Reception Class have had a fantastic time celebrating World Book Day. We started the day by joining together with the rest of the school in our World Book Day assembly. It was very exciting to see all of the other children in school in their costumes too​!
Throughout the day we have been very busy writing about our favourite animals from books, painting pictures of animals and book covers, and playing in our animal tuff tray. Some of the class brought in their favourite animal books from home and shared them with us. It was lovely for us all to hear some new animal stories. Thank you for all of the wonderful costumes. Everybody looked fantastic!

On Tuesday we ​had a go at making our own pancakes. We talked about the different ingredients that were being put in and all had a go at adding them or whisking the mixture. We watched the pancakes being cooked but weren't brave enough to flip our pancakes just in case they fell on the floor and we had none left to eat!

We enjoyed choosing which topping we would like and then ate our pancakes at snack time.
In the afternoon we found out the not everyone knows how to make pancakes. After making them in the morning; we decided that we were experts and would write some instructions for people who don't know how to do it. This meant that we had to be bossy because instructions need to be clear and easy to understand. We put on our best bossy voices and told our partners what we needed to do. We used lots of new vocabulary and remembered to speak in full sentences. After we had practised saying our instructions we then had a go at writing them and did a fabulous job!

This week we have enjoyed the story 'Jasper's Beanstalk'. We have been thinking about what plants need to grow. On Monday, just like Jasper, we planted our own seed. We have watered it and put it in the window to get lots of sunlight. ​In the story, Jasper didn't wait patiently for his bean to grow but we know that it will take some time before we see any changes to our seed and know we must be patient.
We are also investigating what will happen to a seed that is kept in the dark and a seed that is given no water. We have made our predictions based on what we know about how plants grow and are looking forward to seeing what happens.

Welcome back to school! We hope you have all had a lovely half term. Please find below the Medium Term plan for Spring 2. Our topic this half term is 'Come Outside'. 

On Friday, Reception went for a walk to Stourport library. We we were very lucky and managed to avoid most of the rain on our walk there and back! We enjoyed looking at all of the wonderful books that they had in the library and enjoyed having a story read to us by one of the librarians. We learnt how to use the machines to borrow and return books and all got the chance to have a go - we really enjoyed this! At the end of our visit, we all got to choose one book to borrow and we signed up for a Reception class library card so that we can visit the library regularly and borrow lots more books.  

This week we have been thinking about the question 'Why do we wear poppies?'. The children watched the Cbeebies poppies clip and thought about how the animals and soldiers might have been feeling at different points. We discussed the colours and music in the clip and how they made us feel. We talked about how at the end of the clip the rabbits were happy and there was peace in the world again. We know that we wear poppies to remember everyone who died during the war and to remind us to keep peace on earth. 

The children produced some wonderful pieces of art work and performed the poem 'Poppy Poppy' to the whole school during our remembrance service. 

This week we have been learning about why we celebrate Bonfire Night. The children showed a real interest in the story of The Gunpowder Plot and enjoyed acting out and retelling the story in their own words. We spend time thinking about how we can keep ourselves safe on Bonfire Night and made posters to tell the children in Nursery how to keep safe too. We ended the week by making some bonfire biscuits, they were delicious! 

In Maths we have been learning about patterns. We have made patterns using lots of different resources within our classroom. As part of our topic 'Marvellous Me' we have been thinking about healthy foods. We decided to create our own healthy snack. Using our knowledge of patterns we made our own fruit kebabs. We had to carefully chop the fruit and then arrange it on the kebab stick in a pattern. Do you think they look delicious? We enjoyed trying some fruits we hadn't tried before. 

This page contains information about what we have been doing in class. We have a topic idea for each half term however we are committed to following the children's interests as we believe this is how children learn best!

We have been learning to re-tell the story of 'The Little Red Hen' this half term. Just like the Little Red Hen we have been making our own bread. Luckily everyone wanted to help unlike the characters in the story! 

We are so pleased with how the children have all settled into full time school. We have started our phonics sessions this week and the children have been picking up the sounds really well. We have been practising writing the sounds we have learnt in lots of different places both inside and out. 

Please help your child to practise reading their sounds and words at home. Below I have linked a parents guide to Read Write Inc Phonics and  two videos that you can use to help you support your child with their phonics at home. 

Here are some photos to show some of the fun things we have been getting up to while we're busy learning through play. 

The children have settled well into school life and we are so proud of how well they have been coming into school each morning. This week was our first week of having lunch in school. We have enjoyed taking our packed lunches into the hall and getting to play with the other children in KS1 out on the playground at lunch time. 

It has been an exciting week in Reception as our caterpillars turned into Chrysalides. On Wednesday we transferred them to the butterfly habitat. We were all so excited to move the Chrysalides over. We had to sit very quietly so that we didn't frighten them and Mrs Portman had to be very careful as she opened the pot and gently moved the caterpillars. We had to make sure that any of the silk that was on the chrysalides was removed so that the butterflies are able to emerge easily when they are ready. This was a very delicate job and it took quite a long time but we were all fascinated by seeing the chrysalides wiggle around while this was being done. Lots of the children suggested that it tickled and that is why they were wiggling!  After we had safely transferred the chrysalides we enjoyed some caterpillar cake that one of the children had very kindly brought in for us all to share. We are so excited for the next stage of the butterfly lifecycle! 

We've been enjoying watching our caterpillars growing and changing. We spend lots of time in the investigation area looking at how our caterpillars move around and asking questions about what they are doing and what will happen next. We decided it would be  good idea to use the ipad to record what they do while we are busy learning as we can't sit and watch them all of the time. We have created this time lapse video showing our caterpillars before they turn into chrysalides - you can see them exploring their environment and eating - this is what caterpillars do best! Our caterpillars have grown so much over the last coiple of weeks and we are hoping that within the next few days we will start to see the caterpillars hanging from the lid in a 'j' shape. When this happens we know that it won't be long before they turn into chrysalides and then into butterflies! 

This week we have been focussing on the story 'Jasper's Beastalk'. We have sequenced the story and used our phonic knowledge to write it in our own words -  we are becoming experts at writing sentences without any help!

In the story Jasper finds a bean and plants it - he tends to his bean everyday but it doesn't grow. Jasper is very unhappy and digs up his bean and throws it away. A long time later, Jasper looks out of the window and a huge beanstalk has grown. We thought about why the bean didn't grow straight away - and talked about Jasper needing to be patient. This led to us thinking about what plants need to grow. Later in the week we had a delivery of beans and compost and we got to plant our own beans. We planted them in clear plastic cups to hopefully allow us to see the bean germinating. After we had planted our beans, we discussed again what they would need to grow and where we should keep them. The children told me that the beans will need sunlight and then we came up with a question 'What happens if a bean doesn't get any sunlight?' To investigate this we have placed one of our beans in the cupboard so it cannot get any light. We have made predictions about what will happen to it:

"It won't grow into a beanstalk." - Elsie

"It will only be a little plant and not a big one." Kavan

" It won't grow because it is in the dark." Ellis

"I think it will break out of the cupboard and be a massive beanstalk!" - Stefan

We have placed the rest of our beans on the window sill in the classroom. One child asked "If we put the beans outside will they grow bigger?" To find out the answer to this we have placed one of our beans outside. We are looking forward to finding out what happens to the beans placed in different places. Learning from Jasper, we know that we will need to be patient whilst we are waiting for our beans to start growing! 

It has been an exciting start to the week in Reception as we have had 5 baby caterpillars delivered to us. We are learning all about the lifecycle of a caterpillar/butterfly and what better way to learn than to watch this amazing transformation happen before our very eyes! We have been using the magnifying glasses to help us get a closer look as the caterpillars are very small at the moment. We are told that they are going to double in size before they become chrysalides! 

As part of our Literacy learning, our book focus is 'The very Hungry Caterpillar'. We have been reading and acting out this story daily and we now know it off by heart! We are amazing story tellers! We have also been authors this week and have been changing parts of the story to make our own version! Keep your eyes peeled and you may get to see some of our wonderful work! 

We will keep you updated on our caterpillars, we know this is going to be such a wonderful learning opportunity and cannot for the children to see the amazing transformation of caterpillar to butterfly!

Welcome back everyone, I can't quite believe we are in the Summer term already! Below you will find the curriculum letter for this half term as well as some additional information about things happening in Reception. I have also included some fine motor activities that you could do at home with your child. Developing children's fine motor skills is so important and all children will benefit from additional fine motor activties at home. 

We have started our Christmas preparations in school - you can find us somewhere amongst all of the glitter and sparkle!!! We are all disappointed that we can't put on our usual Nativity play but we are working hard to create something special that we can share with parents in a safe way. We are busy learning words to songs and demonstrating our acting skills! Keep an eye on our class page to find out what we have been working on!

When we came into class on Tuesday, we were amazed to see that Elves had been in and transformed our role play area into the North Pole!! We have Santa's grotto and workshop and a Christmas post office. We have loved playing in here and have developed so many skills through our play.

We have used our phonic knowledge well this week to help us write letters to Father Christmas. We thought about what we would like for Christmas and then independently sounded out the words we wanted to write! Elfie, our class Elf was so impressed with our writing that he said he would deliver all of our letters to Father Christmas! We are hoping that we will get a response from him soon!

We have had the opportunity this week to watch Year 3 put on a shadow puppet show. It was very exciting as we have been learning all about shadows as part of our light and dark topic. We were able to go into the hall and watch them act out the story of 'The Minpins' by Roald Dahl. After they had finished they said we could have their fabulous shaddow puppet theatre to use in Reception! We are all very excited to have it and are looking forward to acting out our own stories using shadow puppets. We have told Year 3 that we will learn a story and perform it to them very soon! 

It was lovely to see all of the children in their Christmas jumpers on Friday. Thank you for the kind donations sent in for the food bank. 

This week as part of our topic of light and dark we have been looking at nocturnal animals. Our focus book this week was 'Owl Babies'. This story is about 3 owl babies who wake to find that their mother has gone! Two  of the owl babies realised that their mother had gone hunting for food, but one of owls, Bill, just kept saying "I want my mummy!" The children enjoyed joining in with this repeated refrain throughout the story. All of the children were relieved when the mother owl returned. In the story it talked about how the mother owl 'swooped silently' . We watched some video clips of how owls fly and hunt their prey to help us understand how the mother owl would have been flying in the story. We were amazed at how big owl wings are and how quickly they can catch their prey using their sharp talons. We researched other features of an owl and learnt that there are many different types of owl. We practised moving like an owl, but found it tricky to be silent when moving around the room!  We realised that none of us had seen an owl flying around and this is because they come out at night when we are in bed! We learnt the meaning of the words 'nocturnal' and 'diurnal' and talked about which animals are awake in the day and which are awake at night. The children enjoyed the story so much that we are going to continue looking at it next week. We will be retelling the story in our own words and having a go at describing one of the characters. We will also be finding out about some other nocturnal animals. 

We have also been looking at the famous painting 'Starry Night' by Vincent Van Gogh. We read the story 'Katie and the Starry Night' to introduce the painting to the children. We then talked about the colours Van Gogh had used in the painting and why he had chosen these colours. After, we had a go at creating our own version of 'Starry Night'. We talked about what happens when the colour mix, used different paintbrushes to create different effects and thought about how we could recreate the swirling patterns. We were so impressed with the children's efforts - we have some very talented artists amongst us!  

The children are making pleasing progress in phonics. Children are recognising sounds learnt so far and are trying hard to be confident with their blending skills. During our phonics lessons, children get the opportunity to read and write words using the sounds we have learnt so far. All children are reading daily in school but will not read their home reading book. These books are sent home alongside the 'Fred Cards' for children to practise reading material that is of the appropriate level. Blending sounds to read is a very difficult skill but children will pick it up with lots and lots of practise. It can be hard at the beginning, but practise really does make perfect! I have linked a video that you might find helpful if you are finding your child is struggling with blending. We are in the very early days of learning to read and it isn't something that children will learn overnight but they will get there! Please continue to support us and your child by reading regularly - both Fred cards and the reading material sent home. 

This week as part of our Light and Dark topic we have been exploring day and night. We found out that the sun is a very big ball of gas and is much, much bigger than planet Earth! We talked about what happens to the sun when it goes dark and found out it doesn’t really go to bed like we all thought it did! We had fun taking on the roles of the earth and sun to get a good understanding of what happens to the sun at night.

Our focus book this week has been ‘Can’t you sleep Little Bear?’ We talked about the dark and thought about why some of us might find the dark scary like little bear.  We turned all of the lights off in the classroom, shut the blinds and took turns in the dark den. We thought about why it was dark and realised it was because we had shut the light out. We had lots of ideas of how we could make it brighter ‘Turn on the lights!’ ‘Light a candle!’ ‘Open the blinds’ ‘Use a torch’ were some suggestions.  We enjoyed taking torches into the dark den and exploring the dark. Some of us were very brave and turned the torches off when we were in there. We discovered that at first we couldn’t see much at all but soon our eyes got used to the dark.

We have also had some very special UV pens delivered. We used the special pen to write a secret message that we couldn’t see. When we shone our special UV light on our paper we could see our message! It was so exciting and we were all very keen to write secret messages to each other!

Next week we will be exploring night time with a particular focus on nocturnal animals. We are looking forward to finding out lots of new things!

As part of our Light and Dark topic this week we have been focussing on the Hindu festival of Diwali. We found out that Diwali is the Festival of Light.

We started off our learning by listening to the story of Rama and Sita. The children really enjoyed this story and were horrified to hear about how Sita was captured by evil King Ravana! We made predictions about how Rama would get her back and were excited to hear that he was helped by Hanuman, King of the monkeys and his monkey army. We talked about how Rama and Hanuman worked as a team to rescue Sita from King Ravana. Our favourite part of the story was when Rama rescued Sita using a magic arrow given to him by the Gods. At the end of the story we found out that people put out lamps to help guide Rama and Sita home. It is thought that there were more lamps lit than stars in the sky on that night. We had lots of opportunities to act out the story using puppets and masks – it was great fun and we got to show off our wonderful story telling and acting skills!

We then found out about what happens during Diwali. We watched videos and looked and books to help us find out information. We talked about how Diwali is a celebration and compared it to the celebrations we have. We discussed how we celebrate and came up with ideas of ‘having nice food’, ‘wearing party dresses’, ‘giving presents’, ‘spending time with our families’, ‘having balloons’ ‘lighting fireworks’ and ‘having lots of fun!’. This helped us to understand how our celebrations are similar to Diwali celebrations and also allowed us to compare how we do things differently. The children showed such enthusiasm and were so keen to learn about another culture.

We made our very own Diva lamps using clay and decorated them with glitter and gems. We are looking forward to bringing them home and are hoping that we can light them and share our learning of Diwali with you. We made Rangoli patters using a range of materials and had a go at creating our own pattern. We had the opportunity to create our own Mehindi patterns, taking inspiration from lots of different pictures we looked at. We have enjoyed tasting some food that Hindus might have at their Diwali Celebrations. Finally we have had the chance to take part in a Diwali dance.

This week has also included Remembrance Day. Children watched the Cbeebies clip ‘Poppies’ and we discussed how the soldiers and animals would have felt during this time. We had a 1 minute silence at 11am to think about the people who have fought in wars for us. The children showed great maturity and a good understanding of why we wear a poppy. We have created some beautiful paintings of poppies, and we were really impressed with the detail that children put into their paintings.

It’s been another busy and fun filled week in Reception and we are all ready for a lovely, restful weekend to recharge our batteries for ready for next week.

We have had a good first we back in school after half term. On Monday we shared our holiday news with everyone and we all enjoyed listening to what each other had been doing over half term. Our focus this week has been on Bonfire night. The children have found out who Guy Fawkes is and why we have Bonfire night. Our focus story for this week, 'Hovis the Hedgehog' has taught us that animals don't have the same excitement for fireworks as we do, and we've thought about how we need to look after them during this time. We have also been thinking about how we should keep safe on bonfire night, especially if we are using sparklers and the children have impressed us with their sensible suggestions for how to keep safe. 

We have had lots of opportunities for craft linked to bonfire night. Children always have free access to the craft table and have created some very imaginative pieces with very little support from adults. We've had rockets, bonfire pictures, firework pictures made using lots and lots of glitter! We are pleased to see how well the children are able to access these resources and be so creative. 

We finished the week with a Remembrance service in the hall. The children sat and listened beautifully and this has prepared them for our focus on Remembrance next week. 

Our topic focus this half term will be 'Light and Dark'. As always in Reception, we will be following the children's interests and planning learning opportunities to meet the needs of all children. Some of the ideas we have for the topic are outlined on the topic web however we will follow the children's interests and so this is just a guide. 

Each week in Reception we have a focus story linked to our topic. We will also read lots of other fiction and non - fiction texts to ensure children are exposed to a wide variety of books. 

Our focus text for the week beginning 2.11.20 is 'Hovis the Hedgehog' by Lynda Leigh-Crawford. This text will link in with our focus of Bonfire night. 

We've had lots of fun at school this week. The children are settling into full time school really well and have been enjoying learning lots of new skills through play! We have also started our phonics lessons. The children have been very keen to learn their new sound each day and have been using their new knowledge during  'play to learn time' where they have been writing letters, taking food orders and making labels for their creations! As part our 'Marvellous Me' topic we created self portraits using natural materials. We went on a nature hunt around the school before creating our pictures using the natural resources we had found.  

The welcome letter will give you some more information about the curriculum that we follow and our daily routines in reception. 

The curriciulum overview will show you how our learning links to all areas of the EYFS curriculum. We have outlined some of the activities that we have planned, however we will follow the children's interests so this is subject to change.  

If you require any more information, please don't hesitate to contact us using the reception class email: reception@wulsev.worcs.sch.uk

This half term our topic will be Marvellous Me! We will be learning all about ourselves and thinking about what makes us marvellous! We will explore our families and our traditions, where we live and talk about our similarities and differences. Please keep an eye out for any letters that might come home asking for family photos and photos of the children as babies. As part of our topic we will be looking at how we have grown and discussing how we have changed. 

Watch this space to find out some of the things we have been doing in class linked to our topic!

This half term our topic is 'The Animal Kingdom'. We will be launching this topic with a visit from the animal man who will be bringing in a range of animals from the 6 main animal groups - fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, birds and insects. We are looking forward to finding out what animals he will bring with him. Following this visit we will follow the children's interests to guide our planning. Some of the questions we would like to know the answers to so far are... Do cows drink milk? Why don't snakes have legs? Are humans animals? Where are dinosaurs now? Where do lions and tigers live? 

On Wednesday we celebrated the end of our topic by having a fairy tale dress up day. We all came into school dressed as one of our favourite characters from the fairy and traditional tales that we have been reading and exploring in class. We had some fabulous costumes - thank you to all og the parents for putting in so much effort.  In the afternoon we invited our families for a fairy tale afternoon tea. We shared some of the songs and stories that we have been learning and then all sat down for a fairy tale feast! After we had finished eating we took part in different activities with our family and showed them some of the things we have been doing in school this half term. It was a wonderful day and I'm sure the children will remember it for a long time.

When we came into school on Wednesday morning we discovered that our gingerbread men had escaped from the classroom!! We couldn't believe it! We found some bits of broken gingerbread men on the floor and were very worried that the fox had been in our classroom trying to eat our gingerbread men! We made missing posters to tell everyone what they looked like and to ask them to look out for them. In the afternoon we received a video from a neighbour showing the gingerbread men running away from school!! We went out on a hunt and luckily found all of our gingerbread men hididng around the school. We also found a new gingerbread man who we believe is the chief! We have taken him back to our classroom to keep him safe and to question him on what happened. 

We have had lots of fun making our own gingerbread men this week. Thankfully they didn't jump out of the oven like the gingerbread man in the story!

We've been investigating why the gingerbread man stopped when he came to a river. We made predictions about what would happen if the gingerbread man got wet and then put a gingerbread man in water to check if our predictions were correct. We now understand why the gingerbread man decided he had to travel on the fox's back across the river!

Welcome to the magical world of fairy tales! Was the Big Bad Wolf really so bad? How many bowls of porridge did Goldilocks eat? Let’s find out more about our favourite stories, and discover some new ones. This half term, we’ll look at different character types, and decide whether our favourite characters are ‘goodies’ or ‘baddies’! Using different materials and shapes, we’ll build castles and bridges. We’ll read lots of stories and look at the ingredients that go into a fantastic fairy tale. We’ll be brave explorers and hunt for missing items from fairy tales. Contemporary versions of fairy tales will inspire us to write stories, and we’ll create story maps to retell familiar tales. Our mathematical skills will help us to count the buttons on gingerbread men, and estimate how many beans Jack has got! We’ll test the right materials to make a bed for a princess, and houses for the Three Little Pigs. At the end of the project, we’ll look back at photographs of our amazing experiences. We’ll also attend a fairy tale tea party and dress up as our favourite characters.

Last night we took part in out first Nativity! We were all fabulous! We looked the part, sang beautifully and remembered to smile at our parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles! A wonderful first nativity, well done Reception!

Reception are really enjoying their new role play area. We have been busy making and wrapping presents for Father Christmas, replying to letters, writing tags and decorating the workshop for christmas. 

We were all very excited when we came into school this morning to find that the water in the tuff tray had frozen and everything was covered in frost. We put on our coats, scarves and gloves and went to explore the ice outside. We enjoyed touching the ice to see how cold it was and then we broke it up. We talked about how the ice had got there and thought about how long it would stay. We enjoyed looking through it and finding bits of ice that had been broken off into different shapes. Some of us tried to stack the broken ice up to make an ice castle and some of us tried to melt the ice in different ways. We discussed how and why ice melts and lots of us knew that if the sun came out the ice would melt. We thought about how the sun melts the ice and realised it was because it was hot. We then planned to take the ice in the classroom and see how quickly it would melt. Some of us decided that it would melt faster if we put hot water on it or held it in our hands. We had so much fun and are hoping that the water will freeze again soon!

Today our whole school took part in a skipping day. Reception loved their skipping session and showed real determination when trying to skip forwards and backwards!

Having the opportunity to be chosen to be part of the School Council

Nature walk - looking for the signs of Autumn 

Taking part in Jumping Jaxx led by our Year 6 children

Reading Buddies with Year 6 children 

Having the opportunity to represent the school and take part in the '3 Kings Parade'

Taking part in a school skipping day

Taking part in the KS1 Nativity performance

This week we have been finding out about Bonfire Night. We have listened to the story of the Gun Powder plot and used pictures from the story to retell it in our own words. We have been listening to and watching firework displays on the interactive whiteboard and then using our phonic knowledge to help us write words matched to the sounds fireworks make. Some of the words we thought of were "whoosh", "bang", "fizz", "sizzle". We used sticks and red, yellow and orange paper to create our own bonfire. We had to work together to make the bonfire stand up and think about where the sticks would be best placed to make the bonfire structure strong. We have created some wonderful firework pictures using lots of glitter and made bonfire biscuits and chocolate sparklers. We have talked about keeping ourselves safe on bonfire night, thinking about using sparklers and being at a busy bonfire event. We have loved our week focussing on bonfire night and are all looking forward to seeing some real fireworks this weekend!

As part of our topic 'What happens when we fall asleep?' we will try to answer questions such as 'Where does the sun go at night?' 'Why are the stars in the sky at night?' 'Does everyone go to bed at the same time as me?' 'Has the moon got a light in it?' 'Can we live on the moon?' 'What is it like in space?' These are some of the questions that the children asked when we introduced the topic in our first week back after half term. We will also be looking at nocturnal animals, bedtime routines, light and dark and people who work at night. We're looking forward to finding out all about nightime and making comparisons between day and night. 

The children have loved finding out about Autumn. Our interests were sparked when we had our Harvest Service. Children were keen to find out all about harvesting fruit and vegeatbles and we learnt lots about where our food comes from before it reaches the shelves in the supermarket! We discussed being farmers and enjoyed having a range of vegetables and compost in our sand tray so that we could harvest our own crops.

We explored lots of vegetables that many of us hadn't seen or tasted before including parsnips, swede, sweet potato and radishes. After we had explored them using our 5 senses we peeled them and cut them in half so that we could see what they were like on the inside and compared to the outside. 

We then used a selection of the vegetables to make our own vegetable soup. We looked together at the recipe and picked out the ingredients that we would need. We talked about how we know what to do first and notcied that the recipe had numbers on it. We ordered the steps using our knowledge of numbers and then read in the instructions for each step together. We very carefully used knives to cut up the vegetables ready for them to be boiled. We discussed how we use knives safely and used vocabulary such as 'half' and 'quarters' when we were chopping the vegetables. Lots of the children enjoyed talking about how they help mummy and daddy at home with the dinner. Once we had done this and the soup was ready we got to try it! Lots of the children were excited to try the soup and said it was 'delicious', 'yummy', and 'tasty'. We talked about how the vegetables had changed now they were in a soup and discussed how the soup had got its lovely orange colour. It was a very exciting day and we all learned so much!

We have been enjoying reading the story of Pumpkin Soup by Helen Cooper. We have talked about the different characters in the story and their feelings and explored ways of managing our own feelings in different situations. We have retold the story using the pictures to help us and made predicitons for what we think will happen next after finishing the book. We enjoyed the story so much that we decided to make our own 'pumpkin soup'. We enjoyed scooping out all of the inside of the pumpkin and talked about what it felt like 'slimy', 'sticky', 'disgusting', 'wet' and then used tweezers to collect the seeds; helping us to develop our fine motor skills that are so important for writing. Once we had all of the inside out we collected 'ingredients' from outside to make the soup. We mixed it all together in a bowl and served it to each other. We had great fun making our own pumpkin soup!

This week we have been using the story Owl Babies by Martin Waddell to inspire our learning. We have thought about times when we have missed our own mummies and how we can deal with these feelings. We have enjoyed joining in with the repeated lines in the story and have come up with our own actions to help us re-tell the story without having to use the book. We have acted out the story using owl masks and enjoyed taking turns to be the baby and mummy owl. We have discussed where birds live and compared their habitat to that of other animals. We then looked at a real bird nest and had access to a range of natural materials to create our own. The children have loved exploring this text and we will be continuing to use it next week to follow the children's interests by looking more closely at nature and other nocturnal animals. 

This week as part of our RE learning we have been looking at the importance of family celebrations. We discussed what the word celebration means and tried to think about any celebrations that we have been involved in. We talked about the importance of loving and caring for each other and linked this to the celebration of marriage. The children enjoyed looking at wedding photos that different staff members had brought into school and gave thoughtful answers to the question 'Why do people get married?'

Every week, two children from each class are picked as Pupils of the Week. We celebrate their success each week in our Celebration Assembly where children are presented with their certificate in front of the whole school. There can be a number of reasons that a child could be picked to receive pupil of the week award and it isn't always based on what we see in class. All staff in school are able to suggest a child for pupil of the week if they have seen something that has really impressed them. The reason for the award being given is written on the back so that children can share their success at home. We also choose one child to receive the Discipleship Award. Children are chosen to receive this award if we feel that we have seen them display behaviour linked to our virtues and values for the half term. Here are some of the children in Reception who have already recieved an award. Well done children, keep up the hard work!

This week we have started voting for the story we would like to read at the end of the day. Two stories are chosen at the start of the afternoon, children are given a gem to use as a vote and are then asked to place their gem in the container to show which story they would like. Together we count the gems in each pot to find out the winning story! The first winning story was 'We're going on a Bear Hunt' by Michael Rosen. We had lots of fun acting out the story. 

We've been developing our independence skills at lunch time. First we make a choice about what we would like to eat for our main course and pudding. Next we have to carefully carry our own lunch tray back to our table and then attempt to cut up our food independently. The dinner ladies are always around to help if the children need it but they have impressed them with how independent and grown up they are at lunch time! 

In Reception we plan lots of activities to help children to develop their fine motor skills. Fine motor skill is the ability to make movements using muscles in the fingers, hands and forearms. We need to develop children's fine motor skills to enable them to do tasks such as holding a pencil, drawing and writing, using scissors, rulers and other tools, stacking blocks and threading beads. Below are some photos of some of the activities that the children have been accessing to help develop their fine motor skills. 

Our first week at school has been fabulous! The children have settled into Reception like they have always been here and have come into school with big smiles on their faces every morning! It's been so lovely to see the children happy, enthusiastic and excited to come to school. It has been a very busy first week! We have been getting to know each other, exploring the classroom and the rest og the school and trying school lunches for the first time! The children have been painting, playing in the sand and water trays, role playing, creating puppet shows and showing off their mark making skills all whilst learning a new routine and amazing us with how grown up and ready for school they are! Below are a few pictures to show you some of the things we have been getting up to in our first week. 

The early years curriculum is based on learning through exploration and play. There are a number of ways that you can help your child to learn and make good progress throughout their year in Reception. 

Always be on time

Good attendance

Reading with your child daily. It is important for children to read for a few minutes each night with an adult to help them to develop their early reading skills. 

Making their learning real by pointing out numbers and letters in the environment and playing games with children to help further develop these early skills. 

Count at every opportunity - going up and down stairs, how many different coloured cars you can see, playing games, setting the table for dinner. There are so many different opportunities that allow children to count and they don't even realise that they're learning!

Talk to your child about the world around them. 

Talk with your child about what he / she has been doing at school.