Reception w/b 19th September
Date: 23rd Sep 2022 @ 4:47pm
It has been another wonderful week in Reception and Mrs North, Miss Toft and I have ended the week full of joy and pride in how beautifully the children have continued to settle. As we reach the middle of our first half term, we are aware that the children still have lots to absorb within the busy school week and have no doubt that they continue to be very tired once they get home. Please rest assured that we are continuing our gradual build-up of the timetable and are here to gently and warmly support the children. They are doing ever so well and we are so very proud of each and every one of them.
It has especially been a pleasure to observe children in our phonics sessions this week. On Tuesday, Fred Frog returned for some more oral blending games. On Wednesday, we were then ready to begin our first more formal phonics session. We focused on the ‘m’ sound as a whole class and then practised writing it in some smaller groups, using the phrase ‘Maisy mountain mountain’. It was very important to start at Maisy’s head, down to her toes and back up again for the mountains. We learnt that we never start at her toes! On Thursday, our sounds was ‘a’ and our phrase for writing was ‘around the apple, down the leaf’ as we worked hard to form the ‘a’ without taking our pen off. These sessions followed the structure shown within our phonics parent meeting. If you were unable to attend this meeting, please rest assured that the resources will be uploaded over the weekend for your information. It would be wonderful if the children could continue to practise their ‘m’ and ‘a’ formation at home.
In maths, we have focused on counting to 3 and back from 3. The children have linked the skill of counting 3 concrete objects to the pictorial representation of 3, and then to the abstract numerals 1, 2 and 3. We have enjoyed using lots of natural autumnal resources within these sessions.
Our autumn focus continued into Forest School where we enjoyed working in teams to look for signs of autumn. After Mr Simmons showed us how to identify some trees, such as oak trees, we found lots of leaves on the ground and noticed the change in their colour. We also found many acorns and enjoyed exploring conkers and pinecones. We were so fascinated that I have no doubt that many acorns have made their way home!
Mrs Edwards also enjoyed helping us to think about autumn on Thursday afternoon. The children especially enjoyed making autumn wreaths.
On Tuesday afternoon, we enjoyed our first ‘My Happy Mind’ session which launched our unit for this half term – Meet Your Brain. We read a story called ‘Berty and Betty’s Playdate’ in which Berty is feeling a bit sad because he thinks his drawings are ‘rubbish’. Betty explains to Berty that the more he practises, the better he will get. Each time he practises, his brain grows! By the end of the story, Berty is delighted with his progress. This helped us to discuss some things that we are working hard to get better at, such as: buttoning/unbuttoning clothes, doing a forward roll and some of our swimming skills. We are looking forward to completing some more activities based on this story.
On Wednesday afternoon, we started our RE learning. This week, we asked ‘Who is God?’ which prompted a very engaging circle time discussion to discover children’s existing knowledge. We then read the story of Creation and identified that God made our world and all living things in it. We talked about praying to God and what it means to be a Christian. Some children also used this circle time to discuss the death of Her Majesty the Queen and the comfort we can take in the fact that she is in Heaven being looked after by God. We then worked together to create a prayer of thanks as children suggested things they were grateful for that day. We noticed that we began with ‘Dear God’ and ended with ‘Amen’. Next week, we will enjoy discovering some more stories from the Bible.
In PE, we began by once again emphasising the importance of moving safely. We worked on negotiating the space, looking for big areas of space as we travelled rather than bunching together; travelling in different directions; stopping in a sensible spot; listening carefully for the ‘freeze’ signal and stopping quickly and quietly. We then very much enjoyed learning the ‘beans’ game to get our bodies moving. This included actions for: string bean, broad bean, baked bean, jellybean, French bean, jumping bean. Next, we were each given a beanbag. We focused carefully on balancing the beanbag on different parts of our bodies whilst we slowly moved around the hall, continuing to negotiate the space. As it was such a fantastic PE lesson, we decided to get the parachute out! This was a very fun end to the session – so much fun that we forgot to take any photographs!
This afternoon, after some lovely choosing time consisting of Play Doh, card making and music, we decided to head out into the sunshine. Here, we enjoyed a circle time on the grass. After reading ‘The Colour Monster’ we decided to focus on the feeling of happiness which, in the book, is yellow. We then passed the colour monster around the circle as we each shared something that makes us feel happy. It was a wonderful way to end our week.
Of course, alongside all of these wonderful focus activities, there has been a vast amount of learning through play as we continue to enjoy choosing throughout our environment.
Reception, it has been such fun this week! I hope that you all enjoy a wonderful weekend and I am very much looking forward to seeing you all on Monday morning.
Miss Witham
