Reception class news 15/09/23

And just like that Reception Class, we have completed our first full week in school!

Let's share a little snapshot of our learning...

In our literacy development, we began our daily 'Read Write Ink' phonics sessions where we encountered the sounds: m, a, s, d and t, recognising the letters by sight, practiced saying the sounds then forming them. Taking care to observe the letter size and orientation. We have enjoyed playing lots of Fred games and 'Fred talk' to develop our blending of sounds into words. Fantastic 'Fred talk' Reception class! These speed sound lessons are now on Seesaw for you to watch and consolidate your sound knowledge at home.

Continuing our love of listening to and enjoying a variety of stories, we explored new vocabulary and predicted events and emotions in our communication and language development.

Our mathematical focus has been counting forward and backwards to 3, linking the skill of counting 3 concrete objects to pictorial representations of 3 and then to the abstract numerals 1,2 and 3. To deepen our thinking we explored objects in different sizes and positions to understand that a number is still the same even when it is configured differently.
Progressing onto our journal work, we matched objects to their corresponding numeral and then represented numbers in as many ways as we could think of. A huge thank you for all the number songs posted on Seesaw, the children have enjoyed sharing these across the week.

Our first music session began by listening to 'Celebration' by Kool & the Gang. Some of us had heard the song before and decided that it was a really good song for a disco and it makes everyone want to "get up and dance." Then we explored finding the beat, clapping along to 'pat a cake.' We also did this by marching, hopping and nodding our heads. Finally, we started to learn the song "My name is" celebrating who we are.

With the weather changing this week we observed some of the changes in our outdoor environment, especially the wonder of leaves gently swirling to the ground in the breeze as part of our understanding the world development. Observing that it felt a lot colder than last week, we needed to wear our coats more often too. Discussing that our year has four seasons, we understood that we were beginning to see signs of autumn. After collecting some gorgeous autumn leaves from the field we made some observations drawings of them and explored autumnal colours to paint them.

In our personal, social and emotional development we were introduced to Boris the Robot as part of learning to be 'Heartsmart.' After listening to the story we looked at Boris's tool box, which contained different tools to help us be 'Heartsmart', these included being kind, being a good friend and telling the truth. Finally we made our own tools to be like Boris, we decorated them and stuck them to a tool belt to wear.

Boris says "We are all learning to be Heartsmart"
Bible link "Be careful how you think; your life is shaped by your thoughts." Proverbs 4:23

Continuing with our unit on invasion games as part of our physical development, we warmed up our bodies by playing chain tag game, ensuring we were using our previously learnt dodging skills to avoid being caught. Moving onto our main session, we introduced side galloping to play cat and mouse and then tag where we had to see how many tags belts we could take from the waistband of others whilst trying to dodge our own being taking. We were certainly red and sweaty after this game! Concluding our session, we decided which side we found easier to change the direction of our running and then had a cool drink and cool down. Phew!

Have a great weekend everyone
Mrs Ward and Mrs Wainwright