Baa…baa…BRILLIANT!
Last week, the children came in to find their classroom looking a little bit different! They were so excited to look at all our special Christmas decorations and start to play in all our Christmas-themed areas of provision. Santa’s workshop and the dressing up are particularly big hits!
We had an amazing day on our first school trip to Abbey house museum. The children were all so well behaved, followed lots of instructions, were enthusiastic about the activities and History learning – we had a truly wonderful day. The staff at the museum even commented on how calm and sensible our children were – we were so proud of our class!
The children have listened to the real Christmas Story from the Bible as well as a lovely version called Jesus’ Christmas Party, where the Innkeeper is rather grumpy! They listened well and were then able to order and retell the story. We also looked at lots of the language in these stories and discussed their meaning such as manger, Bethlehem, shepherds and angel.
This week, the children listened to one of our favourite Christmas stories – Father Christmas Needs a Wee! Obviously, they absolutely loved it! However, as well as being funny, it’s also a great book for counting and, again, we picked out some of the language such as heaven, flee and rises. In our Maths, the children used story to carefully count objects (such as 3 cups of tea!), match objects to the numerals on the doors, find 1 more and 1 less, and practise the part-part-whole method to help them understand how numbers are composed. We continued to use this story, and others, to think about Santa’s long journey on Christmas Eve and find out about how people celebrate around the world. Try asking your child how children in France and Alaska celebrate Christmas.
Our busy little elves have been trying incredibly hard to master the skill of sewing! As a school, we have decided to once again support a local charity called Be a Santa for a Senior and in Reception, we have made decorations which we hope will bring lots of seniors some much-needed joy this Christmas. We hope you enjoy the crafts that they are creating for you this Christmas too.
And finally…WOW! What a performance! We hope that you enjoyed Baa Baa Bethlehem as much as the children did! This is such a huge event for the children (and parents!) with many of them never having performed properly on a stage in front of such a big audience. They remembered when to go on and off stage, all the song words and actions, and even to smile. We are phenomenally proud of them J
Have a lovely festive weekend!
The Reception Team J
World Nursery Rhyme Week!
We had a great time last week learning, practising and performing our five focus nursery rhymes. It was lovely to watch the children grow in confidence and fluency as the week has progressed. We will, of course, continue with our Rhyme of the Week going forwards.
Healthy Heroes!
Last week, the children also had to think carefully about ways to stay healthy, from eating the right foods to exercising to (most importantly of all!) getting plenty of sleep! They LOVED making their Superhero Smoothies – yum! In line with the new EYFS Framework, we also focused on Oral Health: discussing the importance of brushing properly twice a day, as well as consuming healthy foods and drinks that don’t damage our teeth – not too much sugar! We were impressed on how much the children understood and explained, and hope that these healthy attitudes are being reflected at home.
Children in Need
Today, the children found out about Children in Need and Pudsey Bear through stories, PowerPoints and discussion. We talked about the importance of helping others and how the money we have raised will help lots of children who are less fortunate.
Superhero Day!
A huge thank to you all for attending our Parent Sharing Afternoon. We know the children loved having you in our classroom and it was such a joy to see you all talking and learning together. The children (and Mrs Swift – watch that aim!) are very excited to test out their inventions next week – let’s hope they are all egg-cellent!
And finally…Christmas is coming!
After spending a couple of weeks learning the songs, we are now in the thick of rehearsals for our Christmas play! There’s a lot of work still to do, but it’s so lovely to see the children performing and celebrating this wonderful time of year together J
Have a fab weekend!
The Reception Team J
We’ve been very busy…!
Wow! Reception have been ‘on fire’ over the past couple of weeks and have settled back into school and our routines well after the holidays.
Our focus story last week was The Creation Story. The children listened so attentively to the story from our Children’s Bible and also watched an animated version. We introduced the children to Tom and Tessa, our puppets who will help us with our RE learning all year. They have loved this first RE unit, showing lots of enthusiasm and having some really interesting discussions about God, Jesus and how the world began. If you haven’t yet, please look on Tapestry for their retelling of the story in groups – they loved watching themselves back on the iPad! We also incorporated some Art and each child created a collage of something important from the story, such as a tree, flower, animal or star. Many children really took their time over this and we think they did amazingly well! We even continued the learning into PE, moving around the hall as different animals and taking part in animal relays – brilliant teamwork Reception! We also started our Class Worships last week – Newsday Tuesday and Big Questions Thursday.
We introduced some new sounds last week and have continued to practise all the sounds we have learnt so far, with many children remembering lots of them. Please keep practising at home when you can. Many of the children are also now able to orally blend CVC words such as cat, man, dog and sit. Please practise this skill any time you can, in the car or walking to school, as it will aid their reading enormously.
In Maths, it’s been all about numbers 2 and 3! We have been exploring the many ways these numbers can be represented: the numerals, 2/3 cubes or 2/3 of any object, Numberblocks 2 and 3, Numicon 2 and 3, a triangle with 3 corners and 3 edges, the 2nd and 3rd days of the week, and so on. We have also been focusing on sorting objects into 2 groups, sometimes more. The children all initially sorted by colour but some were able to find alternative ways such as by the type of object or size, regardless of colour. We were impressed with how hard they tried to explain what they had done. This week, we have also learnt about the 2D shapes, circles and triangles. We did this by describing the features of the shapes, finding them in real life, recapping our sorting and pattern making skills and even looking for them in paintings by Kandinsky!
Today, we spent the morning learning about why we wear poppies using a Reception-appropriate PowerPoint, short cBeebies animation and a beautiful story called Where the Poppies Now Grow. The children were really interested in learning more about the past and we focused on how much courage the soldiers must have shown. In small groups, the children looked closely at artefacts from World Wars 1 and 2, such as uniform, helmets and carved bullet casings. They were really interested and we especially liked trying on the hat and helmets. They also enjoyed making paper plate poppies.
On top of all this, the children have done firework poems, music, computing, PE, and of course, some amazing singing in readiness for our Christmas Play!
What a start to the half term! It’s non-stop from here on in!
Have a lovely weekend.
The Reception Team