Reception Class news 30:09:22

And just like that, another week has flown by !
Reception class you have been very buzzy bees again.
Let's share our learning...

Mathematical Development

Our mathematical learning focus this week has been counting to 5. Building upon our previous learning from week 1 and 2 we used the same counting principles to represent numbers up to 5 in concrete and pictorial ways as well as linking an amount to the numerals 1,2,3,4 and 5.

Reflecting on our weeks learning, we completed our journal work by drawing a picture of a 5 party: 5 balloons, 5 candles, 5 plates, 5 guest and 5 party hats.

Literacy Development

In our literacy development we have continued with our daily Read Write Ink phonics sessions. This week we have practiced reading and writing the sounds: g, o, c, k and u. Fred our phonics frog has joined us again each day, as we have helped him orally blend sounds into words. In our word time we are beginning to identify the first, middle and ending sounds in words and to make them up with letters.

Communication and Language Development

This week we have innovated a new story from our Mr Gumpy story map. We explored how to change the main character, the setting and the ending. Using post it notes we added our changes and reread the new story to see if it made sense. When we were happy with our changes we created a new story map and shared our new version.

Physical Development

In our PE session we learnt to confidently move around safely in a designated space, beginning by warming up our bodies playing a game of chain tag; two children were the first taggers and whilst holding hands they have to catch the rest of us, who once caught joined the chain. We really enjoyed this game and it got our muscles warm for the next part of our lesson.

Next we played a game of cat and mouse, this was great fun! We joined up with a partner and one of us was the cat and the other a mouse, the cat had to try and catch the mouse, who ran away and used our dodging skills to make it harder to be caught. If the mouse was caught then we swapped over roles.

Finally we played a game of tag, we each had a ribbon which was tucked into the side of our shorts, the aim of the game was to run around the hall and try to take others tags, and we then tucked the tag into our shorts as well. The person with the most tags at the end was the winner.

To cool down we followed happy breathing meditation whilst lying down to calm and still our bodies.

A big thank you to Mr Dale, who organised us a fantastic tae kwon-do session with Master Wright today.We learnt that Tai Kwon Do is a form of martial arts.Master Wright showed us how to walk and stand tall like a martial artist! We also learnt some punching and kicking techniques.

Understanding the World Development

Upon noticing a change in the weather this week we have begun to explore the season of Autumn. When walking around the school grounds we noticed we noticed the change in the colour of the leaves on plants and trees and that some leaves had already fallen to the ground. In the orchard we discovered the apples were ready for picking. Back in class we watched a short clip of a combine harvester at work in the field cutting down the wheat. After reading Williams Bee's wonderful world of tractors from our reading challenge basket we understood the role of farm machines in helping to cut, gather and collect produce from farms at this time of year. We understand that Christians like to say thank you to God for the harvest to recognise his wonderful creation of our earth and how it helps provide for us.

This year in Reception Class, we will be supporting The Nantwich Foodbank again for our courageous advocacy. We have made a short video for our families on Seesaw to explain more and we would like to invite any families who are able to support us in collecting items. Our collection point is in the conservatory.

Personal, Social, Emotional Development and Wellbeing

This week in our heart smart session we learnt to work and play cooperatively together and to listen to one another's ideas and adapt a strategy.

We began by rereading our Boris the robot story, paying special attention to what Boris looked like, as our challenge was to build our own Boris.

After reading the story, as a group, we shared our thoughts and ideas about what Boris looks like and what materials we could use to build our own robot.
Next we worked in small groups so that we all had a part to play in building our class Boris. We painted boxes for Boris's head and body, cut out shapes for his eyes, nose and mouth, folded paper for his arms and legs and stuck bottles on for his ears!

We think he looks great and hope you do too!
Boris says "It's fun to pretend to be someone else but being yourself is the best you can be!"

Bible link: "Love one another as I have loved you." John 15:12

In our 'My happy Mind' session we practiced happy breathing meditation. We are learning different ways we can look after our brains and how happy breathing can help. We though about the times that we might use our happy breathing such as when we feel sad or angry and how it can help us to feel calm.

We were very excited to spend some time with our year 6 buddies this week too, sharing some of our wonderful reading challenge books. Thank you year 6, you are inspiring role models for us.

Creative Arts and Design

As part of our theme 'Wonderful me' we drew a self-portrait using mirrors to identify our facial features. We started by looking at our face shape and drawing this first, then we positioned our eyes at each side. We observed that our eye brows were roughly the same height on our face as the tops of our ears so this helped us position them well on our face and then we drew our eyes underneath.

We did find drawing our noses a bit tricky, but we know our brain remembers new learning and it will get easier the more we practice. Then we drew our mouths and then added our hair.
After a delicate application of watercolour paint, we are extremely pleased with them. Everyone who has walked into our room has been amazed by them. They look fabulous!

This week in music we started our lesson by listening to 'Sing' by The Carpenters. This was a song that split the group, some of us liked it and some of us weren't too sure.

We spoke about how the song started off quietly and calmly before becoming a little bit louder and faster. Most of us said that we liked the more upbeat part of the song as we said it sounded happy in comparison to the first part which some of us said it made us feel a bit sad.

In our next part of the lesson we continued our work on keeping the beat, we really enjoyed coming up with different ways to keep the beat to different songs.Finally we started to learn our new song 'This Old Man' we sang this together and added some actions to help us to remember the words, we can't wait to carry on learning the rest of the song next week.

Have a wonderful weekend
Mrs Ward
and the reception team
Mrs Wainwright and Louise