Reception

Welcome to Reception

Class teacher: Miss Hughes

Class T.A: Miss Briscoe

A warm welcome to all children, parents and visitors to our class page.  We have a wonderful team of teaching staff who work hard to ensure the children’s learning and wellbeing are the focus of everything we do.  Miss Hughes is the class teacher who loves teaching outdoors. We have a fantastic outdoor environment with lots of lovely learning resources.  Miss Briscoe is the class teaching assistant who loves creating engaging activities for the children to access independently.

In Reception we are flexible and responsive to the children, environment and classroom atmosphere to ensure every child’s needs and interests are met, therefore the planning is changeable and adapted.

Intent Statement                                      

St Mary’s Catholic Primary Academy believes that all children deserve an education rich in memorable experiences that allows our children’s creativity and curiosity to grow, alongside the development of key skills and knowledge. We believe that offering our children a strong foundation and a love of learning gives children the best chance to become well-rounded, happy individuals, ready to succeed in an ever-changing world.

We recognise the importance of giving our children the best possible start to their education by planning and implementing teaching and learning opportunities that support them in reaching their full potential.

It is our intention to provide a stimulating learning environment where all children can work with adults and peers in a climate of mutual respect to develop confidence in their ability to learn. We aim to provide children with a well-structured, safe and active learning environment. This will enable our young learners to develop the skills, attitudes and understanding that support our children to become lifelong learners and encourage them to become active members of our ever-changing society.

Every child is recognised as a unique individual, and we acknowledge and promote children’s interests to provide them with the opportunities to follow their imagination and creativity. In Reception, we invest time into helping children to recognise their personal goals, which allow them to reflect and aim high. We celebrate the diversity in our school community, and always strive to promote a love for learning.

EYFS statutory framework for group and school-based providers

Reading in Reception

Reading – Reading is at the heart of all our learning at St Mary’s. To support this at home, please could all children ensure that they read their school reading book every night and that the planner is signed by an adult. Alongside this, it is also key that all children select their own reading for pleasure book which they will also have opportunities to read and share with others in school.

Phonics– Phonics is a way of teaching reading where children are taught to read letters or groups of letters by saying the sound(s) they represent. The phonics programme we follow is called Read Write Inc. (RWI). In reception we are beginning to blend sounds together to create words. It is really important that the children practise blending sounds together to create words so please blend, blend, blend with your children at home. Playing simple listening games can help your children understand phonics a lot more. Asking your child ‘Can you get your c-oa-t?’ ‘Sit on the ch-air.’ etc. will help them understand ‘fred talk’ or ‘sounding out’.

Advent 2 2023-2024

In reception our topic book has been The Three Billy Goats Gruff. We have built bridges to walk across, retold the story and have completed some fabulous writing.

In art children have been looking at observational drawings of a beanstalk. They looked at the parts of the plant closely before drawing.Why listening to the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. Children then dug in the soil to find beanstalks before ordering them from the shortest to the tallest.

In Reception, our RSHE lesson, we have spoken about ‘when I grow up…’
We have looked at different job roles and discussed what we would like to be when we grow up, we have looked at our strength and gifts that we have been given to help us achieve this.
We are going to continue reaching for the stars and chasing our dreams 🌟

Partitioning

The children loved exploring partitioning the number 5. We learnt all about part part whole.

This week we have been looking at the story ‘Mixed’.We have been mixing colours with our friends using our hands 🎨

We have also looked at the book ‘The Day the Crayons Quit’. Take a look at some of our writing that we have all been doing.

RE
Advent

During our ‘Birthdays’ topic the children learnt all about Advent being a time of preparation ready for the day Jesus was born. We explored the Advent Wreath and talked about the nativity story.

Road Safety week 2023

As part of road safety week this year we added some road signs to our bike track. The children took their roles very seriously and enjoyed stopping and starting the traffic! We also learnt how to cross the road safely.

Shape hunt in the outdoor area

The children had a great time hunting for circles and triangles in our outdoor area. We knew that circles were round shapes and triangles have 3 sides.

Diwali 2023

While learning about different celebrations around the world we looked at Diwali. The children loved making their own salt dough to create Diya lamps. Once they were dry the children decorated them to look bright and beautiful.

Exploring pumpkin soup!

Our story this week was pumpkin soup. The children loved exploring what was inside the pumpkins and then feeling the different textures. The pumpkin eventually ended up outside in the mud kitchen where the children created their own pumpkin soup.

Advent 1 2023-2024

We have an amazing start to the new year with our new Reception class. Unfortunately the building work was not yet complete on our new EYFS unit however the children adapted well to learning in the small dining hall. We were so excited to finally be in our new class room at the end of the term.

Happy in our new classroom.

Finally during the last week our term we were able to get into our new refurbished classroom. The children were so happy to be in a settled space. More pictures of our amazing space will be uploaded once we have moved in fully.

Getting to know our new school and making new friends.

During the first few weeks on this new school year the children enjoyed getting to know each other and making new friends.

Summer Term 2 (Pentecost 2)

In reception we are going to be taking a walk on the wild side!!! We will be looking at and exploring animals and habitats found in other countries around the world.

We have frogs!

Reception are delighted that the tadpoles have successfully turned into frogs! No more tails means they are no longer babies and are almost ready to go off into the wild. We have created a small pond for them to live in and after we have observed them for a few days we will pop them into the wooded area in the playground. The frogs are jumping and climbing which we are very excited about!

Summer Term 1 (Pentecost 1)

Our theme this half term is ‘Once Upon a Time’. Each week our learning will focus on the key skills we want to develop through exploring different fairy tales as well as the children’s interests as they arise. The theme ‘Once upon a time…’ will be explored with a range of activities and learning experiences both inside the classroom and outside to progress the children’s understanding of the world. Reception class will be looking at the stories ‘The Gingerbread Man’ and ‘Prince Cinders’.

Marvellous Maths

Looking at Hinduism

we looked at and talked about the different Hinduism artefacts and compared these to some of the artefacts on our catholic prayer focus table. We noticed that both religions have ‘beads’ to help people pray.

Grandpas Quilt

The children composed and decomposed shapes to create ‘Grandpas Quilt’.

Pentecost

We learnt that Pentecost is the celebration of the Good News of Jesus. We explored what makes a good friend, just like the disciples were to Jesus.

We are now able to talk about the story of the Holy Spirit. We even acted this out as a group.

We know how to be good friends

Positional Pizzas

We used prepositions and positional language to make yummy pizzas.

Froglets

The tadpoles have now grown limbs but still have their tails. We have learnt that they are now Froglets!

God Save the King

To celebrate King Charles lll Coronation we participated in lots of exciting activities. We came dressed in our red white and blue outfits. Some of us were kings and queens too. We enjoyed a really special street party in our playground with yummy food, music and games, before having a special assembly where we sang the National Anthem.

Ginger Biscuit Science Experiment

we carried out an experiment to see what would happen when we put ginger biscuits into oil, lemon water and milk. The children were asked to predict what they thought would happen first giving some really interesting reasons.

It didn’t take long before we saw the outcome. The milk and water quickly turned the biscuits soggy, however the biscuit in the oil did not absorb the liquid and it remained hard, even after 3 days!

As a special treat we had a taste of ginger biscuits after decorating them with raisins. Our very own gingerbread faces!

Gingerbread man activities

Roleplay bakery where we are making gingerbread people using lots of different ingredients. We like the smell of ginger!

The gingerbread man needed our help to build a bridge to get over the river so we have been designing and constructing these in and outdoors.

Good News

Emily has been awarded 10 Dojos from Father Andrew. Well done Emily!

Our Exciting New Tadpoles

We are looking forward to watching the life cycle of a frog in our classroom over the next few weeks. Our new tadpoles are amazing, we are learning to take good care of them and have created rules to keep them very safe.

Maths

Pictorial counting: we discovered how to easily count groups of objects using counters and the ‘crossing out method’

Can we work together to find 100 sticks? How can we easily count them? Can we put them into groups?

I can tell a story

Story maps help us to understand that tales have a beginning, middle and end. They give us the opportunity to explore different characters, settings and plots. We can experiment with stories by changing these aspects. We are learning to retell stories and are now making our own stories up.

Early Writing Skills

Core muscle strength develops our fine motor skills that help us develop our writing abilities!

We work out on the monkey bars, we squiggle whilst we wiggle, we do dough disc, we put pegs to paper and use a variety of other fine motor resources each and every day!

Spring Term 2 (Lent 2)

Within this topic, we will learn about where food comes from especially focusing on farms and animals. We will plant seeds and watch the changes they go through as they grow. We will understand how to care for living things as we explore the big impact tiny creatures and plants have on our amazing planet! This half term we are looking at and exploring two stories ‘Chicken Licken’ and ‘The Little Red Hen’

Our Learning Environment

We enjoy creating our learning environment to promote our exciting topic. We are getting better at drawing different animals that can be found on a farm too. We use our blending and sounds to create the vocabulary around the unit.

Maths

Exploring number bonds to 10

Literacy

We like to read and write in all areas. We can spell words by identifying the sounds and then writing the sound with letters.

I can tell a story

Story maps help us to understand that tales have a beginning, middle and end. They give us the opportunity to explore different characters, settings and plots. We can experiment with stories by changing these aspects. We are learning to retell stories and are now making our own stories up.

Outdoor learning

This half term we have enjoyed watching and experiencing the changes in seasons and are very excited about the milder weather

World Book Day 2023

Shrove Tuesday – Pancakes!

Reception children learnt that pancake day is also referred to as Shrove Tuesday and that it is celebrated on the Tuesday before Lent begins. We learnt that pancakes are made using batter consisting of flour, eggs and milk. They really enjoyed mixing all the batter ingredients together before Mrs Lawrence frying the mixture to make lots of delicious pancakes. We then used our blending sounds to write out what we would like for our toppings.

Remembrance

Reception children remembered all the fallen soldiers that died in wars. The children were part of a whole school assembly where they were incredibly respectful during the two minute silence. The children took part in lots of remembrance activities including creating a giant poppy in our outdoor area.