Reception

50 Things is an exciting initiative that supports children’s learning at home. It is inspired by parents and carers with each activity developed by Early Years experts and language specialists to create a fabulous resource for families.

More information can be found here 50-things-introduction-letter-pdf.pdf

In Reception we support the understanding of good oral hygiene. Throughout the year children will take part in adult led tasks, child initiated play activities and hear stories based on visiting the dentist and cleaning their teeth.

Oral Hygiene Poster

Please click for Autumn 2 newsletter

Please click for Autumn 1 Reception newsletter

Literacy is taught discretely in daily lessons in addition to elements integrated throughout the Reception environment, inside and outside. As soon as the children join us in September, a focus is placed on letter formation (see handwriting phrases in the phonics section of this page), continuing to develop listening and communication skills. Children begin doing whole class phonics learning in the first half term, after which, they are streamed via ability.

To see more photos of our mark making and Literacy, click here and select the Reception gallery. 

Just like Literacy, Maths is taught in discrete lessons as well as throughout the Reception environment, both indoors and out.

To see more images of Maths in Reception click here and select the Reception button.

In Reception we love to explore our creativity through the mark making table, the craft area and use the painting easels, as well as imaginary and role play.

Children are encouraged to independently plan ideas, use a range of resources and adapt their work to achieve their desired outcomes. We love to see how children take the skills we teach and come up with their own creative ideas! See more images here.

As part of our Reception curriculum, we love to encourage the children to explore the outdoors! There are many benefits of being outdoors including: developing gross motor skills, communication skills, greater self-awareness, sparking interest in new topics, develop decision-making skills, as well as many other benefits. 

Take a look in the gallery (Reception) for more photos of us exploring the outdoors!

Welcome to the Reception blog for Autumn term 2023!

Today was Teaching Assistant Appreciation day so the children made Mrs Doolan a card and gave her some chocolates and flowers!

During our topic of 'People Who Help Us', the children worked with a partner to make something relating to a person that help us out of junk modelling, we had milk vans, stethoscopes, fire engines, police helicopters, lifeboats and many more! Children also made police cars using tissue paper! Check out our gallery (click on Reception) to see more photos!

During the first term, we have been making new friends and learning how to play new games!

For World Mental Health Day, the children split into 4 groups and completed 4 different activities - a Gruffalo hunt, finding the characters around the school, moving in different ways. They also took part in some yoga, mindfulness colouring and then made handprints in different colours to make a rainbow! See the gallery for more photos!

For part of our literacy topic of 'The Gingerbread Man', as a class we made our very own gingerbread men! They were super yummy! After we made them, we then wrote instructions on how to make them!

Welcome to our Spring blog!

Our topic this half term is 'Our Wider World', over the next few weeks, we will be exploring winter, hibernation, climates, contrasting environments and our local area, take a look at what we have been up to below:

We have been exploring winter! The children have been thinking about different clothing to keep us warm, helping rescue animals that have got stuck in ice, in addition to making snowflake artwork using crayons and water colour paint. Following on from looking at winter, we went on to look at hibernation. On Friday 15th January, we had a hibernation afternoon! Throughout the week, we looked at different animals that hibernate and what they do to prepare for hibernation! Children wore comfy clothing and brought in blankets, we practised 'hanging' upside down like bats, curling up like hedgehogs and dormice! We also made a huge den, using the tables and a parachute! Once we made our den, the children then 'scavenged' for food and then returned to the den to hibernate and eat our food! The children thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon!

During the week of the 5th February, we looked at where children had family from around the world! We discussed where the countries were in relation to England and compared certain aspects and looked at what is similar and what is different. We have also had a focus on our local area, discussing what there is for us to do and the range of shops there are for us to visit. Children enjoyed making their own maps, writing sentences about what they know about the local area.

In maths, we spent some time looking at patterns, these included ABAB / ABCABC / ABBABB patterns. We looked at the story of Pattern Fish and identified the patterns on each page and discussed what type of pattern it was. Throughout the week, the children spent time making patterns from natural resources, objects around the classroom, marks on pages and paint! We have also been adding and subtracting within 5 and the children have been using resources such as five frames, natural objects, numicon and much more to help them solve calculations as well as writing their own! 

On Friday 2nd February we celebrated NSPCC maths day. The children took part in a range of activities including counting how many of an action they could do in 1 minute, making stars using triangles, copying patterns onto butterflies and much more!

A big project this half term has been improving our outdoor area! A fence has been added to separate the monkey bars from the other half of the playground, we have revamped our water area, created a music fence and added targets for children to practise their throwing skills! We are still working on improving the area, but phase 1 has been completed! Take a look at some photos! The children were very intrigued watching Mr Wistow and Mr Rodia install the fence! 

Our topic for this half of the Spring term has been 'Amazing Animals'! The children have learnt about the life cycles of turtles, caterpillars, chickens, people and frogs, making life cycles using craft materials! We have also looked at minibeasts and describing them by writing sentences. We explored sea creatures and read the book 'Shark in the Dark', where we looked at rhyming words and trying to make rhyming sentences! 

Nessie Class Sea Creature Display

On Wednesday 20th March, as part of looking at farm animals, we visited Appleby Farm! The children were so excited and were a credit to the school! They got to hold and stroke rabbits and guinea pigs, and we even saw a baby rabbit and rabbits that had been born earlier in the week! We then visited the goats, where the children were able to feed the goats, which felt very tickly on our hands! They fed the cows some bananas, brushed a horse, fed the pigs and had a tractor trailer ride! The children also had a bit of free time on the drive along tractors and play frame, however, Miss Lord had to rescue some children from the boggy mud as well as wellies, which the children found hilarious! Just before we arrived at the farm 3 lambs had been born which we got to see and then the children were able to bottle feed some lambs! We all had a very lovely time! Take a look at our gallery for some pictures!

During this half term we have also celebrated World Book Day! 

Our character potatoes!