Autumn 2022

Our first week in Reception!

The children have been settling extremely well! They are enjoying making new friends and getting to know all the new faces around them. We have been thinking a lot about our feelings and how starting a new adventure can make us feel lots of different emotions. We have been reading The Colour Monster about a monster who needed help to put names to the feelings he had. The children have been so confident in using their words and gestures to communicate how they are feeling. To get to know each other, we have a talk partner who we sit on the carpet with, talking about our learning, asking each other questions etc to help get to know one another. We have even had our first P.E. lesson which was fantastic! We went up to the big hall and we were so good at listening and following instructions.  We loved joining in with the story, From Head to Toe by Eric Carle and have been exploring and talking about what we can do with our bodies.  We are so proud with how well the children are settling in and how independent they are already when they come into school; saying goodbye to loved ones, finding their own peg and tackling their first learning task of the morning! 

This week  we have enjoyed exploring and learning about dinosaurs.  We have been reading lots of different stories and information books about dinosaurs.  We have been exploring questions we wanted to know more about . . . . Can you name a dinosaur?  Can you tell if they are a meat eater or a plant eater? We have been looking at the size of different dinosaurs.  We measured the size of a real T-Rex footprint.  It was enormous!  We have started our phonics!  Look out on Evidence Me for the phonemes of week.

Another busy week of learning! We have been exploring the text '10 things I can do to help my world'.    We loved using google Earth and exploring the globe to find out what we mean by our world.  We have made a story map for the text and added actions.  We have explored what it means to recycle and loved sorting it into the correct bags. We have been re-using materials to make new creations and showed great teamwork!

We have been developing our drawing and painting skills.  When drawing ourselves we must remember our head, body, 2 arms and 2 legs.  Have a look at our great portraits.  They are proudly displayed for everyone to see!

We have been enjoying the book 'Owl Babies'

We have made our own class story map to retell the story using actions.

In the big garden we built our own nests for the owl babies.  We worked in teams and talked to each other about our ideas.  Then we searched in the big garden for the items we needed.  We gathered sticks and twigs to shape our nests.  Then we added leaves and feathers to make it warm and comfortable.  

After a very windy evening, we found an empty bird's nest on the floor in the big garden.  We talked about what might have happened. We discussed who might have made the nest and what they had used.  

We have been finding out about bird's and other animals as the weather gets colder.  We have helped the bird's by making our own bird feeders and putting them in the big garden.  We know that some animals hibernate in the wintertime.

We have been developing our fine motor skills to colour and cut out the owl babies.  We are thinking carefully about the colours we choose.  

We are learning all about space.  

The children are enjoying listening to lots of different stories and information books all about space.  We have read 'Meet the planets' to learn the names and find out facts. In our music and movement lessons we are learning songs about the different planets and have added instruments for each planet.  We picked our favourite planet and talked about why we had chosen it then used pastels to draw it.

We have read Astro Girl and found out about famous astronauts.  We thought about whether we would like to be an astronaut and reasons why.  In our de-constructed role play we have loved building rockets and imagining we are astronauts on space missions.

We have been exploring the stars and made our own star constellations.

We got to look through a real telescope with Mr Cunliffe.

In our phonics we are listening to the beginning sounds of words and blending sounds together making three letter words. 

In Maths we are looking at the different ways we can make numbers up to 5. We have investigated 1 more and less than any number up to 5.  We have been exploring positional language and shapes too.  We used shapes to make rocket pictures.