Welcome to the China class blog! We're the Reception class and you'll find us busy learning through play every day. We balance whole-class teaching, individual and small group work with lots of planned and free play activities. Watching, playing with and talking to the children about what they're doing and enjoying helps us plan to grow their learning. We use the online learning journal 'Tapestry' to work with parents, too.
The structure of the day changes bit by bit throughout the year to help support the children make good transitions from Nursery to Reception and from Reception into Year 1.
Do look at our blog to find out more about what fun we've been having whilst we are learning!
(If you can't see what you're looking for here, you'll find information for new starters on the 'Noticeboard' tab, our curriculum map under 'Information' and home learning information under 'CV-19'.)
What does a good writer do in reception?
Well done to all the children who entered the winter writing competition! Mrs McMullan was impressed with the number of entries.
The winners were …
Amelia and Emily – well done! They will receive a certificate and an Orchard Toys Game.
All the other entrants will be receiving a certificate: Alfie, Ehren, Florence M, Florence R, Henry, Indie-Rose, Mia, Mollie, Reuben.
Children not in school will get their prizes and / or certificates in the post. Well done everyone – super writing!
This week we’ve been using ‘Mog the forgetful cat’ to think about looking after pets – and each other.We’ve talked about – and showed pictures of – our pets and made something for them using modelling materials. We’ve talked about who our special people are, why they are special and how they make us feel. Parents at home have found creative ways of teaching word blending and tricky words. We’ve seen lots of children joining in with physical activities such as yoga. It has been lovely to see children working with older and younger brothers and sisters on their learning too. We are hugely proud of the children working both in school and at home and we’ve kept in touch with each other using Zoom.
Thanks so much to all the adults working so hard to support their children at home!
We have spent two weeks learning about Diwali, the Hindu and Sikh festival of light. We have talked about the things we celebrate with our own families such as Christmas and birthdays. We learned that Diwali is a special time where people decorate their homes and celebrate with their families to remember the story of how Rama and Sita escaped the ten-headed demon, Ravana. The children retold the story with props. We made clay Diya lamps and Rangoli patterns (outdoor floor decorations), as well as Diwali cards with Mendhi patterns (traditional hand decorations). The children loved the story and when Charlotte from ‘West End in schools’ visited us to teach a dance workshop she was impressed with how well the children knew the story. They joined in really well with the dancing!
We also spend a day learning about Remembrance, inspired by the CBeebies animation ‘Poppies’. The children talked about how wartime must have been scary and how it’s important to remember their bravery. We took part in the two minutes’ silence and painted our own poppies.
We are really proud of how the children are learning to speak sensitively about their own and other cultures.
The children have all been keen to tell us about their half term holidays and we’ve seen some lovely photos of the things they’ve been doing. There were some super pieces of writing sent into school which the children completed at home, too.
This week we have been learning about Bonfire night – do you know the story of Guy Fawkes? We talked about being safe around fireworks and drew our own on the big touchscreen, adding words for the firework sounds we hear such as ‘pop’ ‘bang’, ‘fizz’… The children are becoming confident when writing sounds at the beginning of words. We wrote group poems inspired by the things we hear, smell, see, taste and like about Fireworks.
We sang the Steve Grocott ‘Firework song’ https://stevegrocott.bandcamp.com/track/the-firework-song with our own actions. We recorded it for all the parents to see on their child’s Tapestry account.
In maths we have been concentrating on recognising up to three objects without counting them – this is called ‘subitising’. We have practised recognising the numerals and matching them to the quantities – we had a great time hunting the numbers indoors and outside then putting them in the right order!
Next week (9th November) we’ll be learning about Diwali, the Hindu and Sikh festival of light.
WELL DONE CHINA CLASS! We made it! What a half term this had been and I hope you don’t mind me being slightly gushy but we are incredibly proud of our class. They have risen to the challenge of settling in *brilliantly* even after a huge gap since last being in nursery.
As we’ve watched them this week we have noticed how hard they are working to share, be kind, take turns, listen and challenge themselves. There have been lots of big little steps -putting on coats, wellies, doing zips, writing names, riding bikes, eating different fruits for the first time….
Today we had a circle time to talk about their favourite fruit and the listening, concentration and speaking was marvellous. All the children joined in and spoke in full sentences, using the joining word ‘because’ – this took so much confidence, we were amazed at how well they joined in.
The children are beginning to hear, say and write sounds in words for writing. We have written ‘sorry’ cards from Crab to Blob and Brush from ‘Sharing a Shell’. In maths we have used language ‘more’ and ‘fewer’ to compare groups of objects.
Overall – a brilliant start to reception. Thanks to all the parents for your support and for the feedback which supports their learning. Please keep adding to your child’s tapestry accounts and don’t forget the half term writing challenge.
We hope you enjoy your half term break, children and parents alike. Stay safe and well and we will look forwards to seeing you on Monday 2nd November. Have a good rest.
Best wishes – Mrs B and the Reception team
This week in China class we’ve been working really hard on sharing, turn-taking and problem-solving.
We’ve been really impressed with the children’s progress in turn-taking using adult-led board games. We have used lots of brilliant Orchard Toys games like ‘Quack, Quack!’ and ‘The Rocket Game’.
We’ve also worked hard to share resources in our play. We were excited to get our delivery of more large wooden blocks to use outdoors. Thank you very much to the Friends of Browick for buying these for us: They will get definitely lots and lots of use.
We have used the story ‘The Colour Monster’ to learn about feelings: Happy, sad, angry, calm and scared. We enjoyed talking about when we feel those different feelings and there has been some excellent writing, too. The children practised cutting and joining skills to make their own feelings monster puppets and enjoyed mixing all the colours together and creating their own colour monster paintings..
Inspired by the story – the monster’s feelings got mixed up so he had to sort them out – we have been sorting and matching objects. We matched pairs of socks and talked about how they were the same or different – this was size, colour and pattern. We built towers outside and challenged the children to make a matching one, then describe how they were the same or different if they didn’t match! We love playing with dinosaurs and enjoyed sorting them by type, colour, what they ear, their size….
We have started to practise a few more counting songs like 5 Little Teddy Bears, 1,2,3,4,5 Once IO caught a fish alive, 3 Jellyfish, Days of the Week, 10 fat sausages. We’ve also sung lots of nursery rhymes, fun action songs and ring games outside.
This week we have also enjoyed having the first hot school lunches in class – all of the choices including the pizza, jacket potatoes and ‘Fishy Friday’ were a big hit!
Well done, China class on another great week in school. You definitely earned a rest this weekend!
This has been our first full week of being in school every day and the children have really risen to the challenge!They have all been learning to join in with class routines: How we sit together on the carpet; being brave and answering the register; learning what to do at lunchtimes and most importantly getting to know each other and developing new friendships.
The children have explored lots of new equipment. We’ve been excited to use our outdoor classroom and practise our balance skills as well as using the mud kitchen. Indoors there have been shape pictures to make and we’ve had lots of mark-making activities on offer. Some children wanted to use large paper on different surfaces such as walls and floors. We also tipped paint onto paper and explored what happens when we use our hands and other tools to mix colours and make marks. It was lots of messy fun!
We’ve been busy getting the classroom clean and tidy and the children have been enjoying using some of the toys during stay and play sessions. There’s not much to see yet – but there will be!
In the corridor there are pegs for everyone and we’ve taken photos of all the children this week so they know where to put coats and bags next week. We’re sharing part of our outside classroom with the year 1 children – look out for the stripy tape so we don’t get mixed up with each other. If you look at the photos of the classroom you’ll see photos of our carpet area where we sit for register, some construction toys in the maths corner and a book table. The children have enjoyed using the marble run too and we’re looking forwards to building our new role play area next week – we think this will be a home corner!
There have been a few new members in our team. Joining us in class are: teaching assistant Mrs Philpott, who will be with us every day; Higher Level Teaching assistant Mrs Long , who will teach on Tuesday afternoons when Mrs Barber has planning time; Midday Supervisor Mrs Loke, who will be with us most days at the start of the year. Welcome all. Watch this space – next week there will be photos of our classroom filled with life and more exciting things!
