Reception Class News 22/11/24

What a fantastic snowy week, Reception Class!

We have truly made the most of this wintery weather, enjoying every moment in the snow. From making snow angels and snowmen to chasing our friends and hearing the satisfying crunch of snow underfoot, it has been so much fun.

However, the cold weather has slowed down progress on our garden makeover, but we have been cheering on the workers with warm drinks to help them keep going. We cannot wait to see the final results of our new track and play area next week!

And so to our learning...
Mathematical Development
This week, we focused on the concept of one more within numbers up to 5. Using role-play and the "first, then, and now" story structure, we explored how adding one more works. We discovered that the next number we count is always one more than the previous number, an exciting step forward in our mathematical learning!

Literacy Development
We have been working hard on planning and writing the opening and build up sections of our story. Our focus was on becoming more independent with our writing by:

• Rehearsing sentences aloud before writing.
• Counting words in the sentence.
• Using "Fred fingers" to count and write the sounds in words.
• Re-reading our sentences to check they make sense.

You are all making fantastic progress and should be so proud of how confident and capable you are becoming as writers. Keep it up, Reception Class!

Language and Communication Development
Our Christmas story preparations are in full swing! We have been practicing and recording our narrations, learning how narration helps move the story along. We broke the story into parts /scenes and are so excited to act out our roles next week. We cannot wait to share the finished Christmas movie with our families!

Physical Development
With Coach Gabriel, we worked on throwing, catching, and rolling a ball, as well as practicing different jumps like star jumps and tuck jumps just like Yan, the character from our story. We also explored hopping and skipping. What a fun and active week!

Personal, Social, and Emotional Development
In Heartsmart, Boris helped us understand that we are special. We placed our hands on our chests to feel our heartbeats and discussed how our hearts do an important job pumping blood around our bodies to keep us alive. The heart is often where we experience our feelings. Using emotion cards, we explored how our faces and body language express different feelings and talked about which emotions we like to feel most.
Boris says: "When our hearts are happy, we are happy."
Bible Verse: A happy heart is like good medicine. (Proverbs 17:22)

During wellbeing time, we reflected on what we are most proud of. We learned that feeling proud happens when we try our best and achieve something special. Some things we are proud of include:

• Working hard at school.
• Trying our best in swimming lessons.
• Making progress with our writing.

We celebrated these achievements with a smile.

Understanding the World
Continuing with our key question, "How do Christians celebrate Jesus's birthday? We compared two dolls, one dressed in a modern day baby clothes with lots of lovely things that new born babies need and another that was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger with straw. This stark contrast helped us understand the part of the story where Jesus was born in a stable. We then discussed how we celebrated our own birthdays and compared it to how Christmas is celebrated as Jesus's birthday. Finally, we created a story basket with costumes and props to help us retell the Nativity story.

Expressive Arts and Design Development
This week's music session started with "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" by Elton John and Kiki Dee. We enjoyed hearing the male and female voices together, and some of us recognized the song from the radio. Then, we turned our attention to our Nativity songs, practicing the words and actions. It is getting very exciting as we prepare for our big performance!

Reception Class, you have worked so hard this week and have had so much fun along the way. From snow play to Nativity preparations, you are truly letting your lights shine brightly!

Have a restful weekend
Mrs Ward