Reception Class Spring Term - Holy Redeemer Catholic Primary School

“The days of spring are here. Warm, sunny days are

near. Birds in trees, flowers and bees…the days of

spring are here.“

Anon

Week beginning the 28th March

This week Sid the Squirrel delivered a present for Reception Class. It was two versions of ‘The Three Little Pigs’. We have enjoyed listening to both versions and have been discussing the similarities and differences between them. In both stories the pigs built houses out of straw, sticks and bricks.

In pairs, we were given a toy pig and the same challenge – to build a house to keep the pig safe from the huffing and puffing of a big bad wolf (a squeezy bottle or Mrs Taylor!) We talked about what a house needs: a roof, walls and an opening to get in and out; toilets and carpets are just an added luxury! We had to be Collaborative Cats and Persevering Parrots to be successful. We also had fun making some structures for our pigs using marshmallows and straws.

This linked very well with our Maths work on 3D shapes. We have been exploring a range of 3D shapes, making models, hunting for them around the classroom, sorting, describing and naming them, finding out which roll and slide. We are very proud of the 3D shapes we made using the new construction kit.

Week beginning the 21st March

This week we have continued to base our learning around the story of The Enormous Turnip. We explored a range of vegetables and fruit and then used some of the vegetables to make our very own soup. Some of us thoroughly enjoyed the soup – it was delicious! We have continued to act out the story with our peers, re-enacting and reciting some of the repetitive phrases.

On Thursday we went to Blessed Edward Oldcorne for a multi skills festival. We enjoyed a wide range of activities led by the young leaders, including balancing, jumping, throwing, catching, stretching and exploring different ways of travelling.

At Forest School we have been busy planting some trees. We had to measure between the trees to ensure they were 1 metre apart and give them a lot of water. We are looking forward to watching them grow over the next few months and years.

Week beginning 14th March

This week Sid the Squirrel delivered another of his favourite traditional stories – The Enormous Turnip. We have enjoyed acting out the story using stick puppets and ourselves! We also talked about the setting for the story and then compared it to our eco garden. There were lots of differences but also some similarities. Our garden has a pond and frogspawn!

Our role play area has changed to a Farm Shop with lots of flowers and fruit and vegetables to buy.

We have continued our phonics learning through games, including silly questions and board games.

We have also, all been given a ‘Have a go’ writing book – we have thoroughly enjoyed using these and have been busy practising our writing.

In Maths we have been exploring the topic of measurement. We have been using a range of objects to measure things around the classroom and have been learning about the days of the week and finding out what we can do in 30 seconds.

Our History Area has allowed us to continue finding out about the past, looking carefully at non-fiction books and photographs.

After the half term break, Reception Class returned to the classroom to find a letter from the Little Red Hen and some rather floury footprints through the school which led to the discovery of two loaves of bread baking in the oven. The Little Red Hen had asked the class to taste the breads (as long as we left her a slice of each!) to find out how they tasted. We worked in groups to lay the tables and collect the equipment and utensils we needed to butter the bread. We thoroughly enjoyed the bread and we had time to talk with our classmates, having back and forth conversations about our half term adventures.

During our own learning time we have enjoyed making pictures of the characters from the story using 2D shapes, completing hen and farmyard jigsaws, creating kennels and chairs for the characters in the construction area, making the different characters on the creation station, writing letters to the Little Red Hen. We have also enjoyed making our own bread rolls and decorating them with different seeds and at Forest School we made homes for the Little Red Hen. On the Writing Table we found some books with no words! So, we became authors and wrote the text ourselves! We also explored a range of different patterned and sized aprons for the Little Red Hen.

In Maths we have been busy measuring giant footsteps (the Giant from Jack and the beanstalk made an appearance again!), we then drew around our own feet to create a ‘measuring stick’. We found things that were the same size, shorter and longer than our feet.

We have also been learning how to combine two groups of objects and find the total by either counting all the objects or counting on from the larger number.

In phonics we have been reading longer words and words containing double letters through reading and making ‘silly sentences’ and sorting words according to the digraphs and many more activities.

Our trip to the Almonry Museum allowed us to find out about life in the past. We loved exploring the many rooms within the museum and we all enjoyed the school room.

At Forest School we have been looking after the environment and worked together to carry out a litter pick.

World Book Day saw the Year 6 children come into class and read to us, sharing our favourite books and stories we had brought in from home.

Week beginning 7th February

This week started with the discovery of a giant beanstalk growing in Reception Class! Where did it come from? What could be at the top? Some thought a giant, others thought a unicorn or perhaps an ice monster!! We all had great fun climbing the beanstalk and seeing where our imagination took us.

In Maths we have been exploring capacity – filling and emptying containers and investigating which container holds the most.

Another group of children visited the school library to choose a new set of books for us all to enjoy in our classroom. We chose lots of non-fiction books.

At Forest School we were busy planting seeds, refilling the bird feeders and spotting some early signs of spring. What beautiful crocuses!

In our PSHE lesson we thought about Children’s Mental Health Week and what we can do to look after our own mental health. We then spent the afternoon; 1. Talking to an adult about how we feel, 2. Spending time outdoors, 3. Doing things we enjoy, 4. Eating healthy foods, drinking water, exercising and resting and 5. Completing activities away from a screen.

As part of our continuous provision we have been exploring colour mixing to make different shades of green to paint a beanstalk, acting out the story of Jack and the Beanstalk and using tiny seeds to cover the tricky words to help develop our fine motor skills.

Week beginning 31st January

Chinese New Year continued…

This week we were Collaborative Cats to create three giant dragons for our Chinese New Year party.

We also continued with a range of activities linked to China and Chinese New Year. Exploring more artefacts and photographs from China, making drums for our party, threading tigers to give them stripes, making and giving lucky red envelopes, enjoying chinese food and music and having a go at using chopsticks to eat our noodles and spring rolls.

At Forest School this week we made leaf kebabs and developed our gross motor skills by climbing the tree and rolling down the bank!

In Phonics we have been practising reading and writing the tricky words and feeding ‘Mr Hungry’ with words ending in er.

In Maths we have been exploring and comparing mass. We used ourselves as a set of human scales and then used the balance scales to compare the mass of a range of activities.

Chinese New Year

This week we have been finding out about China and Chinese New Year. We have been dancing to Chinese music, looking at artefacts and pictures from China, practising using chopsticks to help develop our fine motor control, making dragon masks on the Creation Station, finding out about Chinese numerals and letters and creating pictures using tangrams.

At Story Club this week (Friday 3.15 – 4.00) we had six books to choose from and we voted for the two books we each wanted to listen to. We read Fabulous Flamingo, The Monster Zoo and The Fish who could Wish. We also enjoyed some yummy hot chocolate and biscuits.

Once Upon A Time….

Week beginning 17th January

This week we have continued using the story ‘The Gingerbread Man’ to base a lot of our learning.

On the Creation Station we have been busy making models of the gingerbread man using reclaimed materials.

In Science we carried out an experiment to see what happened when we put gingerbread biscuits in oil, orange juice, water and vinegar. We used an online timer to remind us to make observations of the biscuits every four minutes. The biscuits in water, orange juice and vinegar went soggy and broke up very quickly, however the biscuit in oil did not absorb the liquid and remained hard.

In Maths we have been exploring the composition of 5 using a range of resources, including bean bags, cubes and interstar pieces.

At Forest School we thought about winter and animals hibernating. We worked in groups to make shelters for the animals.

In Geography, we created maps of the gingerbread man’s journey, selecting the resources we wanted to use to create the different features he ran past.

Week beginning 10th January

This term we are using traditional stories as a starting point for our learning. This week we started our lessons by following a trail of numbered gingerbread men around the school grounds to find this week’s book – The Gingerbread Man. Mrs Barker also left us some maps of our outdoor classroom with ‘X marks the spot’ to find some clues to what we were going to be doing. We worked in pairs and eventually found all the ingredients and equipment to make gingerbread men! We enjoyed making and eating our very own biscuits.

In Maths we have been comparing numbers. In pairs, we played a game, picking a card each and seeing who had fewer and who had more buttons on their gingerbread man.

During our ‘understanding of the world’ afternoon we visited the same three trees in our school grounds to observe how they had changed or stayed the same since autumn.

At Forest School we received a letter from the gingerbread man, enjoyed listening to the story at basecamp, went on a gingerbread man trail and enjoyed some yummy hot chocolate. In PE we put together a sequence of movements to create the gingerbread man’s journey from the oven to the river.