It has been great having the children back in the classroom these past weeks. It’s been so lovely to see them interact with their friends again, work so hard and enjoy interacting with the learning environments so well.
During the past two weeks, Reception have been investigating and learning about life cycles. We have been lucky enough to see these life cycles ‘come to life’ with real caterpillars and tadpoles in both classrooms. Children have thoroughly enjoyed observing the changes of these minibeasts, commenting on their daily changes, and discussing next step in the life cycle that these minibeasts will develop into. Children have loved sharing this experience with their friends, often being the first thing discussed in the morning. In Literacy, children have applied both their life cycle and phonetic knowledge to begin to write labels and sentences about the life cycles of butterflies. It has been great to see children so engaged in this topic and we are looking forward to seeing even more learning unfold in the coming weeks.
As a result of the quick, fun, and snappy phonic assessments that were completed last week, we have been using this data to plan the phonics lessons for the remaining of the term. This week, children are recapping some of the phase 3 sounds that have been learnt so far and reading and applying these sounds within their learning. It has been great to see that even though children have been at home learning, they’ve made some lovely progress in phonics and that is a big thank you to that adults at home! To ensure that children continue to be successful in their learning, we would love to see reading at home continue too. Be sure to write a short comment in your child’s reading book to let us know that reading has been done. We appreciate this can be tricky at the end of a busy day at school, however, it really does make such a difference to children’s learning.
It was great to see children dressed up on Thursday. World Book Day is such a lovely celebration and it was amazing to see the brilliant outfits the reception children were all wearing. During the day, we brought books alive by reading as a class and having a ‘stop, drop and read’ book picnic in the outdoor area. Children enjoyed discussing books their friends and having such a lovely time exploring the books.
We hope you have a lovely weekend,
The Reception Team
