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Welcome to Starfish class page!

(Reception)

We are a kind and happy class who welcome you into our classroom to share our lovely learning.

These are the people who help us learn in Starfish

 

Mrs Eldred Class teacher	Mrs Rente Teaching Assistant

Miss Bondar Teaching Assistant (am)

 

If you need to contact Mrs Eldred, please email: starfish@maybury.surrey.sch.uk 

**Please click here for Starfish Home Learning**

 

Our PE day is on Friday.  Please come to school in your PE kit on a Friday.

 

Stay and Play is on every Monday morning, 8.35am to 8.55am 

 

 

March 2025

Colour Mixing

Starfish class have been exploring mixing colours together.

They discovered how to make orange, green and purple from red, blue and yellow.

They used their colours to paint pictures...

      

Book Week

We started Book week by inviting our mummies and daddies to join us for stories at story time.  We really enjoyed sharing our favourite stories with them.

     

The children loved coming to school dressed as their favourite book characters.  They enjoyed talking about their characters and saying which book they were from.

Sneezy, Happy and Doc from Snow White and the 7n Dwarves.

 

Smed from The Smeds and The Smoos - what a fabulous costume!

We really enjoyed our visit from 'Book Man' during Book Week.  We helped to defeat Book Man's rival 'No Imagination' by using the clues to work out the stories.  We were good at guessing the stories from the clues.  We had lots of fun.

In Starfish Class we love stories from lots of different authors.  We wrote about the character Goldilocks from one of our favourite story books, Goldilocks and the 3 Bears using our phonics to help us spell the words.

 

7 is made of...

The children in Starfish Class have enjoyed finding different ways to make 7.  They have used the STEM sentence '7 is made of....'  They have learnt to represent the different ways using their fingers and recording it in their own ways.

 

Blue Chameleon

 

 

We have been reading one of our protected characteristics book about a chameleon who had no friends and tried to find a new friend.  Chameleon thought he had to change to make a friend; he thought he had to look like his friends.  We talked about our similarities and differences and that we can be ourselves and not have to change to be like others to get friends.  We played a game where we had to make new friends.  The children have been telling their friends why they like them.

Signs of Spring

 

 

Starfish went on a spring walk to look for signs of spring.  The children took photos of the things they found.

We read the book, 'What Can You See in Spring?' before we went on our spring walk.  We learnt what a bud and blossom was and the names of some spring flowers such as daffodils, tulips, daisies and dandelions.  

We learnt about 'April showers' and guess what, as soon as we went out on our walk it started to rain.  We got caught in a shower without an umbrella!

Take a look at the photos the children took.

 

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The children looked carefully at the spring daffodils and had a go at drawing them using pastels. 

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They found out about the famous artist Vincent Van Gogh, and were sad that no one liked his lovely paintings when he was alive.  We looked at lots of his paintings and decided we really liked them and even tried to be artists like him.  We copied his 'Almond Tree' painting as we liked the blossom we saw on our spring walk.

We also planted our own wild flower garden, so the bees and butterflies can enjoy our garden in the summer.  We are going to look after them and remember to water them and give them lots of sun to help them grow.

Mother's Day

This week the children have been thinking about all the things their mummies do for them.
They were very excited to sing songs to their mummies (and daddies) and give them their cards and flowers.

 

 

We sang...

'I love my Mummy.  My special Mummy.

You make me happy when I am sad.

I want to tell you, how much I love you.

When I'm with you, I always feel glad.'

We also sang...

'I have a very special Mum and Mummy is her name o.

M U M M Y . M U M M Y.  M U M M Y.

And Mummy is her name o'

Thank you for coming and to the daddies too.
Happy Mother's Day!

The children also enjoyed writing about why they love their Mummies.

February 2025

Internet Safety Story time

Thank you to all the parents who joined us for our Internet Safety story time.

We have been talking about keeping safe when we are 'online' and enjoyed discussing what "Clicking Chicken' got up to on the computer.  

One night, Chick hops into the farmer's house and has a browse on his computer - CLICK - soon she's shopping online for the whole farm! But when she arranges to meet up with a friend she's made online, she discovers all is not as it seems...

We read our favourite Internet Safety story, Chicken Clicking.

We have also read the story 'Old Mac Donald had a Phone.  The animals all had phones on the farm and got no work done as they were too busy playing games, sending messages and taking selfies.  When the farmer took their phones away, the animals got grumpy and wouldn't do any work.  We discussed having rules when using our mum and dad's phones.

The Gingerbread Man Story

The children in Starfish have been enjoying reading the story of The Gingerbread Man.  They enjoyed joining in with the repeated words in the story and loved the ending when the fox eats the Gingerbread Man in one big gulp.

The children know the story really well and were able to draw imaginary maps of the journey the Gingerbread Man took.  

We baked our own Gingerbread Men, mixing the ingredients together, rolling out the dough, cutting the gingerbread man shapes, decorating them before baking and eating them.  Yummy!

We also made a giant Gingerbread Man.  That's when the trouble began...

Our giant Gingerbread Man, jumped out of the oven and ran away.  He has been spotted around school in different locations.

Jumping out of the oven and running away from us.

Reading tricky red words with Fred Frog.

Please keep your eye out for him and let Starfish know if you spot him.  We want to eat him!

Starfish made Lost posters using their phonic knowledge, so everyone at school could help us find our gingerbread man before the fox finds him and eats him.

*UPDATE

Things did not end well for the gingerbread man. The foxes found him and ate him up!

Luckily, Mrs Eldred cooked a spare one for us just in case this was to happen.

 

Oral Health

Starfish class have been exploring how to keep their teeth healthy.  They have learnt that to keep their teeth healthy they need to brush their teeth twice a day for 2 minutes and visit the dentist regularly.

The children found out facts about teeth....

 You need teeth to eat, talk, and smile.     

 

When you are 4 you should have 20 milk teeth, but these milk teeth will be replaced with adult teeth as we get older.

Starfish learnt that our teeth do not like sugar.  They sorted food into those that were good for teeth and those that were bad for teeth.

 

The children wrote posters reminding everyone of the importance of keeping your teeth healthy using their phonic knowledge.

 

January 2025

Happy New Year and welcome back to school.

P.E.

Starfish were very excited in their first PE lesson this term.  We got out the wall bars and practised climbing and balancing across different apparatus.  We also learnt how to jump off equipment safely by bending our knees and landing on our feet.  We are all really looking forward to next Friday when we will get the wall bars out again.

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Stay and Play Sessions

We had our first Stay and Play session of the new year in Starfish Class.  Lots of Mummies and Daddies came to play and help us with our learning.

Play and Stay sessions are every Monday from 8.35am to 8.55am.  It is a fantastic opportunity to see what your child is learning at school.  Please come along and join in with us whenever you can.

The season of Winter

Starfish have also been learning about the coldest season, winter.  They enjoyed exploring and investigating the ice that had formed overnight.  The children tried to melt the ice in their warm hands, but this made their hands cold.  Some of the children used the hammer to smash the ice.

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We talked about the clothing that we wear in winter to keep warm and packed 'Fred' some warm clothes in his suitcase to wear when it snows on his holiday.

We also talked about some misconceptions. For example, that the sun shines only in the summer when it is hot and that it always snows in winter in England.

We learnt that some animals hibernate in winter and some birds fly to the south, migrating away from the cold.  Other animals have to survive through the winter by keeping themselves warm.  We helped the birds by feeding them and leaving them water to drink.  We made bird feeders.

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The children have been comparing Woking in winter to the South Pole where the penguins live.  

Lightbox Trip

We walked into town to visit the Lightbox for a storytelling workshop.  We listened to the story of 'The Princess and the Frog.'  We joined in with the story language.  We then made a puppet of one of the characters using scraps of different materials.  We used scissors to cut and glue to join the materials together.

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December 2024

Christmas

There was much excitement in Starfish Class when Santa sent us one of his Christmas elves to check that we were being good and installed a ’Santa Cam’.  Every morning the elf is found somewhere in our classroom doing something different, and the children have enjoyed finding him. 

Starfish Class  have been comparing Christmas to other celebrations. They had fun decorating Christmas trees, playing Christmas games, wrapping presents and writing labels.  They even helped Santa to deliver presents to the correct houses and designed and wrote their own Christmas cards. 

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Starfish enjoyed learning different Christmas poems and performing them in front of all our school families.  The children were very brave, used their loud voices and entertained everyone with their different personalities.

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Church Visit

Starfish enjoyed a walk into Woking Town to visit Christchurch and find out all about Christmas.  The children looked for Christmas symbols in the church and acted out the Nativity story.

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Sleeping Beauty

We all had a great time at the Pantomime in town.  This year it was Sleeping Beauty.  We enjoyed booing bad characters and joining in with the pantomime language and silly songs which we found very funny!

A Visit from Santa

we had a very exciting day.  We had a special visitor to see us.  It was Santa with a big sack of presents for us. Thank you, Santa. Also, we had our Christmas lunch which was fun, we got to pull a cracker and have roast turkey.  The day finished with a game of pass the parcel.  Happy Christmas everyone!

The Life Space

Harold the giraffe came to school to teach us how we can keep healthy. He told us we need to eat healthy food, get lots of exercise (an hour a day) and lots of sleep (12 hours a night). Did you know we grow when we are asleep?

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Harold reminded us about the importance of brushing our teeth after breakfast and before we go to bed and washing our hands before eating and after going to the toilet.

 

November 2024

Stay and Play Sessions

Today we had our first Stay and Play session in Starfish Class.  Lots of Mummies and Daddies came to play and help us with our learning.

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Play and Stay sessions are every Monday from 8.35am to 8.55am.  It is a fantastic opportunity to see what your child is learning at school.  Please come along and join in with us whenever you can.

Little Street

Starfish had lots of fun on their first school trip to Little Street.  They got to dress up and pretend to be lots of different people within our community.  The children were so well-behaved, and we were so proud of them all.  The staff at Little Street also commented on how well-behaved our children were.  They were great ambassadors for our school.

Take a look at what we got up to...

We got to be the shopkeeper and go shopping for our tea.

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We also got to be the doctor and the patients.

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Some of us were builders.

    

Some of us dressed up and put on a show.

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Some of us chose to be farmers and look after the animals. 

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We enjoyed driving the cars around the road, and we got a drink.

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Life stages

We have been reading 'As we Grow' and have been exploring what happens as we get older.  The children have been naming and ordering the different life stages.

 

 

Some children ordered the dolls house people and noticed that the elderly people had grey hair and the man had gone bald and lost some of his hair.

 

 

Some children ordered the different life stages outside from baby, toddler, child, teenager, adult to elderly.  The children noticed that the elderly man had a walking stick to help him walk.  We talked about how when we were a baby we couldn't walk, then we learnt as a toddler,  got better and faster as we became a child, teenager and adult but then needed help as we got older again.

        

The children have also been comparing themselves now to when they were a baby.  Wow, we have learnt to do lots of things.  We can now walk, talk, run, jump, eat, drink from a cup, sleep in a bed, learn our sounds and use them to read words.  The list goes on and on....

 

Remembrance Day

The children in Starfish Class remembered the brave soldiers that fought and died in the war.  We talked about the poppies that people wear to remember the brave soldiers.  The children decided to make their own poppies to help them remember and say thank you.  We also observed 2 minutes silence to remember them.

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Autumn

Autumn Walk

Starfish went on a walk looking for signs of autumn.  We have learnt that in the autumn the weather gets cooler, and we start to need to wear a coat.  It can be quite a windy time of year too.  The leaves on the trees change colour and then fall to the ground.  

We learnt a poem about the leaves falling in autumn.

Leaves are falling, leaves are falling.

One fell on my nose.

Leaves are falling, leaves are falling.

One fell on my toes.

Leaves are falling, leaves are falling.

One fell on my head

Leaves are falling, leaves are falling.

Yellow, orange, red.

 

We read the story of Leaf Man and used the autumn leaves to make our own leaf people.

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October 2024

International week

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The week before half-term was international week.  The children enjoyed learning about the country, Belgium.  They particularly enjoyed cooking and tasting Belgium waffles and dressing up in the colours of the Belgium flag..​

    

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We found Belgium on a world map and the globe and discussed how we would travel to Belgium.

 

We found out that football is a popular sport in Belgium, and it is where The Smurfs came from.  In Belgium, people speak French, German and Dutch.

 

Belgium is famous for Belgium chocolate, Belgium chocolate and fries with mayonnaise - yummy!

 

The children in Starfish are really enjoying their phonics learning and are excited every morning to find out what sound they are learning each day.  The children have enjoyed practising their sounds as they play in our school role play being the teacher and engaging in the activities in the classroom..

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In maths, we have introduced children to subitising, an essential maths skill for developing composition of numbers.  The children use their 'fast eyes' to say the amount of objects/dots they see, they don't count and  also represent each amount on their fingers.

 Subitising and copying dice patterns.

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Have a go at home. 

"Fast eyes, don't count, say the amount!

Saying what you notice, 'I have 3 dinosaurs', 'I see 1 cherry on the cake', 'The car has 4 wheels, 2 here and 2 here'.

The children are really enjoying taking turns on our interactive whiteboard, where they are learning to play games and draw by clicking on icons to make things happen.

    

Practise i p n g o at home.  Click on the QR codes to watch videos with Fred the Frog.  The codes will expire in December.

Protected Characteristics

This month we have been reading the book 'You Choose'.  This is one of our 'Protected Characteristic' books which promotes children saying what they think and having a choice. 

We have also been talking about keeping safe when we are 'online' and enjoyed discussing what "clicking chicken' got up to on the computer.  

One night, Chick hops into the farmer's house and has a browse on his computer - CLICK - soon she's shopping online for the whole farm! But when she arranges to meet up with a friend she's made online, she discovers all is not as it seems...

More sounds to practise at home.  The link runs out in December 2024

September 2024

Welcome back and welcome to our new children and families.  The children in Starfish Class are settling in very well to life at school, exploring their new classroom and garden, learning our new routines, making new friends and are developing their listening skills, which are so important for learning.

The children have adapted to having lunch at school really well, trying new foods and trying to use their knives and forks.  I have never seen so many clean plates!

See photos below of our happy, settled children.

  

 

We have begun our phonics learning in Starfish Class.  Below are QR codes to some videos that will help to reinforce the sounds we have learnt this week.  These links will be valid until 31 Dec 2024.

Phonics learning

Clear pronunciation of sounds is extremely important when teaching phonics. This video will demonstrate how to say sounds clearly.  Click the link below.

How to pronounce sounds RWI

Here is a useful video for you, to help you know how to support your child at home with their first stages of reading.  Children need to learn many things such as their phonic sounds and being able to use 'Fred Talk' before bringing home a reading book from school.
Any questions about reading and reading books please ask me directly.
Thank you.
Mrs Eldred

Click on the link below to find out more about our phonics teaching at Maybury.  

A Parents Guide to Read Write Inc Phonics