End of year 2022-2023 Class Blog 

Reception - Penguin Class 🐧 

Take a look at how we have bloomed this year!  We are so proud of our learning - we really have been the best that we can be! 

We celebrated the end of our topic with our families coming in to share the learning on ‘Bug Life’. Our families needed to complete missions and we all tended to our ‘Downstairs Woodland’ and did a bug hunt too! Scroll down to see our complete ‘Bug Life’ journey.

Our ‘Downstairs Woodland’ has quite literally BLOOMED! We have also grown alongside our crops! It has given us the opportunity to find out about camouflage and we understand that bugs use camouflage to disguise themselves from predators. We have understood that our crops need to be watered and picked so that they continue to grow big and strong. We really have blossomed in our ‘Downstairs Woodland’.

Sharing the learning with our families is so important to us. Our families have enjoyed being in the outdoors exploring for insects and bugs. Some families explored on the marsh and found some tadpoles too! We really do love to ‘show and tell’ and use our wonderful newly learnt vocabulary to tell our friends all about our finds. Take a look...

Forest school builds strength and it helps us work out problems. We became designers and have built our own swings! We have used our imagination and we built a fire and cooked some scrumptious soup!

Friendship is magic!

We understand that friends can have different qualities but we can still be friends. We have enjoyed our ‘Think Equal’ focus and we know how to be kind, caring and how to share.

We have been working on our throwing and catching skills...we have learnt the rainbow arc throw and the overarm throw. We have understood that we need hand eye co-ordination to help us catch accurately. We used a medley of targets to help us become accurate.

In maths we have been busy sharing and working on our number facts.  We have been adding more on and also working on our subtraction.  We have played many games to embed our learning. 

In literacy we have been busy learning all about instruction text - we have been able to make seed bombs, fairy cakes, fruit pizza’s and allowed our friends to boss us around with directions !

We have loved practising for sports day. We loved the egg and spoon race but it was tricky to balance - but we did it! The sprint race was fast! We loved the running and pumping our arms. Sports Day was so much fun because our grown ups came - and then it rained!! The races were so fast that we skidded on the floor to win!!

Mae hi’n amser Gymraeg! We have learnt about all the colours and we needed to mix to create different tones. We loved expressing our artistic flair in our ‘Downstairs Woodland’

We have loved harvesting our crops and we have made lettuce sandwiches - we were able to follow instructions to make the sandwich.  We then enjoyed a mini picnic! The lettuce tasted fresh and really, really tasty.  

We LOVE being in our ‘Upstairs Woodland’

The children have the right to play - forest school is a wonderful opportunity for our children to express themselves, develop thinking skills and get super strong!

Summer Term 1 2023. This half term we started our ‘Bug Life’ topic. We started our topic with a bug hunt and a mission to find out about one of our favourite mini beasts - the ladybird!

...We also discovered that we needed some help to attract bugs to our ‘Downstairs Woodland’ so we seeked the help of our parents - they gave us so many donations! Just look at how our garden has evolved...

In Literacy we have been focusing on Literature and allowing the children to use their imagination. We have had wonderful time using the story ‘Aaaarrgghh Spider’ By Lydia Monks - it has been awe inspiring as one of our learners is now no longer frightened of spiders!!!  Take a look at our twitter feed for a response from the author herself! @penclawdd 

During the half term our book has allowed us to become creative, dramatic, expressive. We have had debates and listened to each others point of view. We have been able to imagine what it might be like for a spider when they see a human - we even acted out these scenes and used improvisation. 

Along with this we dissected the text and we discussed why the author used such text in her book - was it so that we as the reader changed our voice? So that we stayed engaged? Was it because the author wanted us to shriek the text? Or whisper it?  It really allowed us to stay engaged. 

We have since made our own book on spiders - titled ‘Spider Village’ and we as authors varied how we printed our text, what our illustrations looked like and ensured that we get it ‘published’ so that we can share our love of reading with our families! 

We certainly are mathematicians in our Penguin class! We have enjoyed learning about 2D and 3D shapes - we can now identify properties of the shape and see 2D shapes on a 3D shape! We continue to build our knowledge on numbers - what do we see and what do we notice?

‘God Save the King!’ We had a wonderful day celebrating the coronation. The children were very curious about King Charles III and we were able to find out using questions and the internet more details. We really enjoyed being the soldiers and watching the practice made some of us want to be in the military when we are older!

CK’s donated 20 grow bags for us to have our mini allotment. WOW! Reception class went on a walk to thank them (and of course Mrs D treated us to an ice cream!). We also took a walk to ‘Gower Timber’ to see if they can help us...keep your eyes peeled next half term for this development!!

May has been local history month. We have looked at the cockle industry - then and now. We have been able to activate prior knowledge and build upon this. We knew that the cockles were once pulled in from the sands by a horse and cart - but we did not realise then it was mainly cockle women. Now we know that they use ‘trucks’ or quads and it is mainly cockle men. We went for a walk to look at the estuary to smell the cockles!  This week our mission is to use a rake and riddle and to sort the cockles into big and small - knowing that the small ones go back into the estuary to regenerate and grow. We really have had a special time learning about the industry then and now. We have invited Mr Swistun in to discuss his current time out on the sands and to tell us his family history of cockle life. We cannot wait to have this authentic experience! 

This half term we have extended our learning on the understanding of being healthy confident individuals. We have spent time discussing healthy and unhealthy foods, used our school park to ‘become strong’ and we continue to perfect our throwing and catching skills. We have worked on our techniques in ready ness for our sports day and we also use our own yard during playtime to become fit and healthy! We really understand that by doing all this it is allowing our bodies to grow big and strong. Once again being the best we can be!

Science and Technology has played a big part this half term. We are learning how to take care of living things - we need to water and tend to our plants and crops. We also are observing our tadpoles to see them transition into broga. We also have built a ‘bug hotel’ so that the animals have safe habitats to reside in. It really has been a busy half term - but we really do care!

This half term the children have been learning about Buddhism. The children have learnt that it is a peaceful and compassionate religion that teaches us how to be kind, happy and relaxed. During our time that we chatted the children had the opportunity to rest and relax, smoothly paint pebbles to relax and make swirling motions in the sand. The children understood that Buddhism is one of the 5th largest religions in the world. Buddhism also teaches truth - we understand that being truthful is a quality we can all share. The Buddha taught many important things - one was that we should be kind to all living beings - plants, animals and each other. It has been a lovely religion to learn about and links with many values that we all hold. 

We are SO thankful to our families for supporting all our activities this half term. We have had a wonderful Twmpath, a market stall and of course our Easter Bonnet Parade.

We are so proud to be the family to two fluffy chicks! We are thankful to Will’s petting farm who gave us the eggs. We incubated them and were so eggcited to see the baby chicks hatch. What a wonderful experience.

Reception class finished our topic of ‘Africa and Us’ with a trip to Longleat. We pretended we were in ‘real life Africa’ and watched the majestic lions groom each other, the tigers prowl and we even had two lunches!! What a wonderful way to finish a topic.

Easter Bunny

We are so lucky that the Easter Bunny popped by with some scrumptious looking Easter eggs. Diolch yn Fawr to Swn Y Gan for the donations of chocolate Easter eggs. So kind and we love our neighbours.

We have explored authentic African objects. We were able to relate these to what we have learnt and we looked at the materials and sounds that they make.

10 in the bed!! (Or 14 in the bed!!)

We had such fun in maths and we really enjoyed acting out the rhyme of ‘10 in the bed’. We were able to work out ‘less than’. It was such a hoot!

Play doh making! We understand that playdoh makes our hands really strong - so we made some ourselves. We filled to capacity, we poured, scooped and we got rather messy!! We added some pink and made it smell like peppermints for a full on sensory experience.

Roar like a lion!

Mr Biggar told us all about what the animals smelt like, what they ate and what they sounded like. He said that in the mornings he could hear the lions roar - can you roar like a lion!? We can! Roar like a lion...

Real life Africa

We LOVED welcoming one of our Dad’s who had been to Africa. Mr Biggar was able to tell us all about the animals he saw. He even showed us how tall the tallest giraffe was. We were able to ask a multitude of questions. X

Outdoor learning enables us to explore and wonder. We have transferred our den building skills to the outdoors and made a wonderful shelter for us to play house in!

Literature really does fire the imagination! We used our ‘Anna Hibiscus’ book to empathise with ‘Anna’ and her family. We paddled in the icy cold water and splashed our friends! We were able to re-tell the literature with much passion.

We are healthy individuals and we have enjoyed having our soft play area where we have perfected our jumps! We have some future Olympians in our mix!

Our after school club has been such a hoot - den building club! It has allowed us to collaborate with our friends and develop problem solving skills. Gwych!

We have loved our ‘Africa and Us’ topic - we have learnt so many facts.  The collective noun for zebras is a dazzle, a crash of rhinos and a bloat of hippos! We enjoyed learning about our own country and that of Africa. Take a look…

What a wonderful half term we have had. Memories made and a whole host of learning. The children have put together their favourite memories - take a look at our class blog…

We discussed safer internet day. We talked about keeping our passwords safe as we have really enjoyed using our HWB account. During safer internet day we discussed who can keep us safe. We could all name 5 people who can keep us safe. So important…

We always start the day in the right way! We understand that ribbon rhumba helps our heart and will help us to have strong arms and fingers for our handwriting!

In the Penguins class we started our spring term off with our new topic - ‘Africa and Us’. We already knew Africa was a hot country and that they had lions - but we wanted to find out more…These wonderful learners were able to tell Mrs R-M the collective noun names for the African animals. Gwych! 

We had a wonderful visit from Will’s Petting Farm. Will and Lily were able to tell us all about domestic animals that we can find right here in Wales. We adored the rabbits and we found out that Alpacas eat “absolutely anything!”  We went on to do our own research and found out fact about our favourite farm animals. MrsR-M and Mrs D hope to meet families at wills farm in the spring to see some new life. Diolch to Will and Lily. 

We made patterns and looked at fabric that the Africans wear to replicate their bright wardrobe. We printed onto fabric and we worked collaboratively with our friends to repeat the pattern. Take a look…

In Penguin class we are fit and healthy individuals and we have loved playing team games. We have worked with our friends to follow rules, take it in turns and have made sure we are being the best we can be during our PE. We have also enjoyed children’s mental health week and we made connections and made up a game to cement these values. 

Twmpath with our Yr 6 Buddies

Reception were enthralled with our Twmpath dance - preparation for our St David’s Day Celebrations. We enjoyed it so much it became a choice for Golden Time!

Literature fires the imagination. We have loved our literature sessions. We have looked at our special story about ‘Anna Hibiscus’. We discussed the laughing waves and Mrs D’s son was able to share photos about his trip to Africa with the ferocious waves!

We were challenged when we were looking at estimations and making reasonable predictions - we loved estimating how many gems we had. Can you make an estimate? It is tricky! (But such fun too!) 

Being outside and learning in our wonderful environment makes us happy and healthy. We have enjoyed feeding the birds in our ‘Downstairs Woodland’ and also conducting the RSPB birdwatch in our woodland. The children also took this home and we made a chart to see which bird was the most popular in our postcode. So far the magpie seems the most popular follows by the wood pigeon! 

We started our topic with setting up an African vets.

We had a wonderful Cinderella’s Ball

A shining star 🌟