Reception

This week was Healthy Eating Week, and we began by exploring why healthy eating matters and why we recognise this week. The children loved talking about the foods they enjoy and discovering different types of food. During child-initiated activities, they practiced their fine motor skills by grating and cutting apples, while also enjoying these healthy fruits. They also sorted miniature food packets into healthy and unhealthy groups. There were mini shopping baskets which the children loved using  to  pretend they were going shopping for healthy foods! Throughout the week, the children eagerly shared the healthy foods they had been eating, demonstrating their growing knowledge and enthusiasm for healthy habits. As a class activity, we organised different foods to pack a lunch box that was filled with healthy foods.

Over the last 2 weeks, the children have been learning phase 5 sounds in phonics. Each day we learn a new sound and then we review the 4 newly taught sounds at the end of the week. We have been reinforcing the new sounds during child initiated learning and the children have shown perseverance in remembering them.

How you can help at home:

• Review the sounds from the picture above with your child. Play some games to help your child learn the sound, like hide and sound seek. Can they give you a word with that sound in? Can they write a word with the sound in?
• Continue to practise counting to 20 with your child. How many forks can they find on the dinner table? Can they count how long they can balance for?

This week has been another fun filled, immersive week of learning. The children came back to school eager to share their news of the half term holiday and ready for this half term’s new learning. It was lovely to see their beaming faces and  we are sure they have all grown at least an inch!

Our  new book is called “Commotion in the Ocean”  and for the next three weeks we will be focusing on identifying rhyming words in poems as well as writing our own poems. This week the children have enjoyed playing lots of matching games, interactive whiteboard games and rhyming bingo!

In maths, we learned to use new equipment to help us with our mastery of number. The children have done amazingly well experimenting and exploring using the rekenrek effectively. All the adults have been incredibly impressed by how sensible the class has been while using these very loud apparatus. 😉

We had a very exciting week this week. On Tuesday, we went on our first school trip to see Paddington Bear! The children were bursting with excitement and the smiles never left their faces all day. We started off by walking to the coach. The children were great at following instructions. After a long coach journey to London, we arrived at the Paddington Bear Experience. The children got to ride a train at Paddington station, followed by meeting Mrs Brown, exploring the Brown’s home and even visiting Peru where the children got to squeeze oranges to make marmalade! The experience ended with meeting the one and only Paddington Bear 🙂 We then had a yummy lunch and were even lucky enough to have lunch with Paddington. It was the best day!

How you can help at home:

– Ask your child to give you instructions on how to make a yummy marmalade sandwich!
– Continue  practising your child’s phonics and read their colour spot book

– Practise counting to 20 by counting jumps, objects, claps etc.

This week the children had a lovely (but messy) week! Between the sunshine and rain, the children managed to  make the best of the outside to support their learning.

In literacy, the children have learned a new story ~ Stuck in the mud by Pie Corbett.  On Monday the children were very intrigued to find our small world animals stuck in a tray of gooey mud! This has definitely sparked their interest and they enthusiastically learned the story and they have thoroughly enjoyed acting the story out.  They are starting to incorporate their own ideas in their work which is lovely to see!

In maths we have looked at the different number pairs that make up number 10.  The children are working diligently to represent their ideas in different forms, using the Hungarian dice format, numicon and  tens frames! The children are becoming very confident in explaining their math understanding as they are becoming more familiar with the stem sentences we use in class.

In PE this week, the children enjoyed working together while completing their obstacle courses.  Following on from last week, where they worked in teams and getting used to activities that they will encounter during Sports Day, they added that extra element of competition.  The adults were very pleased to see that the children were being very supportive to their teammates as well as making sure they are being save while completing the tasks.

How you can help at home:

Reading regularly at home is having a huge impact on the children’s progress and we are very impressed by all their hard work.  Please continue to practice reading daily and don’t forget to write in their reading record.  As an additional challenge, can they write a simple sentence about what they have read in their book?  This will give the children and extra opportunity to use their phonic knowledge to segment words into separate sounds for writing.

This week we continued with our learning about Mr Gumpy and his disastrous journey.  With the amazing weather we’ve had, we were able to take most of our learning outside.

In Literacy we continued to learn the story of Mr Gumpy’s Journey using actions and repetitive language to help us.  The adults were very impressed with how well the children were able to memorise such a long story! Once we were able to recite the story, we decided to change some of the characters and the setting to make the story our own.  The children were very engaged and enjoyed drawing and writing their ideas on whiteboards.  They then chose the most popular changes to incorporate into the new class story.

The event in our class story sparked our interest and we began exploring different ways of travelling.  The children have used a variety of resources in class to build a train network as well as drawing maps of their recent journeys .  They also explored technology by programming Beebots to follow a chosen route.  It was great fun to see the little robots following the children’s instructions.

We even took our story to the forest, where the children collected sticks and worked together to make Mr. Gumpy’s boat.  They then had to test their boats to see if they would float or if they would tip over like Mr Gumpy’s boat when you put too many passengers on board.

How you can help at home:

In maths, we are continuing to look a different ways of making six.  When playing board games or using dice or dominoes, can your child identify different combinations of numbers that make a total of six?

We hope you have a lovely sunny bank holiday weekend!

Best wishes

The Reception Team

Welcome Back to the Summer Term! We cannot believe how quickly this year is flying by.

This week, we started off with a brand-new story: Mr Gumpys Outing. We have been exploring the theme of journeys, and the children enjoyed sharing stories about the journeys they took over the holidays from car trips to nature walks, there was lots to talk about! The children enjoyed different activities based on Mr Gumpys Outing, such as building boats and writing/drawing a journey they have been on.

Friday was a very special day as we celebrated Purple Up Day, celebrating our amazing service children. We had a lovely assembly where we learned about why we celebrate this day, and we were incredibly lucky to be joined by a parent who serves in the military. They led a fun  training session with the children and the highlight was definitely the tug of war, which everyone loved!

How you can help at home:

– Ask your child about a special journey they have been on. Can they write a sentence about it?
– Continue reading everyday with your child.
-Ask your child to count different objects around the house to reinforce our maths lesson on counting

Although the term is drawing to a close, we had a very busy week filled with fun learning opportunities.

As part of our Understanding  the World learning, we have learned about the wonderful celebrations happening in the Spring time.  We started off learning about Mother’s Day, thinking of all the wonderful things mums and the special ladies in our lives do for us every day.  We decided to design our own cards for them based on our spring topic in order to say ‘thank you’ in the most colourful way.

Next we learned more about Eid and how our friends celebrated their important time with their families by dressing in their special clothes, sharing a feast and having fun with their loved ones. We especially loved seeing the henna patterns adorning our friend’s hands.

We later looked at Easter and how Christians celebrate their special festival. We learned that the chocolate eggs and Easter bunny represent the new life we can see around us.  Reception had a great time hunting Easter eggs in the garden and the forest!

The final celebration we learned about this week is Passover.  The children enjoyed getting involved in the telling of the story of the 10 plagues and how the Jewish people made matzo bread. They then had the opportunity to taste the bread at snack time and the consensus was that it was very tasty indeed!

How you can help at home:

You will find a phonics sheet in your child’s bookbag that indicates the sounds they are still finding a bit tricky.  Practising these sounds and reading their books with them during the holiday will support their learning and help to build their reading fluency.

With so much learning taking place this term, the time has absolutely flown by and we are now preparing for a well deserved break! We hope you get to spend some quality time with family, relaxing in the sunshine!

The Reception team xx

We have had another very busy week in Reception! In maths, we have been reviewing our learning on doubles and ensuring that the children know that two equal parts make a double. The children were excellent at showing doubles on their fingers. We have also started to introduce new learning about odd and even numbers. We showed the children that the number blocks with a flat top are even, and the number blocks that do not have a flat top are odd.

The children had an amazing time in their mini explorers lesson. As some children will soon be celebrating Easter, we thought we would start to talk about the story and background of Easter. The lesson started with the children hearing a story called ‘We are Going on an Easter Egg Hunt’  which they listened to really carefully. The children started off by making origami carrots with orange and green tissue paper. They really enjoyed this! They then had the chance to go on an Easter egg hunt, where in groups they had to try and find hidden eggs around the forest. To end the session, the children got to have free flow in the forest, exploring whichever areas they liked. They had a great time and started to learn lots about Easter.

How you can help at home:

– Show your child a number of fingers from 1-5 and then ask them to show you the other equal part to make a double. Can they use the stem sentence “____ is made of ___ and ___ . ___ and ___ make ___” (for example, 6 is made of 3 and 3, 3 and 3 make 6)
– Play a doubling game with your child – roll a dice and ask your child to show you the double parts on their fingers. Can they identify if the number is odd or even?
– Please also continue to read with your child every day.

We have had another fun and eventful week in Reception full of learning opportunities! The weather has definitely started to turn in our favour and it has been magnificent to spend more time outside.

We started off our week by celebrating national recycling day where we learned about many different ways to look after our environment.  The children had a great time learning about recycling and looking for the recycling symbol on packaging. We then practised sorting rubbish into the correct bins where we had to put recyclables in our brown bins, rubbish into black bins and garden or food waste into our green bins.

This week in English we started with a new topic and this time we are learning to recite a spring poem. We started by looking at the changes in the weather and what we might wear to school now.  The children compared what they wore to school a month ago with what they are wearing now.  We had a class discussion about what they might see, hear, feel and smell in spring. Next week the children will continue learning to recite our poem and will then have the opportunity to change it to make it their own.

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This week in Reception, we have been very busy in our Literacy lessons learning about endangered and extinct animals. Our recent story we have looked at (The Journey Home) showed animals and their homes in danger. The children were fascinated to look deeper into other endangered animals and why they are in danger. We looked at what an endangered and extinct animal is. We learned about pangolins and why they are endangered, tigers and deforestation and how to keep the ocean clean for the animals. The children also sorted animals into extinct animals, endangered animals and safe animals and got to join split pins to combine the legs to their animals and make an endangered animal.

Last week, the children got the chance to plant their own plants as we approach spring! This week, they have thoroughly enjoyed observing how their plants have grown and describing what they can see. It was interesting to see the children compare their plant to their friend’s to see whose had grown more. As we venture further into spring, we will look at how the plants grow and how the children can look after them.

Nursery have been looking after some ducklings over the last 2 weeks and we brought them into Reception for the children to say hello! They each had a chance to touch the duck and they loved watching them try to escape out of the pen we had made!

How you can help at home: 

• Your child will be getting a handwriting rhyme sheet which you can use to help support children with their letter formation. Please use this sheet at home to ensure all letters are formed accurately.
• We have been looking at parts of 7 in maths, ask your child to show you the different parts of 7 that they know. If you give them 4 spoons, how many more to make 7?
• Please also remember to put your child’s reading record and reading books in their book bag everyday so we can read with your child.

This week has been choc and block full of learning opportunities as always but we also had 2 extra special days to celebrate!

On Tuesday the children were all very excited about pancake day and all morning long they dreamt of all the toppings they would have on their pancakes at dinner time.  As a surprise, the children were given a taste test of different toppings on  pancakes.  They had to describe the taste without telling the grown ups what topping they liked the most.  This ensured lots of smiles and licking of lips… yum!

Today we had a very special day celebrating World Book Day. Lots of grown ups came into the classroom first thing to read stories with us. It was very exciting and we were allowed to come fresh from our beds in our pyjamas and comfy clothes.

After this we reluctantly said goodbye to our grownups and joined the rest of the school for a special World Book Day Assembly.

We discussed all the ways we like to read – lots of us said at night time and in the morning. Some of us said we loved sharing books with our adults at home. We listened brilliantly to the story, “Here We Are,” by Oliver Jeffers.

You can share the story here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkcjKbbF9JA

Following this we discussed how “Here We Are,” is very similar to our focus literacy text, “The Journey Home.”

We enjoyed reading books in the sunshine and practising our reading during explore time, playing games and looking at different types of picture books.

How you can help at home:

Spend your book day voucher on a lovely new book that you can share together.

Have a look at some other books by the author Oliver Jeffers such as How to Catch a Star, Lost and Found or What we Build. Can your child notice any similarities in themes or style? What do they like about the story? Would they read it again?