Reception Class News 24/11/23 and 01/12/23

It's been a busy few weeks Reception Class, let us share our news...

Last week in our mathematical development we continued to explore and enjoy counting activities to determine how many objects we had all together. We understood that the last number in our count told us the total number. We practiced our 1:1 correspondence skills, counting numbers at the same time as moving or tagging objects.

This week we focused on finding one less than a given number within five, using concrete objects and pictures to help us. Using role play, first, then and now stories, we explored one less stories focusing on crossing out, not rubbing out, to represent our one less pictorially.

Over the past two weeks in our literacy development, we have completed our independent writing of a finding story 'Star in a jar'. Building upon our prior knowledge, that the story was made up of four parts, we carefully planned each part with a planning circle, using objects, pictures and key phrases to remind us what to include in our writing. Using these, we then wrote up our four parts, using sentence openers, capital letters, fingers spaces, and full stops. Reception class, you have blown everyone's socks off with your writing skills these past two weeks. A huge well done, I am so proud of you.

Last week, in our understanding the world development, we began to explore the different types of house and homes that we live in. We identified some similarities and differences in their features and looked at the different sizes and the number of levels or floors they had.

These observations of houses helped our expressive arts and design development as we explored the artist Paul Horton, who paints different styles of houses and homes. We discussed his use of colour and discovered his secret symbol of a wisp of smoke shaped like a heart coming out of the chimney. Paul believes that home is where you are loved the most and so adds a heart to his pictures. Recycling some old cardboard boxes of differing sizes, we covered them in parcel paper, then painted them in paint shades similar to Paul's artwork. Using art straws we created the window panes and doors to add on. They looks very stylish and have created a wonderful little street of different style houses.

Continuing our RE unit of work, we explored why Jesus was such a special baby. Using different nativity story books we compared the pictures of babies today and ones from when Jesus was born, looking for similarities and differences. We then sequenced pictures of the nativity and thought about the parts of the story we liked best and which parts of the story was most important and why.

In our physical development we continued with our exploration of dance. Last week we added more moves to our rock and rock style nursery rhymes, with twists and turns focusing on using the heel or toe of our feet to complete the turns. This week we completed a ballet style yoga session and enjoyed our session with Coach James.

Last week in our wellbeing time, we explored what makes us unique from our friends in class. Some of us talked about our different features, like hair and eye colour whilst others thought about some character qualities we thought we had and showed to our family and friends. It made us feel happy to know we are all wonderfully made and equally loved.

This week, we thought about things we miss, like mummy and daddy when we are at school and then played I spy for our wellbeing activity. We know That playing brain-games is a great way to keep our brain healthy and happy.

As today is the first day of December, it was lovely to put up the class Christmas tree and add all the home made decorations. A huge thank you to our families for helping with this. As a school, we are thinking how we can reduce, reuse and recycle waste products, to minimise the amount sent to landfill as part of our courageous advocacy project this year. It was lovely to see the inventive way, throw away items were made into such beautiful decorations. Well done Reception Team!

Have a lovely weekend everyone
See you on Monday
Mrs Ward and Mrs Wainwright