Reception blog

• Tuesday 16 May 2023 Budding Gardeners This week, as part of Outdoor Learning Week, we have been busy planting lots of seeds in our new raised beds. So far, we have planted sweetcorn, sunflowers and carrots. We have been learning how to space the seeds out, prepare the soil and have been diligently watering the ground. We can't wait to see what happens! We have also been writing labels during our exploration to help us to remember what we have planted in the raised beds. Thank you to all the families who have donated seeds for our garden area!
• Friday 12 May 2023 Mysterious Happenings in Reception This week, we have been exploring some mysterious happenings in Reception. We found what looked like a spaceship in the playground as well as some suspicious footprints leading to the Mud Kitchen. Even stranger, we found some writing in a different language on the ground. We wondered whether who might have left such an unusual message for us! We wrote letters to Ms Fenn to explain what we had found out and we wonder what will happen next....
• Tuesday 25 April 2023 Counting to twenty This week, we have been exploring our numbers to twenty as part of our maths learning and also our continuous provision. We have been playing different games to explore these numbers and had great fun!
• Wednesday 29 March 2023 Planting Potatoes Yesterday, we planted the potatoes which we have been chitting in our classroom. The potatoes had grown sprouts which were about 2cm long and were ready to be planted. We filled our wheelbarrows with soil, digging it carefully, and then half-filled our planting bags. We then gently placed in some potatoes, nicely spaced out to give them room to grow, and then covered them with a layer of soil. We will keep watering our potatoes and adding more soil to make sure they remain covered and fed. We are looking forward to a potato party once they have grown!
• Friday 24 March 2023 Standalone Farm Today, we visited Standalone Farm to continue our learning for our unit, 'Farm to Fork'. We saw many different animals, recalled what their young are called and even saw some animals being fed! We especially enjoyed seeing the Shire horse and Shetland Pony, and seeing the piglets being fed. After lunch, we enjoyed some time playing together on the climbing equipment. Thank you to all our adult volunteers for joining us today - it was a wonderful visit and lovely to see the farm animals so close up!
• Friday 3 March 2023 World Book Day in Reception This year, our World Book Day focus was on non-fiction texts and we dressed up as different people or objects from information books which we particularly enjoy! Our costumes show our wonderful range of interests in Reception class and we hope you enjoy seeing them!
• Monday 20 February 2023 Looking for a Bog Baby.... As we launch our new learning all about mini-beasts, we ventured to the pond to look for signs of wildlife and to see whether any mini-beasts live there! We were very lucky and spotted some dragonfly larvae, some freshwater snails and even a newt! We explored the pond life hiding beneath the duckweed, just like the characters in our new book, The Bog Baby by Jeanne Willis. We also foraged in the woodlands to collect some materials to make some small bug hotels during our outdoor exploration. We look forward to creating some habitats to encourage different mini-beasts into our playground. Watch this space!
• Tuesday 24 January 2023 Fee fi fo fum! This week, we are learning the traditional tale, Jack and the Beanstalk. As we learn to retell the story using the repeated refrains and story language during our adult-directed learning, we are also developing lots of other skills in our child-initiated learning. We have been practising our super cutting skills to make a huge beanstalk for the classroom, building the giant's castle in the construction area complete with turrets and bridges, and counting the beans for the beanstalk. We even made a beanstalk and castle using the Numicon!
• Tuesday 20 December 2022 Christmas is Coming! Our letters are ready for Father Christmas, our biscuits have been baked and our wrapping paper made! We have even decorated the trees counting the baubles! We have been practising lots of different skills during our adult-directed and child-initiated learning, and we have enjoyed getting ready for Christmas!
• Tuesday 13 December 2022 A Winter Wonderland We loved exploring the snow outside yesterday! There was lots of awe and wonder as we enjoying seeing where Jack Frost had been. We discussed the seasonal changes and most importantly, had a lot of fun!
• Tuesday 29 November 2022 We are writers We are really enjoying using our writing in our child-initiated learning. We are exploring the letters and sounds in our environment, and taking lots of opportunities to write as part of our play. We have been writing our names on our learning, writing signs for our construction area and writing CVC words in our writing station! We especially love to spot digraphs in our environment!
• Tuesday 15 November 2022 Is it waterproof? For our first Family Learning Week session, Reception worked in groups to test different materials to find out which ones would be waterproof. We have been reading the story of Julian is a Mermaid and wanted to find some materials which would be waterproof to be by the seaside! We used pipettes to test different materials by dropping water onto them and made predictions about whether different materials would be waterproof. We enjoyed worked collaboratively and had some very interesting discussions. We enjoyed having our families with us and we are looking forward to our next session.
• Friday 11 November 2022 The Creation Story We have been learning the creation story from the Bible in our RE lessons. We learnt the story and as a group, we created images to represent the different parts of the story. We hope you enjoy the images from our creation story.
• Friday 4 November 2022 Phonics in Reception Reception have made a super start to their phonics learning using Little Wandle and are practising blending CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words both in class and at home with their reading books. To support at home, please see the video link for Autumn 1 Reception for a demonstration of the sounds learnt so far and how to pronounce them to support blending.
• Tuesday 18 October 2022 Learning all about Hungary During Culture Week, some Reception parent visitors came to teach us all about Hungary. We learnt all about the beautiful Lake Balaton and we enjoyed seeing how the landscape changes during the different seasons. It was exciting to see people skating on the ice! We also listened to a Hungarian story called 'Bogyó és Babóca' about friendship which we particularly enjoyed! Later, we wore traditional Hungarian dress and learnt some folk dances - it was fun to try the different movements! At the end of the afternoon, we tasted some delicious Hungarian twisted bread. Huge thanks to our parent volunteers for visiting us and teaching us all about Hungary. We had a wonderful afternoon and learnt so much.
• Monday 10 October 2022 Culture Week This morning, to launch our Culture Week, we learnt all about Mandarin characters from one of our parent visitors. We used the clues to guess what the characters might represent and then enjoyed exploring them during our child-initiated learning. What do you think these characters might mean
• Friday 30 September 2022 Pompoms! This week, we have been busy making pompoms in the atelier using different brightly coloured wool. We practised our weaving techniques and have enjoyed seeing the pompoms become soft and fluffy once they were carefully cut! They are hanging in our classroom for us all to enjoy and we will be continuing with some more woolly weaving next week as we have enjoyed it so much!
• Friday 23 September 2022 Ruby's Worry This week, we have started to read Ruby's Worry by Tom Percival. We have been exploring different emotions from the story and have been thinking about the things which make us happy in our lives. We shared lots of our own ideas and feelings, drawing pictures of the things in our lives which make us feel happy. We feel happy when we are with our families because they play with us, give us hugs and kisses, and build things for us. We also explored different colours and which foods make us feel happy. What makes you feel happy What would you draw
• Wednesday 14 September 2022 Bugs in a Blanket We have had such a wonderful start to our Reception Class. This week, we have been exploring the story 'Bugs in a Blanket' and we have learnt that we are all different but we should feel proud of who we are. We have been busy making bug hotels to keep the bugs cosy and snug, decorations for the bugs' party in our home corner and chocolate cakes for the bugs in the mud kitchen. We have been very busy! We have also made our own peg bugs which we have decorated so that they are all unique - just like us!
• Friday 20 May 2022 Christian Aid in Reception Class
• Friday 20 May 2022 Christian Aid in Reception Class
• Friday 20 May 2022 Christian Aid in Reception Class The reception class really enjoyed visiting the Silver Birches this week and participating in the activities organised by the Worship Acolytes for Christian Aid week. It was a time for quiet reflection in our beautiful outdoor area. The children could choose to paint a pebble, create an amulet from clay, dress up or manipulate water beads for a sensory experience. There was even a chill out tent to sit in and relax! The Worship Acolytes supported each group really well and the children thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
• Friday 11 February 2022 RE Week - Sikhism Thisweek we have been learning about Sikhism. We have explored the story of Vaisakhi and learnt how the Sikh religion started. This led on to learning about the different celebrations Sikhs participate in, including Vaisakhi parades for the new year and Diwali.
• Monday 7 February 2022 National Hedgehog Day On the 2nd February we celebrated National Hedgehog Day! This entailed us finding out lots about hedgehogs and creating our own information sheets to let others know how to care for hedgehogs too.
• Tuesday 1 February 2022 We are Authors! Since beginning our Space topic, we have been exploring non-fiction text. We have been learning about the features non-fiction books have. Including a front cover, a title, images and information. This has lead us to become authors ourselves! Using our new knowledge about space we have began making our own books and filling them with information. I have added some snippets of the books created below:
• Monday 24 January 2022 Space We have been exploring all things Space! Exploring all areas of the curriculum through Space themed learning.
• Friday 12 November 2021 Culture Week This week we have 'travelled' around the world exploring many different countries! Finding out about the cultures in our class through parents and carers visiting to give us an insight into the countries they come from such as Greece, The Basque Country and India! We have explored many traditions from other cultures through the arts and have used 'passports' to track where we have travelled! Thank you so much to all of the volunteers it has been fantastic to find out more about where our children originate from.
• Thursday 21 October 2021 Buddy Reading We are so lucky to have made fantastic friendships with our Year 6 buddies. Today they came to visit us to share a story or two!
• Monday 20 September 2021 Starting School Today was our first full day at school!
• Sunday 23 May 2021 Outdoor Learning Week We took our Literacy learning outside this week! We used the outdoor stage to put on our own show, creating our own outfits and sharing our knowledge of the story The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
• View archived news items

Subscribe to our news as an RSS feed