Reception Class News

Odd Socks Day!

Today, children came to school wearing odd socks in support of Anti-Bullying week. We discussed how important it is to celebrate our differences and respect everyone.

Reception children loved showing off their mismatched socks while learning about kindness, inclusion and celebrating differences.

Welcome back!

Welcome back everyone! It was so nice to see the children again and see so many smiling faces upon their return to school on Monday. A great start to the new term!

Phonics

This week in Phonics we have learnt some more digraphs. Digraphs are two letters that make one sound. They were:

We also learnt the phoneme and grapheme /j/ along with the new tricky word ‘as’.

Maths

This week, we’ve been engaging in activities that highlight the purpose of counting – finding out how many objects there are altogether. We’ve reinforced our understanding of cardinality, recognising that the last number we say when counting represents the total number of objects in the set.

A key focus has been deepening our understanding of the number 5 as a quantity. We’ve been linking the number to familiar representations, such as the five fingers on one hand. The children are also beginning to explore different ways to represent numbers up to 5, using both their fingers and the Hungarian number pattern (die frame).
 

Poem Of The week

This week’s poem is called Cup Of Tea.

Celebrations

Over the last couple of teaching weeks we have been learning about some of the different celebrations that people celebrate in our country. We have thought about and discussed Diwali and Bonfire night. We have also been paying close attention to the season of Autumn and thinking about some of the things that happen during this beautiful season.

My Money Week

Throughout school the children have been learning about money this week. We joined in with Key Stage One and created the school logo from the pennies that pupils had brought in to school. Thank you to everyone that donated money!

Next week:

• Anti-bullying Week and Odd Socks Day. Next week we will be partaking in Odd Socks Day on Monday the 10th November. All children are welcome to come to school in odd socks. This is to raise awareness for Anti-bullying week. The odd socks will help us to discuss all of our wonderful similarities and differences.
• Remembrance Day. In school we will observe a minute silence at 11am on the 11th November. This is to commemorate Armistice, to honour the service and sacrifice of the armed forces and to show respect for all the lives lost. This will be done and explained in a child friendly and age appropriate manor.
• Nursery Rhyme Week. This week in reception class we will also be celebrating Nursery Rhyme week. Look out for next week’s web post to see some of the wonderful learning that will have taken place.

Do you have a child due to start primary school in 2026?

A video and FAQ’s are available for more support and guidance with applications.

Light and dark!

Training day – Arty Ideas!

We thought you’d enjoy hearing a little about what went on during our recent teacher training day! Part of the day was dedicated to developing our art knowledge and skills with our resident art teacher, Mrs Boulton.

Teachers got hands-on with paints, pastels and even soap! There was plenty of colour, laughter, and even a bit of friendly competition as we experimented with new techniques and ideas for upcoming art lessons.

The rest of the day focussed on other important areas too, including maths and inclusion. It was a full, productive day – and we left feeling ready and excited for the next half-term!

Leaf Man

This week, we’ve explored all things autumn!

Understanding the world; seasonal changes

We took an autumn walk  to spot signs of autumn and changes in the natural environment. We were inspired by our story this week. Thank you to everyone who brought in conkers, leaves and other natural objects to explore in class.

Leaf Man

We’ve been reading the book Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert.

“A Leaf Man’s got to go, where the wind blows”

The book takes us on Leaf Man’s journey, as he travels on the autumn wind across different autumnal landscapes.

Our ‘word of the week’ is season. We know that we have four seasons in the year; spring, summer, autumn and winter.

Inspired by the book, we made our own ‘Leaf Man’ pictures.

PE;  football skills

This week, we’ve been working on our kicking, balancing and passing skills.

We started by practising ‘small kicks’ around hall, keeping the balls close and under control. We then balanced on one foot whilst trying to move the ball around our standing leg. We finished with some partner work, passing the ball with good control and stopping it with our foot.

Did you know…

We’ve developed our PE curriculum across our Sphere Federation schools, alongside Foot-Tech Academy.  Foot-Tech are an innovative sports coaching company that provide sessions across the city for children to develop their skills and develop a life-long love of sport and physical activity. As teachers, we have received their training and guidance on how to teach effective PE lessons. Our PE sessions have a purposeful, game-based approach and include a range of activities involving multiskills.

On Wednesday afternoons, Reception are taught their PE lesson by Foot-Tech coaches.

Finally in our PE news, a big thank you to Foot-Tech for donating a new set of footballs to Reception. They are rainbow-tastic and so much fun!

Poetry Picnic

Each week we will be learning a new poem. We will recite this poem each day. By saying the poem out loud, we can focus on the sounds and rhythm of each word or line. We talk to the children about how this can help us become better readers. This week’s poem is called Five Little Pumpkins.

Phonics 

This week has been a revision and phonics assessment week.

There will be no new ‘Learn at home’ sheets until the first week of next half term. Please continue to revisit previous sheets with your child.

Help at home; blending

Oral segmenting/blending games are great, both if your child is still learning to blend and for those children who are confident ‘blenders’, to revisit their skills. Here’s just one idea to try at home: Dress the Baby (idea taken from earlyimpactlearning.com)

Any toy can be used for this game. Put a baby doll or another toy  down  with some clothes round it- for example a hat, boots, a nappy, a coat and gloves.

Say one of the pieces of clothing in sound-talk. For example a boot would be a ‘b-oo-t.’ If your child can blend it, then they can put a piece that piece of clothing on the baby/toy. To make it easier, you can say all the pieces of clothing like robots before you start.

Let us know if you try this game at home!

More pictures of our learning this week…

Swimming

We do not yet have a start date for our swimming lessons, due to swimming coach availability. We’ll let you know when the start date is confirmed. We also put swimming date posters in our windows or on the door, so you will have notice before the children start.

Dates for your diary and reminders

Parent teacher consultations: Week commencing 20.10.25- individual appointment times.

Nasal flu vaccinations: Thursday 23.10.25

School closed- training day: Friday 24.10.25

Henri’s Scissors

Henri’s Scissors – Exploring Art Like Matisse!

This week we have been reading Henri’s Scissors by Jeanette Winter. (If you’re watching it on YouTube, here’s a top tip: click the settings cog along the play bar and turn off autoplay – this helps to avoid inappropriate clips and encourages your child to engage purposefully rather than watching video after video.)

The story is a biographical children’s book about the famous artist, Henri Matisse. We learned about his life and discovered how, even when he became unwell and could no longer paint, he continued to make beautiful artwork by “painting with scissors” – cutting bold shapes and colours to create collages.

Our word of the week was artist. We talked about different types of art and artists, introducing new vocabulary such as sculptor, sculpture and collage.

Then, we became artists ourselves by creating our own colourful collages – just like Matisse!

We used our language and communication skills to explore and respond to Matisse’s artwork. We looked closely at the colours, shapes and patterns and thought carefully about which pieces we liked and why.

We also discussed questions such as:

• Why do you think the artist painted this?
• Which is your favourite, and why?

Here are some of our thoughtful responses:

I like the white part. It looks like snowflakes.

I like the colours because they’re like a rainbow.

I can see square shapes. They both have the same colour at the back.

Phonics

This week, children have been learning the phonemes (the sounds that letters make) h, b, f, and l. They’ve also been practising writing the graphemes (the written letters) for these sounds.

We’ve been challenging children to spell words using the letters they already know.  This week, your child has been spelling the words: dog, ten, red, mum and kid.

Can your child tell you which phonemes they can hear in these words?
d-o-g t-e-n r-e-d m-u-m k-i-d

We’ve also learnt a new tricky word: the.
A tricky word is a word that can’t be sounded out using phonics – it’s one they simply have to learn by sight.

The children now know three tricky words:  I, is and the

Help at Home:  You can support your child’s learning at home by writing these tricky words on pieces of paper or sticky notes and placing them around your house. Keep challenging your child to read them whenever they see them – the more practice, the better! These words need to be recognised instantly, just by looking.

Poetry Basket

Children love listening to and joining in with poems each week. We learn a new poem every Monday and recite it together throughout the week.

Saying the poems out loud helps us focus on sounds, rhythm and rhyme, which supports our early reading skills. We’ve noticed that some poems have a fast and lively beat, while others are slow and gentle.

Follow the link to watch Reception recite this week’s poem – Leaves are falling.

Maths

In Maths, we’ve been using our subitising skills to identify patterns up to 4.

Subitising means being able to see a small number of objects and know how many there are without counting –  for example, recognising that there are three dots just by looking.

We practised spotting changes to see whether there were more, fewer or the same and describing the changes we could see. We also explored different representations of 4 using multilink cubes – inspired by our introduction to Numberblock 4!

And finally, here are a few photos from this week’s learning.

Help at home – autumn leaves and conkers.

If you go on a walk this weekend, we’d really appreciate donations of dry leaves to help us with an art project next week.  We also need some conkers and acorns to use in our maths learning – see how many you can find! Thank you for your support.

Stay and Learn – Phase 2 Phonics

A big thank you to all the parents and carers who joined us on Monday for our Phonics Phase 2 Stay and Learn session. We hope you enjoyed seeing a lesson in action, taking part in activities with your child and found the teacher presentation helpful.

Click here to view the presentation slides.

You might also find the Little Wandle website useful to learn more about how we teach phonics in school. You’ll find useful videos showing how to pronounce phonemes using pure sounds and tips for supporting your child with wordless books.

We also have lots of information about phonics in the ‘Learn more – phonics’ section of our school website.

Reading in Reception

Children read in small groups (up to six) with an adult each morning. They work with the same book across the week, reading four times (Mon–Thurs). The week’s eBook is usually shared by Thursday evening.

Days 1–2: Decoding
Children are introduced to new vocabulary and key decodable words – words that can be segmented and blended. We then read through the book together. The aim at this stage is to develop automaticity (recognising words by sight or memory), which helps make reading more fluent and confident.

Day 3: Prosody
Prosody refers to the patterns of stress, intonation and rhythm in speech –  in other words, sounding like a storyteller! This is modelled to the children, who are taught to notice clues in the text that influence how we read aloud. For example:

• How is the character feeling?
• Is there an exclamation or question mark?
• Should we pause briefly at a full stop?

Day 4: Comprehension
Children are asked a range of questions to check their understanding of what they have read. You can find some of these questions on the last page of the eBook – they’re great for chatting about the story at home.

Reading Reports & Support

Teachers check reading reports regularly via Collins Hub and will make ‘keeping in touch’ calls if reading hasn’t been recorded, just to see if we can help.  If you’re having trouble accessing eBooks, please speak to your class teacher. iPads are available to hire from the school office if needed.

Reading Records

Please send your child’s reading record to school every Friday, with a short comment about how they’ve been getting on. This can include any reading at home – not just eBooks.

We’d Love Your Feedback

Thank you again for joining our Stay and Learn session. We’d love to hear your thoughts!  Please scan the QR code to fill out our feedback form.

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!

We’re going on a Bear Hunt

We’re going on a Bear hunt

The well loved story We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen was the focus story for our learning this week. Both classes enjoyed joining in with the story and retelling it in our reading areas.

We used the story as a prompt to go on our own hunt in the school grounds. With an areal map of school in hand, we went on a sound hunt. We searched for some of the graphemes we have learnt so far.

The map’s telling us to go to the gazebo!

Understanding the World

Thank you to everyone who sent in photographs of their front doors. We used them to draw our houses and other types of homes too.

This one’s my house. It has two handles and white all around.

Mine has windows.

My house has a blue door.

Phonics

Autumn 1, week 4 has focused on the new phonemes: /ck/, /e/, /u/ and /r/.

/ck/ is our first diagraph and the children have been great at remembering that two letters can work together to make one sound. We also learnt the new tricky word: the.

The children are doing ever such a good job at blending orally using all their known sounds (phonemes) and they have begun to blend to read independently in our phonics sessions too. Keep it up Reception!

Poem Of The Week

This week’s poem of the week is Falling Apples.

Help at home: you could set up a stage at home (a sofa or chair would be fine) and let your child perform the poem to you using the actions we learnt in class.

Maths

This week we have learnt that numbers can be composed of ones. We joined in with the STEM sentence “one and one and one make three” and made collections of three things for Baby Bear.

Help at home: You could make different collections of three things at home. You could look at how three can be made of one and one and one or from two and one.

Stay and Learn

Our first stay and learn session will be on Monday 6th October. 
This is an opportunity for you to come into school to find out about phonics and watch your child learning in school. There will also be a coffee morning and a Phonics information presentation before the session. We look forward to welcoming you then 🙂