Reception Class News 25/11/22 and 02/12/22

Reception Class, this has been a busy week as we have been making preparations for our retelling of the greatest story, Jesus' birth. We have been making our donkey ears, signs for the inn and Bethlehem and recording all our songs that we have been practicing over the past few weeks. We can't wait until next week where we record all our acting scenes in readiness to share with you.

Let's share in the rest of our learning...

Understanding the world Development:Continuing with the theme of nativity, in our RE we have recalled the nativity story from last week and sequenced the story in the correct order as they happened using pictures. We imagined the different scenes and how the characters felt at different parts of the story and what they might have been thinking about Jesus. We have created our own story board which we will then add the character thoughts next week.

Literacy Development:This week we were very excited to receive a letter from the little red hen. News travels fast around these parts and she had heard that we had made some delicious apple crumbles last week. She asked us for a list of ingredients and a set of instructions. What a stroke of luck, last week in our writing activity we wrote our shopping list of ingredients and this week we are writing up some simple instructions with actions words, cut, chop, mix and put to begin our sentences with. We will send then as quickly as possible, as we hear she plans to serve it to dog, cat and mouse this weekend!

Mathematical Development:Our mathematical focus this week has been to consolidate our knowledge of the part whole model we explored last week and independently split a whole number into two parts. We know this does not mean share equally, as we can confidently split the same whole number in different ways. We have also begun to explain our findings in full spoken sentences, we can tell you, it's harder to do than it sounds!

Language and Communication Development:This week we have been rehearsing our spoken parts for retelling the Nativity story. We are beginning to feel more confident about increasing the volume of our voices so an audience can hear. Wait to you hear our singing, we are very proud of how we sound.

Yesterday saw us unwrap the first of our 12 days of Christmas books. We so enjoy our story time each day and it has been lovely to receive these special books to share. Today's story was 'How to hide a lion at Christmas.'

Physical Development:Last week in our dance we learnt to create shapes, movements and actions from pictures. Warming up our bodies, we worked in pairs to create dance actions using our fundamental stepping patterns from the previous weeks. After our warm-up we played corners, where we danced in a space until the music stopped, then we ran to a corner which had a picture of a jungle animal where we performed the action to match the picture. Then we paired up and travelled around the hall, when the music stopped, we tried to hold an identical pose for different animals, focusing on good balance, posture and flexibility.

This week we have continued with our jungle dance unit. After warming up to down in the jungle, we played night-time in the jungle, where we pretended to sleep on the jungle floor, as a jungle animal was called out, we woke up and pretended to be in. When the music stopped, we got back down on the floor, back to sleep. This helped us to demonstrate our flexibility, body extensions, balance and posture.

Personal, Social, Emotional Development and Wellbeing:Last week in our heart smart we learnt that we are all special. We started our session by talking about why Boris the Robot is special, because he has a heart, we know that the family love Boris just for being himself. We sat in a circle and sang, "Twinkle twinkle little star, you are special as you are" we took turns to sit in the middle of the circle while the class sang the song, then the children in the outer circle said something that was special about the child in the middle of the circle.
Boris says, "We are all special."
Bible link "A sweet friendship refreshes the soul." Proverbs 27:9

This week in heart smart we learnt to tell other people about us and the things that we like.
At the start of the session, we looked at a bag that the teacher had filled with things that tell the class all about her. Then we took turns to go around the classroom and choose three things that would tell someone else about them. We then took it in turns to share what we had chosen with the rest of the class and explain why they have chosen those things.
We talked about how no two bags are the same as no two people are the same that we are all different and have different likes, talents and interests.

Boris says,"We all like different things."
Bible link "Every good and perfect gift is from above." James 1:17

Have a lovely weekend everyone
See you on Monday
Mrs Ward and the reception team,
Mrs Wainwright and Louise