Valley Primary School
‘Growing and learning together to be the best we can be’
Reception
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This week we have started a new Power of Reading story called ‘The Leopard’s Drum'. We listened to the sound of a Ghanaian drum and shared our ideas. We also enjoyed listening to and sequencing the story.
In our outdoor classroom, we have been working together to create our own obstacle course using long planks. We challenged ourselves to make different heights and we travelled across the planks in lots of different ways. We kept ourselves safe and kept challenging ourselves further.
We bid a fond farewell to our butterflies which we have been able to observe since they were tiny caterpillars. I wonder what will arrive next week? Find out soon!
We have continued to observe the caterpillars. They stopped eating and climbed up to the lid of the pot. There are now chrysalis hanging from the lid. We are very excited to see what happens next. We have found out lots of information about caterpillars in books and we have safely used the internet to search for information too.
We have continued our learning in other areas of Reception too. We have solved problems using money and time. We have used the Interactive Whiteboard to write sentences about minibeasts. We have shared objects using lots of new mathematical language including 'fair, unfair, sharing and equal'.
We have enjoyed our new reading corner this week. We have been revisiting our Power of Reading books and loved going back through the stories.
Our Maths focus has been subtraction and we have practised this in our learning environment using the number lines. We’ve even made our own maths books to show our skills!
Continuing our learning about minibeasts, we have started to learn a new nursery rhyme - There’s a worm at the bottom of my garden. It’s been great fun singing this together and playing along with the instruments.
We started our week celebrating ‘Valley’s Diversity Day’ We wore our own clothes and spent time talking to each other about what makes us all special.
In English, we started reading the Power of Reading book ‘Yucky Worms’ We received a letter from Wendy the worm asking us to help her. She was upset that no-one likes worms. She asked us to find out real facts about how wonderful worms are. We listened to the story and discovered lots of fun facts about worms!
In Maths, we have continued to learn our KIRF. We are getting very quick at recalling our doubles to 5. We also learnt how to add and subtract numbers by counting on or back from a given number.
We were all very excited when our new visitors arrived. We now have our very own caterpillars. We have already started observing them. We are looking forward to finding out how long it takes for them to grow into butterflies.
We've had another busy week in Reception. The children have thoroughly enjoyed the new challenges inside and out.
They are beginning to recognise coins and have solved problems involving money.
Outside the children are now independently working safely to transport the equipment. They have also had to listen to and follow a number of instructions.
We've all had great fun solving the addition problems on balloons.
Inside, the children have designed some fabulous models and then gone on to create them. They have also developed their fine motor skills by making spider webs like in our Power of Reading book Arghh Spider.
Rain certainly doesn’t stop play in Reception, especially with our new tennis court. We have been showing patience by waiting to take our turn to play.
We have been inspired by our Argh Spider story and have been re-enacting it outside using construction to make the family house.
Our morning enrichment club have been working on lots of different skills. We have loved having new children join us and learning to work together to develop lots of skills, such as STEM, technology and creative learning.
This week in Reception we have started our new topic all about Minibeasts. We have been ‘bug hunting’ in our outdoor classroom. We found lots of minibeasts in the digging area and underneath the grass. We carefully placed them in our bug viewers so we could look at them more closely. Once we had finished looking at them, we placed them back in their home. On Wednesday we dressed up in our favourite minibeast outfits.
In English we started reading the Power of Reading book Aarrrrgh Spider. We discussed what we knew about spiders already and wrote sentences about them. Later on in the week, we listened to the whole of the story and made predictions about what we thought would happen next in the story.
We started a new topic in our Maths learning too. We read numbers from 0-20 and match different representations.
This week in Reception, we finished our work on the Gruffalo. Our children learning at home each made a delicious Gruffalo crumble for their families. We wrote a list of ingredients and then followed the instructions. We had to peel, core, chop, pour, stir, sprinkle, rub and spread before we could cook and finally eat!
Meanwhile, the children in school were making Gruffalo tusk fruit kebabs. We used bananas for the tusks. Red grapes cut in half for the purple prickles and a green one for a poisonous wart. Then we added orange segments for his eyes. We had great fun making them but even more fun eating them!
The children learning at home enjoyed joining in with the Gruffalo story during our English lesson. Many of them were dressed as characters from the story or they brought their own books and toy characters to the lesson. The children then looked at speech bubbles and discussed what the characters said in the story.
In R.E this week we have learnt about the New Year celebration Norouz and the children discussed their favourite part of the story.
The children in school have continued to read their reading books and the children at home have used the online versions.
In maths we have looked at how numbers can be represented in different ways and we started to learn how to combine two groups together. We have also used tens frames to help us.
In Science, we have continued to look at ways to keep our bodies healthy. This week we discussed our to keep our teeth healthy.
What an exciting week we have had! It started with us all learning from home on Monday because of the snow over the weekend. We shared lots of pictures of us having fun in the snow. We built some amazing snowmen with our families and many of us made snow angels.
In English we have continued to read the story of ‘The Gruffalo’. We thought of lots of words to describe the mouse in the story. We then discovered that the Gruffalo had disappeared, so we created some missing posters to help find him. Look at our fantastic writing. We are using our phonics to help us write labels and captions.
In Maths, we have been exploring different ways to make the number 6, 7 and 8. On Monday we explored the number 6. We found lots of objects around the house and classroom. Edward found 6 of his teddies. We continued our week by exploring the numbers 7 and 8. We identified different representations and also created our own representations of numbers.
We have also been thinking about what makes us happy. We drew our own happy monsters and added labels to show what makes us smile.
We started our new book The Gruffalo. We started by taking a walk through a deep dark wood and we made our own woodland pictures.
In maths, we have had great fun exploring capacity. We have used the language of full, nearly full, half full, nearly empty and empty. We then put our containers in order from the one with the largest capacity to the smallest capacity.
This week in Reception we read the story Bedtime for Monsters. We planned how to keep the monster out of our houses. Emilie closed her blinds and curtains and put up her teepee to act as a den. She has used her giant unicorn to guard the door and has written 2 signs. Whilst Adam made a plan to trap the monster if it came to his house.
We made our own monsters and they went on journeys around our houses and school.
We were very pleased to find out that the monster didn’t want to eat us. Georgia typed a list of what the monster could eat. We are so proud of how she used her phonics to spell new words.
We also made monster biscuits.
In maths, we found out that numbers can be split into their parts.
In RE we found out why the Chinese years are named after animals. Emily and Oscar did an amazing job at retelling the Chinese New Year story. Oscar wrote where the animals came in the race.
Christmas cards with a twist-literally!! In the run up to the end of term, the children have had lots of fun exploring and developing their Design and Technology skills (cutting, shaping, finishing and mastering movement using pivots, levers and sliders) when making their own Christmas cards. We hope you enjoy following their card-making journey through the wonderful photographs captured by their teachers and their cards have taken pride of place at home.
This week in Reception we have been mini teachers. We have taken turns in the role, practising our green and red words, as well as our speed sounds and number formations. We are getting really good!
We have also been exploring different ways to move through yoga. We were able to follow the instructions and balance on different points.
In Maths we have been finding one more and one less than a number. We applied so many of our maths skills in this – counting on and back, recognising numerals, finding more and fewer.
On Friday we finished our week by coming to school in our sparkles! We love our Christmas countdown. Make sure you watch our Spreading Christmas Joy videos in the video resource library.
This week in Reception we have continued to challenge ourselves in our learning. Look at how busy we have been! In Maths, we have been learning to estimate a group of objects and check by counting. We enjoyed guessing how many objects there were. We discovered that the smaller the amount of objects, the easier it was to estimate.
Our Maths challenge this week was to use positional language to describe the position of animals. We used words like; behind, in front, on, under, next to and inbetween!
In English we have been listening to lots of different poems written by Michael Rosen. Some of his poems are very funny. We used our body to create different sounds to accompany the poem as we read them out loud. We also used instruments to add music to our performances. We noticed that some of his poems had rhyming words in them.
We had a go at identifying rhyming words in our focus time.
On Friday, we came into school to discover that Christmas had arrived at Valley. We got to work straight away by decorating the Christmas tree together and wrote our Christmas lists. We even pretended that we were asleep hoping Father Christmas would come early!
We also celebrated our friend’s birthdays in school by having a party. The birthday children choose some songs to dance to. We enjoyed dancing to Baby Shark, Elsa and The Gummy Bears! We are looking forward to celebrating December birthdays next!
We have also read the story Owl Babies and many of the children have made their own owls and created their own stories during our Continuous Provision time.
We have lots of different lights in our dark den that we use in our role play. Lana pretended that she was an evil queen watching the bad people in her ball of light.
We have explored how shadows are made and then made our own shadows using torches.
As part of our topic ‘Starry Night’ we have carried our scientific experiments about light. We explored if glow sticks react quicker in hot or cold water.
In English we have continued to read Owl Babies. We still don’t know where Mother Owl has gone – hopefully she will return this week! We explored how the baby owls would feel alone in the woods.
Using our ‘Mini Me’ characters, we created our own stories starring us!
In Maths, we have been investigating 2d shapes and their properties. We have used them in our construction to make different representations. Corey made a house for his family and Abigail made her Mum wearing a new dress.
We have been working on our personal, social and emotional skills in Reception. We celebrated World Kindness Day on Friday and made sure we were sharing our toys and resolving our conflicts in a good way.
We have been applying our thinking and problem solving skills by building marble runs.
Look at our fantastic writing! We have been applying our phonics in our writing challenges. We created labels for an Autumn picture. We used recognisable letters to represent meaning and we used many sounds correctly in our writing.
In Maths this week, we have been exploring how we can make a number in different ways. We used the Numicon to explore these different ways in our free choice time.
In our outdoor classroom, we have focused on negotiating space around us whilst playing a game. We had to change speed and direction without bumping into each other. We had lots of fun! We also used natural materials to create our own nests for the baby owls in the story ‘Owl Babies’.
As part of black history day, we read the story of Amazing Grace and celebrated her success even though people said she couldn't do it because she was a girl and she was black. We then discussed what we would like to achieve and acted out freeze frames of our ambitions. We have a display in Reception of our Hopes and Wishes for the future.
We have enjoyed playing in our outdoor classroom. There are lots to do outside and it keeps us busy all day. We have been developing our climbing and balancing skills and even making up our own stories in the small world area. We have been mixing and whisking ingredients in our mud kitchen as well as solving problems by working together in the water. What busy children we are!
Reception practising their sounds
The children in Reception are loving our 'Deconstructed Role Play Area'. They can turn the boxes into an exciting area to play in. Last week, they made an aeroplane, police station and a bedroom with a monster under the bed!
A fabulous first day for Reception... the children looked so smart in their new uniform and were so grown up following their class clues and waving goodbye to Mummy and Daddy at the gate. Well done children!
Our Classrooms... all clean and tidy and ready for us to help create our own learning environment and displays!
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