This week in Reception

Last week we had a lovely treat and a special visitor came to school – Mr Marvel! We all had a thoroughly brilliant afternoon full of laughs and giggles. We loved the magic tricks and lots of us were still talking about it this week!

We had another very busy week in reception this week. We continued our learning about traditional tales, with a focus on Goldilocks and the Three Bears. We started to create our own books again and we are loving being authors!

Here is a selection of photos of us during explore time where we have been working very hard to demonstrate the Merry Hill values, as well as practising all of our phonic knowledge!

As this is a new term, we have been talking lots about the Merry Hill values: Inclusion, Communication, Resilience and Responsibility. Each week, our team points focus on something linked to these values. We have been working extremely hard this week, in particular to demonstrate these values in our work and play.

We also had a special assembly this week which was  all about kindness. We know why this is important in making everyone feel safe and valued at our school. In assembly, we learned about a special boy who was part of our wonderful school community that sadly died last year – Zach Barnes. We are very lucky to have been given an apple tree to plant in our school field in his memory.  We loved going to see the newly planted tree and had lots of fun crunching over the grass on a rather frosty field. We are looking forward to caring for our tree and helping it to grow so that we can enjoy some of its delicious apples.

This week in phonics we have been recapping and learning some new digraphs. Please ask us all about the two digraphs that look the same but make different sounds! We can even teach you the actions we’ve learned to help us remember some of them. We continue to practise reading some harder to read and spell words too, which are quite tricky!

How you can help at home:

* Talk about the Merry Hill values – can you remember them all?

* Read and discuss some traditional tales – we’d love to hear some in home languages (you might like to send us a video on Tapestry or even come in to read one to us)

* Discuss the changing temperature and weather – what season are we in and what signs can you find on your walk to school?