Reception

Reception

September

Our Reception children have had an amazing start to the new school year and are settling into school life beautifully. 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 setting and particularly enjoy working in our outdoor areas.

They have also been exploring our indoor spaces, demonstrating that they can share resources and use their imagination. The children have been using a range of resources to develop their mark-making and fine motor skills.

October

Now that the children are settled into the school routine, our learning has really taken off! We have been exploring our Talk for Writing text 'Owl Babies' and have been creating our own story maps to retell the story with actions. We also take part in a Read Write Inc phonics session every morning. In maths, we have enjoyed comparing quantities within five in a range of ways. We have loved meeting the Numberblocks and we are using maths in lots of aspects of our school routine.

Looking at the story of 'The Little Red Hen' opened up some enriching learning about Harvest. We used a Farm in a Box from the Countryside Trust to find 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!

To support our imaginative and mark-making skills, we join together for Drawing Club most afternoons.

We have also been so enthusiastic in our weekly yoga sessions with Lisa. We are working on our physical development in so many different ways. We are able to use technology to expand and consolidate our learning, including mapping skills with Vex123 Robot Kit and apps on the ipads to practice our recall in maths.

In October, we also 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. We went to Jarrow Focus for a special educational theatre show too, called 'The Lightbulb Princess'. We walked there and back and our behaviour was impeccable. Our teachers are really proud of us!

November

November marked the start of our focus text '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. We know what an author is and have been talking about how many authors don't just write one book. We even had a visit from a real author, Alan Windram!

In our maths, we have continued to develop our subitising and we are beginning to compare quantities in a range of ways. We held a parent workshop to show our parents how we build our early maths skills and understanding in school, taking home activities to try.

There are lots of special times and celebrations to be aware of in November. We learned all about 'Remembrance' and made our own poppies. We talked about our own experiences of Fireworks Night and tried out some firework art. We also investigated Diwali, the festival of light. We found out about the Jewish celebration of Shabbat, exploring real-life artefacts and tried to plait our own saltdough Challah bread.

We enjoyed World Kindness Day in school and each of us said something kind about each member of our class, which was written down for us to take home and keep. We thought about how we can be kind to ourselves, our community and the wider world. As a school, we marked Children in Need with a fundraising day in non-uniform.

December

Wow, what a busy month December was! Our enjoyment 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 loved performing our Nativity for our loved ones on stage in the school hall.

In Maths, we have been using practical resources to explore the composition of 3, 4 and 5. We really engage with our Mastering Number sessions and often the Numberblocks join in to help.

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 all went to The Urban Factory in Hebburn one day to take part in an EYFS Co-ordination Challenge, along with ten other schools. We had an amazing morning developing our gross motor skills. The children demonstrated our school motto of 'encourage one another and build each other up'. We also travelled all the way to Lanchester on a coach for a special Christmas trip to the farm to see Santa and his elves and we got to cuddle Santa's animals.

Ben Elf arrived in school and caused havoc but he was a very kind elf and brought us the ingredients to make gingerbread. He even built an elves workshop in school for us to enjoy. Finally, we had a fantastic Christmas party and a Polar Express Day to finish the year off! Phew! What a busy month.

January

January saw the start of our 'Once Upon a Time' theme, where we have been exploring traditional tales. After looking at Goldilocks and The Three Bears, we made porridge and created our own instructions to help Goldilocks make her own. Did you see the news flash when she came into our school and caused a mess? We made posters to help the school community try to find her. We also explored The Three Little Pigs and The Three Billy Goats Gruff in Drawing Club, which led us to make our own houses from straw, sticks and bricks. We found out about some bridges around the world and used what we had discovered to create our own bridges, using construction materials and loose parts. We have been using our spatial awareness, reasoning skills and teamwork to be able to construct carefully and with precision.

Groundworks visited us for Recycling Week to tell us all about the importance of recycling. We made animal collage art using unwanted magazines and newspapers. We had another special visitor when Michael Nelson showed us how to use the Vex123 robots to create codes in our play. In PE, we have started a new unit with Vicky from South Shields Football Club. She is coaching us in ball skills. We love it!

February

Although February is the shortest month of the year, we still managed to pack a lot of learning in! We have continued to explore traditional tales and moved on to Jack and the Beanstalk. We have been talking about and comparing height and length, ordering the children (and Jack's beanstalks) from tallest to shortest. In Maths, we have also been looking at how numbers beyond five but before ten are "five and a bit". We have been representing this with double dice frames and tens frames and have been using songs to support our understanding. We have been exploring primary colours with some of the art work of Mondrian, creating both individual pieces and collaborative projects.

We participated in a range of activities to highlight Mental Health Week. We have been talking about our likes, dislikes and what makes us proud of ourselves and others. After reading 'The Last Wolf', we have been discussing changes to the use of land, such as trees being chopped down to make space for houses. We did some fieldwork to identify the use of land in and around school. We created our own simple maps. Our final week of the half term was jam-packed with pancake making, a trip to West Boldon Lodge, a superhero sports event and a Valentine-themed Stay and Play session with our parents. Phew!

March

We have had a very busy month this March as the children have been investigating dinosaurs. We found a giant dinosaur egg in classroom and we made a nest and labels to make sure that we kept the egg safe. A tiny T-Rex hatched out and his Dad came to class for a visit to check on his baby! We decided to learn all about dinosaurs and completed lots of prehistoric history tasks to help us to find out about their extinction. During Science week, we became palaeontologists and learned all about Mary Anning. We went digging for dinosaur bones in the sand pit and we made our own fossils. We classified dinosaurs into groups of bipeds and quadrupeds. The children were very interested in how the dinosaurs became extinct and we investigated volcanoes, even creating our own volcano in class!

We also celebrated World Book Day and Red Nose Day this term. The children came into school dressed as their favourite book character. We visited Jarrow Library and borrowed some of our favourite books to read in class. We have been exploring lots of different sporting activities too. Our PE coach, Vicky, has been teaching us ball skills. We were also invited to take part in a gymnastics festival at the Urban Factory and we developed our balancing skills.

During literacy, the children have continued to learn new sounds and have been applying their phonic knowledge to write words and simple sentences. In mathematics we have been doubling numbers, sorting objects into groups and learning all about 3D shapes and their properties. The children have also been introduced to time and were able to make their own clock faces.

The children have enjoyed learning about the Easter story and have created beautiful Easter cards, made Easter baskets and learned about the significance of hot cross buns, (of course we had to taste them too!)

Finally our parents, grandparents and carers were invited into school for an Easter Stay and Play session at the end of term. They completed a variety of numeracy, literacy and craft activities and a fun time was had by all.