Reception Class News 07/02/25

Letting Our Light Shine – This Week's Learning Adventures

We have had another exciting week of learning, exploring new ideas, and discovering more about the world around us. Here is what we have been up to!

Mathematical Development
This week, we have been learning about measurement, focusing on length, height, and distance. We used words like longer, shorter, and taller to compare objects. We made sure to line up objects carefully so we could compare them accurately. We also started using non-standard units of measurement with unifix cubes, which helped us understand how we can measure things in different ways.

Literacy Development
We planned and wrote the ending of our superhero story about Joop and her search for a sidekick. We were so surprised to discover that Joop's perfect sidekick had been right under her nose the whole time. It was Nut the dog!
We are becoming fantastic writers. We are remembering to:
Use capital letters at the start of our sentences
Leave finger spaces between our words
Sound out words carefully and finish each sentence with a full stop.

Understanding the World
As this week is International Interfaith Harmony Week, we listened to stories from different faiths that taught us important lessons. On Monday, we listened to the Hindu story of The Blind Men and the Elephant. First, we thought about what it means to be blind. Then, we used toy elephants from our small world area to explore their different parts. As we listened to the story, we realised that each man described the elephant differently because they had only touched one part of it. This helped us learn that people can have different views, and that even if we don't always agree, we should still respect each other's opinions.

On Tuesday, we listened to a Muslim story called The Tiny Ants. In the story, the Prophet Muhammad saw some ants in danger and stopped them from being harmed by fire. We talked about how this teaches us that we are all responsible for looking after God's world and every creature in it, even the tiniest ant.
We shared our favourite stories and explained why we liked them.

On Wednesday we listened to the Sikh story of Duni Chand and the Silver Needle. In the story Guru Nanak shows the townspeople there is always room in the world for more holiness, and that only good deeds go with us to the next world, not money and gold. We have loved listening the different stories and reflected on which one we liked the best and why as well as which values were the most popular in the stories and why.

Later in the week, we made an exciting discovery in our garden! The rain from the day before had frozen overnight. We talked about how the rain had changed state from a liquid into a solid because the temperature was so cold. As the morning sun warmed the ice, we watched it slowly melt back into water.

We wanted to find out how to melt ice the fastest, so we did an experiment with some ice collected from around the garden. We used warm water, cold water, and a little blanket, and we made predictions about what would work best. After timing each method, we found that the warm water melted the ice the quickest. The ice inside the blanket stayed frozen for longer because it was insulated, which means the blanket trapped the cold air. We really enjoyed this experiment because it reminded us of the pinecone experiment we did last week which used warm and cold air to change the scales from open to closed and the reverse action.

Personal, Social & Emotional Development and wellbeing
In HeartSmart this week, we learned that we can show love to others by helping them when they need it. First, we thought about all the people who help us, like our parents, when they help us get ready and comfort us when we are sad or our teachers when they help us to learn. Then, we thought about the ways we help others. We talked about why we help people and realised that helping others is a way to show love. We also know that people help us because they love us too. We enjoyed drawing pictures of ourselves helping someone.

Boris reminded us: "We can show others we love them by helping them when they need help. "We also read a special Bible verse:
"Do not be interested only in your own life, but be interested in the lives of others." – Philippians 2:4

For Children's Mental Health Week 2025, we focused on the theme 'Know Yourself, Grow Yourself.' where we talked about the things that we know we are good at and the things we would like to get better at.

Expressive Arts & Design
In music, we listened to Conga! performed by Miami Sound Machine. It was so exciting that we found it hard to keep our bodies still! We moved in time with the music and tapped our hands on our knees to keep the rhythm.
We listened carefully and talked about the instruments we could hear. We decided that we could hear drums, maracas, a piano, and even a trumpet. Most of us really liked the song because it made us feel happy and made us want to dance. After that, we sang some of the songs we have been learning, including Wind the Bobbin Up, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes. We had lots of fun following the actions while we sang.

Physical Development
This week, we had another fun session with Coach Gabriel. We continued developing our movement skills, building strength and coordination, and having lots of fun while keeping active playing rugby.

This has been another fantastic week of learning, exploring, and letting our light shine! We cannot wait to see what we will discover next week.