Welcome to Mercury Class!

Mercury class is a mixed class of Nursery and Reception children.

Our teacher is Miss Skrzypczak. Mrs Arachchige and Mrs Nash are our teaching assistants. 

We are lucky to have our own outdoor learning area and enjoy playing outside come rain or shine! The ethos of our class is to develop happy, confident and independent learners who are willing to try their best and find success in their everyday learning. Every child is unique and we aim to tailor lessons to the individual needs of the children.

On this page you can find updates about our learning and any special adventures we have been on. We hope you enjoy reading about our learning journey!

Mercury Class Updates 2023.2024

Autumn Term

Week Commencing 4/9/23:
This week the children have been exploring their new classroom both inside and outside  
During creative week we have been reading In our Hands by Lucy Farfort. We were linking this story to ideas about what is ‘community’, the children then created some people in the community for our class display. We have also been really interested in the illustration especially the grey colours and the children were linking the colours to their emotions. 
Alongside all of this learning the children have been very busy in the continuous provision. 
We are so proud of how settled in the children have become and are already a part of the school family!

Week Commencing 11.09.23 

This week we have been talking about ourselves and our families. We discussed how people are all different, and that we need to respect and be kind to one another.

We also saw the phonics fairy arrive in class and she brought four phonic sounds for the children to learn. S A T and P. The phonics fairy said that all the children learnt the sounds very well😊

The children visited the school library and were excited to be able to take a book home for reading.

They also started learning letter formation for the phonic sounds we have started learning. 

This week has been a positive week and I am extremely proud of their progress😊

Week Commencing 18.09.23

What a fantastic week!🤓This week we have been learning about different feelings and we read a story written by Anna Llenas  “The Colour Monster”. The children enjoyed making faces out of paper plates and some puppets representing various emotions in our creative area🥰 
In phonics we have learnt the new sounds I,N,M and D and some tricky words. We have been practising our letter formation on the whiteboards and in our writing books. I am so proud of everyone in Mercury class🥰
The children have been busy in the continuous provision playing inside and outside the classroom. They enjoyed fine motor skills activities and our balance bikes 🥰🤓

Week Commencing 25.09.23
What a fantastic week🥰 This week we have been talking about Harvest Festival and we explored different vegetables including broccoli, carrots and potatoes. The children have been creative making corns and scarecrows out of paper.
We read the story “The Little Red Hen” which is a story of how wheat is harvested, ground into flour and used to make bread.
We also made Litte Red Hens out of paper plates.
The children have learnt new sounds in phonics and we practiced letter formation on the whiteboards and in their writing books.
The sounds we learnt this week were G, O, C and K.
In maths we talked about the composition of numbers to 5 and practiced number formation.
On Friday the children visited the school library to change their books and in the afternoon they had Forest School where they explored nature.
The children also enjoyed the new garage area in our outdoor provision.

Week Commencing 02.10.23
What an amazing week🥰This week we have been talking about Autumn. The children have been very creative painting pictures of trees, colouring paper leaves in Autumn colours and exploring natural resources like conkers, acorns and colourful leaves. We went for an Autumn walk and we talked about the seasonal changes. The children also enjoyed going on the trim trail and they played football. In phonics we have learnt new sounds CK, E,   U and R. We had fun dropping some real eggs after reading the book Egg Drop and colouring pictures of underpants😀In maths we talked about subitising and how we can represent numbers in different ways using fingers, numicon or blocks. We also practised number formation on the whiteboards. We had such a lovely week full of fun and busy learning🥰

Week Commencing 9.10.23

What a fantastic weekThis week we have been talking about kindness. The children have been very creative making beautiful cards for their friends and they painted colourful rainbows. We read different stories about being kind and we talked about what we can do to make someone feel better.

In phonics we have learnt new sounds H,B,F and L. The children practised letter formation on the whiteboards and in their writing books. We also formed some letters during messy playEveryone enjoyed playing with pasta, shaving foam or flour mixed with glitterIn maths we compared two groups of items and we learnt which group has less, fewer or more items. We also practised number bonds to 5. On Friday we went to the library to change our library books and in the afternoon we had forest school. The children found different creatures outside such as ladybirds, snails, slug and worms. We checked the fish in the pond. This week we also read some non fiction books about hygiene. We learnt why it is important to wash our hands and brush our teeth. We had such a great week full of fun and learning🥰

Week commencing 16/10/23

We have made it🙂Seven weeks of great learning and fun.I am so proud of all the children in Mercury. They have made so much progress since the beginning of September

This week we explored pumpkins and we read a story ”pumpkin soup”. The children were making pumpkin soup in our outdoor areaWe have been painting and colouring pictures of pumpkins

We talked about 5 senses and we read non fiction books to find out more about them.

In phonics we have learnt new sounds SS,J,V and W. We practised letter formation and we played with jjjjjjj jelly

In maths we talked about number bonds to 5

We started using interactive board in our classroom and the children enjoyed playing different maths and phonics games

We also went to the church this week and we celebrated harvest festival. Well done everyone

Week Commencing 30.10.23

Fantastic first week back!

This term we are going to learn about different celebrations. This week we have talked about bonfire night and fireworks safety The children painted fireworks using forks, paintbrushes and cardboard tubes.

In maths we talked about the composition of number and we used part-whole model to demonstrate the idea that numbers can be split up into parts. We also discussed and labelled different parts of human body. We looked at non fiction books about the human body.

In phonics we have learnt new sounds X,Y and Z. We practised letter formation on the whiteboards and we enjoyed making yetis out of playdough🙂

Week Commencing 6th November 2023

What a great week! We have been very busy this week!

We learnt about Remembrance Day and the children made beautiful poppies in our creative area. We also talked about Diwali. We made colourful rangoli patterns using stencils and sand.

In phonics we learnt two digraphs SH and CH and we practised blending. The children did some writing on the whiteboards and in their writing books. I am so proud of everyone in Mercury class

In maths we continued talking about composition of numbers and we learnt that numbers can be built out of blocks in different way.

This week we had visitors talking about their jobs and all the children sat nicely and listened carefully We were very excited to see the big fire engine outside our school and see the firemen in their uniforms.

On Thursday we went on the coach to London and we had lots of fun in KidZania

Well done everyone.

.

December 2023

In December we did lots of learning. We were so busy in the classroom completing lots of different activities. The children made beautiful gingerbread puppets and Santas out of cardboard tubes and coloured paper. We watched the film Grinch and we did some writing about him. The children enjoyed making Grinch out of various resources and coloured the pictures of him.

We learnt about Christmas Story and we played with a wooden nativity set in the classroom. We had a nativity performance and all the children did so well. 
In maths we talked about composition of numbers and we learnt about 2D shapes. We used lolly sticks to represent different shapes. 

January 2024 

In January we read different stories like Handa’s Suprise, Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, Meg and Mog, Goldilocks and  the Three Bears and Oliver’s vegetables. We learnt about different food such us guava, mango, avocado, honey, porridge, beetroot, spinach, cabbage or carrots. The children used their senses to explore the food. We also learnt about Chinese New Year and we made beautiful lanterns in the creative area. We used chopsticks to play with noodles and we learnt about traditional Chinese good luck envelopes. 
In maths we learnt about doubles and the children enjoyed the magic of painting one side of the paper, folding it and seeing the mirror image. They also talked about odd and even numbers. 
In RE we learnt about Christianity and Islam. We compared Churches with Mosques and we looked at the Bible and Quran.

February 2024

In February we read a story called Mr Wolf’s pancakes. In drawing club the children used their imagination and creativity to express their ideas about the story. The children made pancakes out of play-dough and tried to flip them over. We enjoyed eating pancakes with some honey. 
In maths we used ten frames to show compositions of different numbers. 

March 2024

After half term we learnt about growing. We read stories like The Growing Story, Jack and the Beanstalk and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We learnt about farm animals and baby farm animals. The children enjoyed making farms in the classroom using different resources in the construction area. 
We learnt about the life cycle of the butterfly and we watched the caterpillars changing into butterflies.

In maths we practised to write the numbers correctly and we did number bonds to 10. We also practised subtraction.

Week commencing 15th April
 

What a fantastic first week back full of fun and amazing learning. This week we have been talking about everyday heroes, people who are helping us everyday like doctors, police officers or firefighters. We read a story called Zog and the flying doctors written by Julia Donaldson. The children enjoyed playing in the new role play area where they pretended to be doctors and nurses. We also went outside to find different ingredients to make ”medicine” for the king. We used flowers, leaves, soil, twigs, grass and bugs to make ”medicine” in the mud kitchen. The children absolutely loved making their own mixtures. We have been watching the caterpillars growing and changing into butterflies for the last few weeks and it was magical to let them go this week🐛🦋

In maths we practised number bonds to 10 and we talked about halving. On Friday we had our first Mystery Reader😃 and we enjoyed listening to the stories. Thank you so much for coming❤️