RT

Welcome to RT!

A big hello and warm welcome to our class page.

Our Reception class is a happy, safe and caring place to be.

Each day is filled with fun and new adventures.

Please return to our class page to see how we are growing.

Curriculum Topic Sheets

Weekly Newsletter

Martin Mere Wetland Centre

On Friday, our teachers took us on a very special trip to Martin Mere! We were so excited to go on the big, white coach, Alicia said it looked like a "limousine". We had never been to Martin Mere before. 

What will we see?

When we arrived, we were greeted by a lovely lady called Kirstin; she was our guide for the day. Kirstin told us all about the different birds which live at Martin Mere.
She also taught us about a special type of bird which lives at Martin Mere; this bird is called a flamingo.

We learned how flamingos communicate using their body. We put these actions together to create a flamingo dance! It was so much fun!

We went on a "wild walk". We saw lots of different types of birds; our favourite birds were the flamingos. The flamingos were bright pink! They had long, skinny legs. They walked very close to us; it was very interesting to look at them.

We had lots of fun showing off our super balancing skills when stepping across the stepping stones to cross the river! It was a little bit tricky and one of us ended up with soggy toes!

At dinner time, we enjoyed our yummy school packed lunch. Afterwards, we decided it was time for the birds to have their dinner. We fed lots of different types of birds. They ate bird seed out of our hands!

What a wonderful day!

This week, we have learned all about 3D shapes. We know 3D shapes are "fat" shapes.
First, Miss Toole gave us some 2D shapes; we know 2D shapes are "flat" shapes.
​Miss Toole bought a special magic box to school. Into the magic box, we put a triangle, square, circle and oblong. We used our magic breath to blow up the flat 2D shapes into fat 3D shapes.

Out of the magic box came a pyramid, cube, sphere and oblong! We learned the names of these new shapes.

We had lots of fun choosing 3D shapes out of a mystery bag and sorting them into groups.

We enjoyed showing off all we had learned about 3D shapes when playing 3D shape match and pairs.

Snails

On Monday, we arrived to school to a very special letter; it was a letter from Percy the Park Keeper. Percy told us some pesky creatures are sneaking into his park and destroying his plants. Percy sent us some leaves, they had holes in them! He explained the creatures leave shiny, slimy trails.

Percy asked us to help him find out which creatures are destroying his plants and what they look like.

We decided that it is snails who are destroying Percy's plants! 

We went on a hunt for snails in our outdoor area. We learned snails like to live in moist, dark places. We looked in our flower beds and soil.

We collected snails; we wanted to take care of them in class. We created a home for our snails using soil, twigs, leaves and flowers.

We used our senses to explore the snails. We showed off our super duper writing skills and wrote sentences about what the snails look, smell, sound and feel like. We are going to send our writing to Percy the Park Keeper; we hope it helps him!

We noticed snails have a "curly", "circle" shaped shell. We had lots of fun, in continuous provision, using our fingers to make spiral shapes in shaving foam, lentils and flour!

We have also had fun showing off our fine motor skills and coiled wool to create a curly, snail shell.

This week, we have learned about weight. We learned weight  measures how heavy or light something is. Miss Toole taught us how to use a balance pan.
We chose two different objects and placed them in the balance pan; we looked carefully at what happens.

Haydn noticed "the heavy thing goes down to the floor" and Alicia saw "the lightest goes up in the air."

We had lots of fun exploring and comparing the weight of different objects.

We also learned when two objects weigh the same they are balanced.

We explored how many unifix cubes it took to balance lots of different objects; we even practiced balancing our smelly shoes! Miss toole was very impressed with our counting!

On Monday, we arrived in school to something very peculiar... there were beans spilt on our classroom floor and a trail of footprints leading us to jelly in our cloakroom!

I wonder why it is there?

I wonder who they belong to?

We were very confused and wanted to investigate further! We decided to dress up as detectives; we went on a hunt around our school in search for more clues. We recorded our findings. We found: Mouldy cheese, slime, a smelly sock and belly button fluff - urgh!!

We were still very confused... Who do they belong to?

On Tuesday, we found out the clues belonged to...

We read the story 'Monstersaurus'; we loved hearing all about Monty and his inventions!

On Wednesday, Miss Toole took us on a very special trip. We went to The Arts Centre at Edge Hill University to see a theatre performance of Monstersaurus! We were very excited to travel to Edge Hill on the "big white coach". We liked sitting next to our friends and had lots of fun looking out of the windows. Laura saw lots of tractors, Mya told us all about the roads to take to her Nan's house and Kieran enjoyed spotting the different coloured cars.

It was so exciting being inside the theatre! The stage had lots of interesting props on.

The show was amazing! We loved seeing the characters from the book come to life. We really liked Bogablob and Dusty; they made us laugh. Our favourite parts were the singing and dancing; we even got up off our seats to join in!

What a wonderful experience!

We would like to say a big "hello" and "welcome back" to the final part of the summer term.

We cannot believe our first year in school is almost over! Our year in Reception has gone so fast! Miss Toole says she is so proud of our journey and it has been amazing to watch us grow.

We cannot wait to see what adventures lie ahead this term...

In Come and See, we been thinking about what it means to be a friend.

We learned Jesus has a special rule for friendship "love each other".

We spoke about what love is and how we can show love to our friends. We learned that friendship is like a circle, the love we share with each other is passed on and goes round and round. To symbolise this, we used salt dough to make friendship rings which we joined together; it was very messy! We enjoyed making friendship bracelets which we gave to our best friend. We also had lots of fun outside, using natural materials to create portraits of the friends we love.

This week, we have caused royal uproar as we have learned all about Queen Elizabeth II, in preparation for her 90th birthday celebrations!

We learned about who Queen Elizabeth II is and where she lives. Louie was very impressed to find out she has lots of houses including a palace and a castle! We know Queen Elizabeth II lives in London; we looked at where London is on a map and talked about how we could travel there. We looked at photographs of famous landmarks in London; we thought "Big Ben" was a very funny name for a clock! We had lots of fun in continuous provision using the building blocks to recreate the famous sites of London.

We learned the Queen has two birthdays! Evelina thinks this is very lucky because "she will get two birthday cakes!" In continuous provision, we enjoyed using the playdoh to make birthday cakes for the Queen. We also tried very hard to design and write birthday cards independently.

We watched a video of her coronation, Alicia said "so looks so beautiful!" We decided to make our own crowns so we can be Kings and Queens too!

Our school hosted a tea party to celebration Queen Elizabeth II 90th birthday!

We enjoyed sitting together to eat our delicious party lunch.

Happy Birthday Queen Elizabeth!

This week, a very special visitor came to our class; his name was Chef Jeff!

Chef Jeff came to ask for our help. He needed us to use our super skills to help him cook some 'silly soup'. Chef Jeff's soup is silly because it only includes ingredients which rhyme!

We thought it was very strange cooking up a car and jar, book and duck, pan and a man!

We don't know if it will taste very nice but it did make us giggle.

We decided to have a go at making our own silly soup.

How is honey made?

This week, we have been very interested in exploring a special type of mini beast, bees!

On Tuesday, Miss Toole presented us with a jar of honey; some of us were unsure of what it was. We used our senses to explore it. We thought it "looked brown", "smelt sweet" and "felt sticky like glue". We learned that it was honey!

We learned that bees make honey! We watched a video to show us exactly how it's done.

Bees are very busy mini beasts!

We ate honey on crackers for our snack; it was yummy!

We are enjoying learning about mini beasts so much, we decided to go on a hunt for them!

We have had lots of fun in our new 'mini beast explorers' role play area, dressing up in our explorer costumes and using our magnifying glasses to hunt for mini beasts!

We have recorded all of the mini beasts we found on our checklist.

We know The Very Hungry Caterpillar likes his food and so do we!

So, we decided there is no better way to end our work on The Very Hungry Caterpillar, than to get busy in the kitchen and show off our super chef skills!

We created our very own fruit pots using the fruit eaten by The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

We used knives to chop up apples, pears, plums, strawberries and oranges independently; we were very sensible.

Next, we poured natural yogurt on top and mixed our fruit altogether.

Our favourite part was eating our fruit pots; they were delicious... but we were still hungry!

This week, we have started to learn about nursery rhymes. We learned a nursery rhyme is a special type of writing; they are songs or poems. We talked about the nursery rhymes we already know. We also listened to lots of different nursery rhymes. We tried very hard to join in with the familiar parts. 

We learned to sing the nursery rhyme Incy Wincy Spider, it is already one of our favourites! We worked together to put actions to each line in the nursery rhyme.

We worked in groups and learned new nursery rhymes all about mini beasts.

We worked together to think of actions we could add to each line in our nursery rhyme.

We practiced performing these actions alongside the words.

Each group is going to perform their nursery rhyme to the class next week; we cannot wait to see each others.

This week, we have learned about addition. We know when we add we have more and our numbers are bigger. We learned what the addition sign looks like.

We planned a picnic for The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We chose cards to see which fruit to feed him. We put the fruit into a bowl, we counted all of the fruit to find out how much fruit there was altogether. We are trying very hard to write our own addition sums.

The lifecycle of a butterfly

We watched a video which showed us the lifecycle of a butterfly. We know a butterfly starts life as an egg which hatches into a caterpillar. We know the caterpillars grow big and fat, just like The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We learned that when they have grown, the caterpillar's spin a cocoon. We saw a butterfly come out of the cocoon! We were amazed! We cannot wait until our caterpillar's spin a cocoon. We are so excited to have beautiful butterflies in our class.

We used different shaped pasta and lentils to recreate the lifecycle of a butterfly.

In P.E. we have been very busy practising our ball skills! We are learning to throw and catch. We tried throwing and catching whilst stood still on the spot then we practised throwing and catching our ball whilst moving; it was very tricky at first but we soon got the hang of it! Miss Toole was very proud of us.

We had lots of fun throwing and catching our ball with our friend.

In Come and See, we listened to the story of Pentecost. We learned Jesus sent Holy Spirit, this was good news! We know when the Holy Spirit came there was a 'rushing wind'. We used the wind in our breath to blow bubbles to represent the Holy Spirit.

We showed off our cutting skills and created a windmill to represent the wind of the Holy Spirit.

On Monday, a very special parcel arrived in our class. We opened it and looked inside. We found a container. Inside the container were 5 tiny, fuzzy caterpillars!

We have created a special observation area in our classroom.

Charlie thinks they will go "big and fat!"

Kian suggested the caterpillars will "spin a cocoon".

Daniel said "they will turn into a beautiful butterfly!"

We cannot wait to watch how they grow and change over the next few weeks.

We wonder if our predictions were right? 

We have continued to read 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar'. We are enjoying the story so much, we decided to create our own Hungry Caterpillar.

We painted lanterns different shades of green to create the caterpillars body. We painted one lantern red, we will use this for the caterpillar's head.

We are going to display it in our reading area.

Please come back to see what it looks like when it is finished.

We have been very busy in the creative area, making our own Very Hungry Caterpillar.

We painted pasta tubes light green and dark green. We showed off our fine motor skills and threaded the pasta tubes onto string in a pattern.

We attached the face of The Very Hungry Caterpillar to complete the body. We have displayed them in our reading area.

Miss Toole thinks they are amazing!

In Maths, we have continued to learn about length. We learned that we can measure the length of our caterpillars to find out how long or short they are; we used unfix cubes to measure our caterpillars. We learned the longer the caterpillar the more unifix cubes needed to measure it. We also know that shorter caterpillars need less unifix cubes to measure their length.

We have also been very busy exploring size in our outdoor area. We used the construction blocks to build 'tall' and 'short' towers. We also built towers of the 'same size'.

Good News

In Come and See, we are learning about news. We know news is something you tell other people, this might be something you have done or that you are going to do. We brought in things from home to share our good news with our friends.