FS2 - Reception - Mo Farah
Welcome to FS2 Mo Farah Class!
Farah Class 2021-22
In Farah Class our teacher is Miss Jesson and our teaching assistant is Mrs Vilums. Mrs Vilums will teach us on Wednesday mornings and Mrs Smith will teach us on Wednesday afternoons.
Miss Nicholls, Mrs Hartin, Miss Penford, Mrs Meakin, Mr Smith and Miss Holmes will help us in school each week too.
Meet our FS2 Team...
Useful Information...
Class Leaflet
Newsletters
Knowledge Mats
Link Letters
Information about Tapestry and the EYFS
Our topics this year will be:
Autumn Term – History Focus
Autumn 1: Who Am I? Who Are You? - All About Me
Autumn 2: Why Do We Celebrate? - Celebrations
Spring Term – Geography Focus
Spring 1: Who Lives In a Land Far, Far Away? – Traditional Tales
Spring 2: Do You Fly, Walk or Swim? – Lifecycles & Animals
Summer Term – Art Focus
Summer 1: What’s Above Me? What’s Below Me? – Growing
Summer 2: Do You Wish You Were Here? - Travel
Each term, you will receive a newsletter telling you more information about each topic as well as brand new Knowledge Mats! These provide you with ‘Subject Specific Vocabulary’ and ‘Sticky Knowledge’ that your child will be learning throughout the topic.
For more information about our topics please follow this link:
https://www.dalestorth.notts.sch.uk/our-dalestorth-curriculum/
What can you do to help your child in FS2?
- Let us know about any changes in circumstances at home that might impact on school. Talk to us if you have any worries or concerns – write us a note, give the school office a ring or email the school office.
- Read to them and read with them! Reading and retelling a story are important skills to develop in FS2 and the more often you can look at books together and hear your child read, the quicker they will become successful, independent readers. Please write in your child’s reading diary when they have read to you as they will be rewarded for this with a raffle ticket (for 3 or more reads at home) and a chance to win a book, each week.
- Please continue to help your child learn the sounds and keywords in their plastic packet. You could ask them to put them into sentences to help remember them, make another set and play matching pairs or look carefully at the shape of the letters/words to help them recognise them as you call each one out.
- Use the Oxford Owl website to help your child with their reading (see link below in useful websites section). Please enjoy this wonderful website – a free eBooks collection. Log in – top right and then our class login is: Username: dale farah Password: farah
- Count! Count in 1s, in 2s, in 5s and in 10s; up the stairs, steps along the street, apples into the bag, pennies in the purse etc.
- Use Purple Mash — Purple Mash has a vast array of resources that you and your child can access for free! Use the link below in useful websites section and enter your child’s username and login which is located in your child’s diary.
- Come and help us – we always welcome parents to help us…listen to readers, help with baking, sewing etc.
- Make sure that all of your child’s clothing is named. This is such a big help to us - it’s very hard for us to find the owner of a blue cardigan/jumper when it has no name.
- Keep inhalers up to date if your child needs one.
- Look out for headlice and keep long hair tied back.
- Make sure your child is rested and goes to bed at a sensible time.
- Check your child's book bag, their class page and the school website regularly for letters sent home and access to more learning links.
Class News...
White Post Farm Trip 🐄 🐑 🐐
We had a fantastic day at White Post Farm! We walked around the fields and fed some of the bigger animals such as cows and goats. We even went on a wallaby walk! Then we looked round the reptile house and the aviary. After lunch, we got to see some animals up close and give them a stroke. Our guide Freya talked to us about the rabbits, guinea pigs, snakes and even a millipede! Then we enjoyed some time on the play park and had a special ice cream treat before heading back to school 😋 Everybody was on their best behaviour and we all had a lovely day 😄
Queen’s Jubilee Celebrations 👑
To celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee we all came to school dressed in red, white & blue. We did a special jubilee dough disco with Shonette and designed our own crowns. Then we looked at some photos of Buckingham Palace and watched a video changing of the guard. We also watched a lovely animated video where the Queen’s hat blew away!
Later in the day we all had a brilliant time at our tea party. We joined the whole school on the KS2 playground for our cream tea and then played some games on the field. We all had lots of fun!
To finish off our celebrations for the Queen’s Jubilee, we came to school dressed in red & orange or in the style of the 1950s or 1960s. We learnt all about the toys that were invented in the 50s & 60s and listened to some music from those decades too. We also looked at an art style called pop art which was big in the 50s & 60s and created our own pop art using the Queen’s head!
To celebrate Easter, we showed off our Easter bonnet designs in a special assembly, made yummy chocolate Easter nests and even had our own Easter egg hunt! 🐣🐰👒
Spelling Bee Day 🐝
Today we all came to school dressed as bees or wearing yellow & black clothes to launch our new spelling scheme 'Spelling Shed'. We had a special assembly where we played some whole school spelling games, had lots of fun trying out the games on the Phonics Shed part of Spelling Shed on the iPads and then had a spelling hunt competition to end the day. Well done to our 2 winning teams who all won a bee pencil! We hope you have lots of fun practising your spelling at home too! 🐝
For Red Nose Day, we came to school in non-uniform and had crazy hair or wore red noses! We helped to raise lots of money for Comic Relief with our donations and cake sale. Well done everyone!
Book Week 📚
We have been very busy during our Book Week. We read the story 'Love is...' by Sarah Maycock, talked about what love means to us and created our own class book. We came up with some lovely ideas for what love is such as our family and friends, being kind, being happy, sharing, helping people and giving hugs 💕
We have had fun sharing lots of stories with our friends and enjoyed using our World Book Day vouchers to buy a book from our pop-up shop to take home with us!
We also had a very special visitor this week, when the author Fay Evans came into school to tell us how she decided as a child that she wanted to become an author, and how this developed into her writing her own books. She read one of her books to everyone in assembly called Fred the Fire-Sneezing Dragon. We had great fun joining in with some of the actions! 🐉 Afterwards, we had our special class time with Fay, she read another of her stories called Bob's Beard. She chose some children to help her tell the story. It was great fun and we all joined in with the actions again. Fay is a brilliant story teller and we all listened beautifully.
We finished our exciting week with a special dress-up day with the theme of expanded noun phrases. We had some great ideas for describing what we had come to school dressed as such as 'a bright, beautiful Red Riding Hood', 'a delicious, crunchy Gingerbread Man' and 'a kind, helpful postman'. We worked together to create a class poem based on our outfits and thought really hard about the adjectives we could use to describe them.
We all looked amazing in our outfits so a big thank you to all the grown-ups who helped us! Special congratulations also go to our FS2 winners of the whole school competition, Isla from Bolt Class & Connie from Farah Class, who both won a book and an Easter egg. Well done! 😊
Fairy Tale Day!
Look how amazing we look in our fairy tale costumes! We had such a lot of fun during Fairy Tale Day; baking gingerbread men, planting magic beans, styling Rapunzel's hair, building houses for the 3 little pigs, weaving a basket for Little Red Riding Hood and retelling the story of The Ugly Duckling in the water tray. We even enjoyed some special fairy tale treats at snack time. We have also loved listening to lots of fairy tales this week. I wonder which is your favourite?
We all had a great time at our Christmas Party. We played lots of party games, such as pass the parcel and had some party food. It was so much fun to dance to some Christmas songs and have fun together before the Christmas holidays!
We had a great time performing our nativity 'Away in a Manger'
Christmas at Southwell Minster
We all had a great time learning about Christmas at Southwell Minster. We took part in 4 activities during the morning; a walking trail around the minster where we found stars which pointed us towards part of the Christmas story, dressing up as people from the Christmas story to create our own tableau, using tissue paper to decorate our own angel and dancing like stars with ribbons & music. We then enjoyed a picnic lunch and some games in the great hall before returning to school. All the children were beautifully behaved and joined in enthusiastically with all the activities. Well done everyone!
Christmas fair 🎅🏻🎄
We’ve had a great time at our Christmas fair. We played lots of games including elephun, skittles, flapping fish and crocodile dentist, as well as taking part in a colouring competition. We also played lots of fair games such as lucky dip, guess how many snowballs in the snowman jar, spin the wheel, hook a duck and find Santa’s sleigh. Everyone had a brilliant time and lots of prizes were won! We all feel very Christmassy now 🎅🏻🎄
A special well done to our competition winners:
Find Santa’s sleigh - Florence
Snowballs in the snowman jar - Charlie
Colouring - Isla & Ava-Grace
Rockstar Day! 🎸
We all had a fantastic day dressed up as Rockstars! Have a look at our amazing costumes - a special well done to Oliver who won the vote for best dressed in our class during assembly too 😄👏 During the day, we had a look at the maths program Numbots. The games will help us to practise and develop our counting, subitising and number bond skills. Please click on the Numbots link in the Useful Websites section below to get started. Enjoy! 🎸
We all came to school dressed in our Pudsey outfits and with crazy hair to raise money for Children in Need...
Anti-Bullying Day
For anti-bullying day we were thinking about being kind to each other and came to school in odd socks! We looked at 2 apples…they both looked the same on the outside. We passed the first apple round and took turns to say bad things to it like “I'm not your friend, I don't like you, you don't look nice.” Then we took turns to talk to the other apple, this time we said only kind words to it like “you're special, I love you, you’re beautiful.”
We then cut the apples in half. The apple we’d been kind to was clear, fresh and juicy inside. The apple we’d said unkind words to was bruised and all mushy inside.
This was a valuable lesson to show the children, illustrating clearly what happens when you bully someone. The children could see inside the apple, the bruises, the mush and the broken bits. We explained to the children that this is what can happen inside every one of us when someone mistreats us with their words or actions. When people are bullied, especially children, they feel horrible inside, and sometimes don’t show or tell others how they are feeling. We talked about what a good friend is, and how to play nicely, always being a kind friend, using kind words, sharing, and making sure we have kind hands and not hurting anyone
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We made chocolate apples for bonfire night! 🔥 We talked about good hygiene and washed our hands before making the apples. We learnt about how the chocolate melts as it gets heated up then had a great time making the chocolate apples. Enjoy bonfire night 🎆
Walk to Tesco Bakery!
The children all had a brilliant time walking to our local Tesco Express store. They were all beautifully behaved throughout and made us really proud 🥰 Before our trip, we had looked at the route to Tesco on Google maps and talked about how to keep safe on the journey e.g. walking slowly, staying with our grownup & stopping at the roads for an adult to help us cross. When we got there we had a little look at some of the bread that was being sold, just like the cobs we made in school! Then Mrs Vilums helped us choose our bakery treat 😋 Next we waited patiently at the tills for our turn to pay and were very polite when given our change. We then walked back to school and enjoyed an extra special snack time! Well done everyone, what a lovely morning 😄
We loved joining KS1 for the Harvest Festival. We performed 'Big Red Combine Harvester' and listened to Pastor Simon tell us all about the importance of giving thanks for all we have at this time of year.
We have had a great first few days in school. Here we are exploring our new classroom and having fun with our new friends...
