Reception

Reception

May

May was a very important month in the country's calendar as it was the month in which our new King was coronated. Leading up to the coronation of King Charles III, we found out about some aspects of his life and enjoyed a new story called 'The King's Pants'. We created our own castles using different mediums and painted portraits of the King. We had a special Coronation party day at school where we all dressed up and enjoyed a class picnic.

Our caterpillars grew rapidly and we were soon faced with five big fat caterpillars that built cocoons around themselves. We updated our caterpillar diaries using our phonic skills and understanding of sentence structure. Once the caterpillars have emerged as butterflies, we will be releasing them into the wild.

We have continued to explore halving and doubling as well as developing our reasoning skills when working with number.

April

When we returned to school after the school holidays, we started our new 'Mad about Minibeasts' topic. We read the story of 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' and created our own story maps. We received a very special delivery of baby caterpillars, so took care of them and began to observe their growth and development. We know the butterfly life cycle well and have been recording findings in our very own caterpillar diary. We have enjoyed investigating the outdoor area, looking for bugs and identifying their habitats on a map we created ourselves.

Guy from Bugs n Stuff came to see us with his large collection of living things from all over the world. The children met and touched lots of different creatures, including stick insects cockroaches, scorpions, tarantulas, geckos and snakes! Afterwards, we wrote him a letter to thank him for visiting. We also received another Farm in a Box from The Countryside Trust. This time, we have been learning all about animal families on the farm and we even made an udder to see what it is like to milk a cow.

Lots of us took part in a maths workshop with our grown ups. They were very impressed by the mathematics skills we already have and we have all taken NCETM packs home to work on at home. In our maths sessions in school, we have been developing our understanding of one more and one less. We have also been solving problems by doubling and halving.

Our teachers recently went on some training all about an approach called 'Drawing Club', where we focus on an exciting story each week. We have been using and improving our drawing skills to record our very imaginative ideas. We are loving having this special time to delve into stories and create exciting adventures with just a pencil!

April saw the marking of Earth Day. We used process art with marbles to create our own little Earth. We used the school grounds to take part in some fieldwork. We drew simple maps of the school field and went to explore. We located litter and marked it on a map with an 'x'. We shared ideas around how we thought the litter had got there and why it could cause a problem.

March

March was a busy month, full of exploration and investigation!

Our topic was dinosaurs, so we have been classifying dinosaurs by their features. We received an unusual sample from the museum and used our knowledge of dinosaur diets to work out whether the dinosaur poo samples belonged to carnivores, omnivores or herbivores. We explored why the dinosaurs became extinct and made our own volcano. We created lots of dinosaur arts and crafts and practised painting and drawing dinosaurs. We made our own clay fossils and made junk dinosaurs from recycled materials. We even dressed up as dinosaurs! At the end of the term, we went on a special trip by coach to the Great North Museum to explore the artefacts and exhibits.

We investigated and observed frog spawn in class which eventually hatched into tadpoles!

In Maths, we have been exploring shape and measure, looking in particular at 3D shape, weight and capacity. We used lots of practical resources to investigate.

During Lent, we looked carefully at the Easter story and listened to stories from the Bible during class worship. We made Easter cards and Easter baskets with chocolate crispy cake nests.

We celebrated World Book Day by dressing as our favourite characters and sharing our favourite stories.

We also went on another visit to Jarrow Library and our friendly librarian Catherine read us a lovely story.

We represented the school at Temple Park and The Urban Factory as part of their EYFS Gymnastics Festival.

February

In February, we had a surprise visit from a giant, who left his footprints all over Reception. We have been measuring them, and other objects, using non-standard units of measurement like cubes as well as standard units of measurement such as tape measures and rulers. We have been discussing and comparing length and height. Our focus on number has now moved to the numbers six, seven and eight, so we have been representing eight and investigating the composition of eight using a range of practical resources.

Our Talk for Writing text has been 'Jack and the Beanstalk'. The children know the story well and have been following the themes of the story during their child-initiated learning time. We found some magic beans so decided to plant them. We were able to use our sequencing skills to order how to plant bean and we also wrote our own instructions using imperatives (bossy words). We took our beans home over half term and we already have a few beanstalks growing in Jarrow and Hebburn! We also used our drawing skills to design a castle and used recycled materials to make them.

We visited the library and some of our parents came along to join in the fun.

As part of Recycling Week, we took part in a special workshop with Laura from Groundworks. She showed us some excellent ways to re-use recyclable materials and we created our own musical instruments.

Our parents and carers were invited into school for a Valentine-themed Stay and Play session. We had a lovely time showing them around our classes and took part in lots of creative activities, with a particular focus on developing our fine motor skills through activities like using clay, lacing and threading.

January

The children all returned to school for the Spring Term full of excitement and enthusiasm for the weeks ahead. We have begun our traditional tales topic, starting with 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears' as our focus story. We made some real porridge for the three bears and wrote some instructions to match. The children created their own small world area relating to Goldilocks and the three bears and were able to retell the story with ease. We have been gathering facts and comparing brown bears to polar bears, using our understanding of the world to discuss their location, appearance and diet.

In Maths, we have been further developing our understanding of quantities to 7. To support us to do this, we have been using a range of practical resources and maths talk to solve number problems. We have been investigating shapes and talking about their properties. We have also been finding out about the primary colours and using them to create our very own Mondrian masterpieces.

January also gave us the opportunity to celebrate Chinese New Year, the year of the rabbit, and we were very interested in finding out lots about this important time. We even made our own dragon and worked together to do our own dragon dance with musical instruments too. We created Chinese restaurants in our classrooms and tried some Chinese food.

December

December has been an extremely busy month in Reception. Our love of Rod Campbell's 'Dear Zoo' story led us to another story by the same author 'Dear Santa.' We wrote our own letters to Santa and made preparations for our Nativity play. We have been finding out about the story of Jesus' birth through drama, stories and songs.

We have been getting creative to make Christmas cards, decorations and calendars for our loved ones and we have been exploring pattern so we have even printed our own repeating pattern wrapping paper to take them home in!

We enjoyed a special Christmas trip to the farm to see Santa and his elves and we even got to cuddle Santa's animals. Our behaviour was so amazing that the head Elves said that they had never met such friendly and polite children!

Ben Elf arrived in school and caused havoc but he was a very kind elf and brought us the ingredients to make gingerbread men and hot chocolate. He even built an elves workshop in school for us to enjoy.

Finally, we had a fantastic Christmas party in school to finish the year off! Phew! What a busy month.

November

November saw the start of our new focus story 'Dear Zoo'. The children used actions they already knew, and some new ones, to retell the story. They created story maps to recall the main events and became authors to write their own lift-the-flap book.

In maths, we explored the composition of 5 in lots of different ways using practical resources. We are beginning to match numerals to quantity to then be able to record our findings in a more abstract way.

To celebrate World Cup 2022 kicking off, we found out all about Australia whilst other classes looked at other countries around the world. We investigated 'Dreamtime' and created our own aboriginal art using pointillism.

We researched historical facts and learned all about 'Remembrance' and made our own poppies. We also investigated Guy Fawkes and created our own safe fireworks on iPads.

We also found out about the Jewish celebration of Shabbat, exploring real-life artefacts and trying to plait our own Challah bread. Some of the children dressed up as a Jewish Rabi and we looked at The Torah.

We have also been working very hard on our yoga poses. As a school, we marked Children in Need with a fundraising day in non-uniform and made spotty biscuits.

October

Now that the children are settled into the school routine, our learning has taken off. We have continued with our Talk for Writing text 'Owl Babies' and have been creating our own story maps to retell the story with actions. In maths, we have enjoyed comparing quantities within five in a range of ways.

Our love of reading took us on our first trip to the library at Jarrow Focus, where Catherine the librarian read us some stories. We all chose a book to take back to our reading area in class. We received a visit from the school nursing team, who worked with us on handwashing and dental hygiene. We had some great contributions to make to the discussion.

Looking at the story of 'The Little Red Hen' opened up some enriching learning about Harvest. We used a special Farm in a Box from the Countryside Trust to found out where our food comes from, looking in particular at where flour comes from, even grinding our own from wheat! We made our own bread rolls. They were delicious!

Sienna's Mum brought her new baby Jessica into school and we talked about how we have grown since we were babies. We talked about our families and created lots of Family Art.

September

The Reception children have had an amazing start to the new school year and are settling into school life with gusto. They are already gaining independence when choosing their lunches and are using their cutlery with developing confidence.

The children have enjoyed investigating the different learning areas across the early years setting and particularly enjoy working in our outdoor areas.

The children are enjoying their yoga sessions with Mrs Cryer during PE and leave this relaxing session incredibly chilled.

We have recently started unpicking the 'Owl Babies' text and the children are currently completing a variety of literacy, numeracy and creative tasks to help them have a deeper understanding of the story.

Parents and Carers came into school to join us for a stay and play session. A good time was had by all!

The North East Falconry association are coming into school on Wednesday October 12th and they will be bringing an owl to meet the children. Watch this space for images of our visiting owl.

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