Friday 24th October

This week we finished our work on A Brave Bear. We learnt about the journey that Big and Little Bear undertook to get to the river and cool down. The children made maps to show the different parts of the journey. We imagined how Little Bear had been feeling at different parts of the story: hot and tired, excited, sad, angry, brave and happy. The children used the bear outline to make appropriate faces and label them, trying to use their sounds. We have also be working on talking in full sentences with our Talk and Listen Partners to share our knowledge and ideas.

In Phonics this week, we reviewed all the phonemes that we have been learning this half term. We are trying hard to hear the sounds in words and sound out and blend to read words with familiar sounds. We are getting better at remembering which letters make which sounds. We recorded short words from listening to the sounds. We tried to practise these skills by giving our Literacy maps and faces labels.

In Maths we have been refreshing our knowledge of the 2D shapes, counting the sides and corners (angles). We have also been focusing on how we can compose and de-compose shapes by using other shapes including using 2 squares to make a rectangle, folding a square to make a triangle and making a square or rectangle with 2 triangles. We also recognised repeated patterns of movements and images and continued those patterns.

This week we started our new RE Topic of Prophecy and Promise. We will be learning about the story of the Nativity. We have started by reading the Gospel to understand the story of the Anunciation. The children were amazed to learn of the visit of the Angel Gabriel to Mary. We discussed what the Angel had to say to Mary and how she may have felt during her experience. The children created their own Angel Gabriel and then wrote about what Gabriel said to Mary.

In addition, this week we have had a super workshop with Drama4All on Tuesday. The children had to learn different actions for various characters in the story to recover the lost magical sword. They got very involved in being the cat, the witch and other figures – it was great fun! On Wednesday the children sat beautifully for their school photos.

We would like to congratulate all the Reception children for their fantastic first half term and wish you all a peaceful and fun half term holiday.

Friday 17th October

This week we have been continuing reading and learning with the text ‘A Brave Bear’. We helped the characters find ways to cool themselves down and role played what they would say to each other. We also made predictions about what we thought would happen next in the story. We are working on hearing the sounds in words, and practised writing a sentence using capital letters, full stops and finger spaces between words.

 

In Phonics we focused on the new phonemes of h, b, f, l. We learn to hear the sounds, recognise the grapheme (letter) and read words with familiar sounds. We are getting better at remembering which letters make which sounds. We also started spelling words in our lessons this week. For example, when we hear the word hat we sound talk by saying and counting the sounds h – a – t, then we record the sounds we heard.

 

In maths we were focusing on cardinality, which means understanding that the amount of objects stays the same without have to count it again. We discussed how we have five fingers on our hands and practised counting objects one to one to ensure we are counting accurately. We are using tens frames to support us with our understanding of number.

 

In RE we learnt about the Catholic Social Teaching principle of Stewardship. This refers to how we need to look after the world that God has made. We discussed ways we can demonstrate stewardship by helping the environment and we painted pictures of what our ideas were and also role played the story of Sofia the Sloth.

Friday 3rd October

Another splendid week in Reception!

In Literacy this week we read how the Everywhere Bear was finally reunited with Class 1 after all his adventures. We thought about all the different occupations of the people he came across in the book. The children talked about what job they would like to do when they grow up and why. When the bear got lost again, the children thought of questions they would ask the bear about what he had been doing.

In Maths we were exploring composition of numbers. We practised making numbers out of 1’s, for example, 1+1 is 2. We went on to work on bigger numbers, understanding that numbers can be broken down into smaller parts, starting with 1’s.

In RE this week we have been looking at the beautiful baptism photos that you sent in. The children were learning that when a child is baptised they are invited to join God’s family and church. The children role played a baptism learning about the roles of the priest, the parents and godparents.

In PE this week we continued to practise moving safely and with control, avoiding each other and listening to instructions. We worked in pairs moving together and taking turns.

In addition, this week the children have been enjoying many science activities, including an experiment where they needed to make a prediction about which liquid (vinegar, water, milk or lemon juice) would slow down the browning process on apples. There were also opportunities to explore floating and sinking, reflections, magnets and textures.

Next week is Space Week and we can’t wait to make more discoveries!

Friday 26th September

What a fantastic second full week in Reception. The children are quickly picking up the classroom routines and starting to explore all the areas of learning, both inside and outside. Also, the sun has shone all week!

In Phonics this week, we learnt the phonemes: i, n, m, d. We enjoyed shuffling all the cards for the phonemes we have learnt so far, reading and saying the sounds and then spotting the newest one. We are revising the grapheme and phonemes to date every day and the children are enjoying sounding and blending simple words.

In Literacy we continued to read about the adventures of The Everywhere Bear. This week we used instruments to create soundscapes for the stormy sea that the Bear was rescued from in a net. We also came up with questions we would like to ask the Everywhere Bear at this point in his adventure. We gave ideas for advice to give to the person who found the bear about how she could return him to his owner.

In Maths we concentrated on our counting, making sure that we helped our class puppets to count correctly! We showed him how to move each small object as he counted so he did not get in a muddle. We also counted actions and sounds. The children put this into practise independently and worked on remembering the cardinal number (the number given to count out).

For RE we explored how God created our families as a gift to love and support us. We shared pictures of our families and what we liked to do with them. We drew our families eating, playing and out and about together.

Friday 19th September

We have enjoyed our first full week in Reception, ending with the beautiful weather on Friday. We even got to go onto the field after lunch.

We started our Phonics lessons this week. We learnt the phonemes: s, a, t, p. We practised recognising the graphemes and hearing the phonemes at the beginning of words. We also played blending games which included saying sentences like: Tap your l-e-g. so that we get used to blending sounds together.

In Literacy we started to read about the adventures of The Everywhere Bear. We compared the names in our class to the names of the children in Class 1 and there are even some similarities. Then we talked about how the children feel and how The Everywhere Bear must feel when he goes on adventures and then gets lost by Matt.

For RE we focused on The Creation Story and about how God made each one of us. We celebrated our names and practised writing them. We also played some movement games during our PE lessons this week, where we focused on following instructions.

We all had a fantastic week with lots of routine building and learning going on. Well done!

Friday 12th September

What an amazing week – Well done to all the children in Reception!

The children have been introduced to the morning and afternoon activities, to their Literacy groups, to the lunchtime routine and to the overall schedule of the daily classroom. In addition, everyone had their First Day of School photograph taken and painted their portraits. They are starting to take it in their stride.

The classes are learning to sit in their spaces on the carpet and to listen quietly when they are learning during our teaching sessions. They have learnt all about the Class Rules and why we have them. Each child has agreed that they will do their best to remember the rules to help make a happy and peaceful learning environment.

On Friday we loved bringing in and sharing our favourite teddy or squashie – what a variety of friends we introduced to our friends and adults. The children explained why their toys were so important to them and places that they took their soft friends. This ties in with our Power of Reading text: The Everywhere Bear, by Julia Donaldson. We will be starting to read this book next week in Literacy.

In RE we introduced the Creation Story, reading from the Bible. The children were considering what happened on each day and all the things that God created.

All the Reception children should be very proud of their start to school.