We’ve had another fun-packed week in Reception! We’ve continued thinking about Autumn as we head towards Halloween, so have been exploring pumpkins. The children have had the opportunity to dig out the flesh and seeds from a large pumpkin and used the seeds to build the letters we’ve been learning. This kind of activity, though not writing itself, will help children think carefully and slowly about how the letters look which will be useful when writing them. There have also been a selection of different pumpkins around for still life art work and we’ve had some lovely watercolour paintings already! The children also had a great time collecting autumn leaves, twigs and berries to create some transient art inspired by nature.
Our Maths sessions this week have focused on exploring the numbers 1, 2 and 3. The children have looked at different ways that numbers can be represented (pictorially and physically in addition to the numeral) and played around with finding and making these numbers in different ways. We have also practised careful counting out from a larger group to enable children to show these numbers in different ways.
Phonics has seen us continue to rehearse the phonemes s a t p i and n. We have focused particularly on hearing and recognising the sound at the beginning of words (the initial sound) and played around with games that allow the children to practise these in fun and active ways. Outside on the playground the children played a game of “What’s the sound Mr Wolf?” with children only moving when they heard words beginning with a particular sound. Inside the children really enjoyed rolling specially adapted dice and trying to match the letter with an appropriate picture with that initial sound.
As part of our ‘All About Me!’ topic work this week we read the story, ‘Once There Were Giants’ by Martin Waddell and Penny Dale and thought about the different stages of life that we move through as we grow older. As part of this we acted out how it is to be a baby, a toddler and up into old age which was great fun and got us all thinking about how it feels to grow up. We then discussed what it means to be an adult and how you become more independent as you grow up. The children loved discussing different jobs and what they would like to when they grow up. Following this discussion, we had many children dressing up as what they would like to be when they are adults: we had doctors, vets, police officers, fire fighters and a few budding singers strutting their stuff!
Wednesday saw our weekly Reading Buddies session with the children from Class 6. This week the whole school were reading books inspired by Black History Month and everyone had chance to listen to and then discuss a story with the older children.
We’ve had a very very wet Friday, so fingers crossed for a better weekend!
The Reception Team
Dates for the dairy:
Tinshill Drive
Cookridge
Leeds
West Yorkshire
LS16 7DH
0113 386 2500