The Epiphany

Welcome to the start of a brand new year - our spring term and the first month of 2024. The children have come back to school excited to learn and ready for a challenge! They have seemed so mature this week - it just shows how far they have come since they started school back in September. This week we have spoken in detail about the visit of the three wise men to the baby Jesus - the Epiphany - and we have spoken about the gifts they brought for Him. We then visited Church yesterday for our first Mass of the year where Father Frank talked about the Epiphany too. We have now packed away our crib ready for next Christmas.

Our Learning this week

Our theme this week has been birds.

Phonics - now that we know all of our Phase 1 sounds we have started our daily reading groups with the children depending on their phonetic ability. The children have adapted to this change so well and we have seen some great work this week. These groups will continue for the rest of the year - each term the children will be reassessed and they may move groups.

Maths - we have been learning how to make 3 and 4.

UTW - we learnt about British birds.

EAD - the children have been busy with Mrs Debowska painting owls.

Communication and Language - we have been learning the days of the week in sign language.

RE - we have spoken about the Epiphany this week. We discussed how the three kings will have cared for their camels on such a long journey.

E-Safety - in Reception we learn how to stay safe online through the Digiduck stories. This week we learnt that we need to make sure that we always ask our grown ups for help if we are online and we come across a tricky situation. Digiduck was sent a funny photo of his friend and he wasn’t sure whether to send it to his other friends.

Our theme next week is Penguins.

Award winners

Our award winners this week are:

Golden - Kacey-Lynne

Writing - Kian

Maths - Mia

Congratulations!

Catholic Life of our school..

The following resources are a great way of keeping you all informed of our current liturgy themes and of the weekly Gospel scripture, with some activities that the children can complete at home. We hope you find these resources useful and that they help you to support prayer and worship in your own homes.

https://www.paperturn-view.com/uk/wednesday-word/faithfulness?pid=MTA101634&v=74.6

http://www.tentenresources.co.uk/prayers-for-home/parent-newsletter/

At Our Lady's we like to support our parents/carers in Online Safety matters.

Keeping children and young people safe online is one of the biggest challenges facing society today and it is all of our responsibility to ensure that children are educated to make positive, informed choices when they are online.

This month’s online safety guides give helpful advice about…

Top Tips for Managing Screen Time - This guide provides some practical tips for helping to reduce your family’s screen time and promote healthier use of their devices.

What Children & Young People Need to Know about Free Speech vs Hate Speech - This free information guide has tips to help combat hate speech online, while still respecting people’s right to free speech.

We hope you find these guides informative and helpful in promoting the positive use of technology to make the online world a better and safer place for us all.

Staffing Update

I just wanted to give you an update on the staff we currently have working in Reception. There is of course myself and Mrs Debowska in the class every day. We also have Miss Lane who volunteers in our class every Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoon. Just before Christmas, Miss Sanderson also started working in our class each morning and this will continue for the forseeable future.

Have a lovely weekend,

Miss Heim-Sarac

Christ the King!

This Sunday, 26th November, marks the feast day of Christ the King. This represents the end of the church’s year. Christ the King is one of the most important titles of Jesus. Even though Jesus Christ was not a king in the earthly sense, He is the divine King of the Universe, who unites all of creation with the Father. I am so proud of the children for how well they are starting to understand our faith. They will now talk confidently about how God made us because we are special, and that we are all different. They are also enjoying learning about the Christmas story, and this week we will begin to talk about the Annunciation.

Our Learning this week

Phonics - we have learnt four new sounds this week: ‘v’ down a wing, up a wing, ‘y’ down a horn, up a horn and curl under his head, ‘w’ down up, down up and ‘th’ thankyou (down the tower, across the tower and down the horses’ neck to his hooves, over his back). The children are making great progress with their sounds. We are definitely on track to learn all our phase 1 sounds by Christmas.

Maths - we have been reinforcing our counting and subitising skills this week.

UTW - we learnt about healthy eating and lifestyles.

EAD - the children have been busy with Mrs Debowska making winter art.

Fine motor - we have now introduced daily number and letter formation practice.

Communication and Language - we have been practising the three songs we know with sign language. The children are becoming very good at it!

RE - we have spoken about Baptism this week. We went over to church where Father Frank conducted a mock Baptism for us so that the children could see exactly what happens during this special sacrament.

Our theme next week is Stickman.

Award winners

Our award winners this week are:

Golden - Ava

Writing - Isabella

Maths - Alfie

Congratulations!

Catholic Life of our School

The following resources are a great way of keeping you all informed of our current liturgy themes and of the weekly Gospel scripture, with some activities that the children can complete at home. We hope you find these resources useful and that they help you to support prayer and worship in your own homes.

https://www.paperturn-view.com/uk/wednesday-word/faithfulness?pid=MTA101634&v=74.6

http://www.tentenresources.co.uk/prayers-for-home/parent-newsletter/

Important dates for your diary

29.11.23 - School Nurse drop ins in the school hall. The drop in is for any parent who might have an issue they wish to discuss, no appointment is necessary and they will be in the hall from 9am to 10am. 

8.12.23 - follow up from the successful SEND afternoon and this session will focus on deciding what professionals parents would like to hear from and areas that they need support in. Mrs Ormerod will speak about how to navigate the FYI directory and how the APDR/graduated response works in school. There will also be members of the Blackpool parent forum in attendance. We will also look at support around the cost of living. Church hall 2-3.10pm.

13.12.23 - Reception nativity! 2pm in the school hall. We look forward to seeing you there!

At Our Lady's we like to support our parents/carers in Online Safety matters

Keeping children and young people safe online is one of the biggest challenges facing society today and it is all of our responsibility to ensure that children are educated to make positive, informed choices when they are online.

This month’s online safety guide gives helpful advice about…

Smart TVs As these internet-enabled entertainment systems rapidly become standard, find out how to guide children in using such devices safely.

We hope you find these guides informative and helpful in promoting the positive use of technology to make the online world a better and safer place for us all.

I hope you have had a lovely weekend,

Miss Heim-Sarac & Mrs Debowska

‘All Saints Day invites us to reflect on our own spiritual journey and strive for holiness’

Welcome back to the beginning of a new half term! We began this new half term with the Feast of All Saints Day which we celebrated in church for a whole school Mass. It was a lovely way to start the coming half term and a wonderful opportunity to reflect on the role models that we have around us and what we aim to be each and every day. Receptions’s behaviour in church was fantastic and it reminded me how each of them are little saints and made in the image of God. A super start to the new half term.

Our Learning this week

Phonics - we have learnt four new sounds this week: ‘c’ curl around the caterpillar, ‘k’ down the kangaroo’s body, tail and leg, ‘u’ down and under, up to the top and draw the puddle and ‘b’ down the laces to the heel and round the toe. We have also started word time with the children where we start to teach them how to blend sounds together to create words.

Maths - we have practiced our counting skills to ten this week.

UTW - we learnt about Diwali and the story of Rama and Sita.

Fine motor - the children have been drawing fireworks in glitter. They have also been creating Rangoli patterns with counters.

EAD - the children have been busy with Mrs Debowska making firework art.

Communication and Language - we have started to learn our Nativity songs.

Our theme next week is nursery rhymes.

Award winners

Our award winners this week are:

Golden - Louie

Writing - Patrick

Maths - Bella

Congratulations!

Catholic Life of our School

The following resources are a great way of keeping you all informed of our current liturgy themes and of the weekly Gospel scripture, with some activities that the children can complete at home. We hope you find these resources useful and that they help you to support prayer and worship in your own homes.

https://www.paperturn-view.com/uk/wednesday-word/faithfulness?pid=MTA101634&v=74.6

http://www.tentenresources.co.uk/prayers-for-home/parent-newsletter/

At Our Lady's we like to support our parents/carers in Online Safety matters.

Keeping children and young people safe online is one of the biggest challenges facing society today and it is all of our responsibility to ensure that children are educated to make positive, informed choices when they are online.

This month’s online safety guides give helpful advice about…

The social media site X, highlighting the major changes since its rebrand from Twitter and the related online safety risks.

Five Nights at Freddy’s: a suspense-filled horror game which has nevertheless attracted a relatively young fan-base.

We hope you find these guides informative and helpful in promoting the positive use of technology to make the online world a better and safer place for us all.

Have a lovely weekend,

Miss Heim-Sarac & Mrs Debowska

'Not all superheroes wear capes'

This week in Reception our theme was ‘people who help us’ and I think it’s been my favourite theme yet! The children have absolutely loved every single second of dressing up as doctors, nurses, vets, postal workers, paramedics, firefighters…they’ve really been in their element. We also had 4 very special visitors in school this week: Ian the paramedic (who came with his ambulance!), Gabby the nurse, Brogan the nurse and Tom the firefighter. They spoke to the children about their jobs and what they do to help others. The children had lots of comments and questions for them and I am beyond grateful to them for taking the time out of their busy lives to come into school. Three of these visitors are current parents from our class so thank you again! It really is true, not all superheroes wear capes.

Our Learning this week

Phonics - we have learnt four new sounds this week: ‘n’ down nobby, over his net, ‘p’ down the pirates’s plait, over his face, ‘g’ round her face, down her hair, don’t forget to give her a curl and ‘o’ all around the orange. We have also started word time with the children this week where we start to teach them how to blend sounds together to create words.

Maths - we have continued to practice our counting with Stanley the Squirrel. We helped him to count bigger objects that we cannot move. Stanley also helped us to learn that we can count things that we can’t see or hear.

UTW - we learnt about people who help us and how they do that in their different jobs.

EAD - the children have been busy with Mrs Debowska making hedgehogs out of leaves!

Our first theme after half term is Diwali.

Award winners

Our award winners this week are:

Golden - Sophia S

Writing - Briar

Maths - Erin

Congratulations!

At Our Lady's we like to support our parents/carers in Online Safety matters

Keeping children and young people safe online is one of the biggest challenges facing society today and it is all of our responsibility to ensure that children are educated to make positive, informed choices when they are online.

This month’s online safety guides give helpful advice about…

EA Sports FC 24 This is the spiritual successor to FIFA which is likely to be a similarly spectacular hit among young football fans.

We hope you find these guides informative and helpful in promoting the positive use of technology to make the online world a better and safer place for us all.

Harvest collection

Thank you to you all for your kind donations to our harvest collection. We have managed to collect 700 tins for our local foodbank. Wow!

Have a lovely half term break,

Miss Heim-Sarac and Mrs Debowska

Autumn, the year’s last, loveliest smile…

We have enjoyed learning about harvest this week and what it means. We spoke about how farmers plant seeds in spring and then when Autumn arrives, they harvest their crops. As you know, we have been collecting tins throughout school to donate to our local food bank. We do this each year to give back to our community during harvest time. I think it is so important that the children understand that there are people in our local area who need our help and who are less fortunate than us. I have spoken to the children this week about being thankful and what that means. The children shared with me what they were thankful for and it was beautiful to hear.

Our Learning this week

Phonics - we have learnt two new sounds this week: ‘t’ down the tower and across the tower and ‘i’ down the insect’s body, dot for his head. We have also started word time with the children this week where we start to teach them how to blend sounds together to create words.

Maths - we have focused on counting this week with the help of Stanley the squirrel. Stanley is our counting puppet and the children have been helping him to learn how to count properly - by remembering that the stopping number tells us how many there are altogether, and by making sure we are moving objects we are counting so that we don’t count objects twice.

RE - we have continued to practise the creation story. The children are also starting to learn how much God loves them.

UTW - we learnt about harvest.

EAD - the children have been busy with Mrs Debowska making Autumn trees.

Our theme next week is: people who help us.

Award winners

Our award winners this week are:

Golden - Draya

Writing - Louie

Maths - Louis

Congratulations!

Harvest Collection

This year we are collecting tinned food for the local food bank. We are asking each child to bring in one tin for our collection. Please donate, if you can, for this very worthy cause. The children can bring their tins into class, where we have a donation box. Many thanks to those who have donated already.

Parents Meetings

We have our parent meetings tomorrow, the 16th October. I am looking forward to seeing you all and letting you know how your child has settled into school.

At Our Lady’s we like to support our parents/carers in Online Safety matters

Keeping children and young people safe online is one of the biggest challenges facing society today and it is all of our responsibility to ensure that children are educated to make positive, informed choices when they are online.

This month’s online safety guides give helpful advice about…

Among Us: a futuristic murder mystery that’s found an enthusiastic audience of young gamers.

We hope you find these guides informative and helpful in promoting the positive use of technology to make the online world a better and safer place for us all.

Reception Welcome Assembly

Thank you for coming along to our Reception welcome assembly last Monday. I was very proud of the children and I know that they were all very excited to receive their medals.

Catholic Life

The following resources are a great way of keeping you all informed of our current liturgy themes and of the weekly Gospel scripture, with some activities that the children can complete at home. We hope you find these resources useful and that they help you to support prayer and worship in your own homes.

https://www.paperturn-view.com/uk/wednesday-word/faithfulness?pid=MTA101634&v=74.6

http://www.tentenresources.co.uk/prayers-for-home/parent-newsletter/

We hope you have had a lovely weekend,

Miss Heim-Sarac and Mrs Debowska

‘That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’ - Neil Armstrong

Wow, this week in Reception has been ‘out of this world’! We have fully immersed ourselves in all things ‘space’ and it has been a blast! One of the things I have quickly learnt about this class is that they LOVE a theme and this week’s theme was no exception. From Space Maths to Space PE, we haven’t stopped! Here’s some more information for you about what we have been up to…

Our Learning this week

Phonics - we have started our daily sound lessons and this week the children have learnt: ‘m’ maisie mountain mountain, ‘a’ round the apple down the leaf, ‘s’ slide around the snake and ‘d’ round the dinosaurs bottom, up his tall neck and down to his feet. We will be learning up to 5 sounds a week all the way to Christmas.

Maths - the children have learnt to subitise to 3 this week (seeing a set amount of objects and ‘knowing’ how many there are without having to count them). Our Numberblock friends have been helping us! The children have also done some Space counting.

RE - we have been learning the story of Creation using our special book, the Bible. We have also been learning some actions to match the story.

PE - we learnt a moon walk, a rocket blast, an alien hop and a planet spin!

Understanding the world - we looked at different pictures of Space using our special Space torch.

EAD - the children have been creating Earth sun catchers.

We have been very busy! Our theme next week is Harvest. Our focus book will be Oliver’s Vegetables.

Award winners

Our award winners this week are:

Golden - Alistair

Writing - Mia

Maths - Seb

Congratulations!

Harvest Collection

This year we are collecting tinned food for the local food bank. We are asking each child to bring in one tin for our collection. Please donate, if you can, for this very worthy cause. The children can bring their tins into class, where we have a donation box. Many thanks to those who have donated already.

Parents Evening

You will have received a notification about Parent/Teacher meetings on MONDAY 16th OCTOBER - please make sure you follow the link to make an appointment. This is an important meeting to discuss how your child has settled into Reception. I look forward to seeing you all on this date. Thank-you.

At Our Lady’s we like to support our parents/carers in Online Safety matters

Keeping children and young people safe online is one of the biggest challenges facing society today and it is all of our responsibility to ensure that children are educated to make positive, informed choices when they are online.

This month’s online safety guides give helpful advice about…

Among Us: a futuristic murder mystery that’s found an enthusiastic audience of young gamers.

We hope you find these guides informative and helpful in promoting the positive use of technology to make the online world a better and safer place for us all.

Reception Welcome Assembly

We look forward to seeing you on Monday at 2.30pm for our welcome assembly in the school hall, led by Year 5 and Year 6. Your children will be officially welcomed into the Our Lady’s family, a very special moment!

We hope you have a lovely weekend,

Miss Heim-Sarac and Mrs Debowska

It’s a pirates life for us!

Last week was our first themed week in Reception and we had a fantastic time! Our theme was pirates and the children really embraced this wholeheartedly. The children made pirate hats, eye patches, cutlasses and parrots! It brings me a lot of joy to see the children active in our provision and using our resources to the best of their ability and that’s exactly what they did!

We read lots of pirate books, our favourite being The Pirates Next Door which was our daily read. We do this each week, focusing on a themed book to repeat to the children each day for repetition and to help their comprehension skills. We also learnt a sea shanty!

On top of all the pirate excitement, we attended assembly with the rest of school on Friday for our first celebration assembly. Well done to the following children who each received certificates:

Golden Award - Sophia B

Maths - Alix

Writing - Esmae

Well done!

Miss Heim-Sarac

In the beginning…

This week we have introduced the children to God through the Bible. We started by talking about how special this book is and why it is different to other books we may read. We then practiced saying the word ‘Bible’. I asked the children to try and spot Father Frank’s ‘special book’ when we visited church on Tuesday morning. Not only were the children wonderfully behaved during Mass, but they could tell us that they had spotted the book and that it was red!

We will spend some time this coming week on reading some sections of the Bible and starting to talk about creation. We were so proud of the children during our visit to church - it is not easy to sit so quietly when you are little! All of the children said they were looking forward to going back to church for another Mass.

We have now established many routines in our classroom which we practice every day. The children are also becoming very good at tidying up and looking after our toys and equipment. This means that we are nearly ready to start our lessons such as Phonics and Maths. This is very exciting and we can’t wait to see the children grow and learn.

On Monday the 25th September we have two events happening in school. The first is our school photographs. As per my email, please send your child to school in full school uniform even though it is a PE day. As this is the children’s first year at school, we will be having a class photo as well as the children having an individual photograph.

The second event happening is a Phonics workshop in the school hall between 2 and 3pm. This will be led by myself and Mrs Hollinghurst (our Year 1 teacher). We will be talking you through our Phonics scheme and giving you some tips as to how you can help your child with their reading at home. I did send an email to you all last week about this and some other important dates coming up, please let me know if you are not receiving my emails.

We hope you had a lovely weekend,

Miss Heim-Sarac and Mrs Debowska

Love one another as I have loved you

This week the children have had their first full week at school. As I said in my blog last Friday, starting school is a huge milestone in your children’s lives and it is not without its challenges. There are new routines and expectations to learn, new friends to meet and for some a longer day to contend with. Overall, I am so happy with how well the children have coped with these changes this week and they should be very proud of themselves.

We have seen many acts of kindness this week, from sharing toys to checking in on a friend if they have been upset. This has been glorious to see and it fills me with hope for the year ahead. Fundamentally we want our children to love one another, be kind and be happy. This is what we teach the children each day. By sending your child to a Catholic school you have ensured they will be taught in a loving, caring and safe environment centred around our Gospel values. It is these values that we would like the children to live daily.

Next week, the children will attend church for the first time with school for a ‘back to school’ mass. We will be attending with the children’s buddies who will help them to reflect and to be as ‘still’ as possible. The first visit to church as a class is always a special occasion and I am looking forward to many more visits this academic year.

I hope you have a lovely weekend,

Miss Heim-Sarac

Welcome to our school family!

This week we have welcomed your lovely children in to our school family. Starting school is a huge milestone in your children’s lives but they have taken it in their stride and after only three days they are already settled and forming relationships with one another. I have been so impressed with their behaviour and listening skills. They have coped so well in the heat too!

We have focused on learning the rules and boundaries expected at school as well as getting to know our class room and one another! We have also focused on routines such as toileting and tidying up. I am already looking forward to next week and spending more time with the class. We start full time from Monday - this may take some getting used to for the children but before we know it, it will be like they have always been here!

The children also met their buddies today who are in Year 5. They were very excited and I can already tell that they are going to form some very special bonds with them.

Here is some important information for you:

• PE will start from the week beginning the 11th September. Our PE days are Mondays and Wednesdays.

• All the children have been given a new school water bottle. This will come home each night to be cleaned and re-filled. Please ensure your child brings theirs each day. Lost water bottles can be replaced at the school office, but I am afraid you will have to pay for those. Reception have orange tops.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Miss Heim-Sarac and Mrs Debowska