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 have done amazingly with this.  They have settled into the St Mary's school family wonderfully and we have had a very busy term of learning.

Maths:

We have been using our mathematical knowledge to sort and classify, create more complex patterns and compare size and mass and capacity.  The children have really started to think in more detail about the possible answers and to explore various solutions to a problem.

Literacy:

We have had fun exploring our books this term with 'Naughty Bus' definitely being a firm favourite.  we came up with new ideas on how the bus could be naughty in school and the children loved taking photos and creating our own Class R version.  We are well on the way to children being able o read their first book with our phonics learning and the children are working really hard with this and their letter formation.

Science:

We are very lucky to have trees outside of our classroom which have given us rich learning opportunities for the changes that we see in Autumn.  We have been on an Autumn walk and created some wonderful leaf art.

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 Jesus is precious.

Term 2 - Starry Night

What a fun filled and rich learning term we have had!  Our topic for the term was Starry Night which allowed us to explore the dark in many ways.  We learnt all about daytime and night time, nocturnal animals and even took a journey to space!  We built rockets and designed aliens that we would meet on the moon.  We even created some space themed music. We have of course also had our Nativity performances which they did amazingly in and I was so proud of them all.

Science

We learnt about the winter season and how the world changes at this time.  We explored light and dark using the dark tent and torches where we got to hunt for nocturnal animals.  We even saw the stars in the tent which was lots of fun.

Maths

The children have been embedding their knowledge of the composition of numbers up to 5 and showing different way they can represent these.  We have introduced 5 frames and used our subitising skills.  We have also learnt a lot about shape and what makes a triangle a triangle and what makes a rectangle a rectangle.  the children have been amazing at discussing the properties of shapes and using this knowledge to sort them.  they are using language such as vertices and straight or curved edges.

RE

We have focussed on the birth of Jesus this term, which of course was supported by our Nativity performances.  The children have made books of the story and used our nativity scenes and fancy dress clothes to retell the story throughout their play. 

We have also celebrated Diwali and the Hindu festival of light.  The children made candles as a gift for their families and took part in some Diwali art.

Term 3 - Marvellous Machines

This term has been full of opportunities to explore both old and new technology.  We have introduced a computer, phone and desk into our home corner where the children have been going to the office and taking lots of written notes from the many phone calls they have made and received.  We have also enjoyed exploring old video cameras and using our imaginations to create films.  We have looked at how modern technology helps us in our daily world and making a number of robots and machines that we have designed first and then created using lots of different materials.  It has been a lovely topic which has sparked many of the children's imaginations which has been wonderful to see.  We also celebrated Chinese New Year by dressing up in traditional clothing and creating a noodle bar in our home corner.

Literacy:

"No-Bot, the robot who lost his bottom", was a firm favourite of the stories that we have read this term.  The children enjoyed creating their own versions of this story of how we could use poor No-Bot's bottom in different ways.  We had many ideas including boats, shopping baskets and even a rocket to the moon!

We then read "The Three Little Pigs" and explored machines that could have helped the pigs make a stronger home.  The children enjoyed acting this story out using face masks and puppets as well as expanding our descriptive vocabulary to create a wanted poster for the wolf.

We continued the theme of traditional tales by reading "Goldilocks and the Three Bears".  We created a map to help Goldilocks to find her way home through the woods and used our positional language to give directions.  She had to go under the rainbow, through the trees, over the pond and around the sticky mud.  We then had the chance to taste porridge and share our opinions of it.

Maths

We have focussed on songs using 5 this term such as 5 Little Speckled Frogs and 5 Little Spacemen.  The children explored the composition of 5 and worked towards being able to subitise how many were left and how many were hidden.  The children have started to use their mathematical language when explaining their answers such as when Tommy said, "I can see 3 on the log which means there must be 2 in the water because 3 and 2 make 5 altogether".

Science

We have been weather forecasters this term and deciding what the weather has been like each day.  We have experimented with various ways to record this and made predictions of what we think the weather may be like the following day.  We have measured rainfall in the outside area too and there has been a lot to measure recently!

RE

The focus this term has been Pilgrims of Hope and we have been exploring what this means to us.  We have of course also learnt all about the Bishop and how blessed we were to have him visit our new school.  We even got to visit the church this term and look for all of the special items that are used at times of celebration.  We also learnt about Hannakah and made special celebration biscuits.

Term 4 - Down on the Farm

We have had a lot of fun learning about all the different roles of a farmer and about growing our own plants from seed.  We have created a farm shop which sold real farm products!  The children labelled and added a price to all of the products .  We had lots of rich discussions about what items would be produced by a farm and which would not.  This then led to discovering how many of these items are produced, farm to fork.  We are also planning to make bread to support this learning as the children have been so interested in this area.  We have even had the opportunity to visit a working farm where we fed the animals and met all the new baby kids, calves and lambs!  We got to feed the goats, sheep, pigs and alpacca and learnt all about a farmers job.  The children were amazing on our first ever class trip, well done!

Maths:

We have been looking at measurement this term which has meant we have had lots of practical learning to do.  We have compared length and height in items and of ourselves by measuring our feet and how tall we are.  We have also linked this to animals in the farm to see which ones are longer/taller/shorter.

Literacy:

We have focussed on farm themed traditional tales this term, the first being The Little Red Hen.  We have made a group collage of a red hen using our hand prints and created some lovely lift the flap piece of writing where the children drew an animal to go behind the barn doors and wrote clues for their friends to guess what was in the barn.  

We have also read The Three Billy Goats Gruff which created many opportunities to explore building stable bridges to cross an area which needed lots of problem solving and team work.  The children have really enjoyed drama opportunities in our literacy this term and worked well in small groups to retell the story.

We will also o a recount of our trip once we have been and we know what our favourite bits are!

We of course enjoyed our World Book Day and the outfits were wonderful :)

Science:

We had a Science Day this term where we linked up with other schools in the trust to explore shadows.  the children enjoyed investigating shadows using torches and shadow puppets.  They showed such an inquisitive mindset by discussing questions such as does it matter where the torch goes? Can we make the shadows bigger and smaller? How can we add detail to our puppets?

RE:

We have focussed on Lent this term and ensuring we understood the importance of the Ash Wednesday service we had and how Jesus gave us new life.  We have been exploring new life by growing things, noticing signs of spring and of course on our school trip to the farm.  To link in with this and our whole trust focus on 'Pilgrims of Hope' we have made a class rainbow collage and garden of hope display which is in the corridor and we are very proud of it as we all helped and shared ideas in it's creation.

Term 5 - Around the world

What a fun filled term we have had!  The children have really started to put all of the learning they have done into practice and fine tune their skills.  We have had a number of events and experiences that have enhanced our writing and understanding of the world including VE day celebrations and meeting the chickens to start our understanding of life cycles.  The children have helped re design our outside area and given suggestions on how to make it more accessible and interesting for them.  They have done a great job!

Here is what we have been up to this term:

Maths

The children have become confident in understanding the composition of numbers to 5 and automatically recall their number bonds to 5.  We have sharpened these skills through lots of games and fun activities such as how many are hiding (both objects and children).  We have also developed this skill and extended to number bonds to 10.  this is valuable knowledge that is needed throughout their lives as our world is usually set as a base 10 system such as time and money.  these really are the strong foundations they need, which is why we spend so much time becoming confident in these areas.  we are also counting past 20 and starting to recognise the counting patterns after each 10.  We have also been working on measurement of time and sequencing activities in time order.

Literacy

We started our topic by reading 'Handa's Surprise' by Eileen Browne.  We tasted the fruits that feature in the story and came up with wonderful word banks that we would use to describe them.  We explored the animals that were in the story and spent time creating animal markings to represent each animal.  the children explored different tools and colour mixing to complete this task.  We also learnt about a child's life in Kenya and compared to ours.  we found that there were lots of things that were both different and the same which was really interesting.

We have also written instructions to show Bertie Bee how to plant and care for flowers in our sunflower project.  we are slowly becoming experts in this area and have helped Bertie Bee to plant new sunflower seeds.  Unfortunately, over the first weekend, we came back to find that something had destroyed our planting and stolen the seeds!  It was such a shock!  But what a great writing opportunity!  The children looked for clues and write what they thought had taken our seeds.  the ideas ranged from foxes and magpies to tigers and flying whales!  We then designed a way to stop them from coming back.  These ideas ranged from making a scarecrow (which we did) building quite aspirational structures to catch the culprit.  We are hoping our ideas work and keep our seeds safe.

Science

We have started to look at life cycles of chickens and of our sunflowers.  Our sunflower project has spiked so much interest where we have used magnifying glasses to examine seeds and sunflowers and used our maths skills to work out if we have enough pots and seeds for everyone.  

RE

We have been learning about Pentecost and really focussing on how it felt to be a friend of Jesus.  We have made windmills to represent the Holy Spirit and studied many art pieces that depicted Pentecost and the children were wonderful and giving their opinions.