Reception

We have had a very hot week this week and the children have coped brilliantly while continuing to engage in their learning activities. A big focus this week has been staying safe in the sun. The children have been doing a great job remembering to wear their hats and drink plenty of water throughout the day.

Outside, the children have enjoyed exploring the water tray. We have been learning about capacity by filling and emptying different containers and comparing how much water they can hold. We also investigated what happens to the water when different objects are placed into it, noticing how the water level changes. When spending time indoors to stay cool, the children have been exploring the topic of transport, talking about different ways people travel on holidays and sharing their own experiences. The last few weeks have also been exciting as we have been watching England play in the World Cup. To support and celebrate Englands’s progress, our tuff tray was designed for a mini football game! The children loved using their mini figures to pretend to play a match.

We are very proud of how well the children have adapted to the warm weather while continuing to learn, explore, and have fun.

How you can help at home:

• Can you do a mini sports day at home when the sun is shining?
• Continue to read with your child
• Ask your child if they can tell you how to stay safe in the sun.

This week in Reception, we have been busy show casing the many skills we have learned over the year! We welcomed some new to Merry Hill friends and showed them how to follow the Merry Hill Way by demonstrating teamwork, resilience, communication and inclusion.  We also had fun practising our teamwork and communication skills whilst we practised for Sports Day.

Mrs Barnes led a very exciting assembly this week. It was all about the men’s World Cup! We learned some interesting facts such as Brazil has won it the most times and England has won it once. We even saw a funny picture of Mrs Barnes’ dog dressed up ready to cheer England on! We know that the football players have to use lots of teamwork, communication and determination to practise their skills to succeed. We talked about showing respect to our team members and the players on the other team by giving them a handshake, just like we are going to do on sports day!

How you can help at home:

– Read daily with your child

– Practice some sports day skills in the weekend sun!

This week we were so lucky to be given the opportunity by our wonderful Friends of Merry Hill to go to a real theatre to see a show! The very kind Friends of Merry Hill decided to treat us after a year of working hard and doing our best!

We travelled to Radlett Theatre by coach to see The Cat In The Hat. We were very excited to go to the theatre and even more excited to be experiencing it with our friends. Each day we were counting down to this very special event.

First we got ourselves ready in our groups, then we walked (and sang) our way down to meet the coaches. We climbed onboard and enjoyed sitting with our friends. “It’s like a really big bus!”

We sat very still whilst we watched the show and we all had a brilliant time! There was lots of dancing and very funny moments too! This was a very special experience for us as our whole school went together. Some of us had never been to the theatre before so this will be a memory we keep forever! Thank you to the Friends of Merry Hill for organising such a wonderful day out for us – we all thoroughly enjoyed it!

When we arrived back to school, we all had another special treat – a class picnic! We collected our lunch and all ate together, talking about our favourite part of the show!

“The funniest bit was the balls!”

“It was so funny when they threw the balls at us!”

How you can help at home:

• Discuss the theatre trip with your child
• Ask your child to recount their day using key vocabulary: first, then, next, after, finally
• Put on your own show at home – it could be a puppet show, a dance show, a singing show or a talent show!
• Write a thank you letter or draw a picture for the Friends of Merry Hill

In Literacy, Reception have been exploring their exciting new topic, The Natural World. The children used their imaginations to think about the different things they might see, hear, smell, touch and feel when walking through a forest. They then chose something they love about nature and created a front cover using the sentence stem, “I love the…”.  It was lovely to see the different parts of nature that each child love. Over the coming weeks, the children will be writing about the different senses, inspired by the special part of nature they have chosen.

This week, Reception have moved on to Phase 5 Phonics and have been learning the new graphemes ay, ou, ie, and ea. The children have been working incredibly hard to recognise and use these new sounds in their reading and writing. They have also been practising remembering these alongside all of the phonics sounds and skills they have already learned, showing great determination and enthusiasm in their learning.

How you can help at home:

• Complete a sound hunt – hide the sounds and ask your child to go and find the sound and tell you what it is.
• Go on a nature walk, what signs of summer can they see? What do they like about nature?

This week in Reception, we have been discussing the different weather as part of our daily calendar. We have found it very interesting and keep changing our weather window symbol – it has been quite funny swapping it from cloudy, to sunny, to rainy! It has prompted a lot of discussion about how quickly the weather changes and why we need to bring our coats to school everyday!

We have had a super busy week with maths – we have been noticing that maths is everywhere! Each day we sing a Days of the Week song and we’ve started doing a Months of the Year song. We add straws to a cup where we count how many days there are in each month. We have even been grouping the straws to make a ’10’ and then counting on from them. We are getting the hang of this now.

This week is Walk to School Week. We have discussed the different ways we all travel to school and why it is important to try to walk, scoot or cycle if we can. We know that it is important because “It’s good for our bodies to exercise”. We have had a lot of fun collecting the data and counting to see how well we are doing. We hope to turn this week into good habits, even if it is for one or two days a week.

This week we have also thought lots about Bees as we celebrated World Bee Day. We spent some time learning interesting facts about Bees and then used this in our forest sessions. We had a lot of fun. Ask us about our Bee facts! You can learn more here: https://www.bbka.org.uk/news/world-bee-day-may?srsltid=AfmBOornJJ0YVeZPFtn20LBBAzIQ-aQ8KY2QIQo_DvEJADtmzRqy21NS

FOREST PHOTOS HERE

How you can help at home:

• Talk about ways to stay healthy – for our bodies and the environment
• Ask us about our fascinating bee facts
• Go for a walk and take in nature – maybe you could draw a picture or paint what you see
• Take this time to check all uniform still fits, is labelled and ready for next half term.
• Please remember to bring a labelled sunhat after half term.
• Enjoy some well earned family time together if you can.

The children in Reception are continuing to make fantastic progress in phonics and should be very proud of how well they are doing! They are growing in confidence when sounding out and blending sounds to help them write words independently, and many are beginning to use their phonics knowledge naturally within sentences. It has also been lovely to see the children becoming more fluent and accurate when reading, particularly with words ending in “ed” and finding out which ‘ed’ sound it makes. Their willingness to practise every day is really helping them develop into confident early readers and writers! Thank you for your support with this!

The children have really enjoyed learning about habitats and animals this week. At the creative table, they have been busy making beautiful sea scenes inspired by coral reefs and different types of fish, showing lots of imagination and creativity. They have loved exploring colours, textures and shapes while talking about underwater habitats and the animals that live there. Outside, the children have been working together to build dens in the tuff tray using a range of different materials. They showed great teamwork, problem-solving skills and creativity as they explored how to create safe habitats and shelters for animals and themselves.

How you can help at home:

• Go on a walk and see which animals you can spot!
• Keep reading at home
• Practise writing words like ‘stop’ and ‘stamp’

This week in Reception we have been looking at our Earth and how we can take care of it. In our garden, we were learning to take care of it by collecting all the litter we found. We also had to litter pick all the rubbish in the sand pit that had blown in over night. We planted some new flowers to make our garden look and smell lovely. We carefully dug over the ground, made a hole, put the plants in, covered them and then we have been watering them a little bit each day.

Inside the classroom this week, we have been sorting the rubbish into different materials such as plastic and cardboard. We have learnt how recycling protects our wonderful planet and reduces waste.  We have all made a really big effort to recycle our paper waste in our recycling robot. He has been filled up lots which has meant our rubbish bins have been less full – this is a really good start! We have also learned a reduce, reuse, recycle song!

How you can help at home:

• Try to recycle or reuse your rubbish at home
• Make a recycling poster for your family so they can learn how to recycle too
• Can your child remember the reduce, reuse, recycle song?

Welcome back!

This week we kickstarted our learning with some very exciting news! We had a mystery letter arrive that was sent to us from a local hairdresser. The hairdresser was very confused about a visitor they’d had and asked us to help figure out who the mystery visitor was. With a little bit of thinking, we discovered it was Paddington who had been for a haircut! This was particularly exciting because our Literacy text this week is called Paddington’s Post. We also received  some additional  post later in the week which has inspired us all to write our own letters. Some of us wrote to Ms Adams and Mr Johnson to say thank you for helping to look after our school. We also received  post from other grown ups at school and even some from other children! We have spent lots of our explore time writing letters back.

Maths

This week in maths we have  been very   busy during explore time! We challenged ourselves to  find out the favourite fruit or colour in Teals and Kingfishers. We loved collecting the data and carefully recorded with ticks or drawings. We then had to count the total and enjoyed finding out the most popular. Some of us could even explain what we found out: “Apples were the best because there’s so many ticks!” “Bananas  only have 1 so they are not good”

How you can help at home:

• Write  a letter to a member of your family, friend or neighbour with some news. We’re sure they will be delighted to receive some post. Having an authentic audience really inspires the children.
• Practise writing for different purposes: labels for your toys, shopping lists, recipes, thank you cards etc
• Complete your own maths investigation – find ways to record information you collect. e.g. tick chart, pictogram for favourite fruit/animal/sport etc.

Reception have had a wonderful week celebrating Easter in our classroom, filled with a mix of meaningful learning and fun activities. On Wednesday,  Father Burton led a special assembly where he shared the Easter story with the children, helping them to understand why Easter is important and the story behind it.

Throughout the week, the children took part in a range of hands-on activities. They explored measuring by scooping rice into Easter eggs and using language such as full, empty, heavy and light. The children also enjoyed decorating their own Easter eggs using pasta, creating patterns and developing their fine motor skills. They also had an Easter egg hunt to complete in the forest. They showed great resilience in finding all 20 eggs! The children had lots of fun searching for hidden eggs and worked together brilliantly.

The Reception children also learnt about the Jewish festival of Passover. They learnt that Jewish people eat Matza instead of bread during this celebration as there wasn’t enough time for the bread to rise when the Jewish people tried to leave Egypt. The children were so excited to try some Matza, they were surprised by the texture and taste!

We hope you have a wonderful Easter and break 🙂

How you can help at home:

• Can you go on an (Easter) egg hunt? You could write clues for your family and friends.
• Read your phonics book everyday

This week we were very excited to welcome Little City to our school. When we arrived in the hall we could see some wonderful role play stations set up. We had a lovely time exploring all the different areas: vets, post office, fire and police station, supermarket, builders yard, hair salon, car garage, and cafe. Whilst we had a magical time exploring, we were also developing our communication and language skills, as well as understanding more about the world around us.

The staff that led the session said how well behaved we all were and he was very impressed with our tidying up skills too! We are very proud of you all.

Here is a highlight of all the fun we had:

How you can help at home:

• visit the Little City website and further explore
• talk about your child’s experience of the day – what was their favourite station, why?
• 8 continue to develop your child’s curiosity for the world around them by discussing different jobs and occupations as well as visiting places such as the library, local fire station, vets clinic etc which all offer free visits on special occasions.
•  continue reading and sharing books as well as print in the environment together – this really does have a huge impact on your child’s phonics and reading skills
• Enjoy the sunshine whilst it lasts!

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!