Reception

We’ve had another festive week in Reception! Children have been learning about the Nativity story and have enjoyed practising their Christmas carols ready for our performance next week. In Maths we have been consolidating our maths knowledge so far by solving a variety of Christmas problems, such as Santa getting muddled by how many presents he can fit in the sleigh, and what 2D and 3D shapes have been wrapped up.  

We have been learning about Christmas cards this week and the children have been hard at work making beautiful cards to take home. We looked at lots of different interesting Christmas cards made by other children, and talked about the features of them before the children made their own. We have encouraged as much independence as possible with the cards they have made and they are so excited to bring them home to give to you! They’ve even written the inserts stuck inside themselves. 

We have shown the children how to make various festive crafts this week such as paper chains and paper snowflakes which have been a roaring success! The children have been really enjoying decorating the classrooms with their own decorations they are making. We will also be making salt dough decorations over this week and next – so save some space on your tree for an extremely cute ornament! 

What a lovely, Christmassy week. On Monday, the children from Active Ants and Busy Bees entered their classroom only to notice a few SLIGHT changes. Over the weekend, the busy elves put up some lovely Christmas decorations for the children to have in their classroom! The children found this so exciting and enjoyed getting busy in the different stations in the classroom. Children enjoyed practising their fine motor skills by carefully putting baubles onto the Christmas tree and using tweezers to put sequins onto a picture of Santa’s tracks. 
 
In Literacy, the focus this week has been letter writing. Children worked with an adult to write a letter to Father Christmas, making sure they were using their phonics and using the sound mat carefully to identify the sounds that they needed to write down. During choosing time, children have had so much fun, looking through Argos catalogues, carefully cutting objects out, sticking them onto paper, putting them into a stamped envelope and posting them to Father Christmas. It has been lovely to see how the magic of Christmas and the ‘hook’ of Santa really encourages mark making and letter formation in the classroom.   

In phonics this week, we have been recapping sounds. Children have been practising their instant recall of letter sounds and using their blending skills to read short words. It has been wonderful to see first hand the impact of how practising reading and blending at home really supports each child during lesson time in school. Children have even had a go at writing words, using the phonics display, their partners and their phonic fingers as support to write words on their whiteboards.   

During maths, children have worked hard in their groups to focus on number, specifically subtraction. Children have worked with counters, teddy bears and even water balloons to practice taking away a number from a set amount. Children have used their 1:1 correspondence and careful counting to do this. To support your child at home, Miss Parsons and Miss Kitchen have uploaded some Maths videos to Tapestry- keep an eye out for these!  

Have a lovely weekend, 

The Reception team 

What a lovely autumnal week we have had in reception! Children have been learning about autumn and the changes that occur over the season and making their very own autumnal treat. The Active Ants and Busy Bees have been peeling, chopping, crumbling and baking their own Apple Crumbles; making sure, they were keeping safe whilst doing so. Children washed their fruit and hands, wore an apron and made sure they were careful with the knives and peelers. It was great to see children baking so safely. All the hard work paid off as the children enjoyed sitting around together eating their crumbles at the end of the day- delicious!  
 
This week in phonics, we have learnt the ‘b’, ‘f’ and ‘l’ sounds. The children enjoyed learning these new sounds, the actions to go with it and practising writing the letter on their whiteboards. For the ‘f’ sound, children wrote the letter with chalk, using black paper and enjoyed rubbing the chalk to create an ‘f f foggy’ effect.  

In Maths this week, we have focused on number, recognising numbers and adding some numbers together. Children have been using counters to practice careful counting and have been introduced to Numicon. Numicon is a maths resource that we use in reception to make numbers real. Children are able to touch and fit the different pieces together to make an amount and count the holes to double check their knowledge. 

In the creative area this week, Miss Parsons and Miss Kitchen have put out recycled soap bottles and filled them with paint. Children have had fun exploring by mixing two different colours together, experimenting exactly what happens when the colours are mixed together. Children have been using the colour mixing posters to help them make their desired colour for their painting.  

Next week, Miss Parsons and Miss Kitchen are going to be uploading a daily video onto Tapestry to support the reception children with their maths and phonics knowledge. It would be great if you could sit down with your child and watch these together, encouraging your child to join in and interact with the videos. Keep your eyes peeled! Please let us know if you find these helpful and we can upload some more for some super home learning.