Welcome to Reception!

Look at what we have been doing in Reception.

Summer 1 - Do cows drink milk?

We started our new topic by talking about different animals that we would find on a farm - we had to solve the clues to find out which animal it was. Some of the clues were a little tricky!

We read a story about a little girl who went to her grandad’s farm to help him to carry out all the different jobs that needed to be done in a day on the farm. We are excited about our visit to the farm in July!

We enjoyed dressing as farm animals in our farmyard role play area and we also had fun painting our tractor too!

Spring 2 - Will you read me a story?

During this topic we have learnt about lots of different books and read lots of stories. We enjoyed acting out different stories using puppets and props we had made. We made houses out of the materials that the 3 Little Pigs made their houses out of and made some bears and Goldilocks out of paper plates. We talked about the different parts of a story and talked about different characters and settings. We wrote the 3 Little Pigs stories by ourselves - our teachers were very impressed!

We planted some beans to see if they would grow as high as the beanstalk in the Jack and the Beanstalk. We watered them and put them in the sunshine. Some grew quite high!

In RE we learnt about special books in different religions and had the Easter story read to us. We also made some chocolate Easter nests - which was fun!

We celebrated Mother’s Day by inviting our mums in to join in with our learning - we iced biscuits, made flowers, wrote about our mums and much more! We had lots of fun and so did our mums! 

We celebrated World Book Day by taking part in some book related activities - we designed and decorated our own story spoons, we also went hunting in books to find different characters, we made our own books, listened to stories on the Tonie and read LOTS of books during the day! 

Spring 2 - Will you read me a story?

We started our new topic by talking about our favourite books - we are looking forward to sharing them with our friends this half term.

We also had a letter from a boy named Jack who was trying to hide from a giant he had met. He asked us to look out for the giant’s footprints, so we got our magnifying glasses out and went looking - we found some footprints in the classroom, green room, outside and a few other places too! 
 

We enjoyed creating a leaf to be added to our giant beanstalk in our classroom story castle - it reached right up to the ceiling and along the wall! 

Spring 1 - What happens when I fall asleep?

During this topic we learnt lots about space and the planets. We learnt the names of some famous astronauts and saw a video of a rocket launch. We also thought about what it would be like for us to go to space and write lists of what we would take. 
 

We also thought about people who helped us at night when we are sleeping and people who help us during the day. We had many visitors come to talk to us, including a policeman, nurse, headteacher and many more! We talked about the jobs we would like to have when we are older too.

We looked at the artist Jackson Pollock and had a go at our own art work by flicking paint onto black paper to create a space background.

We celebrated the Chinese New Year and learnt about the animals each year is named after. We enjoyed using chopsticks to pick up rice and noodles too!

Spring 1 - What happens when I fall asleep?

We started our new topic by painting a rocket ship to go into our role play area. We also designed our own spacesuits.

We had a mysterious parcel delivered all the way from space, which contained some objects we had to investigate from the moon.

We also acted out our new story of ‘Whatever Next’ - we enjoyed our trip to the moon!

Autumn 2 - Why do squirrels hide their nuts?

This term we have looked at hibernation. We talked about which animals hibernate and why. We made our own forest animals and enjoyed learning in the bear cave role play area.

We celebrated and learnt about different festivals too, including Divali, Eid, Remembrance Day, Bonfire Night. We had some adults come to talk to us about their celebrations; Mrs Mohammad about Eid, Miss Cherrington about St David's Day and Miss Postel about French Christmas traditions. 

We also enjoyed celebrating Christmas and were superstars in our nativity performance.

We continued to think about our feelings and thought about things that make us sad, happy and angry - we thought of different ways that we could manage these feelings.

Autumn 1 - Do you want to be friends?

This half term we developed our friendships as we got to know each other. We talked about and drew our family. We thought about things that were special to us and brought in something to share with our class. We also thought about how it felt to start a new school and make new friends.

We used a mirror to look at our facial features and painted a self portrait.

We thought about our similarities and differences and joined with the school to celebrate Diversity Week. Our class book was 'The Smeds and The Smoos' Which we enjoyed reading it and doing activities related to it. 

We talked about the festival of Harvest and tried some new fruits - some that we liked and some that we didn't! we did some vegetable printing.

Our first week 

We have had a great first week at Ash Grange. Look at what we have been doing. We were very brave and had our lunch in the hall - we did very well eating and clearing away our plates. We enjoyed our first PE lesson on Friday too!