15th December 2023
Christmas is in full swing in Reception! Snowy our class elf arrived in style and has been up to all sorts of things including eating biscuits, reading stories and baking. We used our fantastic teamwork skills to decorate our Christmas tree and it looks fabulous! Our role play area has turned into Santa’s workshop we have been busy writing our Christmas lists, putting them in envelopes and posting them in our post box. We have been thinking about how the post office works and the different jobs that happen there. We have also been practising our wrapping in Santa’s workshop.
In the writing area, we have been practising our card writing by making and writing cards for different members of staff around school. The children have made some brilliant cards and the staff have been amazed by their wonderful writing skills.
The main event of the term happened this week, our performance of Whoops-a-Daisy Angel! The children have worked very hard during rehearsals which definitely paid off on the day. Everyone did a fantastic job of remembering their lines and their ques. They really gave both performances their all and I am SO proud of them!
I hope you all enjoy your Christmas holidays, see you in 2024!
Merry Christmas!
1st December 2023
Another fantastic and very busy fortnight in Reception. Last week we ventured out on our first trip of the year to Seven Stories in Newcastle. During our visit we read lots of lovely stories, dressed up as different characters, retold stories using puppets and completed some drawing activities. We loved the Tiger Who Came to Tea exhibit and even got to make the Tiger some tea for ourselves. We had such a busy day that some of us even fell asleep on the way home! The children were so well behaved, polite towards other members of the public and represented our school so well. What a wonderful time we had!
In school, we have had a very special visitor in our classroom. A penguin arrived with his suitcase from the south pole. He had a post card with him which said he was lost and he needed our help, we worked out that it was just like in the story Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers. Penguin has been helping us learn all about the South Pole, how different it is to Ellington and how the huge icebergs are melting. We have learned about what penguins like and we have even watched some real life penguins on the live feed from Edinburgh Zoo. This week penguin went for a little adventure around Ellington to see if he’d like to stay here but we have decided he needs to go back to the South Pole where it’s a bit colder and there are more fish for him to eat!
We have also been looking at the role of a dentist as part of our school wide careers day. We practised brushing our teeth, role played dentists and wrote about what happens when we visit the dentist. We were lucky enough to be sent a video from Zoe, a dental nurse, who talked us through her job and why the dentist does certain things- a big thank you to Zoe for taking the time out to do that for us!
Great work again team!
27th October 2023
What a brilliant fortnight we have had in Reception. We have been doing lots of work based on the story the Little Red Hen. We have learned the story using actions to help us, labelled the characters and wrote speech bubbles to show what the characters in the story say. The children were super at using the sounds they have been learning to help them. We ended our learning on this story by creating a recipe to help us make bread just like the Little Red Hen does. We sieved, poured and mixed to create the dough then worked hard at kneading the dough. We watched it rise and popped it into the oven. We then chose a topping to add to our bread, chocolate spread and jam being the firm favourites. It was so tasty!
In maths we have been working hard on recognising more or less than an amount by playing a magic game where objects kept appearing and disappearing! Head over to your child’s School360 account to have a look.
In our provision we have been thinking about Halloween. We have made our own potions, carved pumpkins and practised Halloween themed CVC words. We have also been working hard at learning our song for the Harvest Festival.
We also had a super special non-uniform day to celebrate being the top attendance class for 3 weeks running. We also had a game of dodgeball and a trip to the library as part of our winning prizes. Thank you for all of your support in making this happen, we have some very happy children in Reception!
Have a brilliant half term!
Another busy two weeks in Reception! We have been busy helping the Tooth Fairy by creating instructions to help the Giant brush his teeth. We then had to help her find one of the Giants missing teeth by going on a hunt around our school grounds. We made simple maps to recall the places we visited on our journey and help the Tooth Fairy find the tooth. Giant was very grateful that we helped and he managed to get his treat!
We have also read the story After the Storm by Nick Butterworth. We discussed our favourite part of the story, lots of us chose the part where the characters fall into the stream and have to use the wheelbarrow as a boat. We didn’t think the animals would be too happy about getting wet!
In maths we have been looking at the composition of numbers to 4 and how we can use our fingers to show different ways to make these numbers.
In our Understand the World work, we have been doing lots of learning about Autumn. We have been on scavenger hunts outside, made playdough hedgehogs with pasta spikes, created toilet roll hedgehogs and made conker runs with our construction and loose parts resources. The children made the conker run into a competition to see who could roll theirs the furthest- great fun had by all!
29th September 2023
Reception have had such a busy couple of weeks since our last newsletter. We have started our phonics lessons and are doing amazingly well with remember the sounds and forming our letters correctly. We have even started using these sounds in some writing in our literacy lessons where we have been thinking about our families, drawing pictures of them and using the first sound in the word to help us label our pictures. We have also been thinking about different parts of our body and faces and how these link to our senses. We coloured our photos in to help us label different parts of our face, we laughed so much once we were finished!
In maths we have been looking at subitising to 3 and we have been creating some golden rules for counting, they are:
- say one number at a time
- count one thing at a time
- stop counting when you reach the last thing
- remember the last number you counted!
In our PSHE lessons we have been learning about the zones of regulation and how they can help us to understand our feelings and emotions. We worked together to create feelings jars with each colour representing a different zone of regulation. We have also introduced a feelings wall so we can place our picture on the coloured space on the wall to represent how we are feeling throughout the day- we’ve been green all week!
15th September 2023
What a brilliant start we have made in Reception! The past two weeks have been full of catching up with our friends, settling into our new classroom and learning our new routines. The children have been amazing, I could not be prouder of the start they have made to the new school year.
In literacy, we have been learning all about ourselves and have started to read the story ‘Once There Were Giants’ by Martin Waddell. We have enjoyed having a guess at what the story would be about using only the title and the clues on the front cover. The little girl in the story started life as a baby, just like us! We used some catalogue to create a list of items that baby’s use. We then had a think about how we have changed since we were babies and how we need different things now.
In maths, we have been busy consolidating our knowledge of numbers to 5 to help us in the coming weeks.
We have also been making some jellyfish in our RE work as we have been learning about God the Creator.
A fabulous first fortnight Reception- keep up the great work!