Welcome to Butterfly Class

Welcome to Butterfly Class.  We are Reception children (4-5 years) and we are in a ‘pod’ with Bumblebee and Caterpillar class. There are 17 children in our class and our teacher is Mrs Wheatley.  She is supported by Mrs McCabe our higher level teaching assistant and teaching assistant, Miss Cox.  We like a challenge and to explore, practising our problem solving to develop our thinking skills both indoors and outdoors. We are starting phonics this term and are very excited by this. Look in our phonics and reading section to see what we will be doing. Find out about our curriculum and long-term plans in the Our Curriculum section of our website.

Home Learning   

We have a range of home learning. Our ‘Ten Town’ website has been busy with lots of Butterflies accessing these activities regularly at home! You can access Ten Town on this link Ten Town .All of the Butterflies have been working so hard with their Phonics. Over half term each child will have a set of resources to take home so that they can keep practising their phonics daily, as well as a reading book or discussion book. Don’t forget, you can log onto your  bug club log-in to access a range of reading books! Remember, any achievements from home can be written on a praise note to give to your teacher! For phonics sounds so far please click here Phonics sounds and actions so far .

Praise Notes

We are sure there are lots of achievements which happen at home which your teachers would love to know about too! These do not have to be academic, it can be about confidence, becoming more independent or being kind to family or friends! Send these into school with your child, and we will put them into their books and learning journeys.   You can download them from here  Praise notes from home pdf .

 

 Homework

Homework across the Early Years Foundation Stage consists of sharing a story book at home with a parent/carer, listening to stories and songs or looking at books independently. Your child with receive a new story book each week  and complete a simple book review alongside this to share their favourite parts from the book.

See below for academic year 2019-20

 

Summer 2019-20

School Closure due to COVID-19 pandemic

Due to the further guidance issued by Central Government, all schools across England are closed. With the fantastic support of our parents, our children have been able to consolidate their learning by completing activities sent home and set online. Please see below for photographs.

Spring 2

This half term we will be continuing to look at more stories in depth, creating story maps, retelling and rehearsing and making lots of predicitions! Our vocabulary is developing well from books we have read to support and influence our choice of words.

We have now learned all sounds we will learn in Buterfly Class. In Phonics we will be consilidating all of our new sounds within reading and writing activites.

We will also be continuing our PE sessions with help from Durham County Councils (Ready Sett Go!) Thrive Scheme! We have been continuing these sessions in school and are developing lots of physical skills. 

Reception had an amazing day exploring Hamsterley Forest. We had so much to see and do. The forest was just like the settings we look at in so many of our story books, including one of our favourites- The Gruffalo! We kept a look out for him all day and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves along the way 😍🌲🍄🍂🍁🌾☀️

Spring 1

This half term we are continue to focus and progress within Phonics, learning our letter names and the alphabet, as well as looking at digraphs and trigraphs. We will be looking at applying our Phonics within our play in meaningful and purposeful contexts. In Mathematics we have looked at data collection and using graphs to find out information and present information- such as our birthdays! We will also continue to look consolidate addition and subtraction through some of our favourite stories. Have a look at some of the things we have done this half term…

 

We will continue with Forest Friday and will also be visiting Hamsterly Forest to develop our experiences further and looking at other celebrations and cultures in more detail, such as Chinese New Year, Safer Internet Day and Valentines day.

 

We had a trip planned to Hamsterely Forest following reading our story ‘The Gruffalo’. However due to snow, we were unable to travel there safely. We were all very mature in dealing with our circumstances changing and enjoyed exploring in our own forest in the snow! Take a look at us working together, turntaking, building on our team work and resileience when building our snowmen!

Autumn 2

Take a look at what we have been up to this half term in Butterfly Class…

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We have really enjoyed following and pursuing our interests within Butterfly Class. One of our interests have been observing plants, planting our own cress and using scientific equipment. Have a look at an experiment we conducted during our choosing time! We talked about instructions, equipment, colour mixing and what knoweldge we have of plants so far to help us with our predictions. We even looked at a diagram to work out how to make different coloured water. We all did really well to read the infomation presented in the diagram we looked at!

 

We have had our parents/carers in school to join us for a Phonics lesson to support with consistency and supporting reading at home! We had a great time showing them how we are learning to read and write in school!

Butterfly Class have visited the Louisa Centre to participate in the PE Festival ‘The Samrtest Giant In Town’. We listened to the story and participated in different stations- each centred around different parts of the story! We had a great time and practised our physical skills. Thank you to the Year 10 students from North Durham Academy who supported us at each station.

Autumn 1

Please find the Butterfly Class newsletter for parents/carers here.

We enjoyed a great afternoon out at Believe & Be! We had great fun using our imagination in the wonderful areas, turn taking with the range of resources with our friends and role-playing in a range of different roles and occupations!

We held a Chemistry Stay & Play with our parents/carers who helped us with a range of Chemistry activities! We loved having a go, using trial and error and persevering throughout our Science morning! Take a look at what we got up to below.

We have all been so busy since starting school. We have settled in so well made new friends and worked hard to follow the new routines within Reception class. We have had visitors in school to speak to us about keeping ourselves healthy as well as a trip to the local shop to source some ingredients to make our ‘Ninjabread men’ (our faveourite story we have read so far this half term!) Take a look at what we have been doing since starting school…

See below for academic year 2018-19

Homework

Homework for the Early Years Foundation Stage has been updated to support home-school links further. Each week an adventure/experiences (usually from the weekend) is documented into heir homework ‘scrapbooks’ and is shared with the whole class. Click on the link for Reception Class homework.

Summer 2

We have had some pets to look after in Butterfly class this half term. We have been looking after two stick insects, a male and female. We have been researching facts, making observational drawings and replenishing their food (bramble) and water from our outdoor area. Take a look at how we got on…

This half term we have been very lucky to have a trip to Wallington. We enjoyed spending time with our friends and walking through the walled garden where we saw lots of wildlife!

Summer 1

This half term, following on from our Farm visit we have been looking closely at change over time and noticing similarities and differences between living things, materials and envirovments when change has occured. We have been very lucky to have visits from ducks and lambs and we have even been looking after some eggs in an incubator which eventually hatched into chicks! We were part of the whole 21 day process, tracking how they change within the egg each calendar day!

We have also had a very exciting visit from Durham & Darlington Fire and Rescue Service who taught us some very important life lessons about fire safety, emergencies and also showed us some of their specialist equpiment! We had a great morning and learned so much from the team. Thank you again!

Spring 2

We have been very excited this half term for our visit to a working farm. We had an an amazing time and learned so many new facts and information as John and Fiona showed us around their farm/home! We saw new lambs which were only one day old, met cows and sheep as well as looking closely at the farm machinery. We also learned all about how they grow barley, wheat and oats and what they turn into! Thank you to the country trust to helped to organise the trip and to the parent/carer helpers who supported us on our trip too.

Thursday 7th March was World Book Day! To celebrate, we held a sponsored reading hour where we dedicated a one hour slot to listening to stories, signing nursery rhymes and playing/singing ring games. We had a lovely morning and managed to read 5 stories, 3 songs along with 3 ring games. Take a look at our fabulous costumes below… a great effort to celebrate our  love of stories and reading. Well done Reception!

Spring 1

Our Forest Friday sessions have been so successful we decided to share these with our parents/carers during a ‘Stay & Play’! We had great fun showing our grown ups what Forest School is all about and what we get up to every Friday. Take a look below to see some pictures from our Forest Friday afternoon.

 

We welcomed snow this haf term which we loved to play in! We have been discussing different seasons and this has helped us in understanding the differences between the seasons since we have been at school. We are beginning to notices changes and signs of other seasons as the weather continues to change around us!

Autumn 2

To end our half-term we have been working so hard to put on a Nativity for our parents and carers. Our Nativity was ‘Shine Star Shine’. We worked hard at remembering our lines, songs and actions and has developed our self-confidence in such a positive way. Our grown-ups came to watch us and were all very proud of our efforts! Well done Butteflies.

This half-term we are contnuing with our Forest School work during ‘Forest Fun Fridays!’ We have worked hard and developed our shared space with Caterpillars & Bumblebees to create a range of areas we planned. This half term we focussed on ‘fires’- working hard to understand the dangers, risk mangement and safety around fires as well as understanding and respecting boundaries and expectations during Forest Schools. Our last session with fires was to toast marshmallows and make smores! We had such fun! Next term, we will be inviting our parents/carers to join us in Forest Schools duirng Stay & Play to show them how busy we have been and show off our new skills we have learned. 

Autumn 1

A fantastic experience at the local library. We got the bus to Consett and enjoyed a story from the librarian too in their wonderful children’s library. The children were very excited and asked if they could visit the library again with their grown ups! A great success thank you Consett library.

We have been counting down the days to the Macmillan Cancer cake sale. In preparation we made our own cakes which helped us a lot with following instructions and our counting. We prepared ingredients, took turns to mix, set a timer for them to cook and learnt about oven safety. We bought our own cakes from the stall then decorated the ones we made. A great Friday!

 

Reception are settling into their new classroom so well; getting used to new routines, getting to know each other and developing their independence- especially at the snack table.