Reception

This week in Reception we have delved deeper into the history of castles. The children were fascinated to find out the differences between palaces and castles.

During our carpet sessions we have looked at the different features of castles and palaces.  The children then used their new knowledge within child initiated learning time to complete the challenges in class.  The children were able to write sentences about knights, kings and castles independently. Others created more props for the role play area and we even made a few helmets to protect our brave knights. The children have been very engaged with their learning this week and it was evident as we could hear lots of discussions about castle battlements, the keep, dungeons, moats and arrow slits.

In maths we have investigated what happens when we count in 1’s and how that looks when it is represented with cubes.  The children enjoyed checking to see if they could change the sequence of counting without disrupting the staircase models but of course that didn’t work! We learned a silly rhyme to help us put our numbers back in order… Diddly diddly do, I’m bigger than you… Diddly diddly dee, you are smaller than me!
Here is a small clip that could help support your child with their understanding of number sequencing. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08cr0y7/numberblocks-series-1-off-we-go#orbit-more-drawer

How to help at home:

This week have learned two digraphs and two trigraphs.  It would be very beneficial if  you could support your child to find these sounds in their library books, magazines or while out and about looking at shop windows or advertisements.

As always have a lovely weekend,

The Reception team xxx

This week the children had an amazing time continuing learning about our class story: Zog!

Not only have they learned the sequence of the story and used drama and actions to act out the story but this week they have also changed it as a class to where Zog is learning how to be a pupil at Merry Hill School! The children have even started independently writing sentences about Zog and his adventures.

As part of our topic on Castles, Kings and Dragons the children used their imagination to turn cardboard boxes into castle walls, drawbridges, shields and crowns! The children have been using the topic vocabulary we have learned in their play and are able to explain their new knowledge to others.

During our phonics session, the children have learned additional digraphs and they are becoming very adept at identifying them within words and even using them in their own writing when labelling the body parts of a dragon.

How you can help at home:

In maths, the children have continued to learn how to subitise (saying what they see without counting) numbers up to six and how to identify numbers within a larger number, e.g The 6 dots on the dice can be seen as 3 and 3 or 2 and 4. If you are playing board games with a dice or dominoes, can you support your child to identify numbers within numbers.

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Happy New Year and  welcome back to the Spring term of Reception! We hope you had a restful break and a happy Christmas for those who celebrated. It was lovely to see the children return to school with big smiles on Monday morning.

The first morning back was very exciting! A mysterious creature had been wandering around the classroom and left behind footprints and eggs! All the children were curious and wanted to know what had happened. It was an interesting introduction to our new Literacy and Understanding the World topic – dragons, castles and kingdoms. We talked about what could be inside the egg before showing the children.

This week we also saw some snow, which the children were very eager to go outside and play in.  They enjoyed investigating the ice and discovering who could find the biggest piece of solid ice. We also made dragon footprints in the snow outside our new castle role play area. The children had such a fun time exploring in the snow!

How you can help at home:

• Talk to your child about dragons, castles and kingdoms.
• Ask your child to tell you about our class story – Zog.
• Talk about the weather with your child. What is changing? What season is it?

For the last few weeks the Reception children have been very busy rehearsing for their Christmas show. The children listened carefully to instructions when putting the show together and took these instructions on board excellently. This week they were able to perform their fabulous show to the rest of Merry Hill and their parents. The Reception team have been blown away by how well the children learnt their parts and for performing so confidently in front of an audience!  The shows this week have been a real success. Well done to all of the Reception children! We are extremely proud of each and everyone of you 🙂

• Keep reading the phonics books with your child. Repeated reading helps to develop reading fluency.  (Reading fluency is important because it develops comprehension and motivates readers)
• Practice counting to 10 and subitising to 3.
• Model language by talking about your favourite part of the show. Then ask your child what their favourite part of the show was. Try to develop their talk further by repeating their sentence back with additional detail e.g child –  I liked the singing. Adult – You liked singing Jingle Bells in front of the audience.

This week the children have been enthusiastically practicing their Christmas production. The classroom  has been filled with  singing voices,  children practicing their dance moves and rehearsing their lines!

We have learned how to recite our nativity story during our morning Literacy sessions and added actions to help us remember the sequence of the story.  We then choreographed dances to match the songs we are using in our story and the children have enjoyed practicing every minute of the day, whether in the garden or in the class.

During our phonics sessions, we have reviewed all the diagraphs and the trigraph we have learned so far this year. We are incredibly proud of how far the children have come and all the hard work they put in daily; they have made great progress in their reading and writing!

Your child will soon receive a summary of the sounds they can confidently identify as well as the ones they need a little more practice with.

In maths the children have continued with patterns, ensuring that they are confident in identifying the repeated section. We have also looked at 2D shapes and using mathematical language to describe each.

Finally, the children had a great time exploring with a variety of artistic effects to create a surprise or two for parents later in the term.  They cannot wait to share all their learning with you all soon.

How you can help at home:

Have a shape hunt in your home- can your child identify some 2 D shapes and explain why they think it’s a particular shape? How many vertices does a triangle have? Can they identify  how many sides a circle has?

As always, your child’s phonics reading book is changed on a Friday. Please continue to listen to them reading and encourage them to use their robot arms to help them when they are decoding an unknown word.

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In Reception this week, we started the topic of patterns. Miss Reuben and Mrs Jones put a magic spell on the children and turned them into math pattern magicians. The children enjoyed learning about different patterns that we see in real life. Some examples were a zebra, leopard, tiger and also some spotty or stripy clothing. They also enjoyed finding patterns hidden within our classroom environment. When having the chance to help their teachers build a repeating pattern, they were great at spotting mistakes that arose when building the pattern. During child initiated learning the children started by finishing off a repeating pattern and then as they built confidence, they made their own repeating patterns.  They really are fantastic pattern magicians!

We have also been working hard on our reading. As we progress through phonics, the introduction of alien words has begun. Alien words are made up words – also known as pseudo words – that the children read by using their phonic knowledge to decode. In our lessons, the children read the word and if it is an alien word, they use their hands as alien ears. This week we had a treasure game during child initiated learning. They had to read the word and if it was real, it goes in the treasure box and if it is an alien word, it goes away with the aliens. They enjoyed sorting the reading treasure!

We had another  busy  week, but not even the freezing weather could stop us from having a great time!

On Monday,  during Road Safety Week, we enjoyed our very first Reception trip! The children really impressed us by remembering  SuperCat’s rap: Stop, Look, Listen and Think while crossing the road.

We were able to safely walk to our destination and when we arrived at Bushey library, the children had a wonderful time exploring a variety of books. They were able to choose a book to take home, and even scanned the books themselves.

If your child forgot their library card or have not yet signed up for one, the fantastic staff at the library have kept their chosen books reserved for the next two weeks and you are welcome to pick the books up at your convenience.

On Tuesday this week we were all taken a little by surprise when we opened our curtains to discover a beautiful dusting of snow.

Understandably the children were extremely excited by this rarely seen weather and were eager to explore it using their senses.

One child proudly presented a snow ball made on the way to school. It was carefully placed on Mrs Jones’ desk and had melted into a puddle by lunch time. Our curious learners thoroughly enjoyed explaining what had happened to the snow ball!

The snow did not affect our Mini Explorer Forest lessons. We wrapped up, put on our boots and excitedly wandered into the forest area.

First we used our feet to find sticks. We collected 7 each then made a square with them. When asked what we could make with the 3 remaining sticks, they quickly made triangles.

After this, it started to rain in the forest but it was not raining anywhere else so we went over to the field to explore.

“Why is it raining in the forest but not here?” I asked.  Lots of thinking faces appeared and here were some of the answers:
“Because it is cold?”

Because it was raining earlier?”

“Because of the leaves?”

”Because the snow is melting and it is up high in the forest.”

We decided to venture back inside and see if we agreed with this final answer. Yes we did. The snow melted very quickly and the forest was not the cosy warm spot it usually is.
With cold fingers and pink noses we headed back inside to get nice and warm again.

The rest of the week the children had the opportunity to explore the rain puddles that froze overnight. This created great excitement as the children experimented with placing ice in different parts of the playground, to see where it would melt the fastest or stay frozen for longer.

As part of our understanding of the world, we have also looked at our timelines from when we were babies until now. We had interesting discussions about activities and skills we had to practice as babies that we now find really easy. We will continue to look at our families and where we are from over the coming weeks.

How you can help at home:

Play a board game or dominoes to help your child recognise and subitise numbers on a dice.

Continue to practice recognising their sounds and blending them together to create and read words.

As always have a lovely weekend.

The Reception Team xx

This week in Reception, we learnt about Remembrance Day. On Monday morning, the children attended an assembly with Mrs Ineson, where they learned about Remembrance Day. The children learned about why we remember, why we wear poppies, who we remember, and the different ways we honour those who served. We were also fortunate to have two special guests from the Armed Forces, who spoke to the children about their roles and the importance of remembering those who served.

It has been wonderful to see all the children happily return to school and eagerly share their news of the half term break. We also wanted to say a big thank you to you all, as many of the children have been enthusiastically telling us about practicing their reading at home.

This term started with a bang 🎆 and the children have enjoyed the story we are using to support their learning in class.  This week the children have delved into the adventures of Whatever Next by Jill Murphy and for the next 2 weeks they will continue to listen to, act out parts and adapt the story while learning about space, planets and the imaginary adventures we can have! The children are beginning to use their phonic knowledge to support their reading of simple words in our story and even starting to write their own simple sentences to explain the story to others.

During maths the children have looked at parts that make up a whole and have had great fun while building a WHOLE picture by using smaller PARTS.  Initially they only found 2 parts to complete a picture but soon challenged themselves to building puzzles with the help of their friends.  This learning will lead to the children understanding the relationship between numbers and knowing that for example, number 5 can be split into smaller parts: 1 and  4 as well as 2 and 3.

This week we celebrated Diwali in class and the children had the opportunity to learn more about the festival of lights.  They used a variety of materials to explore Rangoli patterns, mendhi patterns to decorate their hands and making firework pictures in the garden and we even had a fabulous dance session where we learned a Bollywood dance routine!

How you can help at home:

Listening to your child practice reading their phonics book is vital to their success as it helps to build their confidence and a sense of achievement.
You can also talk to your child about special celebrations you have as a family as this will develop their sense of self and where they belong in the wider community.

Please remember to check your child’s book-bag for important letters and information sent home.

Have a lovely weekend,

The Reception Team xx

As part of our continued work as an Inclusive School we frequently refer to  the difference between equality and equity.

Equality means that everyone has the same chances or gets the same treatment. Everyone is treated equally.

Equity means that everyone has the same chances – just like equality – but equity also means considering different people’s situations so that they really are treated fairly.

If 3 children of different heights went to watch a sporting event but found that they couldn’t see over the fence, what could we do to give them a fair chance of watching the event?

If they all got the same number of boxes to stand on (equality), it would not be fair as one child can still not see over the fence.

If they all got the number of boxes that they needed to stand on to be able to see over the fence, they would all have the same chance of seeing the sporting event with their own individual situations and needs being taken into account. Now that really is fair!

We talk to the children about many of the resources and strategies we have at Merry Hill to ensure everyone is included in the classrooms, outside on the playground and at lunch times.  Some of the things we came up with included:

• our mindfulness areas in the classroom
• writing slopes and pencil grips
• fiddle toys and our fiddle boxes
• visual timetables
• scaffolds and prompts to help us achieve something we find tricky
• having a special place in the line, e.g. line leader
• adaptations at lunch time, such as having a different tray or a designated place to sit
• visiting the sensory room and using the resources in our class sensory bags
• prompts in our learning tool kits to help us remember phonic sounds and harder to read and spell words etc.

• Have conversations that celebrate individuals and their differences
• You can listen to the story “Who Are You? by Smriti Halls being read online https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Xp0LEY3YQ4
• Visit the library and see if you can find other books to enjoy that celebrate inclusion
• Encourage your child to recognise what they need to help them be successful at an activity

This week in Reception Elmer has inspired our learning! The children have enjoyed getting to know the story of Elmer and understanding that he is different and that is okay. There have been a range of Elmer activities for the children to engage in, like painting Elmer in the style of Piet Mondrian and creating party invitations for our special Elmer Day. At the start of the week, the children learnt about different feelings and how things make them feel. They were then able to write down different feelings that they thought Elmer was feeling in the story and also design their own patterned animal to represent difference.

We have also  been busy learning about harvest festival. We learnt that harvest festival is about saying thank you for the people who grow crops and food for us to eat. We spoke about the different foods that we might say thank you for as well as the children looking at the growth of an apple and how long it takes! Some children were able to share their experiences of celebrating harvest festival. They then had the chance to investigate pumpkins as part of harvest. They liked scooping out the fiber, pulp and seeds of the pumpkin.

How to support at home:

• Keep reading with your child everyday.
• Ask the children if they can find any foods around the house that we say thank you for during harvest festival.
• Review the phonic sounds coming home in your child’s book bags at the end of this week and play some phonic games to support their development.
• Talk about Elmer and his feelings towards being different with your child and ask them about their own feelings.

It has been a wonderful first half term in Reception and has been such a pleasure to see each child settle in to Merry Hill. The reception team have already seen great development from each child and we look forward to welcoming the children back after half term.

Have a restful break,

The Reception team x

In Reception we have had another jam packed and exciting week. Not only did we carry on with our phonics, our maths and literacy but we also had a great time learning about Piet Mondrian.

The children are all making great progress with their phonics and it is evident in the way they are starting to blend their sounds to read CVC words.  This week we have practised using our phonic knowledge to sound out words and to label pictures. They are also making good progress in learning how to form recognisable letters.