Class Blog for Reception

Autumn 2 - Week 5- Farmer Duck

Gosh it has certainly turned chilly this week, and it's made us all feel wintry at school. The children are enjoying our new winter themed reading area and can be found snuggling up with a good book in there.

Phonics - This week we have been continuing recapping the phonics learnt so far, focusing on our letter formation, segmenting and blending. We have been writing cvc words, and having a go at writing short captions too. Go Reception! Next week we will be moving on to some new sounds. Exciting!

Maths- This week we have been exploring the number 4. We have been finding this number in our learning environment, counting objects, and seeing how we can make the number 4 in different ways. We counted to 4 in PE before moving the equipment, and enjoyed writing the number 4 in all the learning environments too.

Wider Curriculum - We have enjoying all the different areas of the classrooms this week through the story of Farmer Duck. The children have enjoyed joining in with the reading of this story, retelling it themselves with the masks in the puppet theatre and building homes for the animals in our construction area.

Next week we will have Santa's fun run on Tuesday. The school are raising funds for Children's Hospice South West, a charity very close to our hearts. Please follow the link to sponsor your child if you are able to. https://www.justgiving.com/page/wadebridge-primary-academy?newPage=true

We also have Christmas jumper day on Wednesday next week to coincide with the Christmas lunch.

Thank you for all the returned raffle tickets and prizes so far. We are still looking for donations to the prize list, so please help out in anyway if you can.

Have a great weekend, and see if you can find the number 4 on your adventures.

Best wishes,

The Reception Team

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Knowledge mat Spring 2.docx

Autumn 2 - Week 4 - Under and Over

Another lovely week of learning this week where the children have enjoyed showing off their own interests and skills.

Phonics - This week we have been recapping our learning so far, with the children really working on their segmenting and blending of cvc words. They are becoming much more confident with this. Having listened to readers this week too, we are just so impressed with how they are doing with their books.

Maths - We have had such a fun time using positional language such as next to, in front of, under and over in our maths this week. The children have enjoyed drawing houses, paths, roads and train tracks and adding places they recognise to their map too such as the park, the bridge and Tesco. They have used little teddies to describe where there teddy is. We also applied this maths knowledge in our PE session.

The children have loved using playdoh this week! We have seen many cake and biscuit creations made. Thankfully no ones looked delicious enough to actually eat!

In our outside learning today the children helped to find twigs to make a fire, and then they made a little warming tea using hot water and herbs picked by our outdoor learning teacher. Some children found it tasty, some didn't like it!

Reminders - PE is on a Thursday. Please ensure your child has a PE kit in school. It remains here all term until its sent home for a freshen up at the end of the term. Outside learning is on a Friday. Please ensure your child has wellies in school to change into. Also please ensure they come in clothes that are fine to get muddy and dirty.

If you are able to donate any gifts, discounts for your business or goody bags for the raffle we would really appreciate this. Please either hand this to a member of staff or to the office. All funds received from the raffle will go towards enhancing the Early Years learning environment.

We hope you have a fabulous weekend.

The Reception Team

Autumn 2 - Week 3 - Oh help! Oh no! It's a gruffalo!

We have had such a fun week with our class story The Gruffalo. The children have discussed the story, the setting and the characters. They have been storytellers and used the picture cards to sequence the story too. In our PE session, we pretended we were all the different creatures in the book, thinking about how the character might move. We then applied our gymnastic skills to be the nut, the log pile house and also a very tall tree. It was so much fun! In our investigation area the children loved making their own gruffalo crumbles using the recipe sheets to plan their crumbles. The had lots of messy fun.

In maths, we have been exploring 2D shapes, in particular circles and triangles. We discussed their sides, and how many sides they had. Then we went on a shape hunt in our class, playground and around the school. It was really easy to find circles, but there were far fewer triangles around! I wonder if you can find any triangles and circles on your adventures this weekend?

In our wild tribe session today, we made bird feeders for the birds using leaves and cereal hoops. We hung them on the trees around our wild tribe base camp. They are such an environmentally friendly idea to help feed the birds at this time of year.

Thank you so much if you attended the parents consultations this week. It was lovely to spend time with you to discuss how your child is getting on at school. They are all making us so incredibly proud with how they have settled and working. Well done Reception children!

Today your child would have come out with some raffle tickets to purchase. Money raised will go towards enhancing the Early Years Learning environment. Also, if you are able to donate any prizes, goodies bags or a discount to a business that you are involved with, we would be incredibly grateful.

We hope you have a great weekend.

See you on Monday for more fun!

The Reception Team

Autumn 2 - Week 2 - We're sparkling bright!

Well the children have loved telling us all about the fireworks they saw at the weekend this week! It sounded like they had lots of fun!

As part of our learning this week, the children have enjoyed learning all about the festival of Diwali. We began the week by learning the story of Rama and Sita. The children were able to discuss the beliefs of others and talk about the importance of light during the festival. Throughout the week, there have been many opportunities to explore the activities within our continuous provision linked to Diwali such as making diva lamps, creating Rangoli patterns and even creating their own mehndi patterns on paper hands. The highlight of the week for most of the children was making a large-scale rangoli pattern on the ground made of colourful chalks. We even managed to make a pattern using natural autumn materials such as pine cones, leaves and twigs. The children were able to share ideas about how they celebrate special times and compared it to Diwali. They were able to find similarities and differences between the celebrations. It had been noticed that many people use fireworks as part of their Diwali celebrations. This sparked (no pun intended!) many conversations about fireworks and Guy Fawkes night. To finish our wonderful week off, we put tea candles in our diva lamps outside and walked through them together!

In maths, the children have been exploring the compositions of 1, 2 and 3. On the Maths table there are lots of ladybirds with different number of spots, where they can talk about how many spots are shown. The children can count and subitise how many spots are on the lady bird and describe how they are shown. They also have opportunities to add spots to a ladybird using play dough, and discuss different compositions. Today, we took our learning outside and used the hoops to represent our part-part whole model where we used smaller hoops to see what numbers can be added together to make bigger numbers.

In phonics, we have been working hard on r,h,b,f, l and ll. The children are really impressing us with their letter formation. Thank you so much for helping the children with this at home.

Wild tribe - Today we enjoyed our session of wild tribe where we learnt the rules of the base-camp, and enjoyed making hedgehog homes out of leaves. A letter will have come home today about Christmas in Reception. Please take time to read this, and if you have any questions please ask.

Have a fabulous weekend!

The Reception Team

Autumn 2 - Week 1 - Pumpkins

This we welcomed the children back after their half term and it was fantastic to see their learning moving forward!

Wider Curriculum- we discovered all about pumpkins. At the start of the week, the children learned how there are many different varieties of pumpkins. The children discussed the differences between them with their shape, colour, size and the outer layer’s texture. We talked about the life cycle of a pumpkin, looking at the different stages a pumpkin goes through. The children will be really keen to sow pumpkin seeds with you next year! In our art area, the children looked closely at the pumpkins provided and were able to draw some lovely pumpkin pictures. In our investigation area, we looked at what was inside the pumpkins. The children were very keen to scoop out lots of seeds!

Maths - we have been focusing on the numbers 1,2, and 3. We have been finding these numbers in the classroom, practising our number formation and also
revisiting our counting skills. The children will be on the look out for the numbers 1, 2 and 3 when out and about this weekend. See if you can find these numbers if you can.

Phonics - we have learnt the tricky words 'the' and 'to'. We now know that these words cannot be sounded out, and that we just have to learn these words. We also learnt the sound 'u' this week.

Outdoor learning - We loved getting up to the field for our outside learning this week. The children took advantage of all the little branches and sticks that had come down in the storm and made lovely leaf wands for the little bugs to live in. A reminder that outdoor learning is on a Friday. Please could you send your child in wearing old clothes that you don't mind getting dirty. Please make sure they come into school wearing their trainers/ shoes (not wellies). The children will change into their wellies when we are going out to outdoor learning and then put their trainers/shoes on after outdoor learning. This is to stop mud being walked through the classrooms. Wellies can be kept in school on our welly rack. Also, if you child is coming in with a puddle suit, could you also send them in with a coat. They can then wear a coat at playtime rather that getting in and out of a puddle suit each time.

Have a fantastic weekend.

Best wishes,

The Reception Team

Week 7 - Let's get ready to crumble!

We have had such a wonderful first half term in Reception, and the whole team is so proud of how well the children have settled, shown they are ready to learn and how eager they are to try new things.

Phonics - This week we have been concentrating on the sounds 'ck' and 'e'. The children have spent time learning these new sounds and practising the letter formation. We are working so well in phonics, and the children are getting a little more confident in writing cvc words with our support.

Maths - We have been learning what is 1 more, what is 1 less and what is the same amount. We spent time on the carpet carefully counting our cubes, and then showing us what is 1 more or 1 less. They were sneakily hiding their cubes behind their backs when showing 1 less. Great work!

Creative area - The Reception were very excited to make apple crumble. The children started by washing their hands and putting on their aprons so they were ready to handle the food. They were each given an apple to cut, making sure they held the apple safely in their “bridge hold” which they practiced first. They carefully chopped the apple into chunks, added sugar and took turns at stirring it, talking about what it looked like and smelled like. Next, the children mixed the topping ingredients in a bowl, talking about the texture and quantity. After all children had helped to make the crumbles, they were baked in the oven and we all sat together to try some. Some children weren’t sure at first, but we were all “have a go hippos” and tried a bit to see what it tasted like. We discussed what the apple looked like before and what it looked like now, we smelled it and we tasted it. It was so yummy! Investigation Area - The children have had the opportunity to cut up apples and use the magnifying glasses, tweezers and other investigative equipment to look closely at the apples.

PE - We have sent the kits home to be washed ready for the new term. Please send their PE kits back in on the first day back. These will then be kept in school until Christmas.

Wild Tribe/PE/ Library - We are very excited to inform you that Reception are going to be taking part in outdoor learning each Friday morning, starting from the first week back after October half term. The children will be completing exciting outdoor learning opportunities (with WILD TRIBE) whatever the weather! Therefore, we ask that children are sent into school wearing old, waterproof outdoor learning clothes (not their school uniforms.) This should include a waterproof coat (and trousers if you wanted), wellies and a layer of old clothing underneath. In case of heavy rain and lots of mud, then please also ensure that all children have a spare change of clothes and shoes, so that they can get changed after. They will not need to change into their school uniforms so just normal clothes is fine. Due to this, it means that our timetable will be changing and P.E will now move to a Thursday. Children will continue to need their P.E kits in school each day though still. Library will change to a Monday so please ensure your child has their library book in their book bag on this day.

We hope you all have a wonderful half term. We can't wait to see the children all refreshed after the break!

Best wishes,

The Reception Team

Week 6 - All About Apples

We've been getting stuck in to apples in our learning this week. We have embraced the bountiful harvest of apples that are around us, and using these across all of our learning.

Maths - We have been learning to be careful counters this week with both objects and then pictures. The children have been learning to put their objects in a neat line in order to help them count carefully and accurately without getting in a muddle. When counting pictures that cannot be moved, the children have been using their pointy finger to help them to count. We have been using the apples at the maths table to help facilitate object counting. See if they can show you their awesome, careful counting at home.

Phonics- Now that we are few weeks in to our phonics programme, we kindly ask you to practise their sounds lots and lots at home. The sound mat has been stuck into your child's red phonics book. By practising saying the sounds and doing the actions daily or a few times a week, the children will become more familiar and confident with them. This helps them to build up their quick recognition of the sounds. Quick and confident recognition of the sounds is a very important part of reading and writing. Just like with any skill, the more they practise, the easier it becomes.

Next week, we will be sticking in another sound mat which just has the letters on without the pictures to support. If your child is becoming confident with the sounds and pictures, you could try the new sheet of just the letters without the pictures. When they see the letter, they say the sound it makes.

Creative Area - The children have enjoyed using apples to make beautiful printed patterns. They have explored the different paints, and used these to create some lovely designs. Some have even applied their maths learning in creating repeated patterns. We also spent some time cutting up and looking at apples. All the children were so pleased to find the pips inside.

Next week - We continue our learning about apples, and will be putting on our star baker hats to enjoy some cooking!

Have a great weekend!

Best wishes,

The Reception Team

Week 5 - Hibernating Hedgehogs and all sorts.

Gosh, we have been busy this week learning all sorts of wonderful facts about creatures that we might see in Autumn. In particular, Reception have enjoyed learning all about Hedgehogs through our story 'Don't hog the hedge'. Through this story we have been learning words like hibernate, den and nocturnal.

Phonics - We are getting so good at remembering our actions for the different sounds we have been learning. See if they can show you these at home. We are continuing to have a go at blending some of the sounds we have learnt so far to form short cvc words. Well done Reception!

Maths - We have been learning to sort objects this week, and have been thinking about the different way we can sort objects. We have seen that we can sort by colour, by how it feels (rough or smooth for example), and what it is (leaf or not a leaf). We have talked about animals that hibernate and animals that don't hibernate. Can they tell you which animals hibernate?

Creative areas - There have been some lovely creations this week! We have seen some awesome Autumn animals created with paint and layered leaves, and also some prickly pine cone creatures. The children have carefully selected what they could use to create their creatures. I particularly liked the spider with many eyes!

Library - We are so enjoying our visits to the library. The children are choosing their books, sitting and sharing their books together and treating the library books and equipment in a very respectful way. We love to choose a book or two to share as a whole class at the end of the session. As of next week, we shall be moving our library day to a Monday so please ensure you books come in on this day.

PE - We are so impressed with how well the children are getting changed for PE. They are being very methodical in how they get changed and so far no one has lost anything. Phew! We will send their PE bags back home with them at the end of term so you can give them a wash then.

A request - Next week we are learning all about apples! We will be exploring the life cycle of an apple, developing our vocabulary linked to apples, investigating what we find on the inside of apples, using our observational skills to create apple paintings, using apples to explore printing and creating repeating patterns with paints and much, much more. If anyone knows of any local apple trees or if you find yourself going out and about this weekend where apples trees are, we would really appreciate lots of apples being brought into school on Monday morning for our wonderful activities!

Have a fantastic weekend, and we'll see you on Monday.

Best wishes,

The Reception Team

Week 4 - We're having a hoot!

Its's week 4 and we have been having a lovely time learning all about owls. The children have absolutely loved our class text 'Owl Babies'. Ask them who their favourite owl baby is. I'm sure they will be able to tell you!

Phonics - We continue our learning of phonics and this week we have been robot talking and blending some of the sounds we have learnt so far. The children are starting to recognise a few CVC words which contain the sounds that we have learnt. We have learnt the sounds i, n, m and d this week and the children continue to practise forming these in class. You may have already seen there is a letter formation sheet in their phonics home learning book that has come home on Thursday. Take some time if you can to read this to the child and encourage them to give it a try using the letter formation sheet to help.

Maths - We have been looking at matching pairs this week and the children have shown a real confidence in either matching by shape, pattern or colour. See if they can pair your socks up at home. We can assure you they were exceptional at doing this in class!

Wider Curriculum - Firstly, thank you so much for the junk modelling that you sent in this week. The children have had an absolute 'hoot' building birdhouses with them and the natural materials that they found on our first trip to the field. They have also enjoyed building houses for the owls in our construction area, making sure the houses were different sizes for the owls in our class text. The children have also enjoyed making different types of birds using play- doh, and creating bird feeders for our woody corner too.

A request - Next week we will be using pinecones in our learning. If you come across any pinecones over the weekend, and are happy to collect a few, we would be very grateful.

Have a fabulous weekend, and we’ll see you next week.

Best wishes,

The Reception Team

Week 3 - Amazing Autumn

Wow! What a week of incredible learning. The children's enthusiasm and readiness to learn is blowing us away (almost like the rain and wind we all experienced on Wednesday morning!).

Phonics and writing - We have officially started phonics and the children are loving it! We have started this week with s, a, t and p. The children have enjoyed learning the different actions for the letters, and using this skill to help them to remember how to write the letter on their whiteboards. Everyone is working hard to ensure they are holding their pencils and pens correctly. In their COOL time, many children have loved using the mark making areas and writing table to hone these new found skills.

Maths - Using the lovely story of 'Have you seen Sassoon?', the children have been recognising and creating their own patterns using the peg boards, cubes and colouring pens. Some have even combined this pattern making skill in their creative art work and writing. Great work everyone! We would love to see if you can spot any repeating patterns outside of school.

Topic- The children have been using the talking tub this week to discuss the objects that they see, and share any knowledge they have about them and Autumn. Lots of children knew that apples and leaves fall from the trees, and that pumpkins grow, Using the story 'Leaf Man' which uses leaves to create fish, turtles and the leaf man amongst other things, children created their own leaf designs using leaves we had collected. Perhaps you might find some leaves if you are out and about this weekend. Can you create any other leaf creatures?

A fantastic week of learning all round. Have a great weekend!

Week 2 - Getting Ready to Learn

What a fantastic second week at school we have had! The children are coming in so confidently and have settled right in to school routines. It has been amazing to see how well they have all transitioned into school life, so thank you for all your support with this. Some children have commented on how much they love being here which just makes our day!

This week we have been exploring the indoor areas of the class and learning how to use the equipment safely and respectfully. I'm sure if you ask they will let you know how we keep our classroom safe for each other. We also started getting ready for our Phonics learning. We have been practising getting our writing equipment ready 'step-by-step'. The children are so good at showing they are ready, so we can't wait to see how Phonics goes with them next week. Also, as part of this, we have been working hard on our 'Whole Body Listening'. See if they can show you what this looks like at home.

In our maths area we have been exploring counting objects and matching them with the corresponding number. We have been counting how many people are in the house, and drawing who lives in our own houses. There has been some wonderful counting going on and discussion around number.

We have seen some creative constructions at the Lego tray this week. Boats, spaceships, quad bikes... you name it! All the children could talk in great detail about their constructions and what they could do. So inventive!

We finished the week with our first PE session. This week we explored the hall and also learned when to stop, listen and line up safely. Next week we will attempt getting changed for PE. We also visited the library today and chose books to bring home. As we mentioned, the children can choose any book of their liking from the library. These are to share and enjoy together for the whole week. We will change their library books every Friday.

We have added this weeks Meet the Teacher PDF below for those of you who were unable to make it.

We hope you have a wonderful weekend. We can't wait to see everyone next week.

Our first week in Reception

All of the children have had such a fantastic first week in Reception! The children came into school brilliantly and have started to learn the morning routines of answering the register and joining in for wake and shake. We have spent time exploring both the classrooms and outside learning environments and have begun to think about how we are going to carefully look after all our learning resources! The children enjoyed travelling to the hall to eat their lunch. We have also spent time exploring the outside large scale building and climbing equipment, listening to stories and having a brilliant time meeting and making new friends. What a busy first week - we can't wait to do it all again next week!