Class Blog for Reception

Back With a Bang!

This week our topic has been Chinese New Year and we discovered about different customs and traditions. We started our week by learning the story of how the tradition began and about the twelve animals which represent the years. We watched a short film where we learned about how people decorate their houses, wear new clothes and give red envelopes with money in for good luck. We were intrigued to see how the whole family (including the children!) worked really hard to give the whole house a spring clean before they decorated it.

The children enjoyed learning about the delicious foods and the fabulous dancing dragons.

Demonstrating great recall, the children were able to explain the facts about the celebration.

In our guided writing, we looked at Chinese dragons and wrote words, captions and sentences to describe how the dragons looked.

In our COOL time, we enjoyed playing in our pop-up Chinese restaurant (with real chopsticks and food!), making dragon puppets, creating lanterns, exploring Chinese music, painting Chinese symbols and much more!

Our super week was encapsulated by putting all of our creations together and performing a dragon parade around the whole school, weaving in and out of classrooms as we went! We were delighted with the children’s enthusiasm and pride whilst exhibiting their artist flare!

What Happened Once Upon a Time?

To support our topic of 'What Happened Once Upon a Time?', please find the attached knowledge mat for Spring 2 at the bottom of the blog page. This gives you an overview of our key learning focuses for our topic. You can support your child with their learning by exploring our top 10 vocabulary, 5 facts and specific knowledge, alongside enjoying the magic of stories at home! In school, we will be discovering how traditional tales have a beginning, middle and end and how to order a story. The children will be building their prediction skills linked to our texts and suggest how stories might end. We will delve into different character types and their attributes. The children will have wonderful opportunities of retelling stories in many ways such as; storytelling, creating props, putting on plays, making stories in their own books and much more!

If you have any special moments of your child's learning and development, please continue to upload your own observations on Tapestry - we love to see them!

Thank you for your continued support.

The Reception team

The Magic of Stories!

From the second week after half term, we are moving on to a new and exciting topic! We are going to be learning about the magic of traditional tales. A traditional tale is a story that has been told and re-told for many years, and consequently, becomes a story that almost everyone knows. Traditional tales are also referred to as fairy stories or fairy tales.

Stories such as The Gingerbread Man, Goldilocks and the Three Bears and Jack and the Beanstalk are all traditional stories.

Traditional tales play an important part in early literacy. These well-known stories are used to help develop reading comprehension and early writing skills. Traditional tales also provides excellent opportunities for role-play and support children’s creativity and imagination.

Our overarching topic question is going to be ‘What Happened Once Upon a Time?’

For updates on our learning activities, please check our class blog on the website which we update fortnightly.

Best wishes,

The Reception team

Tapestry Update

Dear Parents and Carers,

You may have noticed that we have reduced the number of observations on Tapestry recently. We have received further Tapestry training and this has been a great opportunity to reflect on how we were using this platform. As a team, we realised we were using Tapestry more as a blog and round-up of the week; however, this is the purpose of our class blog on our school website. Tapestry is used for WOW special events as a class (such as school trips and cooking) and to help celebrate key milestones and achievements of your child individually.

We continue to thoroughly enjoy you uploading your own observations of special moments and key learning and development on your child from home. We can also share this as a class in show and tell time. This supports us in celebrating the wonderful accomplishments of your child!

Tapestry will additionally be used to share important messages and information.

Thank you for your continued support.

The Reception team

Spring 1 - Week 5 - Serious about seven

We have been learning all about the number 7 this week, and the children have taken their number formation very seriously. They filled up their whiteboards with as many number 7s as they possibly could. They absolutely loved this challenge. We extended our learning to find out all the different ways we can make the number 7. First, we used our knowledge of part-part- whole models and next we used the numicon. The children loved finding all the different ways they could add this way.

In phonics, we have all shown how fabulous we are becoming with our reading and letter formation. Please keep reading the book that the children bring home with them in their book bags as this helps to embed the sounds that the children are currently working on at school, and encourages them to feel confident when we read as part of out phonics sessions.

In our wider curriculum areas the children have been super busy creating clay animals and habitats, construction, writing and talking about polar animals and helping our little penguins escape from the block of ice!

Next week, we have our exciting trip to Eden. Please bring in your children at the normal time dressed in their school uniform. They will also need a waterproof coat, hat and gloves. If you have not ordered a packed lunch for that day, please ensure your child brings their own packed lunch. Also, don't forget to pack a water bottle. We will return back to school for the usual collection time of 3:10.

We hope you have lovely weekend.

Best wishes,

The Reception Team

Spring 1 - Week 4 - We came, we thawed, we conquered.

This week we had fun exploring the question 'What is ice?'. The children had some lovely ideas of where we might find ice, and some had an idea of what ice was. We discussed what ice was made from, and talked about how we could make ice ourselves. We then looked at a cup of water that we had left in the freezer overnight and discussed how it had changed from the day before. The children absolutely loved to feel and look at the ice. They explained that it had frozen, that the water wasn't a liquid any more and that it felt hard to touch. We left the ice in the classroom for the rest of the day to see what happened. The children were delighted to tell us that the ice was melting and getting smaller, and that there was now water in the bowl.

To continue our icy theme, the children used ice cubes which had paint in to do large mark making in the creative area. They also designed and made snowmobiles and had fun in our investigation area with the fake snow and polar bears.

In maths, we explored the number 6 looking at how to write it, where we can find the number 6 around us, how we can make 6 with our part-part-whole model and how this leads into combing numbers (adding).

The children have had an absolutely fantastic time in our outside area this week, where we have been able to put out some new equipment and resources. They have been so respectful and careful with all their new things. They have particularly loved the new water tables, ramps and den making equipment.

We hope you all have a lovely weekend.

Best wishes,

The Reception Team

Spring 1 - Week 3- Winter is snow much fun!

We have had such a fantastic week learning all about the polar regions, and to top it off on Thursday we had snow! We made the most of this rare occurrence in Cornwall, and got ourselves outside before it thawed!

We have been learning all about who lives in the Artic, what they wear and eat and quite importantly, their homes. The children are becoming real experts. We spent some time also thinking about how Wadebridge compares to living in the polar regions, where the children compared photos of these two places. They recognised that it isn't as snowy here, that we have cars not snowmobiles and they said they don't have a McDonalds in the polar regions!

Maths - We have been learning all about mass and capacity this week. The children were able to recognise when the scale was balanced or, if it wasn't, which side was heavier or lighter. They really enjoyed our last session on capacity where they got to show how accurate they were with their pouring.

Reading - We love hearing the children applying their phonics learning in their reading and writing. They are so proud of how they are doing, as are we.

Reminders - Library is on a Thursday. Please make sure that library books come in on this day. Also, please ensure that if your child needs a school meal that these are ordered in advance via Parent Pay.

We hope you have a good weekend.

Best wishes,

The Reception Team

Spring 1 – Week 2 – Brrr!

We have embraced the cold this week, wrapping up nice and snuggly warm for any outside plays we have had. The children have loved seeing the frost and ice in our outside areas, and its perfectly timed for more of our Winter themed learning.

This week we have been learning all about the different polar regions, what they are called, where they are and what we might find there. We are getting really good at remembering that polar bears are found in the Artic, and penguins are found in the Antarctic. The children have enjoyed using our small world toys to create polar scenes, making wonderful little homes for the polar bears, They have also been loving painting ice!

In maths we have been learning about the composition of 4 and 5. Using our part-part-whole models, we have been showing how many different ways we can make 4 and 5. We have been doing so well, and the children were really keen to show off their maths skills.

Just a little reminder about the Eden project visit. Payments need to be received by the 22nd January via Parent Pay please. If your child is in receipt of Pupil Premium Funding, please speak to the school office if you would like support with this trip. We are aware that this is an expensive time of year. Therefore, payment will be set up on the system with a reducing balance, meaning you can pay different amounts as and when you can.

We hope you have a wonderful weekend.
Best wishes,
The Reception Team

Autumn 2- Week 7- Sparkling Superstars

Wow! This has been a week filled with so much joy. The children have had an absolute ball rehearsing for the Christmas Fair and preparing their decorations and calendars for you all to enjoy. We would like to say a huge thank you to everyone that attended the Fair. The children were so looking forward to performing for you all. Some may have got a little stage fright, but it is a little scary up on the stage! We are so proud of them all. Also, thank you all so much for your incredible generosity. You have all helped contribute to enhancing the learning environments for the children in the Early Years, and for that we are so thankful. The money is currently being collected together and we will announce the final total next week.

Phonics - We continue to work on letter formation and have started to become more confident in writing some CVC words independently. We have had a few more captions being written in class too. The children love to include some of the tricky words we have learnt so far in these captions.

Maths - We have been looking at shapes with 4 sides this week. We looked at squares and rectangles, noticed what was different about the two shapes, and started to recognise these shapes when they were in different orientations.

Christmas Party - Blimey, we have some great dancers in Reception. Some of us boogied away for a full 45 minutes, whilst the others enjoyed a Christmas film before hunger set in. We had a scrumptious afternoon party buffet. Thank you all for you contributions for this. We carried on enjoying these on Friday too! Yum!!

Reminders - After Christmas, we have a few changes to our timetable. Outdoor learning will be finished. P.E will now move to a Monday morning. Children will continue to need their P.E kits in school each day though still. Library will change to a Thursday so please ensure your child has their library book in their bookbag on this day.

After Christmas:
Monday – P.E
Thursday – Library

A final reminder, on Tuesday we finish early at 1PM.

We hope you have a magical weekend.
Best wishes,

The Reception Team

Autumn 2 - Week 6 - Another week bites the crust.

There has been so much learning going on this week in Reception, all based around the text The Little Red Hen. Our week began with a very special letter arriving in the post from the Little Red Hen. She kindly asked the children to help retell the story to the Nursery children. However, to do this, they would need to learn how to be great storytellers and make the props that they would need to be able to retell the story. They have done such a super job learning the story with actions!

To add to their fun filled week, the children made bread. They had to listen very carefully to the step-by-step instructions of how to make it. The children took it in turns to complete the different steps in the recipe. Using their motor skills, the children poured, tipped, stirred , kneaded and mixed. They did a brilliant job and we enjoyed the tasting session in the afternoon!

On Tuesday we got to enjoy the Santa Fun Run. The children absolutely loved this, despite the rain!

Wednesday saw us all don our Christmas jumpers and enjoy our Christmas lunches. There were a fair few brussel sprouts left over on their plates, but all the children had a fabulous time. The lunch was delicious and the highlight had to be the Haribo and toys on the table. A huge thanks to all of the kitchen staff and helpers for making it great!

On Thursday we got to enjoy the KS1 Nativity performance. The children sat beautifully in the hall and enjoyed every minute of it!

All this week we have learning about the number 5. The children have been practising how to write this. We used this saying to help us 'Draw the hat, the back, and tum, now my number 5 is done.' See if they can show you at home.

Next week you are invited to attend our Christmas Fair on Wednesday 13th December at 2pm in the school hall. If you have a younger child in our Nursery, their songs will be performed in their classrooms at 1:15pm for Little Nursery and 1:30pm for Big Nursery. This will then give you time to visit your Reception child at 2pm. This year, we would like the children to wear anything Christmassy that they would like to. This could be a Christmas item of clothing like a jumper, Christmas party clothes, a piece of tinsel on their clothing, a Christmas headband or a Christmas costume if they already have one – please do not feel the need to buy anything additional. We kindly ask you to bring in their Christmas Fair clothes on Monday 11th December in a named bag. They can then change into them the Wednesday after lunch time. The raffle draw will take place after school at 3:20pm in the school hall.

Have a fabulous weekend.
The Reception Team