Reception Class News 24:06:22

It has been a very exciting week in our Reception Class as we have welcomed some new visitors to our classroom. We are now the very proud custodians of ten tiny, hungry caterpillars that we will care for over the coming weeks as they grow, pupate and metamorphosis into butterflies.

Let's share in our learning...

Understanding the World Development

This week we began to explore the lifecycles of some of our favourite minibeasts using prior life experiences and learning as our starting point to help us prepare for caring for our tiny caterpillars. We understood that some insects start life as an egg and transform themselves through different stages to become an adult insect like the butterfly. We then demonstrated this with models of an egg, a caterpillar, a pupa and a butterfly, rotating them around to demonstrate how the cycle evolves. Each day as we have shared minibeast facts, we have been really surprised how short the lifespan of some minibeast are considering their importance in our world. Like the honey bee, who travels amazing distances to make 1 jar of honey and only lives for up 6 months!
We will keep you updated with how our caterpillars are doing as they have already grown and doubled in length in the past few days!

Communication and Language Development

As we have explored lifecycles this week we have encountered and explored new scientific and mathematical words like pupa and pupate, metamorphosis and symmetry. We have particularly enjoyed sharing and discussing many of our fact books about minibeast this week in our storytelling time, especially how to charm worms from the ground. Anyone heading to the worm charming championship in nearby Willaston this weekend , we have some handy tips!

Expressive Arts and Design

In our music session with Mrs Swan we enjoyed singing, beginning by warming up our voices with one of our new songs "Barney Bear is walking." Standing in a circle, we chose different ways for Barney to get to the park, coming up with lots of different ideas including jumping, hopping, skipping and jogging. Then we learnt a new song all about birds, including parrots, hummingbirds, duck owls and even an emu! It was such a great song and we all really enjoyed singing it. We even learnt how to begin to read music, the last part of each verse of our song was always the same so the we found out that the notes never change. We really can't wait to share the songs we have been learning at our Teddy Bears Picnic at the end of term.

Physical Development

In PE we made the most of the warm weather and enjoyed an outdoor session continuing our sports day practice! We made sure we were sun smart, taking our water bottles and sitting in the shade, whilst sitting we talked about what we have been learning so far about sports day, recapping that when we run we make sure we are looking forwards, using our arms to help move us forwards faster and trying to use high knee. Then we completed a 100 metre race in groups of four, understanding that when running a race we each have a lane that we stay in throughout the race. Finally we ran a relay race in teams of four, understanding that we each run a part of the race before tagging the next team member to run the next part.

We had great fun and can't wait for sports day!

Personal, Social and Emotional Development

This week Boris, our HeartSmart robot, has been helping us learn that we should keep trying when something is difficult. Reminding ourselves of some of the difficulties Boris encountered in his story we took time to discuss how he felt and how with the love of his friends he overcame them.
Then taking turns to consider somethings that we find tricky, we thought about strategies we could use to help us in the future; like keep trying, asking a friend for help and asking a teacher or our parents for help.
Boris says 'Everyone needs help sometimes.'
In 2 Chronicles 15:7 says 'Don't give up, because you will get a reward for your good work.'

Mathematical Development

To support our mathematical development we have continued to explore composing and decomposing shapes to consolidate our understanding how large shapes can be decomposed into smaller shapes, identifying various shapes and sizes of 'hidden' shapes in images. Exploring our class environment we understood that different shapes objects can be combined to make something different and bigger, such as bricks in a wall and tiles on the wall. We understand this concept well when constructing with Duplo and wooden blocks as we can combine different shapes of block to construct a bigger structure.

Literacy Development

In our daily phonics sessions, we have continued to consolidate our set 2 sounds and revisited 'ir' 'ou' and 'oy' special friend sounds. We continue to be proud of how we can quickly read and write words in sentences containing these sounds. We have reached that wonderful time of the year where all our previous hard work bears fruit and everything becomes suddenly easier. Your lights are well and truly shining reception class.

For our writing activity we independently wrote some fantastic sentences to explain the four stages of the butterflies life cycle.

Next week we are very much looking forward to celebrating the 200 bicentenary, or birthday as we like to say in Reception, of our amazing school.

Have a lovely weekend everyone
Mrs Ward and Mrs Wainwright