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?

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.

Brrr! This week has seen some rather cold days, but this has been the perfect opportunity for us to explore our gardens and the forest. We have noticed a big change in the weather and the temperature outside. Lots of us has a wonderful time scraping ice and frost off of the equipment to make our own “snowballs” and mixtures in the mud kitchen.

We have also loved looking at our new ‘Curiosity box’ where we have been describing what we can see, as well as exploring and testing different materials.

Mini Explorers

We have had such a fun week exploring the forest. Here we are fully engrossed in our “loud and proud walking”. We had to use a stick to explore the sounds we could make on different surfaces in the forest. Can you spot the things we tested? You might like to try this activity again at home or on a local walk. Does a stone make the same sounds as a stick when you tap or scrape things?

Phonics

This week in Reception we have been busy using all of our phonic knowledge to help us label pictures, play games and make words. We have been learning about letters that go together to make one sound, such as ee, ai and igh.  We have also been practising our harder to read and spell words. We know that these are words we cannot sound out so we must learn to recognise these by sight – we are beginning to get the hang of it and will continue to practise these over the next few weeks!

How you can help at home:

• Practise recognising the new sounds we have been learning – can you spot them in any stories you are reading together?
• It is the time of year where we see hats, scarves, gloves etc all flying around – please help your child to be independent when getting dressed/undressed and check that everything is labelled! They may need some extra time to get ready in the mornings as learning to zip up coats can be quite tricky!
• Play games together that involve taking turns such as snap, snakes and ladders and other simple board games

In Reception this week, the children have been busy creating their very own rhyming books as part of their literacy learning. Each child chose an animal, such as a cat, dog, or rat, and added new pages each day filled with rhyming words linked to their chosen animal.  As they built their books, the children learnt to hear and generate rhyming pairs, practising these patterns through games, reading and shared writing. They also explored the key features of a book, discussing elements like the front cover, title, illustrations, and how pages are sequenced. This book making project strengthened their phonological and rhyming awareness and also developed their confidence as becoming authors and storytellers.

The Reception children have also been excitedly planting flowers and greenery to help make our playground look brighter. This hands-on project linked perfectly to our learning about growth, as the children explored how plants develop from seeds and what they need to grow strong and healthy. As they dug, watered, and are waiting for their plants to begin to sprout, the children also learnt about the importance of nurturing living things and caring for our environment. Through observing changes over time, they began to understand the life cycle of plants.

These are the phonics sounds we have learnt this week. Please practice these with your child at home.

How you can help at home: 

• Practise the phonics sounds above.
• Can your child find any rhyming pairs around the house? What does fork rhyme with?
• Can your child tell you what a plant needs to grow? How did they plant their plant?

This week we have been learning all about Remembrance. We attended a special assembly where we learned all about what Remembrance day is and why it is important. We heard from some of our friends and their parents who are in the military.

We know that Poppies are the special symbol of Remembrance and we worked hard to create our own. We used lots of different skills to create these – as you can see, some of them were created using watercolour paints, whilst some others were made using cupcake cases which we turned into a wreath.

We watched an animation about Remembrance https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/watch/poppies and also read a poem which we used for our watercolour art.

How you can help at home:

• Practise your child’s reading book at least three times a week and record this in their reading record
• Discuss the ever changing weather and seasonal beauty – pine cones, conkers, leaves, acorns
• Practise playing maths games – this could be dominoes, board games, puzzles or just spotting numbers on items around your house e.g. clocks, microwave, oven etc
• Visit the local library and talk to your child about their visit – can they show you how to borrow and return their books?
• Play games that involve phonics – a sound hunt around your house or garden, I spy, spotting objects in books that begin with the same sound etc

Wow! What a wonderful week full of colour! We have been learning all about the Hindu festival Diwali as well as looking at patterns and comparing sets of objects in maths.

You can learn more about Diwali here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/watch/my-first-festivals-diwali

Here we are making colourful Diwali patterns and pictures!

We used our knowledge of letters and sounds to write some amazing poems and shopping lists for Diwali. We are very proud of the fantastic progress we have made so far this half term!

Looking for a free activity to enjoy together this half term? Visit your local library and take part in My First Library Adventure, by bringing the special bookmark (which came home from school) with you. If you have lost yours don’t worry. Just ask at the library for a new one. 

Choose from hundreds of picture books, fact books and beginning to read stories to share at home.

Complete the Adventure to enter the special prize draw. Fifty lucky Hertfordshire Reception pupils will win a personalised, signed book from author/illustrator Ged Adamson with two overall winners enjoying an author visit with their whole class. Find out more here: https://www.hertfordshire.gov.uk/services/libraries-and-archives/news-and-campaigns/startingreception

How you can help at home:

• revisit the sounds we have taught so far – please see previous blogs
• Continue to read with your child everyday
• Enjoy lots of family time – perhaps go for an autumn walk (we’d love to see photos), visit the library, encourage your child’s independence in getting dressed, shoes, coats etc
• Play games, sing songs and rhymes with your child, encouraging them to listen for the sounds they can hear in words

This week in Reception, we continued our learning all about the famous artist Clarice Cliff and her colourful designs! To challenge the  children’s knowledge and art skills, they decided to have a go at creating their very own Clarice Cliff-inspired artwork.

The children started by cutting out different shapes from tissue paper, carefully choosing colours and shapes that they thought would look great together. The next day, they got creative using glue and bottles to make their designs! The children loved sticking their tissue shapes onto the bottles to make their very own decorative masterpieces. It was amazing to see how the designs turned out, full of imagination and creativity, and personality.

We also started a Literacy topic on poetry this week. The children have enjoyed listening to nursery rhymes and talking about their favourite one. We learnt the poem ‘Purple is’ which is about different things that are the colour purple.

This week in Reception has been very busy! We have been trying out lots of new activities to help us practise our fine motor skills, maths skills and phonics.

We have been working hard at subitising this week – we have been discussing how we see numbers inside other numbers and also matching amounts of objects to numerals. We used tweezers to help us match the correct number of conkers to each number card – it was very tricky as the conkers were slippery!

You might like to use these number rhymes to help practise number formation at home. You could try writing them in mud, water or with chalk on the floor.

Phonics

This week in Phonics, we have been checking our understanding so far – we have been using our knowledge of the sounds we have learned to practise writing words and labels for pictures, including maps of the playground. Here are the sounds we have learned so far:

Expressive arts and design

This term we have been learning about the British artist Clarice Cliff – we know she created some beautiful pottery that was known as “Bizarre”. We have looked at the vibrant colours and shapes in her work. So far we have practised drawing shapes, tracing shapes and painting them. We are working towards our own design inspired by Clarice Cliff’s work – watch this space for more of our fantastic artwork!

How you can help home:

• Practise all of the sounds taught so far – you might like to hide them as a treasure hunt around your house! Talk about sounds in the environment – where can you spot the sounds you already know?
• Help your child to recognise and write their name independently – also help them to use a tripod grip when holding a pencil and forming their letters correctly.
• Talk about Clarice Cliff and ask your child to describe what they can see, what they like/dislike about it. Maybe you could try making your own artwork together – we’d love to see some of your creations on Tapestry!
• Continue to establish good bedtime routines for your child – build reading into your daily routines. Reading anything and everything your child is interested in will help them enormously! You could try reading recipes together, football results in the newspaper, comics, postcards or even invitations.