YEAR R BLOG – WEEK COMMENCING 29/04/2024 – SUMMER 1

We started off our third weed with a very exciting ‘ticket to ride’ bike and scooter day! The children all bought in their bikes and scooters (and helmets) and were whizzing around the playground going on imaginary journeys. The children blew me away with their skills and it was amazing to see how confident they are all getting on their chosen wheels.

I told the children about the journey I had gone on over the weekend to London, and how I had to get the train and the underground train to get about. We spoke about where I went, what I saw and who I went with. The children then shared and wrote about what journey they had been on over the weekend, even if it was just popping to the shop for some milk.

Our topic talk this week has been exploring buses, what is a bus? What do they do? And why are they different to cars? The children came up with some fabulous answers such as …

• You need a ticket for the bus.
• The bus can have different numbers to tell you where you are going.
• They can have two levels.
• They have lots of seats.

We then made our very own bus in our outdoor area, made some tickets and set up a bus stop. We had a look at a bus timetable and talked about our own experiences of being on a bus.

We also looked at what different modes of transport are used around the world, and in particular for different terrain. We learnt what the word terrain means, and the children were able to recall this after we had spoken about it. We looked at snow, desert and rainforests and how people get around. We did some research, and learnt what it means to carry out research, and had a look at some pictures and videos. It was really cool to see how other people live, in different climates and environments.

This week we wrote our whole class story for Miss Stanyer’s journey. It is absolutely wonderful – I have copied and pasted below…

Once upon a time Miss Stanyer went on a journey to the zoo, on a waggly old bus, and she took Year R children with her. They gave the bus man a ticket, and they got on the bus. They saw stuff, like trees and flowers and birds, out of the window. They also saw police motorbikes out of the window. They even saw a castle with a queen inside. They got off the bus and went into the zoo. When they were going into the zoo they saw the zoo sign. They gave the person who works there money, and went in to see the animals. They saw 10 grizzly bears, 5 lions, 6 lemurs, 9 tigers, 8 monkeys, 12 meercats and 1 gorilla. They ate sandwiches for their lunch. They had cheese, ham, cucumber, mozzarella cheese, tomatoes and red Leicester cheese. Miss Stanyer bought a picnic blanket for everyone to sit on. They saw one last thing which was a parrot. The parrot was black, white and red. The parrot squawked at the children and Miss Stanyer, and said ‘Pretty Polly’. The parrot was called Polly, and she felt hungry. She didn’t have any food so one of the Year R children fed her some bird seeds. After seeing Polly parrot, Miss Stanyer and the Year R children got back on the waggly old bus, and went back to school.

Written by Year R children

We have also been exploring different job roles that people have in the travel and transport industry and we learnt a lot – we said about different types of drivers, race cars, taxi, lorry and bus. We spoke about train conductors, pilots, cabin crew, ferry captains, travel agents, mechanics and bin men! We then said what kind of job we would like to do if we had to work in transport.

In PSHE we talked about what it feels like to be lonely and what we would do if our friends in school and in Year R looked lonely, we said that we would try and make them smile by telling a funny joke, or pulling a funny face. We also said that we would ask them if they wanted to play with us. We did talk about safety and how it is ok to do those things to the people that we know, however we shouldn’t go over to people that we don’t know.

In maths we have been looking back at 2D shapes – and rotating them to fit into a template, are they still the same shape? Looking at differences and sorting them into different groups. We had great fun in our creative area, cutting and rotating different shapes to make pictures of animals.

We also had Steph come in on Friday afternoon to do some gardening with us – we will be going out in small groups over the last summer term and hopefully we will start to see some lovely vegetables and flowers grow.

Thank you Year R for another fantastic week – you are all amazing!

Have a great long weekend everyone, see you on Tuesday.

Miss S 😊