Welcome to Reception!

Curriculum Topic Sheets

Reception Class Newsletters

This week we have been learning about the story of Hansel and Gretel. We made a house shape by mixing and baking a sponge mix. We then put it in the oven to bake and when it was done and had cooled down we decorated it with icing and sweets. Yummy!

The Creepy Crawly Show !

Our Fun Christmas Numeracy Trail

Wow! The donkeys came to visit us today, they were all dressed up in their Christmas outfits and we all had a go at riding on them. Just look at these fab' photographs!

The Reception children at St Francis of Assisi have always made the Advent Wreath for our school. We really enjoyed making this year's ready for the first Sunday of Advent.

We have learned so much about Advent already:

• We have learned that the Advent Wreath is always made in the shape of a circle.  Like a circle, God's love for us has no beginning and no end.
• The leaves we used are evergreens which reminds us that God will love us forever.
• We used four candles, three purple and one pink. We will light them each week in this order

Advent week 1 - one purple candle

Advent week 2 - two purple candles

Advent week 3 - two purple and one pink

Advent week 4 - three purple and one pink

On Christmas Day a white candle is also lit.

We have continued to practice our Christmas play this week and have been trying on our costumes. We are getting very excited!

On Wednesday we had a great morning out at the cinema watching Finding Dory. We wore our special 3d glasses and ate lots of yummy sweets and popcorn. On the way back we were very quiet on the coach!

This week we have been learning all about 2d shapes. We have enjoyed sorting them into squares, traingles, rectangles and circles and then counted how many we had. We have also been learning to arrange the shapes into pictures, some of us made rockets and flowers. We searched around the classroom areas for different shapes and could see lots of rectangles such as the doors and windows, we are now expert shape detectives!

We have had a really messy week, mixing paints to make different colours and then using the paint to splatter onto bin bags to make fantastic firework pictures. We then added sparkly glitter and stars.

We have been writing the noisy words that fireworks make, it was great fun shouting "bang" and "pop!"

In Maths we have been playing skittles and counting how many we have knocked down, some of us had to have several goes as the ball kept missing!

Halloween Activities

We have made skeletons, glittery cobwebs, scrunchy spiders, read spooky stories and danced away at the disco!                        

On Wednesday, when the sun was shining, we went for a lovely walk around our school field. We were searching for natural things to take back to class and talk about them. The field was very big but we looked carefully and managed to find buttercups, daisies, dandelions, leaves, twigs and even some squishy blackberries. We had great fun playing under the big Weeping Willow tree and on the way back some of us spotted ladybird cocoons lying on the leaves. When we got to the end of the field we played in the Willow tunnel, it was great fun!

Back in  class we looked carefully at what we had collected and some of us have made lovely collages and pictures with the leaves and flowers.

This week we have been learning our letter sounds and are trying really hard to remember which sounds the letters make. We have also been learning to write the letters s, a, t, and p in the sand and outside with the big chalks.

In Maths we have been very busy counting conkers and matching them to the correct numbers, numbers 6 and 9 are really tricky to remember!

Some of us have been using the paints to paint fabulous self portraits, we have been really careful to use the correct colours for our eyes and hair.

We have been learning lots of new songs and rhymes and have loved dancing and singing to them. Our teachers say our singing is getting much better! What a busy week!

This week we have been investigating signs of Autumn. We have been very lucky to have lots and lots of conkers to count and look at with our magnifying glasses. We even carefully popped some out of  their prickly shells, they were very shiny! We used the crinkly leaves to make pictures of our faces and uses acorns and conkers for our noses, they look really funny!

Outside we have had great fun by making a church with the wooden stools and then pretending to hold a service, some of us even took turns to read out of a hymn book (it was actually a piece of bark!) We have been learning all about baptism in class.

We have had a great week and have been very busy learning about ourselves. We have looked in the mirror at our features and talked about how precious we are both to God and to our families and friends.

On Monday we had a special treat. The Potato Bus came to visit school and we all tried some potato wedges, they were yummy! We then split up into small groups and climbed on the bus to have a go at the various activities. We sorted potatoes into different sizes, sieved soil to get rid of stones and discovered what we use potatoes for. We learned lots of new things and can't wait for the bus to visit again!

A big welcome back to everybody! All the children have been really busy exploring their new classroom and making new friends. The children have been learning new routines especially going up to the hall for their dinner and P.E. both of which they really enjoy!

The weather has been really sunny so they have been outside making pies and digging in the mud kitchen. Inside, the children have been playing together really well and the Home Corner and sand tray have proved to be really popular. We look forward to another busy week next week.

Here are a few photographs of the Busy Bees!

This week we brought our very special objects in to talk to the other children about them. Some of us brought our favourite soft toys and  photographs of us with our brothers and sisters. It was good fun sharing these and talking about them with everybody.

We have also been getting very messy as we have used lovely lilac and pink paint to make butterflies in memory of our special friend, Blossom. We sprinkled glitter on them to make the wings really sparkle.