What a great start to the new term we’ve had in Reception this week! The children have returned from the break with lots of energy and enthusiasm for the term ahead and we have dived straight into our latest topic ‘Let it Grow!’ in which we’ll be looking at all kinds of growth in plants and animals alike. To begin this topic we have used ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ as our focus story. The children enjoyed hearing a couple of different versions of this traditional tale and got stuck into a range of related activities around Reception. There were props available for the children to use to retell the story; we had story maps where children were challenged to put the parts of the story in the correct order; we had some fantastic beanstalk artworks and even a Jack and the Beanstalk boardgame!
Of course, we all also got planting and every child planted their own bean in an individual pot which we shall look after as it (hopefully) grows. The children all started their own ‘bean diary’ too, to record the changes in their plant as it grows. Some children also helped out with preparing out outdoor garden by helping to remove stones and weeds before helping to sow some radish seeds in three neat little rows. We shall be keeping an eye on these in the coming weeks, and watering them as needed (should it ever go thirty minutes without raining in Cookridge, that is!). There was also a curiosity station, where children were invited to explore different fruit and vegetables to look at the different types of seeds they could find.
Our Maths, work this week has extended our number work past ten, investigating the numbers up to 20. The children played around with building blocks and Numicon to show how the composition of these numbers in different ways, as well as filling large tens frames outside to represent the numbers 11-20.
As we concluded learning all the sounds in ‘phase 3’ of our phonics scheme at the end of last term, we shall now be revisiting and embedding the previously learned phonemes and concentrating on building confidence in reading and in sentence writing skills. This week, we revisited some of the phase 3 phonemes in reading and writing exercises and rehearsed recognising some common exception words that cannot be decoded using the learned phonics.
On Wednesday, we enjoyed our regular Reading Buddies session with the children from UKS2. This term we have been paired with Class 8.
Have a lovely weekend!
The Reception Team
Dates for the diary:
Monday 6th May – School closed – Bank Holiday.
Thursday 23rd May – Last day of the half term.
Friday 24th May – School closed – Training Day.
Tinshill Drive
Cookridge
Leeds
West Yorkshire
LS16 7DH
0113 386 2500