Week 4 – Jack and the Beanstalk
This week we have been learning more about the fantastic story ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. We found lots of repeating words in the story and enjoyed joining in.
In provision we created our own beanstalks, made castles and furniture fit for giants and measured different beanstalks using cubes.
We thought about what plants need to grow and decided to see if we could grow our own beanstalks. It was lots of fun getting everything ready and patting the bean into the soil. We learnt that the beans will need light, warmth and water to grow.
All aboard the Hundred Decker Bus!
This week our focus book has been ‘The Hundred Decker Bus’ by Mike Smith. This story takes us on an amazing adventure with a growing bus!
We used our literacy skills to sequence and retell the great story. We discussed how it might feel if we went on an adventure but didn’t know where we were going! In the classroom we created our own towns labelling the different buildings, we created playdough vehicles and labelled double decker buses.
We loved the idea of each deck on the bus been a different place to do things. We decided to create a class decker bus. Thank you grown ups for our cardboard boxes! We all thought about what we wanted our deck to be and then used different materials to create it.
During our Religious Education lesson we learnt more about the Hindu Festival Holi. Holi is a colourful festival, with singing and throwing of powder paint and coloured water. It is a celebration of spring, love and new life. We decided to create our own friend who has taken part in Holi.
This week for poetry basket we used the nursery rhyme ‘Pat a Cake’ we loved creating our own actions. We hope you enjoy watching it!
5,4,3,2,1 blast off!
Our focus story this week has been ‘The Hundred Decker Rocket’ by Mike Smith. This is a fantastic story based on looking after the places we live and creating a huge rocket for everyone to travel on.
In Reception we began thinking about how we could look after the places we live. We had a great discussion about litter and decided to do a litter pick in our school grounds. This also allowed us to go and see if we could spot any signs of Spring!
In maths this week we have been working on our counting skills and spotting patterns when counting. Did you know when we add 1 more to towers they look like stairs! We had great fun taking part in a bean bag challenge.
We created maps of our school to help others find their way around school and even created maps for the Beebots to follow. It was tricky to program the Beebots at first but we soon got used to what we needed to do.
Our poem this week had lots of fun actions! please check it out on the link.
World Book Day
On Thursday we had a wonderful day celebrating reading! Parents and carers joined us for bedtime stories in class and then we had special visitors from year 3 and Mrs Valentine.
All aboard for a new term
I hope you all had a fantastic half term break and are ready to enjoy our new topic ‘let’s go’. This week our focus story was ‘The train ride’ we had lots of different transport activities in our provision areas. We really enjoyed learning more about what trains were like long ago and what they are like today.
We are very excited as we think we have started to spot the first signs of Spring. We have been looking carefully on our journeys and Arthur painted a beautiful daffodil that he had seen on his way to school.
We have been using our phonics skills to build words and sentences. We really enjoyed finding the sound balls and making a word.
Poetry Picnic
We have been popping crazy with our poem this week. We hope you enjoy it too.
On Thursday 2 March it is World Book Day. This year we are not dressing up however we would like invite all families into class to share a story together. Please could you bring a favourite story and teddy with you on Thursday morning.
Mrs Payne
Week 6 – People who help us
It’s hard to believe we are at the end of another busy half term! There has been so much great learning in Reception so thank you to everyone for working so hard!
This week we have been thinking about different jobs and different ways that people help us. We discovered that there are so many different ways to help others! Mr Atkins helped us to develop our building skills and we designed emergency vehicles and uniform for the emergency services.
We had a visit from Wetherby Fire Station on Thursday. It was amazing to see the fire engine and to learn more about what equipment they use and the different jobs the firefighters do.
On Tuesday it was Internet Safety Day. During the day we learnt different ways that we could stay safe online. We read a book called ‘Penguin Pig’ Which helped us to understand that not everything you see and read online is real. We then created our own made up animals so others could see not everything is real.
We love learning new poems and nursery rhymes during our daily poetry picnic sessions. This week we worked in small groups to create our poetry performances.
I hope you are all having a wonderful half term and look forward to seeing you all on Monday 20 February!
Week 5 – Superheroes
What a fantastic week we have had in reception. We have continued with our focus book Supertato but focused more on superheroes.
The children decided that they wanted to build a city for their superhero to live in. They thought carefully about what they wanted their city to have. We saw some amazing bridges!
This week we learnt more about Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. Yayoi is also known as the princess of polka dots as she loves to add dots to her art creations. Yayoi has created sculptures and many different paintings. She has even used people as her canvas! We decided that we wanted to create some artwork inspired by this amazing artist. Check out some of our dotty designs.
There was an emergency in the kitchen this week! Julie came to see us to tell us that all the peas had escaped from the freezer! We thought this must be the work of the evil pea so we thought carefully about what we could do to find him. We decided that we would make some wanted posters so everyone at school could help us to find him.
A huge thank you for everyone who joined us for our funky fingers stay and play session on Friday. We loved sharing our classroom with everyone and hope you did too.
We have parents evening next week on Tuesday and Thursday evening. If you haven’t yet made an appointment please come and speak to me so we can arrange a time.
Mrs Payne
Week 4 – Supertato
This week our focus book is Supertato! We have been learning more about different fruits and vegetables and how they can help us to follow a healthy diet. We really enjoyed listening to the story and then adding actions for the different characters. In the classroom evil pea had been busy and had trapped lots of different fruit and vegetables onto our writing table. We wrote speech bubbles so they could get some help.
We decided that we would like to create our own Supertato. We carefully choose different materials and thought carefully about how we could make them stick to a potato!
The evil pea was causing so much trouble in the classroom we decided to build some traps so we could catch the pea! It was a tough job but we worked together and made some amazing traps.
This week we have learnt more about primary and secondary colours. We investigated what happened when you mixed two primary colours together.
Dates for your diary:
Friday 3 February – funky fingers stay & play. We hope you can all join us in the classroom to discover more about how we build muscle strength in out hands.
W/B 6 February – early years writing zoom. A pre recorded zoom presentation will be sent out to all families discussing writing in the early years setting.
As always please keep reading at home. The children love sharing their e-books with you all.
Mrs Payne
Week 4 – The Magic Paintbrush
Happy New Year!
This week in Reception we have been learning more about the Lunar New Year. We discovered how people across the world will be having new year celebrations and that 2023 is the year of the Rabbit! We were particularly interested in how dragons featured not only in our focus book but in lots of the celebrations. We created our own dragons and even learnt to dance like a dragon in our own parade.
We wrote good luck messages for the year ahead and build great walls to show our representations of the Great wall of China!
Bex Rayner
Thank you to everyone for all of the amazing sponsorships which allowed this great visit to take place. we were so excited to meet Bex and to learn more about what it is like to be a football player. We loved taking part in the circuit training and even our very own Mrs Walton showed her football skills in the assembly.
As you all know we love reading in Reception and love sharing stories with others. On Wednesday Yr 5& 6 came down to share some special stories with us. It was so nice to hear other people read and we even showed off our new reading skills to them!
Ways to help at home:
- Phase 3 phonics flashcards have been sent home. Please keep reading together to gain confidence
- Writing words together
- Daily reading using e-books. If anyone is having any problems logging in please let me know.
Mrs Payne
Week 2 – animal fact books
We have had great fun exploring ice and learning more about different animals this week. We used different cutting tools to create ice sculptures and discovered that the more we held the ice pieces the smaller they became.
We created igloos in our construction area using different building materials and snowflake designs on pegboards. “It is tricky to make the band go around the peg. My fingers are working hard” Aurelia.
We love reading in Reception. We enjoy exploring different books. This week we learnt more about fiction and non-fiction books. We sorted books from our reading corner into two piles and then used the contents page to help us find specific information.
We can’t wait to see everyone in our classroom for our phonics lesson on Monday 16 January. Please come to the office for 9am and then we can start learning together.
Welcome back!
Hello!
I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas break and are looking forward to an amazing 2023. I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you for all of our lovely Christmas cards and gifts.
This week our focus book has been Lost and Found. We have used this to think about the weather in different places around the world and how different animals live in different places. Whilst outside we discovered some signs of Winter. We discussed how we thought the ice got there and what would need to happen for it to change into water.
As we read through our story we decided that we would like to make some of our own penguins. We used a range of different materials to create different parts of the penguins.
The more we read about the penguin in the story the more we wanted to learn. Harry asked “how tall is a penguin in real life?” we decided to find out and create our own real life sized penguins. We created an Emperor, Rockhopper and Macaroni penguin. Can you believe an Emperor penguin can be 115cm tall! We then used our real life sized penguins to find out if we were taller or shorter than the different penguins.
On Monday 16 January 9- 9:30 we will be holding our next stay and play session. This time we will be focusing on phase 3 phonics.
Things you could do to help with learning at home:
- letter formation
- blending sounds
- talking about things in the local environment.
Mrs Payne