Reception

This week in literacy Reception began our exciting new topic “Martha Maps Out”, which focuses on journeys and maps. At the beginning of the week, we read the story together and explored the maps that Martha drew in the book. The children looked carefully at where Martha’s journey started and ended, and we talked about how maps help us follow a route from one place to another. Later in the week, we took our learning outside and went on our own adventure to the forest area. The children were given a simple map to follow which led them to a picture from space where they had to draw the picture on the map according to where they found it. They did an amazing job carefully following the map and working together to find the correct pictures.

Over the next few weeks, the children will be creating their own journey books where they will write about a character going on a journey.

The children have also been exploring castles. We have been learning about the different features of a castle, such as towers, walls and gates, and discussing who might live in a castle, including kings, queens and knights. The children have really enjoyed using this knowledge to build their own castles, carefully thinking about the different parts they need to include.

How you can help at home: 

• Can your child make a map of the house?
• Can your child follow a map that they have drawn?
• Can they draw a castle and talk to you about who lives inside?

This week we celebrated World Book Day!

At the beginning of the week, Ms Adams asked us for some help. She wrote us a letter and came into our classroom to read it to us. She asked for some help to make her costume – she wanted us to think carefully about our school theme this year – sustainability. She asked if we could use materials that we have in the classroom to help make some of her costume. We loved this challenge and set to work finding lots of orange things quickly!

We had a wonderful time celebrating all things related to books and reading! We had a lovely whole school assembly which was full of colour and creativity. In Reception we had a lot of fun sharing our costumes and talking about our favourite books and characters. We also loved seeing the grown ups at school all dressed up!

During explore time, we made book marks and designed posters about our favourite books and stories. Some of us also brought in our favourite books to share. We had a lot of fun and it has inspired many of us to read a new book. We look forward to hearing all about them!

How you can help at home:

• Share your favourite stories together
• Let your child see you reading for pleasure – books, newspapers, recipes, magazines
• Challenge your child to choose a new book or a non-fiction book to share together
• Visit your local library
• Explore the world book day website: https://www.worldbookday.com/
• You might like to explore some of the Cbeebies bedtime stories here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m001xg36/cbeebies-bedtime-stories
• Spend your World Book Day voucher and enjoy your new book!

This week, the Reception children enjoyed planting their own flowers using old welly boots as plant pots. They carefully scooped soil into the boots, chose a bulb, either a daffodil or a tulip,  and placed it inside before adding more soil and watering their plants.

We talked about what plants need to grow, such as soil, water, and sunlight, and discussed how changes in the weather can affect them. The children are excited to observe their plants over the coming weeks and watch for any changes as they begin to grow!

This activity also supported the children’s gross motor development, as they used large movements to sweep, reach, carry, and pick up materials. We talked about why it is important to look after our outdoor areas, and the children showed great teamwork while getting our garden ready to enjoy in the springtime!

How you can help at home:

• Look for signs of spring, write down what you can see!
• Can you count how many flowers you can see on a walk?
• Can you draw the flower you planted?

Maths

This week we have been busy learning all about shapes. We have played lots of fun games such as ‘guess my shape’, I Spy, shape hunts and sorting. We know that there are lots of different ways to sort shapes according to size, sides, corners and types of shape. We have been using our knowledge of the properties of shapes to describe them to each other. We have learned that a corner is where two sides join together to make a point and that some shapes have straight sides, curved sides or even both! We had a lot of fun during explore time where we were spotting shapes in the environment.

Pancake day

During singing assembly this week, we learned a song all about pancakes. We know that this is the start of Lent which is the build up to Easter. We talked lots about our favourite pancake toppings and had so much fin making them! They tasted great!

Phonics

This week we are reviewing all of the learning we have done so far in Reception. We are focusing on some of the digraphs and trigraphs that we find tricky. There have been lots of games of bingo, roll and read boards and even matching games.

How you can help at home:

• Talk about Pancake day – maybe have a go at making them or writing a recipe
• You might like to watch some of the Chinese New Year celebrations on TV or even live up in London over half term
• Continue reading every day and practising the phonics sounds as well as the harder to read and spell words that we have sent home
• Have a fun filled week!

Our Reception children had a wonderful time this week celebrating Hedgehog Day and learning all about these fascinating little animals. We explored where hedgehogs live, discovering that they like cosy places such as gardens, hedges and piles of leaves. The children also learned what hedgehogs eat, including insects, worms, and other tasty bugs. We shared some fun facts too — the children were amazed to learn that hedgehogs are nocturnal and use their sharp spines to curl up and stay safe.

The children got creative by making their own hedgehogs using clay. They carefully added spikes, using different tools and techniques, and showed great focus and imagination. The results were fantastic, and everyone was very proud of their work!

This week in maths, our Reception children have been busy exploring the parts of 6 and 7. We focused on helping the children understand that numbers can be made in different ways, building strong early number sense. The children used double die frames to show the different combinations that make 6 and 7. They enjoyed filling the frames, counting carefully, and talking about how the numbers could be split and put back together again. There were lots of great mathematical conversations as they compared amounts and explained their thinking.

How you can help at home: 

• Ask your child some fun facts about hedgehogs
• Ask your child to show you parts of 6 and 7 on their hands

This week has been a very exciting week in Reception. We started the week off with some very unusual clues in our classroom. The children came in on Monday morning to see some rather unusual sticks! We wondered what they could be for and how they got there. This generated lots of discussion and question asking amongst children and staff. We later discovered a new book called ‘Stanley’s Stick’. We pondered over the front cover where we discussed who Stanley might be and what the story might be about. We had some wonderful ideas such as:

“It looks like a fishing rod!”

“It’s like fire!”

“It might be a Kingfisher! Or a parrot!”

“It’s a stick for stirring porridge!”

After reading some of our new book, we realised Stanley is a very imaginative little boy. We decided to use our imaginations too and had a lot of fun painting and drawing lots of new ideas for Stanley’s stick. What would you use your stick for?

Phonics

This week in phonics, we have been learning the following sounds:

We are getting more and more confident in using our knowledge of sounds to read words in books on our own as well as using them to write labels, captions and simple sentences! We are doing a fabulous job!

Special assembly

We were so lucky to have some visitors from Hello Vet in Bushey  to tell us all about their jobs. We learned lots of interesting facts about their very special job. The vet and vet nurse told us all about how they look after animals and even showed us how to use some of the tools they use to care for the animals they see. The vets played a fun game with us where we had to guess the animal just by looking at their X-ray. It was very interesting looking at all the bones! We had lots of questions to ask and the vets kindly told us about an open day in April where we can visit for free to see what life is like as a vet. It was a lovely assembly and it has inspired lots of us to become vets when we are grown up!

How you can help at home:

• Talk about ways we can use our imaginations to be creative and have fun exploring – painting, dance, dressing up
• Discuss ways to show 5 on your fingers. How many ways can you find? Can you copy a way someone else has shown 5?
• Play number games and sing number rhymes
• Practise the sounds we have learned in phonics so far

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?

Welcome back and a very Happy New Year! We hope you all had a lovely restful break and enjoyed some family time together.

When we came back to school this week, it was very exciting! The recent cold weather had left lots of snow and ice in our garden for us to explore! We had a lot of fun and some of us spent a long time trying to find ways to break into the ice. It was a tricky challenge and we loved it!

Understanding the World and Expressive Arts and Design

We have also started learning about a new artist called Andrew Goldsworthy. We know that he makes sculptures using lots of different natural materials. Some of his artwork even uses ice and snow so we had a go at trying to recreate some of our own artwork inspired by him. This type of work is called Land Art because it is all made from natural materials. We will update you later in the term with some more of our explorations and artwork!

Literacy

This week in Literacy, we have been learning all about the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. We discovered that we had had some cheeky visitors over the holidays and the bears had snuck into our classroom! We had a lot of fun exploring the story of Goldilocks and have enjoyed retelling it in our own words. Over the next couple of weeks we will be doing lots of writing around this story so keep your eyes peeled!

How you can help at home:

* Remember to bring back your PE kit and welly boots

* Complete a ‘Wow’ card telling us something amazing that your child has done over the holidays or the last few weeks. This could be sharing their new toys, helping in the kitchen, learning a new skill such as bike riding or even helping to look after the family pet. Whatever it is, we’d love to celebrate your child by sharing this at school and proudly displaying it in our classroom. You may also wish to share this in Tapestry alongside some photographs 🙂

* Create your own piece of land art using natural materials. Please share these on Tapestry with us as we’d love to see them!

Wow! What an amazing week of rehearsals and shows! Reception have worked so hard over the last few weeks, meticulously practising lines, learning dance routines and singing songs. We couldn’t be prouder of how well they performed to such large audiences!

Here are just a few snapshots of our wonderful show! Please take time to celebrate your child’s part in the nativity and discuss all the things you both enjoyed about the performance!

Phonics:

This week has been a review week, where we revisit all of the sounds we have learned this half term. We are very proud of how well the children are doing at picking up these new digraphs (two letters that make one sound, e.g. ee, ai, oa).

If you have any extra time to play games, it would help all the children to practise the Harder to Read and Spell words (HRSW). The children know that HRSW are words that cannot be sounded out – you, me, push, pull etc).  You might like to hide them around your house as a treasure hunt for your child to find or place them for your child to read each time they go up the stairs! Learning to recognise these words by sight will help your child immensely when they are learning to read full sentences and longer books.

This week in Forest, our Reception children went on a wonderful “Loud and Proud Walking” adventure, exploring the forest through sound. Using sticks, they tapped trees, benches and stones to discover the different noises each material made, describing what they heard with words like loud and quiet. They even tried copying the sounds with their voices before swapping their sticks for stones to see how the sounds changed. The children showed fantastic curiosity as they compared long and short sounds and discussed why objects make different noises, a wonderful muddy, hands-on session full of learning and fun.

In Phonics, we have been reviewing all of our sounds that the children have learnt. It is great to see such amazing progress from every child as they progress with their reading and writing. These are all of the sounds we have learnt so far.