Mrs Allen brought her friend, the Easter Bunny puppet to school with her. The children loved him and his funny songs and when he kept trying to trick Mrs Allen! They also thought he was very clever to know so many of their names. He also knew all about the mystery of the phantom poop on the playground and that the children had used their phonics skills to make posters to make sure it didn't happen again. 

It is the end of our Spring term and we wish all our families a very happy, restful Easter break. 

Don't forget it will be a special WOW week when we return where the children will be learning about festivals such as Holi, Eid and Easter. 

Many of the adults commented on the confidence and volume of our speakers, Mrs Johnstone and Mr Fordham both felt they were outstanding!

All the children sang the songs beautifully and were word perfect. They definitely helped everyone get in the festive mood and the hall was filled with happy, proud parents and teachers. 

We wish all of our families a very Merry Christmas and magic, memories and special moments in the New Year to come. 

This week we were very lucky to have some special visitors come and talk to us about their jobs and how their vehicles help them to help others. On Tuesday we had a police officer visit us. She told us all about her job and showed us lots of examples of the types of vehicles used by the police. She even told us how the police officers turn on the sirens which was very interesting!

On Wednesday we had some paramedics visit us. They told us all about how they help people and even taught us some simple First Aid as well as showing us how they teach grown ups to do CPR using the Annie doll. We also got to see a paramedic car up close as well as hear the siren and see the flashing lights.

Many of the children felt inspired by their visits and said they think they would like to be a paramedic or a police officer when they grow up. 

On Thursday we looked at adjectives and thought of all the different adjectives we could use to describe the people who help us - doctors, nurses, firefighters, teachers, builders, crossing patrol, refuse collectors etc. We even learnt some new words such as 'protective', 'focussed', 'considerate' and 'diligent'. 

What a great week of learning! Thank you to our special visitors for sharing their time with us. 

Our topic focus for Autumn term is 'Terrific Transport'. The children have begun to learn our focus text 'The Train Ride' by heart. They have practised retelling the story using a story map and have worked in pairs, small groups and as a whole class to retell the story.
We looked at the vocabulary in the story and picked out key words and phrases and explored what they meant. For example: a gaggle of geese, strutting, mare and foal. We then learnt about alternative words for example instead of 'strutting' you could choose 'hopping' or 'gliding' or 'sneaking'. A mare and a foal are a mother and baby horse. We learnt about names for other parent and baby animals.
We talked about describing words and looked at the section of the story that talks about a 'shiny red tractor'. We then looked at other transport example photos and thought of descriptions for them. For example: a long, green truck or a giant, pink airplane or a shiny, silver train.

In Maths we have explored shape, pattern, positional language, size and length. Children have taken on lots of challenges both inside and outside linked to their learning in Maths. They have been on shape hunts, made patterns using conkers, acorns and leaves, used teddies to apply our knowledge of positional language for example "Can you put the teddy behind the chair?", "Can you put the teddy underneath the table?", "Is teddy beside the car or over the car?". 

We hope your child has loved their first half-term as much as we have and we wish all our families a restful, fun filled half term. 

We welcomed mummies, nannies and aunties into school for a special afternoon tea and crafts session in honour of Mother's Day which is on Sunday 19th March. 

Children spent the morning making sandwiches for their special visitor (and themselves of course) and talking about who the special ladies are in each of our lives and why we love them.

In the afternoon lots of mummies, nannies and aunties joined us. We made (and ate!) iced biscuits, ate the sandwiches made by the children and drank some fruit squash. 

We also took part in craft activities - making a special wooden hanging ornament and creating a paper bowl hat. 

Everyone had a lovely time and we were so grateful to all those grown-ups who join us in making special memories. 

We wish all the mummies, nannies and carers a very special day on Sunday. 

As part of their Maths and Science learning the children had the opportunity to make pancakes themselves, following a recipe, counting out the correct quantity of each ingredient, mixing it together and then watching it change state once heated. Of course eating the pancakes afterwards was a very important (and yummy) part of the experience!

As part of their Literacy learning children wrote out and sequenced instructions on how to make pancakes, putting their ever growing Phonic skills to good use.

Yesterday Graham and Sue from Portals to the Past came to visit us. The children loved the dinosaur workshop and had a fabulous morning learning lots of facts about dinosaurs. Did you know that fossilised dinosaur poop is called coprolites? 

The dinosaur models were a huge hit and the children enjoyed being able to look closely at the details on each dinosaur. 

This week in Literacy the children are going to be using their phonic skills to write a simple sentence about something they learnt in the workshop.

The dinosaur eggs in our classroom are still there - we wonder if they might hatch soon? 

We were joined by lots of parents and grandparents for our Family Christmas Crafts. 

The children and their grown-ups worked hard making some truly fabulous Christmas wreaths which we are sure will look wonderful hanging in pride of place in their homes this festive season. 

Thank you to all those who joined us. We hope you had as much fun as we did!  

Our focus text is 'The Train Ride' and the children have been learning this story. The children have a story map and they are learning to retell the story off by heart. We take an in-depth look at our focus texts, looking for new words, discussing the characters and the setting and making predictions of what might come next. 

We also like to immerse the children in different experiences to help them deepen their understanding of the text. Some children have been on a train and some have not. One of our activities was to create an imaginary train ride in our classrooms where children got to 'look out of the window' and spot the different scenes. We then described what we could see and the children were introduced to the idea that some words make descriptions better and easier for the listener to understand. These words are called adjectives and children will learn more about them throughout the year and even start using them in their own writing some day!

We have been really proud of the children and how they have settled into their first half term at 'big school'. We are looking forward to next half term already!

What a great start our new Reception children have got off to. They have managed big adventures such as staying for lunch in our newly decorated dining hall, exploring the indoor and outdoor environment, taking part in Phonics and Maths lessons, getting to know new friends and new teachers AND staying at school all day. We are very proud of how they have all managed and we have loved getting to know them all. 

As the weeks move on there will be many new things that the children will be learning in school. One of them, which you can support with at home, is learning to write their name with correct letter formation. Many children when they first start writing their name will do so using capital letters. This is age appropriate for pre-school children. Now the children are in 'big school' we need to help them learn to write their name with a capital letter at the beginning and lower case letters for the rest. To support this we will be sending home laminated name cards for every child to practise. Our welcome and curriculum information letter has more information on this terms' topic which is 'Terrific Transport' 

Our learning behaviour for Autumn term is 'Independence'. The children have been read the story of the Wolf who learnt how important it is to be independent. Over the coming weeks we will be learning how the children can be independent and the ways in which this independence helps them to develop as learners. Please do refer to independence with your children and encourage them to try things themselves such as getting dressed, putting their toys away or helping prepare their breakfast or lunch. You may find this new skill will become a helpful addition to your homes. 

Our door is always open so do pop and see us for a chat before or after school if you have any questions for us 

Mrs Johnstone, Miss Ludlow, Ms Williams and team

All the children agreed that this was not acceptable. They decided we needed to catch the dinosaur responsible and teach them some toileting etiquette as, clearly, they aren't aware that the rules have changed since the Jurassic era.

To help track down the naughty dinosaur, the children were all very eager to create a wanted poster offering some very generous rewards! Just look at all our wonderful writing!

We hope to find the culprit soon and will get working on a set of toilet rules to help them avoid this unfortunate mistake in the future. In the meantime the children are grateful that the teachers sorting the problem pair of rubber gloves and some disinfectant - phew!

Our lovely green fingered Mrs Allen helped the children to plant the tree and water it. She also made a beautiful plaque to accompany the tree and commemorate the occasion. 

The tree will grow for many years to come and be a source of enjoyment for generations of Stopsley children. 

Today the children were very excited to have the chance to act out our alternative version on an actual dinosaur hunt around the school. 

We had to tiptoe through the corridor, jump through the playground, read through the library before finally coming to the jungle cloakroom at the end of the corridor. When we got there the children were amazed to find a dinosaur hiding! 

Luckily it was friendly and even gave Mrs Johnstone's hand a gentle shake. 

What an adventure! We can't wait to write about it. We hope that cheeky dinosaur doesn't get up to any mischief over the coming weeks... Better watch this space! 

This is an important part of their development in the area of learning 'Understanding the World' and lays the foundations for future national curriculum subjects like History, Geography and RE in the future. 

Giving children an opportunity to learn through immersive experiences is an important way of making the new knowledge 'stick'. Creating memorable moments that mean that long after the activity is over, the learning remains.

Our WOW weeks are all about creating 'sticking learning' moments. 

Children this week have learnt about the Hindu festival of Holi and how each of the coloured powder paints that are thrown represent something - green for nature, yellow for knowledge. To help make the learning memorable children took part in a colour run.

They have learnt about Easter and how this is an important religious celebration for Christians and why. To make the learning memorable they took part in an Easter egg hunt and learnt about the origins of the Easter bunny tradition. 

Children also learnt about Shrove Tuesday, St. Patrick's Day and Eid. 

We wish all of our families a wonderful and restful Easter break. Remember you can share any special memories you make with us via Tapestry.

See you in 2 weeks!

Mrs Johntone, Ms Williams, Miss Ludlow and team 

Last week we were investigating length. The children went on a walk around the school grounds and field and collected sticks. In their pairs they then compared the length of their sticks, placing them in order from longest to shortest. 

Some children were even able to represent what they knew pictorially - great job everyone! 

Laura-Joy read her book 'The Worry-o-saur' to the children and answered some questions they asked. One of our favourite questions the Reception children asked was "Why did you write the book?" 

Back in class we had some great discussions about times the children have felt worried and the strategies we can all use to help if we have a worry. 

We also looked at other books linked to emotions such as 'Ruby's worry', 'The huge bag of worries', 'The koala that could' and 'How big are your worries little bear'. All these books are great tools for helping children understand that the feeling of worry or uncertainty is normal and something everyone feels from time to time. They also help children understand how to manage this feeling and feel better. If your child is a little worrier, we would definitely recommend purchasing Laura-joy's book, if you haven't already, or one of the other books listed above. 

If you have any concerns about your child and anxiety please do come and speak to one of the team and we can offer support and strategies to help. 

To start our topic we have shared a variety of non-fiction books with the children about animals. The children then talked about their favourite animals and why they liked them. After this the children had the opportunity to draw their favourite animal and write about it. 

We were really impressed with how hard the children tried and how well they did. Children were using their new phonic skills to write the sounds they heard in words and some were using finger spaces and full stops without the need for a reminder - fabulous! 

We are very proud of their efforts and we are sure their grown-ups at home will be too.

Please check out our social media platforms for some more examples of the children's writing. Don't forget to check your child's Tapestry account to see more of what they get up to at school 

The children have had their first ever term in school and they have all come so far and learnt so much. 

We would like to encourage the children and their families to take a few minutes to look back on the last few months and reflect on all the ways they have developed. From learning to write their name, to learning phonics, to beginning to write words and sentences, to learning how numbers can be combined and shared to make other numbers, to extending their vocabulary, to making friends and growing in confidence. Each and every one of our children deserves a moment of appreciation and we are proud of all of them. 

We had a lovely end to our first term together, culminating with our Christmas Carols concert and a party afternoon.

We wish all our families a wonderful and very merry Christmas. We look forward to seeing you all in 2022! 

Children were asked to come into school dressed either as a superhero or an everyday hero. During the week we will be exploring the differences and similarities between the superheroes we might read about in books and comics or watch in movies and cartoons, and the everyday heroes who keep us healthy when or keep our streets clean or keep us safe. 

Children will also be thinking about what makes them 'super'. What is unique and special about you? They will be learning new vocabulary and structuring verbal sentences using connectives such as because. 

We will also have our first try at writing for a purpose using the phonemes and letter formation skills we have learnt so far in Phonics. 

We are in the process of setting up parent accounts for the children's online learning journals. 

Please keep an eye on your inbox and junk folders for an email from Tapestry with details on how to activate your account. If you have not yet filled in your contact information sheet to share your email with us, please do so as we need this information to set up your parent account. 

A letter explaining the system in more detail will be sent home with your child next week. 

Any questions please feel free to pop in and have a chat  

Mrs Johnstone 

Our Stay and Play sessions went really well and were a wonderful opportunity for us to spend some time getting to know the children in smaller groups. 

This week the children have begun their first full days, and we are so very proud of how well they are settling. It is clear to us already that we have a fantastic group of children, and we are already looking forward to all the learning, exploring and adventures we will share together through the year. 

The children have been making good use of the environment. We have opportunities for learning and discovery across our provision, both inside and outside. It has been great to see the children already managing to navigate their way around, explore the environment and show us what they can do. We are already discovering more about the children's personal interests, and we will use this knowledge to shape our curriculum and experiences. 

We have been learning about our Golden Rules here at Stopsley, and we hope that by the end of the week the children will be able to remember many of them and share them with those at home. 

A big thank you to all the parents who welcomed us into their homes for home visits. These visits are such an important and valuable part of our transition process and we consider it a privilege to be able to meet our families in this way. 

We also want to thank parents for making sure their children are so smart in their new uniform. The children look lovely! If you do need any help in terms of uniform do ask a member of the team, we will be happy to help. 

Parents will be pleased to hear that lunches are going well and the children have taken the full day in their stride. If you do have any concerns feel free to chat to us at the beginning or end of the day, there is always a staff member on the gate to speak to you. After school, we may ask you to wait a moment or two while we make sure children get safely to their adult. 

We wish everyone a fantastic week! 

They were all consummate professionals, even at such a tender age, and worked super hard to show off their talents. 

The children learnt a poem all about their first year in school, penned by Mrs Johnstone. They then learnt 3 songs which each demonstrated something from this year and the preparation for starting Year 1 and the next part of their school story. 

All the staff would like to publicly say how incredibly proud of the children were are. Each and every one of them has been an absolute joy and sharing their first year of school with them has been a privilege. Good luck in Year 1 children - reach for the stars!

They took part in games and races including target throw, football dribble, skipping, obstacle course and, the favourite of many, water bucket challenge! 

Everyone did their best and made us proud. Well done Reception!

We had created our own version of the story 'We're going on a bear hunt' and changed it into 'We're going on a dinosaur hunt'. Once we had written our story we decided to act it out around school, following the different parts we had put in our story.

We went through the big, empty playground - run and skip, run and skip. 

We went through the long, quiet corridor - tiptoe, tiptoe, tiptoe.

Eventually we came to the jungle cloakroom and you won't believe what we saw! 

Two big, beady eyes. One long, squishy tail. Four strong legs. It...was...a...dinosaur!!!

What an exciting thing to happen! The children were delighted to find a dinosaur and the end of their dinosaur hunt, and we decided that we would make our very own book. The children in each class wrote a section of our story. We then laminated them and turned them in a book which we put into our book corners. Being authors if even more fun than finding dinosaurs. 

As you will be aware from Mr Fordham's email before the end of the half term, we are making some changes to our Distance Learning offer. This is in response to parent feedback.

This includes some changes to the timetable for Reception. This can be found on the website and via Google classroom. I have also uploading a copy to Tapestry, in the memo function.

Every child has previously been given their google email and password. You will need to use these to log in. Each child has been sent an invitation to join their individual class and a whole Reception classroom. It is important that both these invitations are accepted before next Monday (22nd) in order to receive the links and invitations needed to join the google Class Catch ups or the Live lessons.

We will now be holding 3 'Class Catch ups' each week, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Your child's teacher will send a link via their individual google classroom (Squirrels, Badgers, Rabbits). This will be a short live session for your child, their class mates and their teacher.

We will also be holding two live lessons each week, on Tuesday and Thursday at 9am. These Live lessons will be Literacy based. These Live lessons will be for the whole year group. Invitations will be sent via the Reception google classroom.

For the first 2 weeks of term we will be putting any work/resources onto both the website (as previously) and google classroom.

Submitting work/evidence:
As we have Tapestry up and running and working effectively we will continue to use this as the way parents submit their child's work/evidence of learning. Please DO NOT submit via google classroom.

If you have any questions, you can still contact us via Tapestry or the help email.

Kind regards
Mrs Johnstone and the Early Years team

We hope you have all had a great week. Thank you for all the evidence of fabulous learning we have been receiving either via the help email, uploaded onto the children's personal Tapestry online learning journals or by returning hard copy packs of work we have created for you. It really does help us so much to see how the children are getting on and know what we need to plan for them next. Keep up the good work and keep it coming!

If you are struggling with printing at home, most of our activities can be easily replicated using paper and pencil. Alternatively, give us a call via the main school office or email us at yearRhelp@stopsley.primaryluton.co.uk and we will be happy to arrange a hard copy pack for you. We do ask that if you request a hard copy pack for your child, you do ensure you come to the front office and collect it. 

This week is Children's Mental Health week. Place2Be launched Children's Mental Health Week in 2015 to shine a spotlight on the importance of children and young people's mental health. The theme of this year’s Children’s Mental Health Week is Express Yourself. Expressing yourself is about finding ways to share feelings, thoughts, or ideas, through creativity. It is about finding a way to show who you are, and how you see the world, that can help you feel good about yourself.

The world our children live in at the moment is unusual. All families are experiencing a rollercoaster of emotions as they do their best to manage trying to maintain a normal life in extraordinary circumstances. To support you with this, I have put together some resources which I hope may be helpful to anyone who needs them. They can be found via Tapestry, under the Memo funtion.

Please also remember that we are here for all. If you need support, advice, a listening ear to let off steam to or perhaps your child is struggling and would really benefit from a one on one chat with their teacher, do not hesitate to email or call the school office. One of us will get back to you.

We wish you all well and we are so proud of how the all the children, both those learning from home and in our Rainbow bubble, are managing. We see how hard they are working and we are super proud of each and every one of them. 

Have a lovely weekend 

Mrs Johnstone and the Early Years team

Thank you to everyone who has been uploading children's work to their Tapestry online learning journal or emailing into our yearRhelp address. It helps the teachers to know how children are getting on with the work we are setting and to know what we need to plan for next. 

Last Friday we had 23 families join us for our virtual year group meeting. It was so lovely to see so many smiling faces and to hear all their news. We are hoping for even more people this week. 

This week we will be holding a 'Shout Out' section where will do a well done call out to every child who has shared some work from home with us from the week. 

There will also be 'Show and Tell' section, as last week, where children can show us something or tell us about something that they have been doing during the week.

We will finish the session with a story

We are looking forward to seeing lots of you on Friday at 1:30pm. 

See you then!

Squirrels, Rabbits and Badgers spent the day creating paper chains, photo frame baubles and Rudolph's, wreaths, tree decorations and much more!

We all had a wonderful day and we are using some of our creations to decorate our classrooms. 

We also creating a collaborative Christmas tree. Every child, from Reception and Nursery, had a chance to add to it throughout the day and it really did look rather splendid when they had finished. We also created some cards to be shared with local care homes, after they have been quarantined. 

Everyone had a wonderful day and we were impressed with their artistic flair 

We currently have 28 parents actively using the system and it has been great to see some examples of learning the children have been doing at home adding to children's personal journeys. Feedback for Tapestry has been positive over the past few years with parents telling us it is enormously helpful to see snapshots of what their child is doing in school and how they are getting on. 

If you have not yet activated your account, please check your junk mail folders as the email containing the link may have gone there. I have re-sent invitations for anyone who might need a new one because the old one has expired. 

If you would like some help or have any questions please speak to me either before or after school or email the school office and I will be more than happy to help 

Mrs Johnstone

Last week we had a special dress up day. Children were asked to come dressed up as someone they thought of as a hero. We had a wonderful selection of superheroes such as Batman and Batgirl, Superman and Supergirl. We also had a variety of every day heroes such as nurses, midwifes, doctors, fire fighters, police officers and teachers. Many of the children who came dressed as every day heroes were inspired by family members or parents who do those jobs every day. 

The children were asked questions around heroes. Do heroes have to have special powers? Do heroes have to wear a cape? What makes a person a hero? We had some great writing outcomes and children were inspired and motivated to write about the person they were dressed up. 

This week we have built further on our topic and begun to learn our focus story 'The super kiss that missed' This is a journey story and to help the children understand this type of story we went on a journey around school where we kept finding things that had mysteriously gone wrong. How did the recycling bin end up upside down? How did the felt tips get on the floor? The children then got their first chance to be authors by working together to create our own journey story about our walk. They are now proudly displayed on our class washing lines. 

Next week we are going to be exploring vocabulary and looking at how describing words, which we will learn are called adjectives, help us to understand a story and to imagine it in our heads. 

The children explored capacity, cause and effect, sinking and floating, texture and colour mixing through using water, food colouring, spooky sequins, natural materials, cauldrons, pipettes and potion bottles. We also explored rhyming as we created witches potions. Most importantly it was lots of fun and helped us further cement our new friendships. 

Children also used their senses to explore pumpkins. This was a great opportunity to build fine motor skills and the muscle in their hands. These are very important as they will help them develop the strength and stamina for writing in the future. Cutting a pumpkin can be a hard work which meant children sometimes had to work together in order to help each other. This is demonstrating another of our Learning Behaviours, Collaboration. We will learn more about this Learning Behaviour next term. 

We also did some taste testing. The children had seen what an uncooked pumpkin looked like, felt like and smelt like. We wanted to give them an opportunity to see what it tasted like so we brought in some pumpkin soup for them to try. We were really impressed with the children's willingness to have a little taste and we were able to use the opportunity to develop children's descriptive language as they described what it tasted like and told us what they liked or disliked about it.

Another great opportunity for team work was a large scale junk model haunted house. Children worked on it all week, adding different parts, using different materials to create different effects and thinking about how they could make it even better. Lots of social, communication, design and evaluation skills were happening and the end result was very impressive.

We hope everyone has had a wonderful half term. We look forward to welcoming you all back to school. 

All the grown ups in Squirrels, Rabbits and Badgers have been really pleased with how hard the children are trying especially when trying to form the new letters we have learnt during their child initiated learning time. This demonstrates our learning behaviour of 'Independence' beautifully and makes all the teachers very proud! 

The children have been enjoying exploring their letter formation in lots of different ways. They have used large vertical surfaces such as our 'Doodle Board' and chalk board doors, they have used our outdoor chalk table cable reel, they have used small whiteboards, painting easels and the mark making areas in each classroom. 

Keep up the good work everyone and remember your lead ins! Children will soon be bringing home individual name cards, as discussed at Parents Evening, to practice their pre-cursive letter formation with their own name.

Our focus in our first weeks has been on settling the children in and on making sure the Prime Areas of Learning (Communication and Language, Personal, Social and Emotional and Physical development) are secure in all the children as these are vital foundations on which future learning in other areas of learning will be built.  

We have also been talking to children about the Learning Behaviour of Independence. This a key part of our first term together as our provision offers many opportunities for children to make independent choices about how they explore their learning. They are also learning to be independent with their belongings, hanging up their own coat on their own peg, making sure their book bag goes in their tray and remembering to put their jumper or cardigan in a safe place when they take it off (or it might not be where they left it when they return) They are also learning about looking after our resources by tidying away after they have finished. This also links to our Golden Rules. 

In the coming weeks we will be learning our focus text 'Supertato' and exploring what makes a person 'unique' and the ways in which we are all 'super'. After all, not all superheroes wear capes!