Reception

Reception 25-26

Autumn 2

We have really enjoyed our first week back at school and the children have all settled well back into our usual routines. We have learnt about circles and triangles in Maths, looking at how many sides and corners they each have and explored the shapes through lots of practical activities. 

We loved dressing up and taking part in different activities for Talk Money Day and enjoyed learning more about money and coins. Thank you to all of the parents and carers for providing the excellent costumes! 

Autumn 1

We learnt all about the story of Diwali and enjoyed completing lots of activities around this afterwards, including making diva lamps, creating our mehndi designs, creating Rangoli patterns and retelling the story of Rama and Sita using figurines. We also used the story of Rama and Sita as our Drawing Club book this week!

Thank you to all of the parents and carers that came to our Stay and Play session. We all had a great time!

Week 7

We have been doing a lot of work this week on the numbers 1, 2 and 3 in our maths lessons. We have sorted, subitised and counted the different numbers. 

Thank you to everyone for coming to Parent's Evening. I mentioned to a few parents about developing fine motor skills at home through dough disco. Here is a link to a few videos on YouTube that the children can move along with. Feel free to have a go at home!

Dough Disco Videos

We also really enjoyed spending time with the Y5 and Y6 GIFT team who came into our class and helped us make a rosary bead craft to help us reflect during the month of the rosary.

We all did brilliantly during the Dancealongathon and had so much fun with our friends!

Week 6

We've had another fun week. We have started our learning on transport and lots of the children were very curious when we showed them some pictures of buses in the past. We have continued with our phonics learning and have learnt the sounds c, k, u and b this week. We really enjoyed our PE lesson which was around 'going to the shops'. We learnt some fantastic skills including balancing and jumping by bending and stretching. We had lots of fun playing a listening game where we pretended to be cars too.

As part of our expressive arts learning, we are focusing on the work of Andy Warhol and this week we began working on our own self-portraits in the style of Warhol.

Week 5

We have had a great week! We had so much fun on our trip to Winton Park, we collected lots of different Autumn treasures and enjoyed sharing them with our friends later on. Thank you to all of our helpers that joined us, we really appreciate your help! In Read, Write, Inc. we have learnt n, p, g and o. We really enjoyed completing lots of activities around these sounds including night painting, penguin puppets, goat pictures and squeezing o-o-oranges. In maths, we have been completing and creating simple patterns. 

We also really enjoyed taking part in our first Write Dance lesson. We did this as part of our PE provision and it was lots of fun! Our lesson was called 'The Volcano' and involves dancing using large movements before using the same movements on a smaller scale to create pictures. This programme really helps to develop both gross and fine motor skills. 

Week 4

We have had another good week, busily completing our learning. We have learnt two new sounds, t and i and have also started work on magnetic boards looking at segmenting and blending CVC words. We also had lots of fun completing more sorting activities. 

A huge well done to all of the children for sharing their 'all about me' bags so confidently with the rest of the class. We really enjoyed learning more about you!

Week 3

We have now started our Maths and Read, Write, Inc. sessions. The children have tried incredibly hard and even though writing letters has been particularly tricky for many, they have all persevered and we have been very impressed with their efforts! We have completed lots of follow-up phonics activities including making mice masks, baking apple cakes, creating hanging snakes and making our very own dinosaurs. In Maths, we have been learning about ways to match and sort objects. We have played matching card games as well as sorted dinosaurs, buttons and natural objects. We have also been learning about our senses and have completed some really fun activities through this.

Week 2

We have started the Reception Baseline (see information sheet sent home last week) and the children have all been doing really well! We have also started some of our lessons including Religion, Think Equal and PE. We have enjoyed learning about God's world, talking about the things we like about ourselves and completing fun games in PE. We have also continued to explore and learn in our classroom environment.

Week 1

We have really enjoyed getting to know the children this week by spending lots of time in the provision with them. We have completed lots of circle time to support the children in feeling more comfortable with us and in their new classroom and this has helped everyone to settle more quickly. Well done Reception for a super first week!

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Reception 2024-25

Summer 2

Week 6

We planted our own potatoes a few months ago and we harvested them this week. Tina, our school cook, made chips with them for us. They were so yummy!

We loved our teddy bear’s picnic with our y6 buddies.

We had so much fun at our school disco!

Week 5

We went on a trip to Holy Cross church this week. We looked at all of the different objects in the church including the statues, candles, sanctuary light, tabernacle and the altar. We made the sign of the cross using holy water when we entered, practised genuflecting before we sat down and said some quiet prayers. This visit really helped to consolidate our learning from our religion topic this half term. Thank you to all of our parent and staff helpers who supported us on this trip!

Week 4

We said goodbye to our butterflies this week. We have really loved watching them change and grow from caterpillars to chrysalis to butterflies. It was very special letting them go. We said prayers to wish them a safe journey. 

Week 3 

This week we have been busy learning. We really enjoyed learning about the church. We learnt how to spend quiet time reflecting and saying prayers. We also enjoyed using costumes to role play churches. 
 

Well done to the last few children to complete their class talks!

Week 2

Well down to all of the children who have done their talks so far. We have really enjoyed listening to them and have learnt so much!

Week 1

We’ve had a great first week back. The children have settled well back into the school routines and have worked really hard. 
We received a special delivery on Tuesday. It came from Insect Lore and it was five caterpillars! They sent a special note to ask us to look after them and release them when they finally turn into butterflies. They have grown a lot already!

Thank you to all of the grownups that came to our Stay and Play on Friday, we all had a great time!

Summer 1

Week 4

Reception led the whole school Crowning Mary celebration this week. Everyone was very brave and sang the songs beautifully! As part of our learning in Religion, we have been learning more about Mary. We have enjoyed completing different Mary crafts to celebrate our love for her. 

Week 3

We have been continuing our learning about minibeasts. We have been doing lots of crafts and writing. Take a look at some of our fantastic work below! We’ve also been looking at shapes in our maths lessons. We talked about rotating shapes and created lots of pictures with them. 

Week 2

We have continued learning more about different mini beasts and growing this week. We have planted potatoes and have been learning how to look after them. In religion, we have continued our work around Jesus’ resurrection, learning about doubting Thomas as well as the path to Emmaus. In maths, we have developed our understanding of addition and in drawing club we have completed our sentences through Bertie the Bat. 

We have loved celebrating VE Day. We all came to school in red, white and blue. We learnt more about the war and why we celebrate VE Day, we made Union Jack flags and we enjoyed a picnic with our nursery friends. 
 

We have also been busy practising the songs for our Crowning Mary assembly. Please click the links below to practise at home (thank you!).

Bring Flowers of the Rarest
 

As I Kneel Before You 
 

Week 1

We’ve had a great start to the summer term. We have begun our new topic ‘the great outdoors’ by learning about the very hungry caterpillar. In ‘drawing club’ we created our own caterpillar characters then imagined what the caterpillar was dreaming about inside the chrysalis. We have created lots of different butterfly crafts and hungry caterpillar necklaces. In maths we have been learning to count beyond 20, adding and taking away higher numbers too. In religion, we have been celebrating Jesus’s resurrection and learning more about what happened on Easter Sunday. 

Spring 2

Week 8

We have had a lovely last week of half term. We’ve been completing lots of Easter activities as well as finishing off our learning for the term in our maths and phonics lessons. All of the children have worked incredibly hard this half term and we are really proud of them. Now for a well deserved rest! Have a lovely break and we will see you for the start of a new term on 28th April!

We also celebrated Easter by spending time with our Year 6 buddies and taking part in an Easter egg hunt. 

Week 7

We have had a busy week getting ready for our Easter performance which will take place next Monday (14th) at 9am. We are all working hard to learn our lines! 

Thank you to everyone for bringing in their St Joseph penny boxes. We created our own piece of art with the coins, working together as a class team to do this. 
 

We have also been continuing with our Lego Discovery lessons. This week we worked in small groups to create a submarine and sea creatures for the submarine to see. We are really enjoying these lessons!

Take a look at our fantastic Easter bonnets!!

Week 6

This week we have continued with our learning about the farm. We created our own life cycle of a chicken craft and were all able to confidently talk about the different stages that happen. We have also been enjoying learning about sheep shearing, milking cows and the names of baby farm animals.

Week 5

In our maths lessons, we have been learning about 3D shapes. We have looked at the names and properties of cubes, cuboids, cylinders, spheres, cones and pyramids. We tested the different shapes to see which could roll and talked about how the shapes can only roll if they have a curved face. We sorted 3D shapes, drew around 3D shapes and printed with 3D shapes, looking at the 2D shapes that were hiding in the 3D shapes as we did so. 

Thank you also to all of the special ladies in our lives who came for our Mothers Day Stay and Play!

Week 4

This week, we have been learning about the life cycle of a chicken. We were really interested in learning more through books, videos and fact sheets. We created our own life cycles using paper plates. The children have done really well to understand and remember this!

Week 3

We enjoyed taking part in British Science Week this week. We took part in a whole school experiment looking at the average heights of each class. Each child was measured then we drew around one of our class members who was as tall as the average height in our class. In reception, the average height was 113cm! We compared our average heights in a whole school assembly. 

Week 2

We’ve had a very busy week. We loved taking part in our pancake activities as part of Shrove Tuesday. We made and ate pancakes, we decorated pancakes, played pancake shop, did pancake maths, wrote about pancakes and decorated pancakes with creative materials. 

We also had a wonderful time celebrating World Book Day. Thank you to all of the parents for making such an amazing effort with everyone’s costumes. We also spent time reading with our y6 buddies, listened to readers from St Patrick’s High School and enjoyed listening to our Secret Reader - thank you to Aria’s mum and Lucio’s dad for volunteering for this!!

Week 1

We loved taking part in our first gymnastics lesson with Mrs Gilmore. We had so much fun learning how to use the equipment correctly and safely and we are all starting to build on previous skills learnt. 

Spring 1

Week 6

It has been a very busy last week in Reception. In our maths lessons, we have been learning about ‘long’ and ‘short’ and tall’ and ‘short’ and we have had lots of fun comparing the lengths of objects, creating tall towers and measuring each other. We’ve been finishing off our learning on castles this week. We looked at the story of Rapunzel, however this was a different version of the traditional story which was set in India. Through this, we learnt more about India and created our own India maps, made elephant art pictures, painted pictures of the Taj Mahal, learnt more about Indian food and traditional clothing and created a dance routine (see below). We also loved celebrating Valentine’s Day, we learnt about St Valentine, created cards for our families and our friends, threaded valentines hearts, completed transient art hearts, made valentines play dough creations, completed valentines maths themed activities, painted Kandinsky style hearts and made heart wands to spread the love around our classroom! 
 

Parents, thank you very much for all of your support this half-term with your child’s learning. We hope you have a wonderful and restful break. 

As part of our learning on India, we learnt some Bollywood dance moves which we had great fun putting together into a dance routine. 

Week 5

We’ve had another great week in Reception. This week, we have been making potions and writing potion recipes as part of our talk for writing. We’ve been learning about 1 more, 1 less and doubles as part of our maths lessons. We went on a doubles hunt in the playground, made doubles ladybirds and much more! We also really enjoyed Number Day and made numicon number 5 biscuits which we all had fun decorating too!

Week 4

We had lots of fun learning about Lunar New Year this week. We dressed up for our special celebration day and were really interested in learning the story of the zodiac as well as the special celebrations that people who celebrate take part in (cleaning the house, wearing new clothes, eating special food etc.). We watched some traditional dragon and lion dances then did our own dragon dances. We made dragon puppets, paper lanterns, painted pictures of the cherry blossom, played with small world zodiac animals, completed a 'cross the river' obstacle challenge and much more. Thank you to everyone for all of the effort you put into the children's costumes. Thank you also to Pippa and her family for the paper envelopes and tasty treats for all of the children!

Week 3

This week we have begun learning about measurements. We started with measuring weight and capacity. The children all worked really well to develop their understanding of the different mathematical vocabulary used to describe the different measurements. 

Week 1

The children have all made a great start back to school after the holidays. It has been wonderful to see them ready and eager to learn. We’ve begun our new Castles topic and the children have been completing some challenges around this in the different areas of the classroom. We also really enjoyed spending some time outside in the snowy, frosty weather. 

Autumn 2

Week 8

We had a wonderful last week of the half term. We completed lots of Christmas activities, enjoyed our Christmas party, took part in the Christmas singalong, spent time with our y6 buddies, tasted different traditional Christmas foods from around the world and much more. We are all very excited for Christmas!

Week 7

We’ve had a lovely week, getting in the festive spirit. On Monday, we performed our Nativity in front of the whole school and on Tuesday, we performed it for our parents. Everyone was fantastic, it was a great success! On Wednesday, we enjoyed eating our Christmas dinner together. 
 

We have had fun completing different challenges including making Christmas wreaths in the playdough, building snowmen with the construction blocks, writing the cvc words we can see and painting winter trees inside the lines. 

Week 6

We have had such a wonderful surprise this week! When we came into the classroom after lunch on Tuesday, our classroom whiteboard had been wrapped up with paper and tinsel!! When we ripped it off, we discovered that Santa was behind it with a special message for us. He said that Holly and Snowflake, our class elves had wrapped up the screen. He asked us what we want for Christmas and everyone was very excited to share. Later on, we received a delivery from Santa which was the book ‘Dear Santa’. We have started to learn this as part of our talk for writing! We also all worked together to decorate our class Christmas tree. Everyone got involved and it was wonderful to see the fantastic teamwork!

We have had a lot more challenges to complete this week. In our play dough area, we were challenged to create a 3D Christmas tree. They all looked amazing! We completed hot chocolate counting with marshmallows (mini pom poms), we wrote CVC words in hot chocolate powder, we investigated and explored Christmas ice, we made our own Christmas cards, made Christmas trees in the construction and painted snowflakes made out of filter paper. We talked about what happened as we painted them.

Everyone enjoyed taking part in the Santa Dash!! We sang Christmas songs as we ran around too!

Week 5

We were very lucky to have a visit from Mr Stix and Peanut this week. They performed a fantastic magic show for all of the early years children. We absolutely loved it!!

We’ve been completing lots of activities and challenges this week. During our trip to the RHS, the children were really interested in the fungi so we developed this in our learning. W learnt about different mushrooms, completed observational drawings of them and created our own clay fungi. The children are really starting to develop their skills when using clay too.