Our Reception Class

A very warm welcome to our Reception class page.  In Reception, our children start their journey by settling into school life and begin to develop into confident, independent learners. I hope you find all the information that we send home useful and if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask us. The staff are always on hand both before and after school and throughout the day on Seesaw.

Our Reception Class 2024-2025

The Phonics Scheme we use in Reception is:

• Read, Write Inc                                                                                           

Find out more about Read, Write Inc here

Reading books
All children will be provided with a reading book with words once they have learnt half of the RWI Set 1 sounds and are able to segment words and blend sounds independently.

Homework

At the beginning of Reception your child has been given a homework toolkit (Stripy zip bag) which was kindly paid for by Friends of School. This is to be kept at home and is to be used to help your child complete their homework. Please can you ensure that all the items are put safely back in the bag each time they are used as these need to be used throughout their time in Reception.

Please can you make sure that Homework is returned to school by Thursday morning, so that they can be updated and sent out again on a Thursday evening. Thank you.

Seesaw
Seesaw is our observation and assessment app which is used daily in class to record evidence for your child’s learning journey throughout their year with us in Reception.

Don’t forget to send Miss Nelson observations from home through Seesaw, as it is extremely important that parents are able to contribute to their children’s learning journeys just as much as the practitioners.

Requests
Please can you help!!! We are constantly trying to add to our resources and are always on the look out for the following items: Comics, magazines, prams, dolls, small world toys such as farms/train sets etc. scooters, bikes, jigsaw puzzles, games, dressing up costumes etc. If you are having a clear out  please could you check with Mrs Gornall whether we could use any items before throwing them out. Thank you.

This half term.... Spring Term 1 (January - February 2025)

Over the next half term our topics will include:

• When I grow up...... My Goals in 2025/life (1 week)
• We will start this short topic by discussing what a New Years resolution is and how lots of people make these at the start of the year because they want to start the new year by setting themselves a goal, something that they want to achieve. We will then move onto discussing the difference between short and long term goals and make some of our own, such as what job we might want to do when we are older.                   
• Traditional Tales / Houses and Homes (5 weeks) 
• Each week we will focus on a different traditional tale that will link in with an aspect of our houses and homes topic. 
  
  

 During our Literacy time are learning will focus around the following texts:

• I want to be a Cowgirl
• The Gingerbread Man
• The Three Billy Goats Gruff
• Little Red Riding Hood
• The Three Little Pigs
• Goldilocks and the Three Bears    
  
  

We will be using a selection of traditional tales and other well known stories to learn about how stories are structured (beginning, middle and end), discussing the different types of characters found in these stories and the different settings they take place in. All of these activities will help us to develop a range of imaginative story language and our very own story writing skills in preparation for Year 1.

In RWI we will use the Set 1 letter sounds that we learnt during Autumn term to further develop our blending and segmenting skills and to read and begin to write simple captions independently. 

We will have a new role play area outside which will be an Arctic Expedition Base Camp and the enhancements in our Home corner will be DIY equipment as we make some home improvements.

In our Maths learning time the children will be introduced to the Numberblocks and Numicon. These will help them as we work our way through the following units:

• Counting to 6,7,8.
• Counting to 9 and 10.
• Comparing groups up to 10.
• Addition to 10- Combining 2 groups to find the whole.
• Measure- Length, Height and Distance
• Measure- Weight

In our Topic work we will be learning about:

• People who help us- We will learn about the different jobs that people do in our local community, what those jobs involve and decide whether these might be something that we would like to do when we our older.
• Our Goals- We will discuss our short term goals and decide on something that we would like to achieve in 2025 and also discuss our long term goals and what we might like to be when we are older.
• Simple structures- We will explore how to build simple walls and bridges and test our structures to see which designs are the best.
• Different types of houses and homes- We will look at the different types of houses and homes that we have in our local area and compare these with ones found around the world. We will focus on the materials that they are built from and why different materials are used in some countries.
• Different rooms in a house- We will learn about the different rooms in our homes, the furniture that we might find in them and how these have changed over time.
• Chinese New Year- We will listen to the Chinese New Year Story and discover which animal the Chinese are celebrating the year of in 2025. We will learn about the traditions and customs associated with Chinese New Year and how people around the world celebrate this festival.

Our RE will focus on the question ‘Being Special- Where do we belong?'

In this unit, the children will reflect upon the things that are special to them and why they value these things. The children will learn about key religious symbols for Christians, Muslims and Hindus. They will find out about why many Christians believe that children are special to God and learn about the story of Jesus and the children. The children will also find out about the welcoming ceremonies that many Muslims and Christians have for a new baby. The children will learn out about how Hindu brothers and sisters might show their love and respect for each other at Raksha Bandhan.

    
Heartsmart- Too much Selfie isn't Healthy

This unit focuses on Empathy where the children will explore the importance of others and how to love them well.

Too much Selfie isn't Healthy is about working well with others, about being a good listener and understanding that life is more about we than me.  Love without action isn't love, it's a thought.  Love requires an out; love does.  By contributing to the lives of others we find fulfilment for ourselves and learn that Too much Selfie isn't Healthy!''

In our PATHS lessons we will be covering the following units:

• Wk 1- Twiggle learns to do Turtle l
• Wk 2- Twiggle learns to do Turtle ll
• Wk 3- Turtle Technique Review
• Wk 4- Appropriate Turtles l
• Wk 5- Appropriate Turtles ll
• Wk 6- Calm or relaxed 

During our Music sessions we will be developing our skills of listening and appraising and learning to find the pulse through the following units:

• Wk 1- Jack and Jill
• Wk 2- The Gingerbread Man
• Wk 3- The Three Billy Goats Gruff
• Wk 4- The Muffin Man
• Wk 5- The House that Jack built
• Wk 6- Goldilocks              

Our PE focus this half term will be ‘Gymnastics’ and our School Sports Games Value will be ‘Teamwork’ 

During this unit of the of work the children will learn:

• Week 1- Rainforest Animals
• Week 2- Woodland Animals
• Week 3- Lakeland Animals
• Week 4- Desert Animals
• Week 5- Sea Animals
• Week 6- Pet Animals

Dates for your Diary:                     

PE: Monday Afternoon (Outdoor Play) and Friday Mornings (Indoor PE)

Autumn Term 2 NEWS!……(October - December 2025)

The 8 weeks leading up to Christmas were extremely busy in class and we learnt lots of new things through our Autumn, Light and Dark, Space, Dinosaur and Christmas topics.

It started with us looking at seasonal change and the signs of Autumn with the story 'Hedgehog Howdedo'. We enjoyed exploring outside, experiencing different weather conditions, collecting Autumn treasure and using it to help us with our learning. We discovered that some animals begin to go into hibernation at this time of year because they don't like the cold and that others are nocturnal and only like to come out when it's dark outside. We got really messy when we used clay to make our own hedgehogs and had great fun making our Hedgehog Hibernaculums out of the leaves we collected from our gardens. 

We really enjoyed reading the story 'The Bears in the Night' which helped us to learn lots of new positional language, as we worked together as a class to act out the story, all taking on a different role. We learnt about the sun and moon and discovered the differences between day and night.

When we read the story 'Whatever Next!' we were lucky enough to travel into space in our very own rockets, just like Baby Bear did in the story. We used colanders for our helmets, wellies for our moon boots and packed a picnic to eat when we landed on the moon.  Mrs Gornall turned our small world area into space and we created our own moon landing stories. We looked at different light sources and investigated how to light a bulb.

We particularly enjoyed learning about two new festivals which we had never heard about before- Diwali and Hanukkah through stories. We discovered that they were both festivals of light, but were celebrated by two different groups of people- Hindus and Jews. We enjoyed making our own Diva lamps out of clay and rangoli patterns on the computer, but especially enjoyed receiving a gift of golden chocolate coins in the Hanukkah money wallets that we made. 

We then moved onto learning about Dinosaurs and discovered what it would have been like on earth when the dinosaurs were in existence by reading the non-fiction 'My First Book of Dinosaurs.' We were amazed when we checked the CCTV and discovered that a dinosaur had visited our classroom and laid some eggs in a nest that we had created in our outdoor area.  We created our own dinosaurs through a variety of different creative tasks and enjoyed using a range of non-fiction books and search engines on the iPads to find out lots of information about them.

During our RWI learning time, we learnt the remaining Set 1 sounds and continued to develop our blending and segmenting skills to help us read and write more words. We also started to enjoy reading books with words for the first time.

Our Maths learning time continued to focus on the numbers 1 to 5. We explored lots of different activities in continuous provision which involved us trying to identify 1 more and less than a given number to 5 and also what two parts made each of these whole numbers. We also learnt the names of the different 2D and 3D shapes and the vocabulary associated with describing the position of something.

The children thoroughly enjoyed their PE lessons this half term, as they created their own dances that linked with the weekly theme and then finished off the unit with some Christmas Cheerleading.

Autumn Term 1 NEWS!…. (September - October 2024)

What a busy first 7 weeks we have had in school! We began our Autumn Term 1 by welcoming our new children into school and helped them to settle in and become familiar with our classroom routines.

Our first topic of "Ourselves" helped us to learn all about our bodies, what they look like both inside and out and we explored our 5 senses with lots of fun interactive activities. We learnt about our skeletons by reading the story 'Funnybones' and the different parts of our bodies by looking at a non-fiction book called 'All about me'. We also learnt about how we grow and change and what we will look like as we grow older when we read the story "The Elephant and the Bad Baby".  

During our 'Colours' topic we listened to the story of 'Elmer' which helped us to understand that it is ok to be different. We found out what happens when we mix colours and made repeating patterns with colours and shapes. We even had our own Elmer Day where we dressed up in lots of different colours and celebrated diversity.  The story of 'The Rainbow Fish' taught us the importance of friendship and learning to share with one another and we had great fun making our own yummy Rainbow Fish biscuits.

During our RWI learning time, we learnt over half of the Set 1 sounds and began to blend and segment these to read and write simple words. We will continue to learn the remaining Set 1 sounds after half term and start to enjoy a reading book with words for the first time.

Our Maths learning time focussed on the Numberblocks and learning the different Numicon shapes and numerals for the numbers 1 to 5. We explored lots of different activities in continuous provision which involved us trying to place them in the correct order. We also learnt how to count accurately by using 1 to 1 correspondence. Just before half term we learnt all about 2D shapes and went on shape hunts to find lots of different objects containing these shapes. 

During our whole class carpet times we enjoyed learning lots of new rhymes and songs, which we now sing everyday to help us with our daily routine.

In our RE time, we explored the question is “Why is the word God important for Christians?”. We learnt that God created the heavens and the earth and that everything belongs to him. We also learnt that many Christians treat God’s name with respect and that Jesus told stories about how much God loves them.

During our Heartsmart Unit 'Get Heartsmart' we were introduced to the robot Boris and the nasty Scrapman and even made our own Boris' to live with us at home.

In PATHS we were introduced to the PATHS animals and started to explore that we all have different feelings. We were excited when we learnt about Pupil of the Day especially when we were selected. 

As you can see from our pictures we had a great time taking on different roles in our Hairdresser and Hospital role-play areas and loved exploring all the different activities in our continuous provision areas both inside and outside the classroom.