It’s been a full and fun-packed week again in Reception! We have continued our topic of ‘Let it Grow’ by tending to our plants and checking on their progress, despite the Spring weather proving reliably unreliable. The children have added to their bean diary booklets to record the progress since planting their bean last week, and we are starting to see small seedlings from the radish seeds we planted outside too. We also built a small-world play set up to roleplay the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff. To create a meadow of ‘fresh green grass’ the children all helped to sprinkle cress seeds and helped to keep them watered all week as they sprouted. The children have then been tasked with building a bridge to help the goats cross the river (and avoid the troll!) to reach the new growth! Of course these were toy goats, our Cookridge goats Doughnut and Nigel did make a cameo on our nature walk during Thursday’s Forest Schools session – but more of that later!
While thinking of all our precious seedlings, we got to talking about how farmers have protected their crops through the years. From employing children armed with stones, and building traditional straw scarecrows to more modern methods of using rotating bird-scarers and movement-sensitive water sprinklers we saw how plants have been guarded from pesky birds. This was all prompted by an invitation to enter a scarecrow into the upcoming Cookridge Scarecrow trail. Lots of children have worked together to help begin building our (as-yet-unnamed) scarecrow and we shall add the finishing touches next week before sending them off to frighten the birds. To guard our own seedling in the Reception garden, the children were encouraged to try putting together their own bird-scarers from shiny tins, containers, ribbons and foil. There were some fabulous efforts, and with these blowing in the breeze, our radishes are surely safe from curious crows.
Thursday brought our regular Forest Schools session which found us out in the school garden despite some very mixed weather. To support our topic of ‘Let It Grow!’ we set off in small groups to explore the school grounds for signs of Spring. Despite a rather chilly walk interrupted by a heavy hailstorm we did manage to spot many signals that life is returning to Cookridge Primary School with lots of new leaves, buds, blossom and emerging seedlings the Kitchen Garden. At one point, we even happened upon Nigel and Doughnut out on a walk with and enjoying a munch on some of these fresh Spring growth on the school field. The children also got to enjoy the welcome return of the newly repaired treehouse equipment (following storm damage in the winter). All in all, we had a lovely time and anticipate some more Spring-like weather next time!
Our maths work this week, has been still focused on counting beyond ten and exploring the make of numbers 11-50. There has been lots of fun activities and opportunities to investigate these numbers, including bean-bag throwing along number-lines and looking at patterns in the number system as we explore larger numbers.
Phonics has seen the children gaining further in confidence as they rehearse their reading and writing skills using the phase 3 phonemes we learned last term. There has been some great writing and the children are beginning to reflect on their own writing to make corrections and improvements as needed.
We hope you have a fantastic weekend!
The Reception Team
DATES FOR THE DIARY:
Thursday 23rd May – Power of Pattern Day! – whole school non-uniform day (pattern-inspired!).
Tinshill Drive
Cookridge
Leeds
West Yorkshire
LS16 7DH
0113 386 2500