Author: Reception team

Autumn Week 8

What a great first half term we’ve had in Reception! We’re so proud of how well the children have settled and how much they have learnt in just eight weeks. It was lovely to share their progress with you at our parent-teacher consultation meetings. Mrs Long will rearrange her appointments after half term once her voice has fully returned!

Please refer to our previous swimming post for the dates of our upcoming sessions. The children are really excited and have loved visiting the pool over the last few weeks.

This week, we’ve enjoyed reading Room on the Broom and had great fun painting pumpkins and investigating what was inside.

The children also put their phonics skills to the test by completing a spooky phonics trail, spotting sounds along the way and playing a game of Pass the Pumpkin! When the music stopped, we had to write words to match the objects, such as hat, cat and bat.

Please check your child’s book bag for a  phonics sheet showing some sounds and tricky words to practise over half term. Remember, little and often is best!

Finally, we hope you all have a wonderful, restful half term. Thank you for your continued support and we look forward to seeing everyone again in November!

Bear Hunt

Bear Hunt

Our focus book has been We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen. We have used a story map to retell the story. See if your children can retell it to you at home.

Phonics

We have been introduced to ‘s, a, t, p, i, n, m, d, g, o, c, k, ck, e, u and r’ next week we will learn ‘h, b, f and l’. The children are all working really hard on their ‘blending’ skills. This is where they blend the phonemes (sounds) together in a word. For example we might ask; Can you point to the b-u-s?

Help at home; games like I spy are great for phonic awareness, can they name things that start with the right sound?

Reading

All e books are set up, please let us know if you can’t see this week’s book. After school is the best time to catch us as we have responsibility for the whole class first thing on a morning.

Finally, here’s a snapshot of some of our fantastic independent learning this week.

Family photo

This week we’ve been reading  The Great Big Book of Families.  (This is a YouTube link. Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog along the play bar and turn off autoplay – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip.)  Through the book, we have explored and celebrated the variety of families. Children had lots of suggestions about what makes a family.

 

To support our learning we’d love a photograph from home with the children and their families. Please either bring a copy in or email one to [email protected]

Reminders
Don’t forget to attend our Welcome to Reception meeting at 6pm on Wednesday. This will give you some basic ‘need to knows’ about life in Reception. They’ll also be an opportunity to ask any questions.

First week in Reception

Our Reception children have settled in so beautifully and are doing a fantastic job getting to know their new classroom, routines and friends. It’s been wonderful to see how much more confident and comfortable they’re becoming each day!

From Monday 14 September, we’d like to encourage the children to start coming into the classroom independently, as they’re now becoming familiar with the morning routine. This is a lovely next step in helping them to build their confidence, independence and sense of responsibility.

We really appreciate your support with this and know that, together, we can help the children feel proud and confident as they begin their mornings independently. If you ever have any questions, concerns or would simply like to have a chat, please don’t hesitate to speak to us, the door is always open and we’re happy to help.

Here we are exploring our outdoor learning space. We have been looking for objects in our nature areas, riding bikes, gymnastics and playing games.

All children need a pair of wellies leaving at school so they can access the grass area year round.

We have had a little taster of our P.E. sessions this week!

Just a reminder that we will be doing a short P.E. session every day in Reception. The children will not be getting changed for P.E., so please ensure they come to school wearing suitable school uniform and comfortable footwear.

Help at home: Practise undoing buttons, taking off jumpers and putting shoes on and off. These are important skills in children’s development and make a huge difference to their independence.

Thank you for a wonderful first week and all your support.

Last week of Reception

Wow, the last week of Reception, how is that here already? We’ve spent this week talking about our favourite experiences and memories from across the year. Plus, the exciting things we have to look forward to in Year 1.

We had our beach party which included a visit from the ice cream van and we all got to choose an ice cream.

A huge thank you as well to all the parents and carers for your support throughout the year. Have a wonderful summer, whatever you get up to. Stay safe, be healthy and be happy.

Best wishes

The Reception Team

Nell Bank

Nell Bank

We had a wonderful visit to Nell Bank on Tuesday. We learnt all about recycling, looking after the environment and about badgers. We made badger sets, explored tunnels and cooled off in the water area where we had to work as team to transport the water around.

We’ve been keeping cool this week by listening to stories in the shade of our willow trees and sharing some of Nursery space where it is much cooler. The children had to work together to build  and explore the space.

Next week we will be looking at ‘Sharing a Shell’ by Julia Donaldson. We’ll be talking about our own experiences of the seaside.

Help at Home

As we are consolidating all of their phonics knowledge ready for Year 1  please keep practising their reading and celebrating their successes with their reading e-books.

The Night Pirates

Our book this week is The Night Pirates by Peter Harris. We have been reading the story and talking about the different vocabulary. Next we will draw a story map and use it to retell the story.

Here is some of the pirate provision that has enhanced our learning this week.

For our writing challenge we wrote about what we’d done in the half term.  Here are some examples;

This week, we introduced the children to Rekenreks. We continued to develop our subitising skills by using our “fast eyes” to quickly identify the number of beads shown. Rekenreks help children explore the structure of small numbers and build confidence in recognising quantities without counting.

We learnt that all of the beads should start on the right-hand side. This is known as the ‘ready position’. The children practised using the ‘pause (think), place (one finger), push (the beads)’ method. We always make sure we’re only using one finger when carefully pushing the beads.

Getting ready for Year One

We are now in Summer 2 and starting to think about transition into Year One. To help prepare children, we’d like parents/carers to encourage children to come into school independently and wave bye to them at the waving window.

We know there are a few children already doing this, which is great for developing independence.

Having said this, please know that our door will continue to be open to you for chats and if your child wants to show you their learning.

Thank you for your support.

Staying Safe

This week, we took part in Safety Week and spent time learning about how to keep ourselves and others safe in different situations.

The children enjoyed spotting potential dangers around the home, including hazards in the kitchen and living room such as trailing wires, hot pans, candles, fires and sharp objects. We discussed why these can be dangerous and how to stay safe around them.

We also played a fun safety game where the children moved forwards if a scenario was safe and froze and shouted “Stop!” if they thought it was unsafe. Some of the scenarios included wearing a helmet whilst riding a bike, stroking a dog that runs up to you in the park, jumping into a river on a hot day and remembering to wear sun cream.

In school, the children explored how we can stay safe in our classroom and outdoor areas. They identified possible hazards and created colourful safety posters with captions to share their ideas.

We also talked about the important adults who help to keep us safe, as well as the ways children can help to look after and support each other.

To finish the week, we watched a road safety video and discussed different types of road crossings and how to cross roads safely.

The children showed a great understanding of how to make safe choices in everyday situations.

Our special visitors included D.side who talked about how to keep healthy, some firefighters showed us their equipment and catering Leeds came to talk to us about germs and keeping our hands clean.

 

Help at Home: Talk to children about staying with a grown up and waiting agt every kerb to cross the road. We have also been looking at how to keep healthy, can they share 3 ways to keep happy and healthy?

 

We released our butterflies today, all 10 of our butterflies made it, and flew off to continue their lifecycles.

swimming dates (1)

Rabbits Don’t Lay Eggs

We have been reading the funny story ‘Rabbits Don’t Lay Eggs’ this week in Literacy. It does make us laugh.

Doubling

We looked at the doubles within 10 during our maths lessons last week and the children have been exploring it in their challenges.

Spring Walk

We have been on a walk around school looking out for signs of spring. We spotted daffodils, buds, blossom on the trees and bees.

“Look I spotted flowers on the trees, they weren’t there before.” Millie.

“There’s a bee flying round in there, come look!” Korbin

“It’s bud growing on the trees.” Henry

Help at Home

Go on a spring walk and see what signs of spring you can spot. Record what you find!

Easter Fun! 

We had lots of fun with our egg rolling competition and Easter activities.

Have a happy and healthy Easter break and we will see you on Monday 20th April.