Reception Blogs
w/b 5th May 2025
We were absolutely delighted to welcome many of you to our final Learning Exhibition of our Reception year. We are so proud of each and every child and the progress that they have made in all areas since our very first Learning Exhibition! We hope that you enjoyed sharing in our fun and learning; thank you so much for giving up your time to visit.
It has been another super week of learning new sounds in phonics and writing sentences with ever increasing independence. The children continue to read their more challenging books with determination and increasing confidence which is lovely to see. If you are finding the new books to be a bit of a jump in terms of length, you and your child may enjoy a ‘take turns’ approach, reading a page each so that it doesn’t feel like quite so much to read!
In our literacy lessons, we have been writing our finding stories, innovations of our story ‘Star in the Jar’. The children can orally retell and sign the story map with fantastic fluency, so it is no surprise that this is translating into beautifully written stories. We are thinking about our story in three parts: the opening, the problem and the ending. On Wednesday, we wrote the opening, each choosing a main character and the treasure that they would find. On Thursday, we thought about the problem with finding the treasure. Was a fairy unable to cast magic without her missing wand? Was Iron Man unable to lift the hammer that he had found? Was a hermit crab missing its shell home? The children had such imaginative ideas and I can’t wait to find out their creative resolutions to these problems as we write the endings to our stories on Tuesday.
In our maths lessons, we have revisited ‘odd and even numbers’ and ‘doubles’ as we further explored the connection between even numbers and doubles. All doubles are even numbers as they can be split into two equal parts. If we have an even number of objects, we can pair all of the objects without an ‘odd one’ left over. This week, we have looked at each of the numbers to 10, representing them pair-wise on a ten frame. We first thought about whether the number was odd or even. If each counter had a pair, creating a ‘flat top’ shape, the number was even. This means that it is also a double! For example, 6 is an even number. 6 can be split into two equal groups of 3 – 6 is double 3! For an extra challenge, we represented this in a number sentence: 3 + 3 = 6. We then thought about the odd numbers, with an ‘odd one’ without a pair. We correctly identified that odd numbers are not doubles as they cannot be split into two equal parts.
In our numeral formation session, we practised forming 10, ensuring that we were writing the 1 before the 0.
Our focus on special and holy places has continued in our RE lessons. This week, we started looking at a photograph of people removing their shoes when visiting a mosque. Muslims go to worship at the mosque. Before they enter they take off their shoes. We thought about why this may be. We then looked carefully at photographs of mosques. We asked: What do you notice? What questions would you like to ask? We watched a short clip (https://youtu.be/hg_CbiGE9kk) helping us to understand more about Mosques, a holy place for Muslims. We learnt that most mosques have a dome, and some also have a tall tower called a minaret. In some countries, the minaret is used to call Muslims to prayer five times a day. When Muslims go inside a mosque, they take off their shoes and wash themselves in a special way, called wudu. Women and girls cover their heads. The children spied that a difference between Christian and Muslim places of worship was that, in a church, Christians often sit on pews but Muslims don’t pray on chairs in the mosque, unless they are needed. There is carpet on the floor and prayer mats to kneel on. Muslims always pray facing Makkah, the holiest city in the world for Muslims. The mihrab, a niche in the wall, shows the direction of Makkah. At Friday prayers the Imam shares Islamic teachings and leads Muslims in Salah. That’s a prayer with special movements. Each set of movements is called a Rakah. Muslims do the prayer five times every day, either at the mosque or wherever else they are.
Our Understanding of the World time focused on VE Day. Firstly, we looked at the the flag that represents the countries of the UK – England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It is called the Union Jack or Union Flag. Between the years of 1939 and 1945, the UK and other countries around the world were at war. This was a very difficult time. Soldiers had to go and fight for their country. We were also shocked to realise that some children had to move out of big cities to stay safe and food was rationed to make sure that everyone had enough to eat. The children thought that this must have made everybody feel sad and scared. On the 8th May 1945, Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister, announced to the UK that the war was over in Europe. The children thought that this was such good news and that everybody must have felt so joyful that this time of war was over. The 8th May 1945 became known as Victory in Europe Day, or VE Day for short. People went out in their streets to have a party and celebrated the war being over. They waved Union Jacks, put up bunting, danced and shared food with each other. We very much enjoyed our picnic lunch and we thought that this was a bit like having a street party! We were then delighted to welcome our friends from Brereton Preschool into our classroom to enjoy some VE Day activities and crafts together. We made Union Jack flags; decorated red, white and blue bunting; made medals; explored red, white and blue loose parts and playdough; we decorated red, white and blue biscuits to eat! It was a wonderful celebration with our wonderful friends.
We have also enjoyed time in the sunshine as we created our movement sequences on the field for our PE dance lesson; we planted our strawberries into our strawberry planter and continued to nurture our plants and seedlings; and we enjoyed listening to stories outside.
For anybody who may not have seen Mrs Forrester’s message, due to unforeseen circumstances, Reception will not be visiting St Oswald’s church before half term.
Finally, the school photographer will be in next Friday 16th May so all the children need to wear full school uniform, please.
We hope that you are able to enjoy more of the sunshine over the weekend!
With many thanks,
Miss Witham
w/b 28th April 2025
What an absolutely wonderful week we have all enjoyed! We have been making the most of the glorious sunshine as we are so lucky at Brereton to have so many beautiful outdoor spaces to explore and enjoy – all the more beautiful in the sunshine.
Children continue to progress brilliantly in their phonics sessions and I was just delighted to read so many comments in reading diaries about reading at home. It sounds like the children have been ever so proud to read their new books at home with confidence and success. Well done, Reception! We hope that you enjoy reading your next two stories.
Our literacy lessons have focused on oracy, comprehension skills and retelling the story of Star in the Jar. We are fantastic at retelling Star in the Jar with the aid of our story map and actions, beginning to do so with superb fluency and expression. This should give us lots of ideas, story language and structures to help us to write our own finding stories over the next couple of weeks. Our adult led tasks have involved writing a ‘Lost’ poster for the missing star and a rhyming challenge, an opportunity to revisit and consolidate rhyming skills.
In maths, we have continued to focus on learning number bonds of 10. This week, the children have been recalling the bonds (e.g. 8 + 2 = 10, 1 + 9 = 10) with more speed and confidence. We have also noticed that, when you add numbers, you get the same answer if you swap the numbers around (commutative property). For example, if we know that 7 + 3 = 10, we also know that 3 + 7 = 10. This week, we have continued to use ten frames and Numicon shapes to spot the number bonds. We have also enjoyed creating a part-whole model to show the bonds of 10. The children were so confident with their bonds that they were set an extra challenge – one part was visible and the other part was covered with a blanket. Using their number bond knowledge, the children were challenged to tell me the part that was hidden. For example, if we can see 4 buttons, there must be 6 buttons under the blanket because 4 + 6 = 10. Towards the end of the week, we practised writing some of these number sentences on our whiteboards. We continue to sing along with ‘Ten Again’ to help to embed these bonds for speedy recall. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0bn5k6h/numberblocks-series-3-tenagain?seriesId=b0bl5v3r
You may also enjoy playing some of these online games at home; we have played some of these games on our Interactive Whiteboard during washing hands times this week.
https://wordwall.net/resource/11260765/maths/number-bonds-to-10
https://whizzbots.co.uk/whizzbots-links/ks1-maths-games/number-bonds-to-10-2/
In our numeral formation session, we practised forming 9 by saying, “A loop and a line, that makes 9.”
It was a beautiful Forest School session on Monday! Whilst the sun shone, we enjoyed exploring our Forest School environment; as it changes along with the seasons, we are noticing lots of evidence of spring and are starting to think about and predict future changes for the summer. We used lots of the nature that we had found to make nature aliens and nature rockets. We also enjoyed working as a team to build a 3D ‘rocket’! Mr Simmons is hoping to be able to use a bottle rocket launcher in the next few weeks!
Our RE lesson began with the story of Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:41-52). When he was a boy, Jesus visited the Temple in Jerusalem. The Temple was the most special, holy place for God’s people (the Jews) at that time. He went there with his parents for a special celebration. We asked: Have you ever been to a place of worship for a special celebration? This led to our focus this week on the church, a special and holy place for Christians. We looked at photographs of churches around the world. We explored the features of churches and thought about what happens in a church service. Finally, we looked at a photograph of the doorway of a church in Sri Lanka in which lots of shoes were left outside. When people go to church in the UK, they usually keep their shoes on, however this is not the case in other countries around the world. We asked: Do you visit any places where you take off your shoes? Why do you take off your shoes when you go there? We will revisit these questions as we think about mosques and mandirs in the next few weeks.
In our dance lesson (PE), we went on a journey to the Moon! We skipped, hopped, jumped, tiptoed, jogged and galloped around the room in between putting on our astronaut equipment. We created ten different poses to accompany our countdown from 10. We worked in teams to create a rocket shape and we chose our own way to travel around the hall like a rocket. Finally, we put the movements together to make a dance sequence, before cooling down with deep breaths, imagining that we were comfortably floating in mid air, travelling in a spaceship towards the Moon.
To begin our music lesson, we repeated the game ‘Don’t clap this one back’. We listened and sang along to ‘You’ve Got a Friend in Me’ before thinking about how the music makes us feel and how we might move our bodies to it. To develop our rhythm skills, we then practised saying and clapping the names of Toy Story characters rhythmically (e.g. Slink – y – Dog. Woo – dy) before tapping out the rhythms with percussion instruments.
In Spanish, we recapped the five colours that we learnt last week: rojo = red; amarillo = yellow; azul = blue; verde = green; gris = grey. This week, we learnt how to say five more colours in Spanish: blanco = white; morado = purple; marrón = brown; naranja = orange; negro = black.
Our Expressive Arts and Design focus for the week has been colour mixing to create tints and shades. We have enjoyed adding white to make colours lighter and black to make colours darker. We were most excited to discover how to make pink and grey!
In our Understanding the World time, we have been learning more about our solar system, particularly thinking about the order of the planets and their features. We have lots of fantastic non-fiction books about space which we have thoroughly enjoyed exploring.
We have, of course, also enjoyed lots of provision time. A favourite area to help to keep cool has been our water area! Mrs Mayson has been setting up exciting activities including whisking bubble bath into the water to create even more bubbles, and washing dolls clothes and pegging them onto the line. We have also absolutely adored time spent in our developing garden area. This is an ongoing project and we are ever so grateful to Mr Moore for all of his efforts and Mr Simmons and Mrs Ball, who rival Monty Don and Alan Titchmarsh with their brilliant ideas and helpful tips. In our beds, we have already planted out our broad beans and sown our carrot seeds. On our window ledge and in our outdoor area, seeds are sprouting, seedlings are growing, and tomatoes are hardening off after being potted on. It is a hive of activity and we have a class full of extraordinary gardeners!
A glorious week in glorious weather! I hope that you all have a lovely Bank Holiday weekend and are able to enjoy some more sunshine.
With many thanks,
Miss Witham
