Termly Blog
Term 1 - Me and My Community
Wow! What a great start to the school year we have had!
The first term in Reception Class is very much about ensuring the children feel safe and happy, forming good friendships and establishing class routines, and the children are doing well with this. They have settled into the St Mary's school family wonderfully and we have had a very busy term of learning already.
Maths:
We have been using our mathematical knowledge to sort and classify things and the children are starting to explain their thinking. We have played lots of games to develop our subitising skills and the children particularly enjoyed the hunt for 3 and not 3 around the school.
Literacy:
The children have worked hard on developing their arm, wrist and finger muscles in school by joining in with our 'Squiggle Whilst you Wiggle' dances and 'Dough Gym'. This has all been in preperation to start our letter formation and will be something that we continue to develop over the term.
We have been tuning our listening ears using phase 1 phonics activities and the children have started to be able to identify rhyming words and alliteration. Although these activities continue daily, we have moved on to phase 2 of phonics and started to learn some of our sounds. We are using our oral blending skills constantly and it won't be long before these develop into blending cvc words which is very exciting!
At story time, we have enjoyed so many rhyming stories, the funny ones being the favourites of course! The children loved our Supertato week and most of them gave the vegetable tasting a good go and they enjoyed vegetable printing and making their own Supertato to take home. We have enjoyed the 'Zog and the Flying Doctor' story and made our own potions to help the poorly people.
Science:
The pirate day gave us valuable opportunities to explore magnets in class. We had buried treasure in sand and the children used magnets to find it. The discussions the children had when sorting which were magnetic and which were not and why they thought this is, how magnets pushed each other away and the discovery that they could move them from underneath the tray were wonderful!
We have also started to explore Autumn and as a hook into the season, we had a Wednesday Woods day! The children had lots of fun climbing and hunting for the best sticks to make Zog wings!
RE:
We have been creating our prayer corner together and learning about the importance of each part as well as learning our daily prayers and how the time we take to talk to God is precious.
We created our 'Circle of God's Love' display which shows how the child and their family are in the centre of the circle, then surrounded by extended family, school family, clubs and groups they attend, parish and local community and finally all of this is surrounded by God's love. This sparked many conversations about who loves us and how we know which was lovely.
TOPIC:
We started our topic with superheroes and how they help people in need. The children loved making their own capes and designed their own superheroes, giving them codes which gave them superhero powers.
We then started exploring all of the people who help us in our community. We went on a tour of the school to meet staff that help us in different ways and we had a visit from David, our lollipop man. We also have a visit form the police booked in soon which the children are excited about.
We have introduced a phone to the home corner with an address book they can call the different heroes and also a dog so that they can show how we care for animals. We have started to look at healthy eating linked to our Supertato week and this will be a theme that will run throughout the year.
