Half Termly Life Skills challenges as part of our drive to develop good future citizens: 

Weekly Brain Boosters and Curious Challenges as part of our Feel Good Friday initiative: 

World Book Day Adventure Story Competition 

We loved taking part in the Valley Commonwealth Games this week. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. 

We had so much fun this week collecting evidence and developing our theories about the mysterious spots that have taken over our school. We enjoyed writing about our experiences. 

This week we have been exploring odd and even numbers.  We sorted the Numicon into odd and even numbers.  We also explained how we knew they were odd and even.   Here are some of our explanations.

" It's 7.  It's odd.  This one hasn't got a partner"

"It's 10.  It's even. It has 2 and 2 and 2 and 2 and 2."

"They're even.  They all have partners."

This week in POR, Reception have been acting their new story The Leopard's Drum. We have been so good at retelling the story and can't wait to write our own.

Nursery and Reception have been working together to make some delicious food in the outdoor kitchen. We have made summer salads and lemon cakes as well as some lovely cups of tea!

Today was a very exciting day in Reception. We released the butterflies! We have loved learning about the lifecycle of butterflies.

Today was our topic Express Day. We came to school dressed as minibeasts and Nursery came to watch our assembly. We told them lots of facts that we have learnt about minibeasts and we sang and danced for them.

This week in Reception, we have enjoyed finding out why minibeasts are so important to our planet. We have used videos from the internet to find out what bees do for us and we have used our new Power of Reading book, Yucky Worms, to find out what worms do for us. We have linked this to our Valley Value of kindness and we have pledged to be kind to all creatures on our planet. We had great fun on the climbing frame outside where we pretended to be minibeasts. It was very exciting when a real spider started to create a web whilst we were pretending that the climbing frame was our web. 

In Reception this week, we have learnt all about where minibeasts live.  We discovered that minibeasts can live under leaves, stones and mud.  We went for a walk around the school to look for these micro habitats. 

We have continued to observe our Minibeast friends that have arrived in Reception. We have been noticing the changes that have been happening to them. We have also been observing other minibeasts carefully and practicing our accurate drawing skills as well as our sentence writing about these.

This week, we enjoyed our WOW day to start our new topic 'Minibeasts'. The day started with a note from the postman telling us that he would be delivering some minibeasts for us to take care of. We predicted what they would be. We then made some butterfly cakes and learnt a song and dance. We received our delivery of stick insects and caterpillars. We then researched the life cycle of both minibeasts and how to take care of them . 

At Valley, we always aim to make good choices and stay on green on the zone board. However, sometimes we move to silver or gold when we show exceptional behaviour. When we reach gold ten times, we visit Miss Milewski to receive a Golden ticket prize. This week, five children from Reception received a prize. 

Reception thoroughly enjoyed Science Day. We became 'handy gardeners' and planted five different seeds. We are looking forward to see what happens to the seeds. We have used lots of new vocabulary including seed, plant, observe, grow and change. 

This week in Reception we have been exploring the different seasons. We discussed what the weather was like in each season and the different things we do. We have started to explore the life cycle of a plant. We could put this in order as well as use some of the science vocabulary such as stem, shoot, roots and seeds.

It was World Book Day on Thursday and Reception had a fabulous day enjoying books and reading. We came to school dressed as our favourite characters and listened to the World Book Day assembly. Lots of us said that we would like to take part in the writing competition at home. We took great responsibility writing the beginning of whole school adventure story.  During the day we explored our fabulous new book corner and took it in turns to read a book in the Book Boats. Each day, we vote for a story for the end of the day so we were very excited to see what the books were on World Book Day. We also started our new Power of Reading book, On Sudden Hill. It is about two boys who create adventures from cardboard boxes. We made our own box adventures in the deconstructed role play area. We had great fun watching the Extreme Reading slide show and guessing who the teachers represented with their three clues. We can't wait to enjoy more books at home and at school. 

This week we have started a new topic called Enchanted Woodland.  On Wednesday, we arrived to find a letter from the Valley fairies!  They had been hibernating all winter and wanted us to find out if spring had arrived.  We took on the challenge and became detectives. We took a walk around the school grounds looking for signs of spring.  We found nests, birds, flowers, blossom, green leaves and insects.  Spring time has definitely arrived and we excitedly reported back to them.

In Reception we have been reading The Gruffalo. This has inspired lots of Gruffalo activities including some writing. We applied our skills of Fred Talking the sounds, using finger spaces and the correct letter formations to describe him.

We have really enjoyed working outside this week and we have used lots of writing in our play. We have created robots and drawn diagrams with labels for other children to make the same robot. We have also written menus and sent messages to our friends. 

We have had an exciting week in Reception. We have celebrated Chinese New Year by eating Chinese food and writing about our favourite Chinese food. We found China on an online map, on a globe and in an Atlas. We came to school wearing red and yellow clothes as we found out that these are the colours on the flag of China. We enjoyed learning a song and a dragon dance. We found out about lots of traditions such as cleaning the house, fireworks, receiving money in red envelopes and hanging letters on a wish tree. We then compared these traditions with New Year's Day earlier this year. As it was also Story Telling Week we listened to lots of stories set in China including the story about how Chinese New Year started.  

This week we started reading our new Power of Reading text   On Monday, our teachers gave us clues about where the story was set.  We then took a walk around the school to discover the setting in our new story.  We eventually concluded that the story was set in a deep, dark wood.  Can you guess what the story could be? 

In Maths, we have been comparing the volume of water in containers.  We used the words; full, empty, half full, half empty, nearly full and nearly empty.

We've been practising our safe scissor skills this week. We have learnt how to handle them carefully and carry them safely.

In Maths we have been learning about mass. We were surprised that the bigger the object didn't mean it would be the heaviest. We found this out using our balance scales.

The Reception children enjoyed a fabulous WOW starter to the new topic - Monsters! They started the day listening to The Colour Monster story. Then they made monster biscuits and monster puppets. They finished the day learning a monster dance!

The weather caused much excitement in Reception this week. On Monday morning, we went for a Winter walk around the school grounds to see what was the same and what was different compared to our Autumn walk. We had lots of discussions about where the snow and ice came from and why it was starting to disappear. 

This week we have started reading poems from our Power of Reading book 'A great Big Cuddle' by Michael Rosen.  We enjoyed reciting these poems and playing musical instruments to the rhythm of the poem. 

As part of Anti-Bullying Week, Reception came to school in their odd socks. We wanted to show that everyone is unique! We love to celebrate our similarities and differences in Reception.

This week, we took part in Real Life Maths Week. We wanted to play Snakes and Ladders but we couldn't find the dice so we decided to design an alternative to dice. We designed number cards that represented numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. We then put the cards into a bag and took it in turns to pull a card out to see how many places we could move on the game board. We used our subitising skills to recognise the number on the card without counting the pictures. Please go to the school Facebook page to like the EYFS video.

After reading Pumpkin Soup for our bedtime story, we then explored pumpkins in our environment. We discussed what they looked like, felt like and their smell. Inside we said the pumpkin was gooey and slimy. We explored other things we find in Autumn through our Autumn basket. Reading our bedtime story has encouraged us to read other stories ourselves.

In maths, we have made our own playdough by following a recipe.  We had to make sure we counted out the ingredients carefully. We are now experts at making playdough!  

We have explored a range of new opportunities this week. Many of the children chose to turn the home corner into a hairdressers! We have also loved using our mark making skills to enhance our play. We have ordered objects by size and sorted shapes. At the communication station this week there was a block of ice which created lots of discussions about how it got there, what was inside the ice and what was causing it to melt.

We have continued to explore our outdoor environment. We have created police stations, built houses and sold vegetables in our shop. We even built a canopy to shelter from the rain!

We have had another exciting week in Reception. The children are bringing all of their skills and knowledge into their play. Some children were creating treasure maps to use in the pirate ships that they had created and others were jumping over the lava that was running out of the volcano that they had created.

Wow! What a fantastic start to our Reception year! We are extremely proud of the children already. They are embracing all of the learning opportunities that Reception offers. The children are exploring all of the classrooms and the outdoor environment.

Summer 1 Home Learning Activities

Spring 2 Home Learning Activities

Spring 1 Home Learning Activities

Autumn 1 Home Learning Activities