Reception Class News

Reception parent/carer survey

If you’re a parent of a child in Reception, please complete this short survey.

At Scholes (Elmet) Primary, we’re always trying to keep getting better and better. Your views help us to do that. The survey will only take a few minutes to complete and you’ve got until Wednesday 18 March to complete. (If you’d like us to follow-up any of your responses with you, we can only do this if you leave your name.)

We can’t guarantee to meet the needs and wants of every parent / carer, but we do assure you that we consider all the points raised and aim to act on specific points that are raised by many, or a useful idea raised by just a few.

Previously, based on your feedback, for example, we alternated the days Stay and Learns were held – to give all parents an opportunity to attend.

Thank you for taking the time to complete the survey. We’re looking forward to reading your views.

This Green Moon

The Train Ride

We’re starting the half term with a focus on transport. This week, we’ve been reading The Train Ride by June Crebbin.

This story is about things that are seen out of the window, on a train journey. We noticed that the rhythm of the book’s repeated/rhyming lines start fast and repetitive (much like the sound of a train chugging along a track) and then as the train approaches the station, the lines become longer and the pace slows down until the train reaches is destination. Destination is our ‘word of the week’.

Historical links

We looked at pictures of the early steam locomotive- Robert Stephenson’s Rocket. We compared it to the trains we use today.

Phonics

Spring 2 week 1 has been a review of phase 3 sounds: ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, oo, ow, oi, ear, in words and sentences. We review tricky words daily.

Tricky words can be just that-tricky! Here’s a game we play at school that you could try at home.

Roll and Read

You will need a die for this game. You may wish to print the boards or display them on a screen.

• Roll the die
• Count the spots, match to the correct row
• Choose a word to read on the row
• Cover the word when read correctly
• Repeat

Who will be the first to complete a row?

Maths: Comparison

We’ve been comparing groups of objects and toys, saying which has more and which has fewer. We’ve been noticing and explaining why size, colour and other factors do not matter when comparing ‘how many’.

In the classroom, children have been making 6 using Numicon frames.

This Green Moon

This week was a very special week for our Reception class as we went on our very first class trip to This Green Moon! As soon as we opened the doors in the morning the children were buzzing with excitement.

When we arrived at Green Moon, we were warmly greeted by the two leaders, Paul and Matt. They led the activities and supported us throughout the day – they were fantastically engaging and fun.

We thoroughly enjoyed spending the day outdoors, exploring the natural world around us. The children took part in so many exciting activities: making a fire, creating sculptures using potatoes, designing bracelets with pieces of coloured wool we found in the forest, and even working together to create a giant piece of artwork. It was fantastic to see their creativity and curiosity shining through.

What a fantastic day full of learning, laughter and adventure. Well done, Reception – we’re so proud of you all!

Let’s grow

Phase 3 Stay and Learn

Thank you to all parents and carers who attended the Stay and Learn this week. Hopefully you found the ‘Phase 3 Phonics’ presentation and lesson informative and that you enjoyed playing the phonics games with your child in class. If you’ve any questions about the information you heard/saw during the session, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Please take a short few moments to feedback on the Stay and Learn session by copying this link and pasting it into your browser: 

https://forms.gle/JWgXSyfTj53kx6Em9

Great Fairies of the World

This week, we read Great Fairies of the World by Stephanie Moss. This rhyming story introduces fairy characters with jobs that help others, including an architect fairy, a doctor fairy and an engineer fairy, to name just a few!

We discussed how the author chooses the most interesting and imaginative words to bring the characters to life. Through describing images and making our word choices more adventurous, we’ve developed our oracy skills and strengthened our writing too.

Supertato

Supertato

This last week’s book focus was the amazing Supertato by Sue Hendra. There was a real buzz about the classroom with the children enjoying all the linked activities. They designed traps to capture Evil Pea, wrote wanted posters for the villain, created patterns with vegetables, created observational drawings of different vegetables and used green pea counters to make words in the Phonics area.

Our new word of the week is: mischievous. A perfect word to describe the small, green villain in our story!

Help at home: you could read some other Supertato stories (there are many) or watch some episodes of Supertato on BBC iPlayer. Talk to your child after the story/episode to see if they’ve understood the story and the events Why did that happen? What do you think might happen next? Who was the main character? Why did they feel that way? Did you like it? All these types of questions help with reading comprehension. 

Poem of The Week

This week’s Poem is A Little House. We enjoyed the rhythm and rhyme in this poem and talked about the new words we came across like curling and drifting.

Gross motor skills

Did you know that gross motor skills helps with early writing skills?

Gross motor skills involving large muscle movements like crawling, climbing, and throwing are crucial to early writing. This is because they build strength in core, shoulder and arm muscles. These movements enable children to sit upright, stabilize their shoulders for controlled pencil grip, and improve coordination. It also helps to improve stamina when writing. We practise lots of gross motor skills every day in our outdoor area.

Help at home: take your child to the park, ride bikes and scoot together. Play tennis, football, rugby or dance around your kitchen. All these playful activities help in your child’s writing journey. 

Art

Following on from our visit to the ‘gallery’ last week, we begun to create some wintery art. The art work is inspired by Claude Monet’s magpie Painting. We created a wash with watered down blue paint and mopped some of the paint using different media to create different effects. Next week we’ll finish off our creations using tissue paper. Look out for photos of our finished art.

Dates for your diary:

Wednesday 4th Feb – Stay and Learn

Tuesday 10th Feb – Parents teacher meetings (booked appointments)

Thursday 12th – Parent teacher meetings (booked appointments)

Friday 13th – break up for half term

Packed lunches

Does your child have a packed lunch at school? If so, please download our Guide to Healthy Packed Lunches.

Did you know that popcorn and whole grapes are a choking hazard for children under 5? Lot’s of people don’t! The Food Standards Agency. has published the following advice on how to prepare food safely for your young child.

• Early years choking hazards food safety advice
• Early years food choking hazards

Penguin Huddle and Claude Monet

In our literacy lessons this week, we enjoyed reading Penguin Huddle by Ross Montgomery.  In the story, the penguins huddled together during an icy storm but it was so cold that they got stuck together and couldn’t break free!

Our word of the week is: huddle.  Ask your child to tell you what it means. Can they use it in a sentence?  

Here is some of our super writing from this week.

We also watched a short clip from an episode of BBC Frozen planet  to find out more about where penguins live. We located the UK and the Antarctic on a map and found their locations on a globe.

How is the Antarctic environment different to the United Kingdom?  After watching the clip, we looked at some photographs of the Antarctic and compared them to the United Kingdom to find similarities and differences.

Focus Artist: Monet

This week, children loved exploring the art of Claude Monet. We found out about his life and his amazing pictures of the natural world!  On Thursday afternoon, we visited a special ‘pop-up’ Art Gallery in the Hub.

When looking at the artwork, we used sentence stems to talk about our opinions.

I like it because…

I don’t like it because…

Children’s examples of speech.

“I like it because it’s looks the same as outside, look outside the window, it’s the same.”

“I like the colours, the pink and the blue.”

“I don’t like it because it’s a bit grey and it looks cold”

After looking at the gallery, we took inspiration from some of the pictures to create our own Monet inspired artwork. We’ve also been exploring colour mixing to find out what happens when you mix two of the primary colours (red, blue and yellow) together.

Maths -composition

This week, children  consolidated their understanding of the composition of 5 using the familiar rhyme ‘5 Little Ducks’ By singing the rhyme and moving the ducks during each verse, children investigated part–part–whole relations, e.g. seeing that 5 can be made of 3 and 2.

There are five ducks in the pond but when one duck swims away, we can see that there are four ducks in the pond and one on the hill.  5 can be made of 4 and 1.  When another duck swims away, there are 3 ducks and 2 on the hill. 5 can be made of 3 and 2. 

We also used our fingers to show this, first holding up 5 fingers and then putting one down each time.

Poetry Picnic

Our poetry sessions this week have been a little different as we learnt and recited a traditional nursery rhyme.

The children used gestures and expression to recite ‘Jack and Jill’.

Phonics

Spring 1 week 3  has focused on the digraphs ur, ow, oi and the trigraph ear.

We’ve learnt the tricky words; my, by, all.    Tricky words are words that should be read by sight.

Help at home:

Each week, we’d like to give you an idea of a game you could play at home to make reading even more exciting.

This week’s game is: Tricky Word Splat

• Write a selection of tricky words on paper/sticky notes.
• Place around the room/floor.
• Say a tricky word for your child to splat. You might jump on the words, splat with a masher or create your own ideas.

Lost and Found

This week, we’ve continued to enjoy the story Lost and Found  by Oliver Jeffers and have been making lots of connections between the book and our topic learning.

We explored a world map and located England and Antarctica, before tracing the journey the boy and the penguin would take from where we live in the UK all the way to the South Pole. We revisited what we already know about maps, with some children remembering that blue shows oceans and green shows land. Others also spotted the orange and brown areas and suggested these might be deserts.

We also compared our weather with the weather in Antarctica and talked about how different it is. Our word of the week is climate and we’ve been using it to describe what the weather is usually like in different places.

Penguin observations

Children loved being zoologists this week. They enjoyed observing a live stream of the penguins at  Edinburgh Zoo and wrote about how the penguins move and interact with one another.

In writing, we created ‘Missing’ posters, carefully describing the penguin from the story and thinking about the key details someone would need to help find him.

Maths; the staircase pattern

In Maths, we’ve been looking at counting and ordinality- specifically, the ‘one more’ relationship that creates ‘the staircase pattern’.

We were introduced to the concept by watching an episode of the Numberblocks, before moving on to create our own staircase patterns.

We even overheard some of the children singing the Numberblocks song, “I’m bigger than you.  I’m smaller than you. Diddly diddly doo!”  as they ordered their towers into the staircase pattern.

Phonics

This week, our phonics learning focused on the digraphs oo, ar and or.

We also learned the tricky words was, you and they. Tricky words are read by sight, as they cannot be sounded out easily.

Help at home – Tricky Words

Here’s a simple game for you to play at home to support reading.

Tricky Word Bingo. 

1.  Enter your chosen tricky words into an online picker (such as pickerwheel.com) or write them on paper to choose from at random.
2.  Ask your child to select 4–6 tricky words and write them down. You can join in too, or invite a sibling to play.
3. Take turns choosing words.
4. The first person to cross off all their words and shout BINGO wins!

Poetry Basket

Each week, we learn a new poem and recite it daily. Saying the poem aloud helps the children focus on the sounds and rhythm of each word and line, supporting their reading development. This week’s poem is Who Has Seen the Wind?

Swimming

Rainbow class made a splash in their first swimming session this week, with lots of happy faces and plenty of laughter as they splashed in the pool! They followed instructions carefully to enter and exit the pool safely and took part in games using pool noodles and floating toys to help build their confidence in the water.

We’re sure that Sunshine class are looking forward to their first lesson next week. They’ll need their kit on Wednesday. 

Help at home – Self-help skills

To help make swimming days run smoothly, please make sure all clothing is clearly labelled. You can also support your child further at home by encouraging them to practise getting dressed independently. It’d be especially helpful for children to practise turning their clothes the right way around (such as trouser legs and sleeves) to help them be as independent as they can be when getting dressed after their lesson.

Penguins, paints and pipettes!

And finally, here are a few more photos from our learning this week. We’ve been improving our fine motor skills by balancing penguins and squeezing pipettes, practising our throwing skills, experimenting with paints on different media and designing our own certificates.

Reading: It’s so important!

We hope that you’re enjoying reading your child’s library book with them. We call this a ‘love of reading’ book – to do just that, encourage a love of reading for your child! Reading to and with your child can have a huge positive impact on your child’s education.

This research is a powerful message of the impact you can have when reading to/with your child:

At school, your child reads a physical book four times a week – with a focus on teaching phonics skills. This is then sent home as an eBook. The purpose of the eBook at home is to celebrate your child’s success (in phonics skills). Your child should be able to read most of this book confidently and really feel like a reader.

We’ve chosen to use eBooks at home for many benefits. Allocating eBooks frees up about two hours of teacher or TA time changing books – now spent teaching reading!

Here’s some information on how to access eBooks but if you’re having any problems please speak to your child’s class teacher.

Happy reading!