why this happened. 

On Friday we explored the 'M' in steam - Maths! We consolidated our learning from the previous day and took our fabric ten frames outside where we collected natural objects and arranged them to show two separate parts. The children could talk about the separate parts within their whole number.

Life Education Visit - PHSE

As part of our learning in PHSE, we had a visit from Helen who works for 'Life Education.' The children loved meeting Harold the Giraffe and helping him with his problem of not being able to catch a ball. We understood the importance of adding the word 'YET' to the end of a sentence. "I can't catch a ball yet!" which means that one day in the future, with practice, Harold will be able to catch a ball. 

In RE, we reflected on the Jewish festival of Passover and the children created their own Sedar plates.

Open Classroom Session

Over the course of two mornings, we welcomed our lovely parents and grandparents into Robin classroom to join the children and experience a session of discovery time. This is where the children are provided with a number of activities through continous provision (such as construction, role-playing in the home corner and various STEM challenges) as well as enhanced provision, specifically linked to our learning such as doubling numbers and writing simple sentences using the resources provided.  The children were very excited to share their learning environment with their family members which was lovely to see. 

In Science, the children enjoyed learning about a pond habitat and we explored the life-cycle of a frog.

Forest School - Making a Bug Hotel

Finding doubles and making doubles

In maths, the reception children have been learning to find doubles and make doubles using numicon. They have also doubled the number of spots on butterflies using finger prints.

Beckington loves books - Book Week

Over the past week, Robin Class have been immersed in stories written by the authors Kes & Claire Gray and Jim Field.  Our favourite stories are Oi Frog, Oi Puppies and Oi Duck-Billed Platypus. We have explored how the authors use pairs of rhyming words and humour to engage the reader. During enhanced provision, the children have matched pairs of rhyming pictures and recorded these as words on whiteboards using their knowledge of sounds. This then progressed to writing their own matching pairs of words later in the week and applying them in their own sentences by the end of book week. We are so proud of the children's writing and their ability to choose the most appropriate rhyming words.

As a link to Science, the children have created their own habitat for the book character, 'Oi Frog!'

Forest School - Creating Natural Minibeasts

Mental Health & Wellbeing

This week we've been talking about how we are able to help our minds to feel happy. We've enjoyed exploring meditation, yoga and outdoor activities and exercise to help us to have healthy and happy minds!

Dinosaur Wow Day!!

Wow, what a busy day we all had in Robin Class today, celebrating the end of our dinosaur topic with a dinosaur wow day! We were busy making dinosaur footprint biscuits, making our own fossils, making dens for dinosaurs, doing some dinosaur silhouette art and painting dinosaurs. The children look AMAZING in their costumes and hopefully enjoyed the day as much as we did!

Forest School - Stickmen!

We all enjoyed our Forest School session this week practising tying knots. We made stickmen to practice this skill. This learning was part of our den-building topics, knot tying is a crucial skill in this process to help us combine logs, and attach fabrics to make our dens waterproof!

Home-learning:

It's been lovely to see the home-learning the children have been busy with at home. It's great to see parents and children engaging in learning activities together, sharing learning experiences that fit with learning they've been doing at home. Thank you all, for your efforts and participation.

NSPCC Number Day 2024

Leading up to Number Day, the children explored different representations of the numbers 6, 7 and 8 by sorting picture cards into correct numbered hoops and drawing pictures to represent 6, 7 and 8. On Number Day, the children loved exploring these numbers further by creating a numicon city with shapes 6, 7 and 8 and creating their own numicon shapes using play-doh. Some children focused on their individual targets and revisited numicon shapes 2 and 3. 

Today, the reception children revisited their learning on capacity from the Autumn term and deepened their knowledge and understanding.  

During enhanced provision, the children explored questions such as: How many spoonfuls fill the cup? Which size spoon was the best and why? How many ___ does the jug hold? Can the jug hold more of one object than the other? 

In Robin Class, even at this young age, we believe it is very important to immerse the children in story texts which have a rich and varied range of vocabulary. Some of these words are now appearing in the children's writing which is very exciting!

Today, we have been learning to use stencils in art. Can you name any of the dinosaurs?

A Dinosaur Discovery...

The children were excited to come to school this morning and find dinosaur footprints in our classroom! 

In our history learning we later found out that Mrs Burns had made some discoveries on the 'CCTV'. The children were
interested to find out that some cheeky dinosaurs had visited whilst we were all in bed last night. 
 

The children enjoyed the dinosaur discovery tray to find dinosaur themed items as part of their learning. 

We love to see the children continuing their learning at home. What an amazing dinosaur and perfect STEM challenge.

As a link to our new topic, 'Dangerous Dinosaurs' we will be reading and sharing the brilliant story, 'Romeosaurus and Juliet Rex' over the coming weeks.

Before focusing on the story, we have explored the famous playwright, 'William Shakespeare' and reception children have produced some fantastic portrait drawings by identifying his distinguishing features/tudor clothing and Year 1 have written some descriptive sentences to describe his appearance.

The children have loved creating their own theatrical masks which could have been worn by an actor on the stage in one of Shakespeare's famous plays. 

The children were given binoculars to explore 'The Land of the Dinosaurs.'

We have been so impressed with the way in which Robin Class have returned to school today after the Christmas holidays. It has been lovely to see the excitement in their faces and an eagerness to learn and explore new things.

They really enjoyed meeting our new headteacher, 'Mr Summers' and dressing him up in the home corner. He has popped into Robin Class throughout the day, talking to the children and learning their names.

Today we raised money for 'Save the Children' by celebrating Christmas Jumper Day 2023. 

We also had great fun making our own Christmas jumpers and enjoyed our Christmas lunch in the hall with the whole school.

Robin Class have been busy making hot chocolate in the home corner.

To improve our fine motor skills we have been creating pine cone Christmas trees.

We have loved exploring the 'Winter Wonderland' tuff tray today and feeling the snow between our fingers.

Christmas has arrived in Robin Class.

This morning, we opened our first advent calendar story book to share with the class. Each day, leading up to the end of term, there will be a new parcel (Christmas story) underneath the Christmas tree ready to be opened and enjoyed by the class.

In PHSE, the children have been thinking about people who are special to them and why they are special. 

The children then created their special person using a range of natural objects. We love their creations! 

In Science, the children have been learning about the seasons of the year. They have explored how trees change over the four seasons.

They have selected the most suitable paint colours to represent the same tree in Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter.

The children have loved creating their own leaf hedgehogs using the Autumn leaves that have changed colour and fallen within our school grounds. 

This activity was inspired by one of the children bringing in their own leaf hedgehog as a show and tell.

Reception have been consolidating their understanding of one more and one less than a given number. 

To support children's understanding of this concept, we used 5-frames to work out one more and one less. To deepen understanding further, children have engaged with hands on practical activities such as counting one more, one less sheep in a field, one more, one less passenger on a bus and choosing their own numbers and displaying one more, one less using numicon and glass beads.

We're Going to Find the Monster... 

In literacy, for the past few weeks, our focus text has been 'We're Going to Find the Monster'. This week we've been story-mapping the adventure Eddie and Charlie go on to find their monster! Listen below to hear some of the children retell the story!

Positional language: 

In maths this week we've been learning to use positional language. We've enjoyed using Rosie's walk to support us with this. We have also been playing hiding games with Teddies, talking about where they are. A great week of learning!

As part of our learning about celebrations, we enjoyed using loose parts to make firework pictures!

Reception explored their local environment by going on a shape hunt. Their challenge was to find as many circles and triangles as they could. It was very exciting...

Autumn Art and exploring with water colour paints:

Reception matched the pictures and objects to the numbers 1, 2 and 3:

Campfire smores and making faces using

natural objects:

Year 1 explored part-part whole:

Our Year 1 children were introduced to our new wooden, part-part whole frames and soft felt balls. We talked about whole numbers and how whole numbers are made of two parts. Children explored different ways of making the whole numbers displayed on our new wooden number line.

Reception created repeated patterns: 

The children have created simple repeated patterns using natural objects found in the school grounds. They then used their knowledge to independently create different patterns inside the classroom during discovery time. 

Forest School (linked to maths):

In today's forest school session the children loved going on a scavenger hunt to find signs of Autumn as well as any other natural objects they could find. Once the children collected their objects, we gathered in a circle and talked about how we could group the objects. The children were amazing and referred back to their previous learning in Maths (last week) and suggested grouping the objects by colour, size or shape.

Dear Zoo (capacity):

As a further part of our learning about capacity today we read Dear Zoo. We spoke about the size of the boxes and what animals could fit into those boxes, the children used their reasoning skills to explain why certain animals needed "tall, wide and long" boxes to fit into.

They then investigated what animals they could fit into certain containers in their discovery time. 

Potion Making (capacity): 
In our maths learning this week reception have been learning all about comparing measures. Today we looked at comparing capacity. We made potions and spoke about the capacity of different containers. 

Autumn Sound Hunt:

The children have enjoyed hunting for sounds amongst autumnal objects.

Forest School: 
We've enjoyed our first couple of Forest School sessions of this year so far. We have enjoyed exploring our Forest school area and climbing trees!

Art Week:

We started the term with an Arts Week. During this week we were learning all about Kandinsky. We combined Elmer and Kandinsky. Below are some pictures of some of our art work. 

Pebble families!

As part of our learning all about me at the beginning of the term we were exploring families and how people have different family members. We then made our own pebble families (these are on display in our classroom if you want to see them!)

This term- Autumn 1: 

This term our topic is Amazing Africa! 

We have lots of exciting learning opportunities coming up so watch this space!