Reception have been learning about the life-cycle of a butterfly through reading ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ by Eric Carle and observing actual caterpillars in each classroom. We watched them as they grew bigger and longer and eventually formed into cocoons. During the holiday the butterflies hatched from the cocoons and we released them into the wild. 

Before the holiday each class learnt the process for how to make food. RP made sandwiches, RB made popcorn and RL made porridge. It was a fantastic chance for children to learn about food and think about processes. Once they had made their food they went on to write instructions for another class to follow.

We all had an excellent time at Hatton Farm. The children enjoyed a range of activities which included feeding and petting different animals, a tractor ride, outside climbing frame play and indoor soft play. At lunchtime we all sat together and enjoyed our packed lunches and chatted with our friends before we headed back out to continue with various farm activities. Needless to say, we were all feeling tired and sleeping during the coach ride home due to the excitement and the busy schedule but we all made long lasting memories.

Summer Term

Welcome back to school for our Summer Term; your child's last term in Reception before they move to year one.

We have lots of exciting things happening this term:

• A trip to Hatton Country World to visit the farm, ride a tractor, feed and hold some of the animals.
• Our caterpillars will arrive. Over the space of two weeks we will watch them turn into their chrysalis before they become beautiful butterflies and we release them in our garden.
• Our ants will arrive for our ant farms. We will observe them tunneling in the sand and building their own habitat.
• We will take a visit to the Junior Garden to observe the tadpoles and frogs.
• We will go for a picnic.
• We will all participate in Sports Day.

This is a fun and exciting term where we learn lots, but we still need lots of help at home; reading our books, practising our writing, and recognising our sounds. At the end of the term we will find out who our Year 1 teacher will be and we will spend some time getting to know them.

A few things to remember:

• Ensure your child's PE kit is in school.
• Remember to send your child's book bag every day.
• As we near Summer the children will need to have suncream applied before they come to school, and they will need a summer hat. They will need cooler clothes, our classrooms get very warm in the summer.
• Our pick up time is at 2:55pm. We understand the area around school is busy but please try and be on time to pick your child up. The gate to Anglesey Street opens at 2:50pm. 

Thank you for your ongoing support.

Reception Staff

Ducklings

We were very lucky to have a special delivery on Monday 18th March; 5 duck eggs and an incubator were delivered to school. We watched and waited for two days and overnight 3 ducklings hatched. On Wednesday we moved the ducklings into their new home, and by Friday their other two brothers or sisters joined them.

We've learnt all about why ducks have webbed feet and their special feathers which keep them warm. We've held, cuddled, stroked and watched our little feathery friends swim.

On Thursday 28th March we had to say goodbye to our new friends as they head to their new farm in the north of England where they will lay eggs for their new family.

Handa's Surprise 

We have been reading Handa's Surprise as our Talk for Writing book this term. We've learnt lots about Africa and why certain fruits can grow there but not in England. This week, we tried pineapple, banana, guava, passionfruit, tangerine, orange and mango. Some of us enjoyed all of them, some of us thought the passionfruit was too sour, but we all loved the juicy orange!!

Circus Skills with Flip

On Tuesday 12th March, we had a special visitor in Reception. Flip the Clown came back to our school to teach us lots of different circus skills. We learnt how to juggle, balance on on a standing see-saw, control a diablo and spin plates. We had so much fun. 

World Book Day

On Thursday 7th March, it was World Book Day. In Reception we have been reading 'Walking Through the Jungle' so we all dressed up as animals from the story.

West End Theatre

On Tuesday and Wednesday this week, West End Theatre visited our school. In Reception, we have been learning the story 'Where the Wild Things Are', and we got to dance and act out the story.

Pancake Day

This week we learnt about Shrove Tuesday, and the tradition of making pancakes. We all took part in making the batter and watched our teachers cook and flip them. We got to choose the topping for our pancake - jam, lemon and sugar or golden syrup.

January Newsletter

Dear Parents,

Thank you for your ongoing support, it’s great to see the children are now so settled and making progress. We’ve had a lovely start to 2019, with a visit from Flip the clown and visiting the Nursery Garden. Over the next few weeks, we should have our new nature garden up and running in our outdoor classroom, and we have exciting upcoming events including World Book Day.

Here are a few reminders to keep things running smoothly:

• Our doors open at 2:55pm to dismiss your children at the end of the day. This is for safeguarding reasons to stagger the dismissal times throughout the school, and for your convenience so you have enough time to pick up siblings in different year groups. As we only have a small area outside our classrooms, we ask you for continued patience as we dismiss.
• We do PE every week. As your children are still little, we understand getting changed can be difficult for them. Please remember clothes that are easy to change from will support your child’s learning on this day. This includes earrings, which should not be worn during PE, so please don’t send them in with earrings on that day.
• If your child has lost anything in school, we store it in the lost property box which you can access when all children have been sent home. If it isn’t there, we will endeavour to find it. Children should not be bringing extra things into school, including toys and lip balm. 

Please don’t forget to check the Reception page, on our website, we update it with lots of pictures and information about things we have been doing in class.

Parents evening will be on Wednesday 27^th February from 3:30 – 6:00pm, however, RL’s parents evening will be on Wednesday 13^th February from 3:30 – 6:00pm. You will be able to book appointments beforehand.

Kind regards,

Reception Staff

Lesson Study - Ice

This week, we got to take part in a lesson study. A lesson study is where all of the teachers and teaching assistants in the year group plan a lesson together based on a topic, one teacher teaches it to their class, whilst everybody else observes the children to see what they get out of it. 

We have been reading Owl Babies, and had to help Mummy Owl melt the ice to get the worms for her Babies. We had lots of different resources to melt the ice and needed to find the most effective.

Flip the Clown

Flip the clown came to visit this week, and what fun we had! He performed a puppet show to us with lots of different characters who had different personalities and voices. Flip taught us how to use the puppets and we got to explore with lots of different ones. We created names and personalities for them, and worked on showing their emotions. 

Winter

Learning about the seasons is a big part of our curriculum so we took the opportunity to visit the Nursery garden and compare it to our last visit in Autumn. We found the leaves from the trees were now brown and decaying, and the ground was very damp. We know this is a great place for bugs to hide so we turned over lots of tree trunks and looked under pots to find worms and woodlouse. We even found a spider hiding in a tree which was shedding it's bark, and realised the spider has laid lots of eggs. 

Class Role Play

Every half term we change the role play area in our classroom to something new. We always give our ideas to our teachers beforehand, and plan what we would like. This term we have: a hairdressers in RL, witches and wizards in RP and a grocery shop in RB.

It's such an important part of our learning and really supports skills such as speaking, team work and imagination.

Christmas Craft Workshop

Our parents were invited in to school to help us make our party hats for the Christmas party. We worked together adding feathers, stickers and sequins to make our hats party ready! We love it when our Mummy's and Daddy's get involved. 

Christmas

We had a fantastic time in school before Christmas. We performed our new Nativity - A Wriggly Nativity to our parents and other children in our school and loved dressing up in our costumes.

We had a special visitor come to Reception and give us Christmas presents as we'd been such good little boys and girls all year.

We enjoyed our Christmas party dressed up in our party clothes, eating cakes and crisps, and we played pass the parcel and musical statues. 

Our first week full time...

As the children are now in school full time we have started our daily lessons.

Every day the children will take part in short Phonics and Maths sessions.

On a Monday we will change the children's reading books, so please make sure they have their book and red book bag in school. We will read with them during the week, and encourage you to do so at home too. 

We will start PE this week so every child needs their red PE bag in school with a white shirt and blacks shorts inside. The PE timetable is:

Monday - RB

Tuesday - RP

Thursday - RL

Please note, if your child has their ears pierced and wears earrings to school, they need to be removed for PE. We would prefer it if you didn't send them to school wearing their earrings on a PE day. If they do have earrings we will tape them, and there is a form you will need to sign.

Welcome back for the start of our new school year.

Over the year we will be adding to this page to show you everything we've been up to. There will be photos of the children's experiences, information about upcoming events, photos and information about any trips and dates for parent workshops.

We're really looking forward to starting the school year and getting the children settled into their new routine. In a few weeks we will be organising a parent workshop to discuss our class routines and what you can do to help your children at home. If we work together we can give the children the best possible chance of working at age related expectations and achieving their targets.

Please can we remind parents to be patient in the morning at drop off, and afternoon during pick up as it is our priority to make sure your children are safe.

Our Reception classes and staff this year are:

RP: Mr Pendry (Teacher) &  Miss Mahmood (Teaching Assistant)

RL: Miss Lee (Teacher) & Mrs Satnam (Teaching Assistant)

RB: Miss Bradbury (Teacher) & Mrs Chohan (Teaching Assistant)

If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask your child's teacher.

Let's have a great year