Reception Gallery & Work 21/22

Picasso

Over the last few weeks, we have been learning all about the artist Pablo Picasso. Inspired by his work, we created our own abstract portraits using some of the shapes that we have been learning about in maths.

We also created some ‘pigasso’ masterpieces, as we have been reading The Three Little Pigs. We used lots of bright colours to create some wonderful work.

Zachary said “Look that’s funny the ear is the wrong way.”

Phoebe said “ It looks like me but funny!”

In Reception, we have been reading Dear Dragon, a story which features a bubble-blowing dragon! Whilst enjoying the sunshine this week, we have been blowing bubbles of all shapes and sizes. We were amazed at just how high some of the bubbles floated and we had lots of fun chasing and popping the them.

We also created bubble art by mixing paint, water and washing up liquid and then blowing through straws to create colourful bubbles, which wobbled like jelly.

Over the last few weeks, we have witnessed the lifecycle of a butterfly in live action! We cared for tiny caterpillars and watched grow as they munched their way through lots of food, then when they were really big and plump they formed chrysalises and hung from the top of the net while the magic happened. It was so exciting to arrive in school one morning to discover beautiful butterflies had hatched! We have enjoyed lots of stories about caterpillars and butterflies and from one of them we learnt that at first, butterflies wings are damp and a little crumpled. Once they were ready, we headed outside to carefully release the fabulous creatures. It was wonderful to see them fly high.

Steve’s Animal Ark

As part of our ‘Not everything has living have legs’ topic, We were lucky enough to have a visit from Steve’s Animal Ark. Steve shared with us his wonderful world of exotic minibeasts, and we had the opportunity to meet, learn about and even hold a whole host of curious critters. Stick insects, slugs, a tarantula and a snake were amongst the spectacular species we came face to face with. Have you ever seen a stick insect dance? We have and she had quite the moves! We thoroughly enjoyed the experience and learnt an array of fascinating facts about some rare wrigglers and creepy crawlers.

As part of our ‘Not Everything Living has Legs’ topic we have been learning about life-cycles of different animals. In our story this week (The Cautious Caterpillar) we took a closer look at the life-cycle of a caterpillar. We went on a journey with Cody through the different parts of a caterpillar’s journey to becoming a butterfly. We came into our class to find a gigantic trail of leaves, caterpillars and butterflies. We followed the leaves and discovered they lead to a post box, we were all very excited to find that Cody had written us a letter, we had to write back to her and explain that we could help look after her friends until they were ready to become beautiful butterflies.

We were thrilled when we came into our classroom the following day to see another trail of leaves and some of our very own caterpillars! Cody explained in her reply letter that she had received our beautiful writing and was convinced we would take extra special care of her friends. We learnt that caterpillars needs plenty of food, a safe habitat to live in and some sticks to hang their chrysalis from. We counted five caterpillars in our pot and we cannot wait to watch them grow over the next few weeks!

In cookery we have been making butterfly biscuits. We very carefully weighed out the different ingredients; flour, butter and sugar. We then had to read and follow the recipe very carefully to combine the butter and sugar first, then add in the egg (we had to be extra gentle and not get any shell in our mix) before finally stirring in the flower. Once we had mixed all the ingredients we rolled out our biscuit dough and used the cookie cutter to make a butterfly shape. We decorated our butterflies so that they had the same number of spots on both sides (did you know that this means it is a double).

This week Cole class celebrated winning the reading revolution with a party in our school library. We played party games like musical bumps, musical statues and pass the book. We designed our own book marks and enjoyed some party snacks. We had so much fun!

“I am so excited for the party” – Esme

“I had so much fun today!”- Charlie

As part of out ‘Not Everything Living has Legs’ topic we will be learning about lots of living things. This week we have been learning about some different mini-beasts. In our story ‘Oliver’s Vegetables’ he finds slugs and snails eating his vegetables. We went to our secret garden and became bugologists for the afternoon.

“I’m looking for spiders” – Delanie

“I found a slimy snail” - Kaiden

Last week we were very excited to come into class to see a gigantic magic beanstalk had grown in our reading area! At the bottom of the beanstalk there was a story, we think the Giant must have dropped it. The story was called ‘ Jasper’s Beanstalk’.  In the story we learnt that you need to take care of a bean plant very carefully to make sure it grows into a big beanstalk. We discussed what a plant needs to grow; soil, water, sunlight and love. In our science lesson we enjoyed planting our very own bean seeds, we cannot wait to see if any magic beanstalks grow and then we can go giant hunting!

“They need lots of sun and water” – Jake

“I think a big green giant lives at the top” – Kaiden

“I hope mine grows really big” – Zachary

We are loving completing some Easter themed activities this week. We have been ordering bunny footprint numbers in our very own small world chick and bunny village. Another Easter challenge has helped us to become increasingly confident in learning number bonds to 10, we worked together to find the eggs showing numbers that, when added together, make 10. As always we have been practising counting through singing; and this week we have enjoyed some lovely Easter themed songs.

It had been a little while since we visited our beautiful school garden so this week we went to explore and look for signs of Spring. There was lots of excited discussion around changes that have taken place since autumn and winter and how our garden looks different in each season. Beautiful spring flowers have bloomed, the sun was shining and the air was filled with  cheerful bird song. A visit to our garden wouldn’t be a visit to our garden without a mini beast hunt, we spotted spiders and a whole family of woodlice under a rock. We have also been doing some fantastic observational drawings of tulips. We sketched lightly before colouring our masterpieces using different shades of the same colour for affect.

“ I have to look very closely to get the drawing right.” Isla

“look daffodils!” Lissy

In maths, we have been learning all about the number ten. We went on a number hunt around our classrooms looking for the number 10 and collecting sets of 10 objects. We explored lots of different representations of the number 10 and  the many ways we can make 10. As always we used  lots of lovely stories and songs to support our learning.

“I’ve got ten cars.” Preston

“six and four makes ten.” Brilie

“You can find ten lots of times in our classroom.” Mia

“Look ten here.” Pijus

This week we have created some amazing ‘Flora and Fauna’ artwork that will be form part of a spectacular whole school display. We mixed our own watercolour paints by gradually adding water to each colour. We used our knowledge of primary colours to mix purple and brown. We also created by using a range of artistic techniques. We scrunched and rolled tissue paper to create a floral collage.

“We can make purple if we mix red and blue.” Isla

“Put more blue in, his head is dark blue right at the very top.” Zachary

In reception, we love hearing and telling stories every week, but as this week is National Storytelling Week we have squeezed in even more stories than usual! We particularly enjoyed reading ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea’, which also linked nicely to our learning around the year of the tiger. We used props to act out and retell the story to each other. After hearing how the tiger ate everything in Sophie’s home I don’t think we we’ll be inviting a tiger to tea anytime soon!

We even set up a restaurant in our classroom, where we tasted some delicious Chinese food. We enjoyed noodles, sticky sweet and sour rice and prawn crackers.

Lanterns are an important part of Chinese new year celebrations, they can be a symbol of vitality and good luck. We used our cutting skills and collage technique to create our own beautiful lanterns.

This week in reception, we have been learning all about Chinese new year and that this year is the year of the tiger.

In maths we challenged ourselves to use chopsticks to count the correct number of pompoms into each bag, it was a little tricky but practise makes perfect.

We also tried our hand at writing Chinese numbers and counting to five in Mandarin.

We have also been using ‘Go Jetters’, fictional stories and Atlases to learn more about some f the different countries in our world an what makes them special. This week we have looked at France. We enjoyed working with our friends to draw the Eiffel Tower.

Our topic for the next half term is ‘Our Wonderful World’ this week we have been learning about what we might find underground by reading the story ‘The Streets Beneath My Feet’. We learnt that lots of animals dig holes underground to make their homes.

Heidi said – “A fox lives in a den”

Charlie said – “Do you know Badgers live underground?”

We have also enjoyed pretending to be bricklayers, using foam to stack our own towers.

Phoebe said – “I have 11 blocks”

Jake said – “It feels super squishy.

We were all super excited when we returned to school to see that Mr Hibbert has built us a brand new tool bench. We have all been using real tools to develop our fine and gross motor skills by; filing, sanding, drilling and hammering lots of different nails and wood.

Delanie said – I am sanding to make it smooth.

Pijus said – “Hammer hard. Make a hole.”

In PE our topic is called ‘Jumping Jacks and Rock’n’Rolls’. We will be focussing on developing gymnastic skills. This week we have been learning lots of different types of jumps. We competed in team relay races using; hops, skips and lots of jumps.

Since returning to school in the New Year, our teachers have been really impressed with our phonics skills. They can tell that we have all worked very hard over the Christmas holidays to practise with our grown-ups and show off our lovely reading!

We have been busy little elves this week getting ready Christmas in Reception. We don’t want to give too much away but our Christmas card making involved painting our feet!

Another of our festive jobs was to make and decorate delicious biscuits for our Christmas craft sale. We followed Mrs Clause’s special recipe and took it in turns to stir the mixture.

Practising our scissor control, we each cut out and decorated a sparkly Christmas stocking. They look beautiful hanging up in our classrooms.

We have been working hard to learn our Christmas songs and actions to go with them. We are proud of our performance and are sure you will be impressed when we share it with you. You may want to have a little tissue at the ready.

This week Cole class celebrated being the winners of our Reading Revolution competition. They enjoyed a party in our wonderful school library. A huge well done to all of the children in both reception classes who have been reading their little socks off at home this term.

Christmas has arrived in Reception this week. The children really enjoyed working together to assemble and decorate our class Christmas Trees. They discussed where best to put the baubles and worked brilliantly as a team to make sure that both trees looked beautiful.

We have also been learning all about the reason we celebrate Christmas (the birth of Jesus Christ) and why we have advent. We have learned all about what is special about the 1^st December – it marks the start of Advent and made our own Christingle oranges to light. Christingles are oranges wrapped in red foil and decorated with sweets and cloves. We learnt that the candle represents Jesus, the red ribbon represents his blood, the sweets represent the four seasons and the orange is the world.

Anti-bullying week

This year as part of the ‘One Kind word, anti-bullying week theme we have been learning all about kindness in Reception. We learnt how to show kindness to our friends and what to do if we think somebody is being bullied. We practised saying one kind thing to our friends each day.

Skyler said “my firnd said I love you.”

Eve – “Evie said she liked my hair”

Isla K “Esme said I make her happy”.

Shop keepers

Our role play area inside of our reception class is now a toy shop. This week we have really enjoyed taking on the roles of shop keeper, assistant and customers.

Delanie (Shopkeeper) and Isla B (customer) said… 

“Hi

Hi Can I buy all of this stuff?

And would you like a bag with that?

Yes please it’s for my little boy.

That will be £20

Ok here is my card, I’ll put my card in now.

Ok let me get that for you, beep, beep, beep.

I have so much stuff.

This shop is about to close now so we can tidy up.”

Toy makers

As part of our toys topic we have begun to make our own stuffed toys. We have already drawn out and labelled our designs and marked out onto our felt the front of our teddies. This week we will be cutting our felt shapes out and adding the decorative details ready for our teddies to be stitched next week. We cannot wait to see the finished product!

Phonics

We have been continuing to develop our amazing phonics skills in Reception… some of us have even moved onto the phase 3 sounds. Mrs Telfer and Mrs Musk are very impressed with how hard we have all been working to improve our segmenting and blending skills and were super proud when listening to us all read this week.

P.E – Slithering Snakes

In PE this half-term we are doing gymnastics. This week we were practising the skills needed to crawl over and under objects. We had so much fun playing lots of games with the parachute. We played cats and dogs, all change and here we go round the mulberry bush.

Floating and sinking

This week in Reception we have been learning all about floating and sinking. We have been exploring materials and discussing what we think makes something float or sink. We learned all about density – if something has lots of air particles inside it then it will float.

Phoebe said “I think it will float because it is not heavy”

Evie said “this block is big so it will sink”

Old Toys

This half term our topic in Reception is ‘Toys’. This week we have been looking at some toys from the past, we used our PE slot in the hall to try out some of the toys we have learned about, we had; giant tower blocks, connect 4, spinning tops, cups and balls, jacks and noughts and crosses. We discussed how some of our parents and grandparents would have played with these toys when they were little like us and how they are very different from the toys we have now.

Parent’s afternoons

We were all so excited to welcome our parents into our classrooms, we took on the role of tour guides and showed them all the lovely activities we get up to in Reception. We also loved showing our grown-ups the inside of our special learning journey books and showing off all our fabulous work.

Spooky Spectacular

We love Halloween in Reception and we were all getting very excited to go trick or treating. In the last week of the previous half term we had lots of Halloween themed activities in our classrooms. We investigated and explored the inside of a pumpkin…we even got to chop it up all by ourselves. We made spooky potions in witches cauldrons, rescued spiders from slime in our outdoor area, built our own skeletons in our fine motor area and read ‘Room on the Broom’. We had so much fun!

Colourful crayons

We have been reading the story ‘The Day the Crayons Quit’ in our classes. We decided to use up some old and broken crayons to make our own brand new crayons. We discussed why it is good to recycle where you can to help our planet. We all designed our crayons and then we explored heating, melting and cooling in our science lessons, we are very impressed with the finished products!

All about autumn

In Reception over the last few weeks we have been learning all about autumn. We have looked at how the season is changing and observed how the leaves have started to change colours and fall off the tree. On our weekly visit to the secret garden we had an autumn treasure hunt and collected some leaves to try and make our own leaf rubbings with crayons. We also collected lots of autumn goodies over the half term holidays to inspect in our investigation area.

Hedgehogs

When we have been going to the secret garden we have noticed the leaves changing colour on the trees and begin to fall off. Some of us were very interested to know why this happens. Mrs Telfer and Mrs Musk said it was because we are in autumn. We have been learning lots about autumn including, hibernation. This week we learn that hedgehogs use the autumn to gather lots of food ready for winter and then they sleep for 4 months! We decided that we would love to help the hedgehogs and built two ready-made hibernation huts in our garden. We collected leaves and sticks to make sure they were well hidden. We cannot wait to see if the hedgehogs use them over the next few weeks.

At Highfield we are Rights Respecting; in Reception this half term we have been focussing on Article 7/8, every child has the right to a name. In music we have been using Charanga to sing the name song. We are all very proud of our names and what they mean to us.

Phoebe said…”My name is Phoebe and I love it!”

In our classroom we have our very own dark space. This week we discovered that you can make shadows in the light when we were on the big yard and the sun was shining behind us (some of us had very tall shadows). We discussed how we could make shadows in our dark space with the different torches. Mrs Telfer showed us how to make shadow animals with our hands!

Jake said...”Look! It’s a big bird flapping its wings”

Skyler said…”if I’m far away the shadow is small”

As part of our colours of the rainbow topic we have been reading the story ‘The Colour Monster’ this week in class. We enjoyed a range of different activities including; colour sorting, acting out the story, painting and discussing our own feelings. In PE we experimented with different ways of moving to show how we were feeling, we skipped to show happiness which we represented with the colour yellow.

We experienced lots of different weather types on our walks into reception today; lots of us were very excited to tell Mrs Telfer and Mrs Musk that there was a big beautiful rainbow shining right over Highfield. The rainbow was the inspiration behind our music lesson this week. We learn to sing the colours of the rainbow song and included some Makaton actions. We sent it to our grown-ups on freeflow and they loved it!

We have also been continuing with our learning of phase 2 phonics and how now learnt half of the sounds! Mrs Telfer has been so impressed with our amazing segmenting and blending!

Phoebe said “I made pig and gas look p..i..g, pig. G..a…s, gas. I loved reading my phonics reading book with mam, I showed her how we do phonics like that, she wrote in my book too!”

We have been experimenting with colour mixing in our classes this week. We discussed what we thought would happen when we mixed colours and tried to make as many new colours as we can using only the primary colours… did you know there are only 3 primary colours: red, blue and yellow? We had so much fun and made lots of new colours, then we used them to make our very own Elmer the Elephant die dye t-shirt!

Charlie said “red and blue make purple”

Evie M said “WOW! It looks just like Elmer, lots of colours!”

We have had another very busy couple of weeks in Reception. Our topic this half term is ‘Colours of the Rainbow’. Last week we enjoyed an afternoon in our secret garden making our own nature themed magical wands, so we could be just like the wizard and the Fairy Godmother in the story we were reading ‘The Princess and the Wizard’. We all loved making up our own spells … we even turned poor Mrs Musk into a frog!

Marnie said “Bippity…. Boppity… hoppity… frog!

Welcome to Reception 

We have all really loved our first full week in reception. We have spent lots of time getting to know our new teacher, friends, classroom routines and rules. We have all been to the secret garden, where we explored in the maze and hunted for mini-beasts. We enjoyed a story read by Mrs Musk in our school library, we even had the chance to get our own books from the shelves and read them with our friends. We have been to the PE hall where we moved around, pretending to be like different animals. This week we have also started phonics lessons and have already learnt the first four sounds; s, a, t, p. We have had so much fun and are very excited for the year ahead.