Dormouse Class (EYFS)

Welcome to Dormouse Class

My name is Mrs Bramwell and I will be teaching in Reception. We are called Dormouse Class.  I will be with you every day except Wednesday afternoons; this is the time I use to plan all the wonderful activities we do in Dormouse class. We have two teaching assistants who help us with our learning. Mrs McDonough who works Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday morning and Mrs Dillon who works Wednesday afternoon, Thursday and Friday.

I am also the Computing lead so I am responsible for ensuring the curriculum is up to date and relevant for all of our children.

Term 6- Week 6

The weeks are certainly flying by! In English we have been very busy using all we have learnt about caring for pets to write a "How to" guide. The children have worked incredibly hard on this.

In Maths we have been recapping our counting and number recognition skills.

We spent Tuesday in Hedgehog class to prepare for next year. Miss Tillson said the children were fabulous and very keen to learn.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Mrs Bramwell

Term 6- Week 5

We certainly have had an action packed week! We started off with our visit to Grimsbury Farm. The children we incredible and the staff at the farm were impressed with our listening and behaviour. We learnt about all the animals they have there and helped to care for them. We feed the chickens, ducks and goats, cleaned up horse poo and made their bed for them and we feed the guinea pigs and rabbits. The walk home took a whole though!

In Maths we have been working on sharing numbers, deciding if it is a fair share and halving. 

It was lovely to share sports afternoon with you we hope you enjoyed it.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Mrs Bramwell

Term 6 -Week 4

I am ending this week as an extremely proud class teacher. I have not been in class much this week as I have been visiting the new starters in preparation for next year. The children have been behaved brilliantly all week. The reports have been nothing but positive.

In English the children have been learning about farm animals in preparation for our visit to the farm next week. They have been learning the correct names for the animals young and identifying them through their noises!

In Maths we have been starting working on sharing equally.

Mrs Bramwell

Term 6- Week 3

Another amazing week! We have been working incredibly hard to create our own story maps this week and this has supported us to retell the story independently.

We have recapped addition and subtraction using first then now stories and are beginning to remember lots of number facts.

Mrs Bramwell

Term 6 - Week 2

What a fantastic week! We have been using the story "Dear Zoo" to help us think about sensible pets. We have talked and shared stories about our own pets and written our favourite part of the story.

In Maths we have been working on odd and even numbers as well as recapping our doubles knowledge.

Have a fabulous weekend.

Mrs Bramwell

Term 6 - Week 1

What a fabulous first week back! We spent the week learning about the Platinum Jubilee and hearing about how the children had celebrated with their families. We made and decorated crowns and sun catchers among other arty opportunities.

Have a grate weekend.

Mrs Bramwell

Term 5- Week 5

Wow! What a busy week. The children have worked incredibly hard to learn the story "Walking in the Jungle" using the story map. They had a go at being authors and changing one of the animals in the story. Look out for the videos on seesaw.

In maths we have been looking at addition using "first, then, now" stories to support us in getting the numbers the right way round.

Have a fantastic half term.

Mrs Bramwell

Term 5- Week 4

This week in Dormouse class we have started looking at jungle animals. We are using the story "Walking Through the Jungle" to begin our learning. The children have using a story map to retell the story and are beginning to use actions to support this.

In phonics we have been practising longer words and are fantastic at it! 

In maths we have been identifying shapes, matching them, explaining properties and creating images.

Have a good weekend.

Mrs Bramwell 

Term 5- Week 3

This week we have continued our learning about mini-beasts. We have labelled a picture of a bee using difficult words such as thorax, abdomen and antennae. We have been creating non-fiction books about insects and trying to remember facts. The children have been incredibly engrossed in this learning all week!

In Maths we have been working on numbers 11-20, solving missing number problems and playing counting games.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Mrs Bramwell

Term 5- Week 2

This week we have started a new unit of learning "All Creatures Great and Small" and began by looking at the mini-beasts. The children have loved exploring our outdoor area to find insects and observing them in magnified containers. Some children drew the insects and wrote a label! We played a game where we looked a a small part of an insect and tried to guess what it was. The children were fantastic at explain how they knew which insect it was. We learned the words antenna, head, thorax and abdomen to describe insects. 

In Maths we have been working on our number 10-15 practicing counting, recognising matching the numerals.

Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Bramwell

Term 5 - Week 1

What a wonderful start to the week. 

We have been talking about all the things we learnt in our Traditional Tales topic, what our favourite story was, what we remember from the books and things the characters say. The children were AMAZING!

In maths we have begun work on the teen numbers counting forwards and backwards and adding within them.

Enjoy the long weekend.

Mrs Bramwell

Term 4 - Week 6

What a fabulous last week of term!

The children have been learning about Spring this week. We watched short clips of the seasons changing and talked about what signs of Spring we had noticed. The children had a go at drawing  daffodils using pastels in their sketch books. We also talked about Easter and the Easter story. We made links between the Christmas and Easter stories and learnt about Jesus. Then we talked about how we celebrate Easter. 

The children have made Easter cards and nest cakes.

Have a wonderful Easter break.

Mrs Bramwell

Term 4- Week 3

This week we have started using the Three Billy Goats Gruff as our class text. The children have had a go at building and drawing bridges and labelling goats using our phonics.

In phonics we have learnt all of the phase 3 sounds now. We will be spending the rest of term practicing reading and writing using them.

In Maths we have been looking a 3D shapes, describing properties, looking for them in everyday items and choosing the best ones to build with.

Have a good weekend.

Mrs Bramwell

Term 4- Week 2

 This week we have looked at the story of Jack and the Beanstalk focusing on sequencing the story. The children worked hard to write sentences they had thought of to describe part of the story.

In Maths we have been working on shape. The children have been able to recognise shapes and describe their properties to justify their selection. Being able to justify their answer is a key skill for Maths learning going forward.

It was wonderful to talk to you all in parents evening. As always if you would like to have a conversation with me please don't keep it until parents evening. You can send me messages through the website or seesaw app or we can arrange to meet.

Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Bramwell

Term 4- Week 1

What a fantastic week! We have certainly come back to school with a bang this week jumping straight into Book Week using a whole school theme "Alice in Wonderland." The children were enthralled with the beautiful pop up book we shared in class. We wrote the ingredients for the potions we thought Alice may have drunk to make her taller or shorter and the children certainly let their imaginations run wild - though I'm not sure Alice would have finished the potion if there was a chance eyeballs, slugs and mud could be involved!

 We took part in Drop Everything and Read with our Year 6 friends and had a Mad Hatter's Tea Party with our friends in Year 1 and Year 2. The costumes in school on Thursday were exceptional - congratulations to Dylan who won our class award for the best costume.  On Friday we met up with our house friends to share our favourite books.

Enjoy your weekend.

Mrs Bramwell

Term 3- Week 7

What a busy end to the term!

We used character hats to help us retell the story of the Gingerbread Man. All the children thoroughly enjoyed being the different characters and were able to tell the story together.  We then wrote some of the character speech into our English books using our phonic skills.  All of the adults were blown away by the children's resilience during this activity. Some of us had a go doing it again indepdently.

In Maths we have been looking at number bonds to 10. We used ten frames, counters and numicon to help us with this. We will continue to practise these going forward as knowing them by heart will support our mathematical learning through school.

Have a wonderful half term.

Mrs Bramwell

Term 3- Week 6

In English this week we have been looking at The Gingerbread Man. The children have been fantastic at remembering the story and joining in with the repeated phrases. We will be revisiting this text.

In Maths we have been looking at measures specifically length and height using the words "taller/tallest" and "shorter/shortest"  to help us compare. As you can see from the photos we measured lots of different people!

It was wonderful to see the children "Express Themselves" today. We talked about what our favourite things are, how different we all are and most importantly we did class yoga and went for a run around the track to see how good exercise makes us feel.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Mrs Bramwell

Term 3- Week 5

What a wonderful week! The children have been learning about the Lunar New Year and how this is celebrated around the world. We looked at the preparations and compared them to celebrations we take part in, tried our hand at dragon dancing and tasted some food.

In Maths we used the story of The Great Race to support our learning in ordinal numbers. We ordered the animals based on the story and played games to support this understanding. 

Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Bramwell

Term 3- Week 4

Another amazing week in Dormouse class! 

We have continued to use the Three Little Pigs as our English book this week. The children have worked really hard to retell the story and think about the character's speech. Some of us even tried to write this independently.

In Maths we have focused on addition within 8 and writing the calculations. We are getting really good at adding in our heads now.

Have a good weekend.

Mrs Bramwell

Term 3- Week 3

This week we have used "The Three Little Pigs" as our Traditional Tale. We have sequenced the story using picture prompts, retold the story using small world characters and built new homes for the pigs.

In Maths we have focused on the numbers 6, 7 and 8 looking at the additional and subtraction within these numbers and recognising the numerals.

Enjoy your weekend.

Mrs Bramwell

Term 3- Week 2

This week we have continued our Traditional Tales topic using the story "Little Red Riding Hood" to support us. We used a story map to help us retell the story and thought about some actions we could use to help us remember the words. We learnt a new word to describe the wolf- sly- and had a long discussion about its meaning, words that sound like it and how else we could use it. We are beginning to focus on new words in all of our learning and their meaning to support our language acquisition.

In Maths we have looked at addition and subtraction within 5. We looked for patterns, used resources to help and decided we could use our fingers to help us work out the answers. We will be practicing these lots as the year goes on!

Enjoy your weekend.

Mrs Bramwell

Term 3 - Week 1

Welcome back to school! It has been lovely to see you all back.

We jumped straight back in to our learning this week recapping all the sounds we have learnt so far in phonics, reading sentences and writing captions.

We spent some time talking about how we celebrated Christmas - the children shared what gift they got, who they spent time with and what food they ate. It is safe to say the children are very lucky and we all like chocolate cake!

Enjoy the weekend.

Mrs Bramwell

Term 2- Week 7

What a fantastic ending to this term. We had a wonderful time at our Christmas party playing pass the parcel and dancing to music.

We learnt about the Christmas story this week. We made links to our nativity performance, retold the story using figures and talked about why it is an important celebration for Christians.

We wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. 

See you in January.

The Reception Team.

Term 2- Week 6

What an action packed week! We really hope you enjoyed out nativity performance with Key Stage 1; the children were fantastic and I am incredibly proud of them all.

We used the book 'Dear Father Christmas' to inspire our letters to Santa. The children worked very hard to use their phonic knowledge to write the letters. Some children then used the Argos catalogues to write extra lists- I have demonstrated copying the words from the book so I apologise if the lists are longer than expected this year!

Many thanks to the kind parent helpers who supported us walking round to the post box to post our letters today we needed to make sure Santa definitely knows what we asked for!

Enjoy your weekend.

Mrs Bramwell

Term 2 - Week 5

This week we have been practicing reading and writing with all the sounds we have learnt so far. The children are being encouraged to say the words in slow motion to hear each sound- just in case they have been practising at home we're not completely crazy!

We have been having our first go are using a story map to retell the story of Goldilocks and the three Bears. The children enjoy using these to help them remember and they are viatl tools we use to support writing throughout school.

Enjoy the weekend.

Mrs Bramwell

Term 2 - Week 4

We have started a new topic this week - Traditional Tales in which we will look at lots of well know books to support our story telling language. We have used Goldilocks and the Three bears to begin. The children have been listening to different versions of the story and spotting the differences and retelling the story in the role play area. 

In maths we have been focusing on numbers 4 and 5, looking at the composition, the numerals and of course our favourite Numberblocks characters have helped us out!.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Mrs Bramwell

Term 2- Week 3

In English this week we talked about who is in our family. We shared family photos with each other and talked about when and where the photos were taken. The children thoroughly enjoyed sharing their photos and information about their families. 

In Maths we looked a positional language and used it to build obstacle courses and draw maps.

We are working very hard on our Christmas performance songs as well I'm sure you're hearing them at home!

Mrs Bramwell

Term 2- Week 2

This week we have been following the whole school topic -We Will Remember Them. We used the story 'Where the Poppies Now Grow' to introduce the idea of remembrance and why this is an important time for lots of people. We painted pebbles with poppies, used egg cartons to create a wreath and sketched poppies into our sketch books.

In Maths we have been linking shapes to the numbers 1, 2 & 3. The children have been learning and using the correct mathematical vocabulary to describe the properties of shapes, for example "a triangle has 3 corners and 3 straight sides."

We hope you have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Bramwell

Term 2- Week 1

Welcome back to Dormouse class, we hope you enjoyed the half term break.

This week has been a busy one. In English we have looked at 2 special occasions: Diwali and Bonfire night.

The children learnt the story of Rama and Sita which helps us understand why Diwali is celebrated. We made diya lamps, painted rangoli patterns and made footprints to show the Goddess Lakshmi the way to our classroom. We found out some of the ways Diwali is celebrated and compared it to special occasions we have attended. 

We learned about the Gunpowder plot as the reason for celebrating Bonfire night. We talked about displays we had seen, how to care for pets and how to look after ourselves. 

In Maths we have been consolidating our understanding of 1, 2, and 3. We are practising subitising - recognising what the amount is without counting and recording the numerals.

Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Bramwell

Term 1- Week 7

What a week! We finished learning about the human body this week by finding out what's inside and talking about our senses. The children were fantastic at remembering what some of the different organs were called and the job they do.  We finished the week looking at Autumn. We went for a walk around the grounds looking for different signs of Autumn and collected some leaves, pinecones and acorns to investigate further in our classroom. On Friday we had a bit of Halloween fun carving pumpkins.

Un Maths we have explored the numbers 1, 2 & 3 looking at different ways to represent them, practicing our counting and number recognition.

Have a wonderful half term.

Mrs Bramwell

Term 1- Week 6

In English this week we have continued learning about the body. We worked with a partner to build a body talking about which bits go where. We had another go at being authors and acting out our stories with our friends- this week we had lots of comedy shows!

In Maths we have been comparing groups of objects; first sorting objects, then counting them which helped us decide whether there was more, fewer or and equal amount of items.

Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Bramwell

Term 1- Week 5

In English this week, we have compared our life to that of Cidina who lives in a village in Brazil. We talked about our bedrooms, houses, families and aspirations for the future. We also began looking at the human body and spent some time labelling the different parts we knew.

We also became storytellers for the first time. Most of us told a story to an adult and then we acted it out each one on stage. The children absolutely loved this- the adults did too! We can’t wait to hear your stories next time.

In Maths, we have been looking at sorting items into categories. We have been carrying this out both in whole class activities and during our independent learning time.

Have a wonderful weekend everybody.

Mrs Bramwell

Term 1 - Week 4

We have had an extremely busy week in Dormouse class. Our first week staying for the whole day has certainly been tiring for the children and staff! We took part in our first house meeting; listening to the candidates pitch there ideas and asking them questions. Then we exercised our right to vote at the polling station.

In English we have used the book 'My World Your World' to begin to explore the similarities and differences between ourselves and others. The children talked carefully with a partner to find things they both liked, activities they take part in or how they travel to school and also something different. 

Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Bramwell

Term 1- Week 3

Another action packed week in Dormouse Class! This week we have stayed for lunch - we learned how to walk sensibly down to the hall, how to carry our food tray safely and played outside with the older children. 

The children have enjoyed exploring the outdoor area further this week. We have been building dens in the trees, making obstacle courses and practicing hula hooping.

Inside we have been making strange insects and robots using the playdoh, having a go at colour mixing and showing off our counting skills. 

Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Bramwell

Term 1 - Week 2

This week in Dormouse Class we joined together as a full cohort. This means there was double the number of children! You have already shown us what a fantastic bunch you are-taking time changes and a busy classroom in your stride. We have also ventured out onto the field at playtime to give us a chance to practice what lunch time will be like next week.

This we we have focused our learning on the "Zones of Regulation." This is a system whereby colours are assigned to different feelings to give the children a way to explain how they feel. We learnt all about the different feelings, how its not wrong to feel a certain way and that there maybe times we need help to change them to help us feel better. With each colour the children have been able to make links between the emotions associated with the zones and their personal experiences which has been wonderful to hear.

We're all excited to have you for lunch next week. Enjoy your weekend.

Mrs Bramwell

Term 1- Week 1

What a fantastic start to term! I am so proud of our newest members of the Cadbury Heath family they have settled in brilliantly.

This week we have learnt our 3 school rules: Be Ready, Be Respectful and Be Safe and how we can make sure to follow them. We have also been learning how to use our classroom space both inside and outside.

Enjoy your weekend.

Mrs Bramwell