Reception class news 28:01:22

Reception class, what a fantastic way to end another great week with our traditional tale theme day. We looked absolutely fabulous in our character costumes, so a huge thank you to our parents for putting them together for us. Throughout our day we enjoyed playing lots of games linked to our areas of development and enjoyed some very unusual snacks provided by the evil witch; roasted boy, buttered parsnips and boiled beetroot. Thankfully by the power of magic, they tasted like Jaffa cakes, breadsticks, cheeses straws and cup cakes. Phew!

Let's share in our learning...

Physical Development

In our PE lesson we enjoyed carrying on with our gymnastics. We warmed up our bodies by playing a game, we were in an electric car and moved around the hall slowly, whilst in first gear, we moved up to second gear, getting faster and finally third gear we jogged around the hall. We even had to go around roundabouts and over speed bumps! Once we had warmed up our bodies we did some stretching to get ready to begin our gymnastics, we rolled our shoulders, hips and knees slowly together.

We had three different stations to move around, at the first station we were practicing our teddy bear rolls from last week, some of us are really good at this now! At the second station we used some apparatus; the beam as well as the small and medium vault. We learnt how to safely mount the vault and how to do a controlled jump onto the mat. We also practiced balancing along the beam, using our arms out at the side to steady ourselves. The last station was to practice our balancing, we found different ways to balance on our feet and even hands, we tried to think of ways to practice on 4, 3, 2 and even 1 part of our body!

Personal, Social and Emotional Development

In our Heartsmart session Boris has helped us to learn appropriate ways to show care and affection for others. We talked as a group about how we can greet someone who comes into our classroom. We decided some good ways to greet someone are by; saying hello, giving a wave, a handshake, blow a kiss or giving them a hug, we discussed that we should only hug members of our family.

Next we sang the 'hello song' we learnt when we started reception in September, we had a practice to remind ourselves of the words before singing it whilst we played the hello game; we walked around the carpet, greeting others that we met on the way, we used different greetings such as a wave and a handshake. Coincidentally Mrs Chesters came to visit our classroom during our lesson so we were able to practice our greetings for her as well.

Boris says "Greetings are a great way to say we're glad you are here!"
This links with 1 Peter 2:1"We should show respect for all people."

In our wellbeing time, we couldn't wait to join our year 6 buddies to show them our character costumes as we joined them on the daily mile. It was such a joyous moment. For some unknown reason our costumes seem to make us run faster and the sight of big bad wolves tails bobbin around the track and the sound of fun and laughter continues to make this our favourite part of the week.

Expressive Arts and Design Development

In our music session we listened to the song ABC by the Jackson 5. We really enjoyed this song and it made us all want to dance and sing along, we clapped our hands in time with the music. We listened really carefully to see what instruments that we could hear, we decided that we could hear; bells, drums, a guitar, maracas and people clicking their fingers. We found out that the band was called the Jackson 5 because all of the members had the same surname; Jackson. We thought that meant they must all be from the same family, we learnt that they are all brothers.
Next we listened to a different version of a familiar song; 5 little monkeys jumping on the bed, we found out that it was in the style of a rap, we enjoyed singing along and adding some actions as well.

We also got to use some percussion instruments, we learnt that with percussion instruments we have to shake, tap or scrape them to make a sound. Some of the instruments we looked at were a cow bell, maracas, drum, tambour, bell, scraper, triangle and castanets. We all had fun choosing an instrument to play, we then followed Mrs Swan (our conductor) and practiced playing them quietly, getting louder and then stopping altogether. We all got a turn to play the glockenspiel as well, which was very exciting!

Mathematical Development

In our mathematical development our focus for learning was to compare numbers up to 10 and compare groups of objects where the objects differ in size.

We began in our starter session by exploring two groups of objects which were unequal in numbers. Building upon last weeks learning, we practiced subitising the number of the first group of objects and then counted on the number in the second group to find the total number.

In our discover session, we focused on representing numbers of objects within groups where there was a variation in size, using counters. This helped us to explore the misconception that the larger objects must always represent the biggest amount.

In our thinking together session, focused on identifying the group of objects that had more or fewer using counters to represent them, then explaining our answers in full sentences.

In our challenge session, we used ten frames to explore different ways of comparing objects using the variations of size or colour. Grouping objects on the ten frame allowed us to subitise and count on how many they objects there were in total in one group. If the top row in the ten frame was full, we knew we had five as a starting point for counting and then counted on, on the bottom row to find the total number.

In our journal we progressed to identifying the difference between two groups of objects. It was a tricky week of learning and took lots of overlearning to master this concept, but we persevered. Well done reception.

Literacy Development

In our daily phonics sessions we have continued to recap known sounds and explored new sounds in listening, reading and writing activities.

Continuing with our talk for writing, we used our story map to begin writing up key elements in the story. Using our story language that we have developed over the past weeks we were able to say and rehearse the sentence we wanted to write. Using the skills of 'Fred Fingers' developed in our phonics sessions, we could identify the sounds we could hear in words and made good attempts to write words. We ensured that we put a finger space between our words to distinguish them and added a full stop at the end of each sentence. We have reached that wonderful part of the year where all our developed skills and prior learning make these tasks easier so we are extremely happy with our writing outcomes this week. Great job reception!

Language and communication

We were so excited to pick up our story where we left off last week and discover Gretel's plan to trick the evil witch. It was brilliant! She cleverly fooled the witch into thinking Hansel wasn't putting on any weight and then managed to trick the witch into putting her herself in the oven to light it. Hansel and Gretel managed to find their way home with the help of all the wild animals in the forest. Love truly does win in the end and they were reunited with mum and dad, whose spells had been broken. In the words of Luca, 'That was so excited, I want to read it again!'

As part of our theme day we played games 'Who am I?' and 'Name that story.' These games required us to use our listening skills to hear a set of clues and then work out who the character was or which story the plot was from. We certainly know our traditional tales well and had great fun working out the answers.

Thank you for such a fabulous week reception class
See you Monday
Mrs Ward and Mrs Wainwright

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