Reception

Nursery to Reception

Welcome to Reception

Please remember that I post daily lessons on the school blog. Click on this link to go to the blog. If you click on my name on the right-hand side of the blog, it will take you to all of the blog posts that I have done so far.

Home Learning

Weeks 1 and 2 (23.3-3.4)

Look at all of the wonderful work that these children in Reception have been doing at home. Remember to please check the blog for regular updates and to upload your own pictures so that I can add them to the selection! Thank you parents for continuing to work hard with the children through this difficult time.

Spring 2

Superheroes

The children have really loved our superheroes topic. We have read lots of stories, including Supertato and Superworm. We’ve dressed as superheroes in our role-play area, defeated evil peas with tweezers, written superhero speech bubbles, made lolly stick superheroes, superhero indestructible bracelets and made our own super veggies!

Pray, Stay and Play

The children had a wonderful time with their family members and friends today during our pray, stay and play session. They made Lent leaves, decorated holding crosses, made rosary beads, created stained glass crosses and made lovely ‘Lamb of God’ pictures.

Shrove Tuesday

Today was a brilliant day in Reception! We celebrated Shrove Tuesday by firstly learning that it was the last day before Lent began. We also learnt about how other countries celebrate Shrove Tuesday. We then designed pancakes and wrote about our favourite toppings, we used creative materials to decorate pancakes, we used playdough to make and flip pancakes, we used pancake toppings to complete some maths, we payed for pancakes in the pancake shop and we made our own pancakes by mixing the ingredients together, cooking them in the microwave before adding our favourite toppings then eating them!

Spring 1

Valentine’s Day

We celebrated Valentine’s Day today by learning about St Valentine. We then made Valentine’s wands, Valentine’s playdough cakes, Valentine’s cards and heart shaped toast with strawberry jam on top!

Valentine’s Song

Castles

Our topic this half term is ‘Castles’. We have learnt about different castles, the parts of castles, life in the castles and different castle jobs. The children have loved this topic and have especially enjoyed acting out the different castle jobs in the role-play area.

NSPCC Number Day

We made Numicon biscuits for NSPCC Number Day!

Junk Box

We have been using lots of different materials to make our own creations! We have used cardboard boxes, tubes, cake cases, polystyrene pieces and plastic packaging and have created cameras, phones, TVs, TV remotes and more!

Money

The children have been learning to recognise different English coins this week. They have paid for things in our class shop, they have completed money challenge cards and they have made rubbings and imprints of different coins.

Potions

Somebody came to our classroom and put all of our gems inside a potion! We had to use tweezers to take the gems out but we had to be very careful not to touch the potion with our fingers, just in case we turned into frogs!

Chinese New Year

We had a wonderful time celebrating Chinese New Year with our friends in Nursery.

Gong Hey Fat Choi!

Dragon Dance!

Patterns

We’ve been learning lots about repeating patterns this week. The children have used lots of different objects to create their patterns!

2D Shapes

We’ve been learning the names and properties of 2D shapes this week; triangle, rectangle, square, circle, pentagon and hexagon. We had fun creating shapes in our classroom.

Autumn 2

Christmas

December has been such a fun month for us in Reception. We began by learning about the true meaning behind Christmas - Jesus’s birthday! We retold the nativity story using small world figures and costumes and everyone remembered lots about the story!
We also had lots of fun playing in snow, making our own Christmas cards and writing inside them, telling stories in Santa’s Grotto, creating Christmas decorations, making play dough snowmen and gingerbread men, threading baubles, using our fine motor skills to pick up snowballs, having a race on the Santa Obstacle Course and completing some Christmas maths activities!

Hanukkah

We listened to the story of the Maccabees and looked closely at some special objects associated with Hanukkah. We retold the story with puppets, played games with a dreidel, made Hanukkah cards and made our own menorahs which we linked closely to the story by remembering how many nights the oil stayed lit for.

The Nativity

The children did a fantastic job in our Christmas production, ‘A Little Nativity’. Well done Reception!

Measuring

We have been learning lots about measuring different objects this week. We measured how far it was from our classroom to our outdoor playhouse using footprints and skipping ropes, we measured how far we could throw a beanbag using rulers and we even measured how long Parsley was using felt tips. We also ordered different objects by size including leaves, play dough snakes and wooden blocks. The children used this knowledge in their play to make tall construction towers and to measure their own objects inside and outside the classroom.

Parsley’s Birthday

It was Parsley’s birthday this week! We had a fantastic time celebrating with him, making birthday cards, making playdough cakes, decorating his birthday cake and singing ‘Happy Birthday’. We learnt all about what a birthday is and why we celebrate them and shared memories of our own birthdays. We ended our celebrations with a party for Parsley, playing party games and enjoying a birthday biscuit.

Autumn Celebration

This week, we have been celebrating autumn and all of the wonderful things that it brings. The children have demonstrated a fantastic knowledge of autumn and have learnt so much too. We discovered more about autumn animals and learnt facts about hedgehogs and foxes. We made autumn leaf necklaces, windy day pictures and autumn tree pictures. We had fun in the sensory tub looking at acorns and conkers and even created rubbings of different pumpkins! We also looked inside a giant pumpkin that we picked from our school garden and enjoyed getting our hands messy feeling the seeds and pulp inside. We finished our autumn fun by creating bread shaped like hedgehogs! The children worked together to measure out the ingredients and had lots of fun kneading the mixture!

Remembrance Day

The children began the day by learning why we have Remembrance Day. We heard about the bravery that soldiers have showed during different conflicts and we said special prayers to remember them. The children then created poppies to wear, using their fine motor skills to cut them out with scissors. They also created poppy paintings, transient art poppies and medals. We ended by watching a lovely short video which can be found at https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/watch/poppies

Diwali

We have had a fantastic time learning about Diwali. We listened to the story of Rama and Sita and used small world figures to retell it, we created our own diva lamps using clay, we created rangoli patterns with sand and we made paper lamps too. We even enjoyed some Indian dancing and loved making special Indian sweets to celebrate Diwali.

Indian Dancing

Bonfire Night

The children learnt all about Bonfire Night this week. We used our phonics skills to write firework sounds, made fireworks with play dough, created firework pictures with paint and glitter and used small world figures and fireworks to act out a bonfire event.

Black History Month

To celebrate black history month, we heard stories from other cultures, tasted tropical fruits, created African sunset pictures, made giraffe hand puppets, played instruments from other cultures, dressed in traditional clothes and used small world figures to tell Handa’s Surprise.

Autumn 1

Bear on Toast

The children had lots of fun this week creating ‘Bears on Toast’. We had to follow lots of instructions to make our bears, including how to be safe when using the toaster. We had a great time making them and we were all really excited to taste them!

Pumpkin Picking

We had fantastic fun picking pumpkins and squashes from the school garden today! We are going to display them on our harvest prayer table then after harvest, we are going to make pumpkin soup! Yummy!

Porridge

This week, Goldilocks sent us a special delivery. It had a recipe book in it to make the three bears’ porridge, as well as some porridge oats and some milk. All of the children worked carefully to follow Goldilocks’s instructions to make the porridge and enjoyed trying the finished product!

Baptism

In our Religion lessons, we have been learning about how we welcome people into God's family. We learnt about baptisms and practised re-enacting a baptism in our water tray.

Bears

We have started our new topic on ‘Bears’. We will be learning lots about different types of bears, where bears come from and what types of food they like to eat. We will also be looking at lots of fiction books about Bears including ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’, ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ and ‘Brown Bear, Brown Bear’. We’ve been having lots of fun in our new Goldilocks role-play area.

Write Dance

We are really getting into the routine of ‘Write Dance’. Each week, we start by learning a dance which helps our gross motor movements. We then use these movements on a smaller scale by using our fine motor skills to create a piece of art (this could be done with shaving foam, crayons, chalk etc.). We then listen to a story about the dance we have just done before learning a song to go with it, and using instruments to make it more interesting and exciting.

European Languages Day

Today was European Languages Day, In Reception, we learnt lots of different ways to say hello in other languages but focused mainly on France in our activities, though we did learn a little about other countries in Europe. We said the register in French, we tasted French foods, we made French flags, we learnt about Monet and Seurat and created our own versions of their famous artwork and we also learnt Frère Jacques.

We also looked at food in Italy and made our own collage pizzas. Finally, we learnt about Picasso (from Spain) and created our own Picasso faces!

Frère Jacques

Doctor Foster

This week, we have been learning a new nursery rhyme. Watch us performing 'Doctor Foster'.

Grandparent's Day Celebration Letter

Grandparent's Day celebration letter.pdf

Our first week in Reception

We have had a fantastic first full week back at school. We have begun our first topic 'All About Me'. We have been busy playing doctors in the hospital role-play, making faces in the playdough area and creating faces with different materials.

Vegetable Picking

Today we have picked lots of fruit and vegetables from the school polytunnel and veg patch. We found tomatoes, cucumbers, grapes and runner beans! We even tried some back in class but the grapes were a bit too sour for our liking!

Meet the Teacher

Parents were invited to attend a 'Meet the Teacher' meeting. If you were unable to attend, please read through the document below which outlines everything that we discussed.

St Gilbert’s Parent Presentation-Reception.pdf