Welcome to Reception

In Reception, Mrs Grice is the class teacher. Reception is supported by Miss Rizzo, Mrs Wang and Miss Bees.

Our PE days this term are Wednesday and Thursday. Please come to school wearing your PE kit on these days.

Drop Everything and Read - Every Wednesday morning 8.40 - 9 am.

Forest School is on a Friday afternoon fortnightly.  Please come to school wearing old clothing and waterproof coats plus trousers on these days.  Children can wear their wellington boots that are already in school. Reception will be having Forest School on Week 1, 3 and Week 6 of this term.

Library sessions will be every Monday afternoon - please return in bookbag every Monday so your child/children can get a new book weekly.

Our topics during Spring Term 2 are Signs of Spring and Ready Steady Grow.  The Signs of Spring project teaches children about the changes that happen during the spring, including weather and the festivals that are celebrated at this time of year.  

In the Ready Steady Grow project teaches children about food and farming and explores themes, including where food comes from, what plants and animals need to grow and survive and what constitutes a healthy lifestyle.

Supporting your child at home

• Go for a walk in your local park and look for signs of spring.
• Draw a picture of a spring walk in the box below. Explain how you can tell it is springtime.
• In springtime the weather can change every day. Fill in the weather chart for a week to show what the weather is like.
• Imagine you are going for a walk on a spring day. What clothes would you wear? Draw an outfit and label the clothes.
• Easter is a Christian festival that is celebrated each spring. It is traditional to decorate eggs at Easter. Hard boil an egg and when it is cool decorate it with colourful patterns.
• Sow some fast growing seeds, such as cress or lettuce. Put them somewhere warm and keep them well watered. Take photographs as the seeds germinate and the plants begin to grow.
• Draw your favourite fruit or vegetable and write words to describe how it tastes.
• Use different coloured fruit or vegetables to make a rainbow fruit or vegetable salad.
• Draw a farm, what animals would you have on your farm? Can you label them?

This topic encompass all areas of the EYFS curriculum: 

• Communication and Language 
• Personal, Social and Emotional development
• Physical Development
• Literacy
• Mathematics 
• Understanding the World
• Expressive Arts and Design 

Phonics

We follow Little Wandle to teach Phonics. This term, we will continue to review teaching Phase 3 abd tricky words with the Children.  Please continue to practise these at home.

Please click the link for more information: https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/

Literacy

Drawing Club is an approach designed by Greg Bottrill that immerses children into a world full of imagination.  

It is through drawing club that we open up the magic world of tales and story to children whilst at the same time enriching their language skills, developing their fine motor and share a really special time with them. Drawing Club is a fantastic place to start a child’s experience of school ‘Literacy’

Drawing Club is based upon the 3M principle. These are making conversation, mark making and mathematics. We use a book, traditional tale or an animation as a portal for the week. Children learn new, exciting vocabulary that we revisit each day of the week. We draw characters on a Monday, settings on a Tuesday and we ‘wonder’ on a Wednesday and Thursday.

We add maths to our drawings by talking about shapes, doubling, halving, addition, subtraction etc… We might be drawing a troll with a spherical shaped head, 2 strong, wiry hairs on his chin and double this amount coming out of each ear. He has one more than 4 buttons on his filthy, ripped shirt. Children observe as the teacher models drawing club each morning and then get the opportunity to complete their own drawings. They are invited to wear a lanyard showing they are part of drawing club and can borrow ideas from the teacher or create their own amazing ideas to share.

One of the most exciting parts of Drawing Club is adding secret symbols and passwords to our drawings. We always draw a secret symbol that can make anything happen! Sometimes we press them and aliens or unicorns become 3 times bigger, pencils turn into chocolate or hair turns multi-coloured! We then add a password to make the secret symbol work. This can be a mark, letter, digraph (2 letters that make one sound), a word or a sentence. As children make progress and become more confident with their phonics, their passwords develop and move towards phrases and sentences.

Maths

We follow White Rose for Maths and Maths Mastery; this term we are focusing on:

Supporting your child at home

Each week, your child will bring home a Sound Book, which outlines what we are learning during our daily phonics sessions in school and hopefully provides a helpful reference point for you to practise and reinforce our learning at home. It explains how we teach pronunciation and letter formation and suggests words that you could practise blending.

Your child will also bring home a decodable reading book, which we have already explored in small groups in school; please read frequently with your child - we are aiming for fluency! They will also bring home a high quality sharing book from our library. Explore the pictures and talk about them together. Help your child make connections to the picture and what they know about the world and their life. Enjoy the book together! Sharing a book together will help your child grow their vocabulary. 

Photos of our classroom

Useful Documents for Reception

Recommended Reads for Reception

One Minute Maths