A very warm welcome to our Reception class page. 

Reception M staff team: Mrs McGuire, Mrs McGrath, Mrs Donley and Mrs Olisa

Reception W staff team: Miss Ward, Mrs Lee and Miss Jedrach

Wishing all of our Reception children and their families a happy and joyful Christmas! We look forward to seeing everyone back safe and well on Tuesday 5th January. 

Recently we celebrated Friendship week. We all thought carefully about what makes a good friend. In class, we discussed how to treat our friends and how we would like to be treated ourselves; this helped us to think about how we can be better friends to everyone is our class. We each drew a picture of something we enjoy doing with our friends and then we joined these strips of paper together to make a friendship chain to display in class.

Questions to ask your child:

Who are your friends?

What do you like to do with your friends?

How should we treat our friends?

In Reception, we look at different types of festivals and celebrations throughout the year. We have been learning about Diwali also known as the 'Festival of Light'. Firstly, we looked at the traditions of the festival, the story of Rama and Sita, and how families celebrate together. We then decided that we would have our own Diwali party, so we gave the classroom a spring clean and decorated it with handmade decorations. Using salt dough, we made our own Diva lamps and finally made some delicious Diwali sweets to enjoy at the party. 

Questions to ask your child:

Have you ever celebrated anything before?

Do you know anybody that has celebrated Diwali?

What noises can fireworks make?

What are your favourite colours?

Over this first term, we have been focusing on the season of autumn. We have been on an autumn walk and spotted the things that have changed around us such as the colour of the leaves, the conkers on the ground and the shorter days. We have also been learning about what food is collected during the harvest and why this food has to be collected before the winter. We will continue to look at the changes as the season progresses.

UPDATE: We have recently had the opportunity to make our own vegetable soup using harvest vegetables. We had to listen carefully to learn how to prepare the different vegetables, including washing, peeling and chopping. The  adults helped us to cook our soup and then we all helped to taste it! It was delicious and helped us to warm up on a cold, rainy day!

Before we had chopped everything up to make our soup, we made some careful observational drawings of the vegetables, paying close attention to their size and shape and trying our best to control our pencil whilst drawing. After eating the soup, we didn't want any left over vegetables to go to waste, so we used them to explore printing patterns with paint.

We have also been learning how different animals prepare for Winter during Autumn by collecting food and finding a safe place to hibernate. We thought about how sad it would be if the animals couldn't find enough food and about how we might be able to help. We worked in teams to create some special bird feeders and, during our Forest School sessions, we took them out to hang around the school grounds and school garden.

Why not try this activity at home? Follow the steps below:

(remember that an adult must help throughout this activity)

Questions to ask your child:

What colour have the leaves turned?

What vegetables might be collected during the harvest?

Do you have a favourite vegetable?

What season is after Autumn?