Mrs Helkvist - Reception/Y1 | Cwmcarn Primary School

Hello and welcome to class 2. We have had an excellent start to the year with a full class of year ones all eager to learn and laugh together. We started the Read, Write, Inc groups today and the children went to their groups as if there had been no break. They are truly amazing!

They love all the new areas in class and are eager to investigate. Some groups have already begun the Wriggle and Crawl topic with an investigation in the Daisy Park. I am taking another group tomorrow and as soon as I have some photographs I will share them with you.

Just a reminder that PE is on a Tuesday and Thursday. Could you make sure your child has shorts and a 'T' shirt as they cannot join in safely without the correct kit? Any problems please come in and speak to myself or Miss Warren.

Reading books will be with you as soon as possible. We are working through the class steadily.

I am looking forward to working with you to help your child progress as much as possible and for them to achieve their full potential .

Next week will see our new reception group join us. They are delightful and will be loved by these sensible year one children. It will be a great experience for both age groups. Don't forget to keep a look out for photographs and updates over the next few weeks.

Can you believe we are in week 3 already? The whole class has now settled. The Reception children are making new friends and enjoying all the activities school offers.

Clubs have started this week and we are having some very enthusiastic responses from the pupils. I am looking forward to some of my lovely Year One children joining Mrs Fraser and myself for Welsh Folk dancing on Thursday lunch times.

What a busy few weeks we have had! We are concluding our minibeasts topic and learning some songs about insects and spiders to scare you all. We have had some very involved entomologists investigating and recording what they found.

We also had some exciting visitors to broaden our experiences.

We have created bugs- We have shopped for bugs-We have been bugs and all the time some of us have been a bit afraid of some bugs...and I'm not naming anyone !

So now we will be off to Rio for Carnival Time! See you there.

Here we are half way through our visit to Rio. What a time we have had...a bright and lively carnival, some scary adventures in the forest with whistling monsters, all our mums and dads visiting to see us at work and join in the fun and even going into business to help Pudsey Bear!

Thank- you so much everyone for all your support.

Now we are moving on to Christmas preparations. We have started to learn our songs for the play and are slowly picking up the moves to our dances. We can't wait to show you how fantastic we are! A lovely mum has offered to make bow ties for the boys so if anyone needs one please let me know. She has kindly offered to to this for no charge- she is a gem!

What a busy but exciting December we had in class 2. We rushed back from Rio to visit Bethlehem in time for the concert and then back to Cwmcarn for a party. Hectic but happy, as you can see...

Finally, it was time to kiss the party and Santa goodbye!

Happy New Year and thanks for all your hard work making our school Christmas such a success. The children had a wonderful time and were thrilled when Santa came through the door on party day!

I expect by now you are aware that our new topic is Moon Zoom and is all about space. Last week we had a visitation- an alien aircraft crashed in our room at lunch time. Don't panic it was far more ' Batteries Not Included' than ' Invasion of the Body Snatchers.'- The children loved it especially when they had to collect samples and discover what had happened; they were real little detectives. Keep an eye on your rubber gloves at home as they insisted on wearing these to collect the slimy evidence and seemed to have a deep affinity for them!

We have made some circuits to send messages into outer space...hope we don't get too many replies.

Watch this space for more UFO information.

We experimented with waterproof materiels for an outer space expedition.

All set for blast off. Hope we are back in time for half term.

What a busy few weeks. I feel as if we joined the Apollo mission to the moon and back. We have designed and made rockets, reflected on the beauty of the moon and created a lovely display with our poetry. We tried to contact the aliens by building our own circuits to send messages and performed our spectacular " Aliens wobble but we don't fall down" dance for members of classes 3 and 4. It has been a fantastic experience. I hope your little ones came home with all our latest news and kept you updated.

When we arrive back-(in time for St David's day so don't forget to dig out the necessary costumes)-we will be beginning a new topic all about dinosaurs. We are all looking forward to this I just hope class 2 don't hope to have one visit us in the way the aliens did!

Here is a glimpse of how we celebrated St David's Day. It was a festival of fun fun fun.!

Thank-you for sending the children to school in such lovely costumes. We looked into our culture and really had such a sense of pride in our hertitage. You are amazing!

We are busy with the dinosaur project at present. We have dinosaurs in every area...who knew that they love Maths and English, Welsh and History as much as Art and Craft!.

Thank-you everyone for your hard work making dinosaur models with your children for homework. They were so excited and could tell us so much about their experiences. Here is a little snap shot of what they have achieved with your help.

The last few weeks have seen us using dinosaurs in every activity and area- who ever said they were extibct must be wrong! Here are some of our busy learning jobs...

A fossil expert visted us and it was brilliant. She answered all our questions on showed us a range of fantastic fossils. We loved every minute and the best part was she was a Cwmcarn mummy and they are always the greatest.

We finished by making beautiful dinosaur models from socks, play dough and anything else we found in class. We all had different favourites so we made a board to let you see what we have enjoyed this term.

Welcome to the Summer Term. We all arrived back safely and have started our new topic, Land Ahoy! We are eager to get into the role of smugglers and pirates-I hope I can manage a life at sea...I have been known to be sick on a rowing boat on Roath Park lake! The children are going to learn about the oceans and continents, find out about the lives of some famous sea faring explorers, and try out life as a pirate- so expect some exciting sea shanties to be sung at home.

In class we have set up an exciting beach exhibit and a smugglers cave with a barrel of smuggled goods so that we can learn as we play.

The first week back has been a delight as we had such glorious weather and we have been able to use the yard more fully. We will be putting in the consructon area next week - thanks to you all for providing the boxes and the PFA for covering them. Loads of items have been donated for the play areas so they are going to be added to the rota of activities.Thank-you again for your kindness and community spirit- you are a fab team.

I will post some photos a.s.a.p. Well, we are about to set sail... keep watching!

Mrs Helkvist - Reception/Y1

A pirate crew!