The children and staff at Garden Village Primary Academy have so many wonderful learning experiences to share with you. 

We would like to say a special thank you to our parents and extended families for your support this term. It has been a busy term but without the support from home, many of the activities would not have been possible.

Attendance has remained at 94.6%. Parental support with attendance and punctuality remains strong; thank you. 

Reception Maple this Spring Term have made great academic progress in their learning; they have also grown in confidence and independence.

We are so proud of you all!

Drawing Club and Literacy

In Reception, the children have been working hard to write more independently, using their finger spacers to help them leave clear gaps between words. They are also confidently applying their growing phonics knowledge, listening carefully to the sounds they can hear and using them to build and write simple words on their own. We're also continuing to develop and strengthen our letter formation.

Last week in Drawing Club we read ‘Little Red Riding Hood’. Using the vocabulary ‘flee’, the children drew Little Red Riding Hood, Grandma’s house, and an invention to help Red Riding Hood flee faster from the wolf. The children came up with some amazing ideas, including using roller skates!

This week in Drawing Club we watched the animation Bananaman. Using the vocabulary ‘transform’, the children drew Banamana, Dr Gloom’s secret lair, and a hiding place for Bananaman’s bananas. 

Mathematics

In Reception, the children have been learning all about 3D shapes, including the sphere, cube, cuboid, cone and cylinder. They enjoyed exploring these shapes through hands-on activities, building, sorting and spotting them in everyday objects around the classroom. It’s been lovely to see their confidence grow as they begin to name the shapes and talk about their different features. Reception have enjoyed activities such as building with the shapes to create buildings such as the Eiffel Tower and Sydney Opera House. We have also been practicing our spatial reasoning skills, and we’ve timed ourselves to see how quickly we can fill the Numicon boards.

Phonics

In phonics, the children continue to develop their phonic code and are reading their books with such accuracy and increasing fluency. 

When they write, the children know what the letters look like but Miss Matthews and Mrs Guild have become super strict with the letter formation. In their new handwriting books and on a whiteboard, we are practising writing letters accurately and with fluency every day.

Design and Technology

In Design and Technology, we have continued with our unit on junk modelling – thank you for all your generous donations. Reception have put all the skills they have been developing into practice by creating their own unique junk model plan either on their own or with a friend. These plans include which tools, materials and components they will need to make their model. Using their plans, they have started to build their models. We have also learnt about how to evaluate a model. Using questions such as ‘what do you like about the model?’ and ‘were there any difficult parts that you would do differently next time?’, we helped Miss Matthews to evaluate her own junk model.

Music

We’ve had lots of fun with our music learning! The children have been exploring how to use musical instruments to represent different actions and movements. They had great fun choosing sounds to match sounds and actions from the Michael Rosen story ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’. We have thought about which instrument would be suited to which action or sound, and we have played them in different ways, such as quietly, loudly, quickly and slowly. We have also started to think about writing, composing, practising, and performing our own musical story based on our morning routines. Alongside the instruments, we have used our voices to add sounds to different parts of our routine, such as brushing our teeth. Reception also enjoyed exploring body percussion to some of their favourite songs. Miss Matthews and Mrs Guild particularly enjoyed body percussion to Cotton Eye Joe! We performed this to Pip at snack time – she was very impressed!

Outdoor Learning

Reception have been making the most of the sunshine this week, enjoying plenty of outdoor play. We’ve enjoyed playing with water in the mud kitchen, as well as drawing around each other on the floor – we’ve even drawn around Miss Matthews!

Mother's Day

Reception Maple hosted a wonderful assembly for their mummies and grandparents. They sang a song, recorded a message, shared a cupcake, coaster, drink and flower with their guests, but the best gift for everyone was the self-portraits!

Thank you mums and grandmas/nannies for coming. 

Literacy Tree

In Literacy, the children have been diving into the wonderful story The Odd Egg. They have been experimenting with bossy verbs, using them to write clear command sentences that give instructions to the birds about how to care for their eggs – and even to the duck about how to look after his unusual new baby crocodile! We have also explored the prefix ‘un-’ and learnt how it changes the meaning of words. Alongside this, the children have been practising writing exclamation sentences, beginning with the word ‘What’. What a clever bunch we are!

Maths

In Maths, we have been exploring measures! The children enjoyed measuring length and height using non-standard units such as cubes, counters and counting bears. We even took our learning outdoors to measure using natural objects like sticks and log slices. After that, we moved on to working with centimetres, learning how to measure accurately using a ruler. As well as length and height, the children have been learning all about mass. Using balance scales, they compared objects to find out which were heavier or lighter and worked hard to balance the scales to measure mass carefully.

Phonics

The Children are continually blowing us away with their phonetical knowledge and their reading fluency. The children are now starting to apply this to their writing too. 

Science

In Science, we have been investigating seasonal changes and spotting the many signs of spring. The children created beautiful collaged spring trees and wrote about the different things we see during this season – flowers beginning to bloom, lighter evenings, new leaves growing and much more. They have shown great curiosity and observational skills as they explored the natural world around them.

History

In history, the children have continued exploring toys from the past. We sorted toys into ‘past’ and ‘present’ and discussed the similarities and differences between them. The children noticed how materials have changed over time and how many modern toys are now battery-powered or electronic, unlike many toys from the past. They enjoyed comparing how toys look and work, and were fascinated by how much they have changed!

Mother's Day

Mother's Day - A huge, sparkly thank you to all the fabulous mummies who joined us for our Mother’s Day stay and craft session! The classroom was bursting with glitter and glue, and the children could hardly contain their excitement all day to share their afternoon with you all. We hope your afternoon was filled with smiles – and that you enjoyed the world-premiere performance from Garden Village’s very own Spice Girls tribute act! 

March Personal Development Opportunities

Book Fair

A huge thank you for supporting the GVPA Book Fair this week and promoting the love of reading for pleasure with your children. We are overwhelmed by the kindness and support that our parents have given – again. 

In four days, an incredible £678.58 was spent, which means that school in return will be rewarded with £270.63 worth of books for the library in return.

Decorate an Easter Egg Competition

Thank you for the creative and imaginative entries in this year's competition. The children's art and craft skills shone brightly. 

Two independent judges (Mrs Hand and Pip) were tasked with the difficult job of selecting the finalists, but every entry was a winner in our eyes!

The winners....

Chocolate Bingo!

This week was the annual chocolate bingo competition. Thank you for the generous chocolate donations – 22 hampers were created!

We hope you all had fun, we certainly did!

Thank you for parking respectfully this term. 

Last week, Mrs Burke and Mrs Hand proudly accompanied two children to attend the Fierte Trust Pupil Leadership meeting at Manor Primary Academy. During the meeting, the children discussed environmental issues and how each school can support this.

We are very proud of you both for representing GVPA so confidently. 

For further information about the Trust, please use this link: Fierté Multi-Academy Trust - Home

Telephone: 01827 214630

Office Email: office@gardenvillage.fierte.org

Headteacher / SENCO: headteacher@gardenvillage.fierte.org