Welcome to Icicles' Class!

    Teacher  (Key Worker) : Mrs Aitken             Teaching Assistant: Mrs Bell

     Children: 25 fabulous boys and girls who we are loving being on a learning journey with!

We are always busy in Icicles. We are loving learning to read and write. We have been exploring lots of facts about numbers. We have also had a visit by the Fire Brigade and Police, enjoyed a visit to the theatre and had a pantomime visit us in school!.  We have also followed the interests of the children which have included birthdays, telephones, making masks, mermaids, pirates and puppets.

We hope you enjoy looking at all of the fantastic things we have been up to and seeing how our learning progresses over the coming year.

Science Week

Miss Thompson started the week with a bang in her Science Week assembly. We loved watching the experiments she did and were buzzing about it for the rest of the day.

Miss Thompson set Reception the challenge of making a boat that would hold the most coins.

We worked in pairs to create our boats. We talked through to plan and design and then made them. 

We all hoped our boat would hold the most coins and then we tested them! 

Nieve-Alice and Ophelia's boat held the most coins - 182!

Their boat held the most coins in our class and in the whole of Reception so they won the overall challenge.

A Visit from the Harrowgate Hill Fairies

The fairies have left us a few letters this week, our favourite was when they left us some fairy eggs too! We had to use the magic liquid (vinegar- we had a bit of a smelly classroom!) to drop onto the eggs to find out what was inside. We had a few ideas - fairies, unicorns, chicks, dinosaurs to name a few! We kept using the pipettes to drop the magic liquid on to the eggs and it made lots of bubbles and even a hissing noise, some children thought maybe there were snakes inside! Slowly the eggs began to dissolve and we were thrilled to find an elf, a unicorn and Tinkerbell inside the eggs! Mrs Aitken explained that the magic liquid caused a chemical reaction with the egg ( bicarbonate of soda) and the hissing we could hear was a gas being released. One of the children asked Mrs Aitken to use the computer to find out the name of the gas, she did, and found out it is called carbon dioxide. We had a really good time exploring the eggs and watching the interesting science.

Shapes!

We have been exploring 2D and 3D shapes. learning their names and finding out their properties. We even made some 3D shapes ourselves!

Our Bird

We were very sad to find a bird sitting and not really moving in our outside area as we were coming into school this morning. We watched through the window to see if it was okay and Mrs Bell went to check on it once the parents had gone. She thought it looked unwell and that it had perhaps flown into the windows and stunned itself. The children decided to go to the library to see if they could find out what sort of bird it was. We took a photo on the I-Pad and took it with us to look at. We found out it was a female blackbird. It was still there when we got back so we went to ask Mrs Lunn in the office if she could telephone the RSPB to find out what to do. Sadly when we got back to class the bird had died. The children were all very sad. We had a look at the bird (from a distance and not touching it) and talked about how beautiful it was and looked at how sharp its beak and claws were. The children were very keen that another bird would not fly into the windows and so decided to make some warning items to stick on the windows. Over the next few days they drew lots of bird pictures and looked at some bird feathers that Mrs Bell brought into school from her budgie, chickens and a pheasant. 

Investigating Our World

In our play we often explore scientific concepts. We have enjoyed finding out about 'Floating and Sinking' in the water area. In our block play we explored forces - seeing how fast the cars went down the ramp and what we could to change their speed.

Crazy Hair for Comic Relief

We enjoyed coming into school on 'Comic Relief Day' with crazy hair! Some of us came with our hair done and others visited Mrs Bell's 'Crazy Hair Salon' for a hair makeover! We had lots of fun. We all thought it was funny having a teacher with unicorn hair!

World Book Day

We had great fun celebrating books today. We had an assembly where the teachers acted out the story of 'The Enormous Turnip', did shared reading with the Year 4s, had to 'Stop & Drop' when the noise sounded and read our books and finished off with a whole school parade. What an amazing day!

Don't we look fantastic in out costumes!

'Stop & Drop' Reading and 'Jump Start Jonny' in our costumes was fun too!

Snow!

TYRE PLAY       

We have been enjoying playing with tyres in our outside area.       

How does playing with tyres help us?

• Strong arm muscles are needed for writing – pushing and moving

        the tyres help this.

• Stamina is needed for writing – tyres aren’t always easy to manoeuvre and can develop this.
• Balance helps our core strength – this is needed when we have to sit still for longer periods, this will help us as we progress through school.
• We play lots of imaginative games with the tyres – this will help with story writing.
• We are inventive making games up, using problem solving and communication skills – all vital for our learning now and in the future.
• We develop persistence and resilience when things don’t go as planned – these skills will be vital to ensure we don’t give up when we have to learn new skills and apply them in our learning.
• We work together. We don’t always agree and sometimes have to sort out disagreements or change our ideas/opinions. This will help us with group activities and when working with others throughout school and beyond.

Cinderella Pantomime

We had a visit from a touring pantomime. They were excellent. The pantomime had lots of funny jokes and we laughed and laughed. They also sang songs, some of which we knew and joined in with - especially the 'Million Dreams' one, it's our favourite! The costumes were great and they were really good actors. All in all, a fabulous show!

Christmas!

We have been so busy over the past couple of weeks with lots of Christmas activities. We were amazing in our .Christmas Concert'.

We really enjoyed our visit to Theatre Hulaballoo to see'Luna'.

We made reindeer food, baubles, marshmallow sweeties and bird feeders to sell on our Christmas Fayre stall. We made just over £80 on our stall.

Lots of our family members came to the fayre and we loved looking around all the stalls with

them and spending all of our pennies!

We loved 'Christmas Jumper Day' which was on the same day as the fayre. We donated money to 'Save the Children'.

We had a fantastic Christmas party. We danced, played games, had a 'House Team Quiz' and ate lots of delicious party food provided by our parents (thank you mams and dads!!).

We have really enjoyed finding out about the ways in which we all celebrate Christmas at home and we have loved celebrating the start of the festive season with our Harrowgate Hill family. 

'Happy Christmas' from all of us!

               Our Christmas Concert

11th December 2018

What a busy day we have had! We have performed to parents and family members twice today and we did a cracking job! Our singing was amazing and the children who had lines to say did a brilliant job too. We had so many lovely comments from the audience saying how much they had enjoyed it. We all looked so cute in our reindeer outfits (even if they were a bit hot!) and Mrs Aitken was very proud of us.

Father Paul Visits

Father Paul came to tell us 'The Christmas Story'. He used figures, made by French nuns, to help him tell the story.

 The children all listened very well as Father Paul told the story and tried very hard to answer his questions.

Father Paul is the vicar at St Mark's Church and he is going to take the figures back to church for a very special Christmas Eve service. 

Thank you Father Paul for sharing your time with us at this very special and busy time of year.