Reception Class News 06: 01: 2023

Welcome back Reception Class and a Happy New Year.
It has been lovely to be back as a class and begin our new topic of 'Time Travel' and traditional tales.

In ourPersonal, Social, Emotional Development and Wellbeing we have focused on understanding thankfulness in our 'My Happy Mind' session as we listened to the story of 'Arabella and her friends visit the seaside. 'In the story a little girl lives by the seaside and is excited that her friends are coming over to stay, they live in the countryside which we know is different to the seaside. At the end of the story when it's time for her friends to leave Arabella is sad, however they remind each other of the fun they had and that they can look forward to their next play date together. Arabella is thankful to her mum and dad for arranging for her friends to come over for the day.

After the story we talked about what it means to be thankful and talked together about some of the things that we are thankful for.

In Heartsmart this week we started our new topic, Too Much Selfie isn't Healthy!

We learnt that there are special things we like to do with special people. We started the session by sitting in a circle, in the middle of the circle were a family of dolls. We went round the circle and took in turns to choose a doll to represent someone that we love, we then told the class what we like to do with this person. We all love lots of different people including our mums, dads, siblings, cousins and grandparents. We discovered we like to play with the people we love as well as have sleep overs with them and help them at home.

We finished the session by drawing a picture of us doing what we like with the person that we love.
Boris says, "It is fun doing things with the people we love."
Bible link "I have not stopped giving thanks to God for you. I remember you in my prayers." Ephesians 1: 16

For our Physical Development we started our new topic for this term, Gymnastics!

We started the session with a gentle warm up, we learnt that it is important to stretch our muscles to warm them up before we perform any gymnastics moves. Next we warmed up our bodies by moving around the hall as different animals, we hopped like rabbits, leaped like frogs, stomped like elephants and slithered like snakes. Once our bodies and muscles were warmed up we learnt how to safely carry PE equipment, in small groups we worked as a team to move the mats into a space in the hall.

During the main part of our session we looked at different ways of rocking, this included a dish rock on our front and back. It was quite tricky and we learnt that we needed strong muscles in our tummy to help us with the rocking. Next we talked about what makes a good balance; arms stretched out to the sides, looking forwards and taking our time. We took in turns to balance along the beam and jump at the end. We all did really well!

In our Literacy Development we explored our talk for writing story this term 'The Gingerbread Man.'

We understand that traditional tales were told a long time ago and passed down in families before they were printed stories in a book. They are usually set in the countryside as that is how most people from the past earned their living, as farmers.
This week we have enjoyed listening to the story and joining in with the repeated phrases. Next week we will build upon this make a story map an read our story maps with Makaton actions.

In our Understanding the World Developmentwe joined Mr Hadfield and our Year 6 buddies for our first forest school session. We began by exploring some animals and insects that are in our local environment: foxes, sheep, frogs and dragonflies through their skulls and preserved bodies.

We then explored examples of habitats when a woodpecker and fungi would live and survive.

After listening to the story 'Peck, peck, peck' we were set a challenge to create a habitat for Buzz Lightyear. As an astronaut Buzz would have survival training in case his rocket came down. We needed to create a secure fence around his camp with a path entrance, a dry shelter, a warm comfortable bed, a toilet area away from the sleeping area, a fire for warmth and a place to sit.

Working with our buddies we set about making our Buzz survival camps. they were very impressive!

In our Expressive Arts and Design Developmentwe looked at the artist Paul Horton and some of his artwork based on houses. We observed the different ways he uses colour in his painting, some were brightly painted with primary colours, others were muted and used shades of grey that evoked a sense of wartime and some used pastel colours. In our discussions and comparisons of his work, we noticed that he puts a little heart shaped smoke trail from chimneys and understood this was his little message that home is where we feel loved the most with the people that love us the most. We chose some of our favourite paintings and made attempts to draw and paint in a similar style.

In music this week we listened to 'We Are Family' by Sister Sledge, we all really enjoyed this song as we said it sounded happy and like we could dance to it. Some children said it made them happy as it made them think of their own families and others said they had heard it before on the radio.
We started to look at some nursery rhymes and songs including wind the bobbin up and if your happy and you know it. We talked about about how these nursery rhymes have actions, we then enjoyed learning the actions and singing along as a group. We practiced them a few times before performing wind the bobbin up! We think we did a great job and hope you enjoy it.

Have a fantastic weekend and we will see you on Monday.
Mrs Ward and the Reception team, Mrs wainwright and Louise.