EYFS – Newsletter – 19.07.24

Well… Reception year has come to an end! We’ve had a lovely last week with the children and got up to all sorts of exciting and fun things.

At the start of the week, we invited the class to draw a self portrait picture and then compared them to the self-portraits they drew at the start of the year in September. 

To keep up the practice of Phonics and Maths this week, the children have all been working through some Summer-themed booklets packed with different activities to help apply all the amazing skills they have learned this year.

On Wednesday morning, the Reception children met up with the Year 5s for a very special reason. All term, the children in Year 5 and 6 have worked together in their DT lessons to produce each of the Reception children a dinosaur ‘worry doll’ which will be there to greet them as they start in their new classes in September. The dinosaur toys are made from felt with added details sew and painted on by the older children as a way to develop their skills with textiles and also great a lovely connection across the year groups. Each child will find their doll waiting for them as they begin their time in Year 1 and will stay with them all year to help them with any worries. 

Thank you so much to everyone who was able to make it to our end-of-year celebration in Reception on Wednesday afternoon. It was a fantastic turn out and the children really loved having the opportunity to play and enjoy Reception together with their grown-ups. 

On Thursday the children were very excited to find that the letters they had written to Dr John Hammond (of Jurassic Park, naturally) had received a reply! The team from Jurassic Park were very grateful for us taking care of the dinosaur egg and wanted to re-assure the children that the missing dinosaurs had been recovered safely (phew!). To thank the children and reward them for their brilliant work, the team left a string of clues that led the children to a dinosaur pinata. The children loved having chance to whack the pinata and upon breaking it were delighted to be rewarded with a shower of golden chocolate coins in a fantastic end to our Dinosaurs topic. 

Thursday also found us revisiting something we planted last half term during our Let It Grow topic. Back then, during a Forest School session we discussed the role of earthworms and how they eat through organic material to help the soil. We had buried a pair of cotton underpants (rumour has it an old pair of Mrs Arnott’s, but I couldn’t possibly comment) and this week we dug them up to see how much they had been eaten. Though not as munched as Mr Gamble had hoped for, the pants definitely showed areas that had been eaten by the creepy crawlies below the ground. 

We’d also like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank everyone for all the kind, thoughtful and generous gifts that we Reception staff have received this week. It has been a wonderful year and we have loved being able to spend such a special time helping these brilliant children learn and explore. We know that they are going on to even more fun times with Mrs Koopman and Miss Devine in Year 1 but we shall miss them all. It is lovely to feel appreciated, so thank you. We’d also like to thank you for your co-operation and enthusiasm in joining in with your children’s learning journeys this year. As with everything, it is a team effort and we are so incredibly proud of how this group of children have flourished and grown this year, making great friends and fabulous memories – and you ought to feel proud of them too!

We hope you all will have a brilliant Summer break and we’ll see you around school in September.

The Reception Team (signing off!)

DATES FOR THE DIARY:

Tuesday 3^rd September – School reopens

Thursday 5^th September – KS1 Meet the teacher meeting 

Friday 6^th October – KS1 Wear your favourite colour day