Welcome to Reception! Our teacher is Lauren Bowe. She is assisted by Karen Moore and Hazel Gaines. We follow an emergent curriculum that is based upon the needs and interests of the wonderful children in Reception.
Most of the children in our Reception class came to our Nursery and so we are lucky enough to have already formed relationships with them by the time they come to us in Reception. We also welcome some children into Reception from other Nurseries and it is always lovely to make new friends.
Early Years can be the child’s first experience of the wider world, outside of the family home. It is therefore essential that this experience is varied, rich and of the highest quality to ensure that strong foundations are built to enable our children to progress through life successfully.We support our children in becoming capable, confident individuals who have high self-esteem and social competence. We have highly skilled, enthusiastic educators who work hand in hand with parents and the community to provide the best start for all of the children in our care.
During the Reception year, children progress rapidly and develop the skills that are essential for lifelong learning. They work on both adult directed tasks and have lots of opportunities for child initiated learning. Reception children begin their day at 8.35am and stay with us until 3.15pm. Lauren and Karen work very closely with Reception. They are also assisted by Hazel during the week. We have a breakfast and after school club available daily to both Nursery and Reception children. For more information about this service please click here.
If you have any questions or want to find out any further information about our unit, then please do not hesitate to contact us. We will be happy to help you!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P3KWbGNdq8&w=560&h=315]Useful Information for Parents and Carers:
Reception Long Term Plan
Reception Long Term Overview 2023- 2024
What we are learning in Reception this half term…
This half term our top is ‘Spot the difference!’
This half term we will be basing lots of our learning around noticing changes, particularly in growth and life cycles. We will be discussing seasonal changes as we move from Winter into Spring and learning lots of new vocabulary in relation to this. We will be exploring the life cycles of things such as plants and animals and the children will get first hand experiences of the life cycles of sunflowers, butterflies and frogs.
As we love to read in Reception, we will be reading some key texts such as The Crunching Munching Caterpillar and Tadpole’s Promise as well as some non-fiction books to gain information about life cycles. We will be sequencing life cycles and learning the key vocabulary linked to each cycle. We will be learning about the life cycle of humans as part of our SCARF project and thinking about how we have grown and what we may grow up to be.
We will also be continuing to develop our independent skills, particularly fastening our own coats and taking care of our belongings. We will continue to develop our resilience skills and learning about how to keep warm when it is cold outside.
In Literacy, we will continue to read a wide range of books linked to our learning as well as choosing books simply for pleasure. We will continue to learn and discuss new vocabulary as we discover it in books. We will use our expertise in oral blending and recognising the set 1 sounds in Read, Write, Inc to read a wide range of simple words. We will continue to learn to read a growing range of Christopher Crocodile’s ‘tricky red words’ and begin to recognise them around us as well as begin to write them. We will begin reading captions with a combination of green words (that we can sound out) and Christopher Crocodile’s ‘tricky red words.’ We will be working hard on our letter formation to make sure that we form our letters correctly and the right way around. We will be creating our own books about what we have been learning about in class.
In Maths, we will be continuing to deepen our understanding of the numbers up to 10, thinking carefully about the composition of numbers. We will Continue to deepen our understanding of subitizing where we can recognizes the number of objects without needing to count them. We will be applying our knowledge of the composition of numbers to support our subitizing skills to subitize numbers up to 10 noticing smaller amounts and knowing what they add up to.
E.g. I can see 5 and 2 so that makes 7.
A great way to support this at home is to use dominoes!
We will be revisiting doubling amounts and numbers as well as looking at the days of the week, months of the year and seasons. We will continue to look at patterns in the environment as well as more complex repeating patterns.
We will be learning how to form our numbers correctly using formation rhymes as well as using large movements to support this formation in ‘Squiggle while you wiggle’. Here is a link to the formation rhymes that we use in school: http://www.communication4all.co.uk/Numeracy/Number%20Formation%20Rhyme%20Cards.pdf
It would be great if you used them at home to support your child with their number formation. Remember, it can be written with a pencil, but it you could also work on this by writing in mud, glitter, paint, in sand at the beach, by pushing toy cars through paint etc
We will be working on our ‘fast fingers’ to show the numbers to 10 without needing to count them and talking about how the numbers are made up such as ‘9 is made of 5 and 4 more’.
We will be having a big focus on writing for a purpose particularly ensuring we are consistently developing our gross and fine motor skills to help us to become more competent writers.
Things you can do at home to support this are;
mark making, letter formation in: glitter, mud, flour, corn flour, paint, using pencils, pens, chalks as well as any threading activities, dough and cutting activities. In any role play games encourage writing e.g. taking orders in a café, writing a shopping list to go shopping, designing and labelling models etc.
We will be doing observational drawings and painting using a range of media as well as continuing to develop our confidence and techniques in ‘joining’ materials together to create models. We will be learning about the primary colours and exploring mixing them to create new colours. We will be learning about Easter and talking about Lent and what it means for Christians.
Other Helpful Information
Our P.E. days are Mondays and Wednesdays. Please send your child to school dressed in their P.E. kits on these days.
Please remember to put your child’s name in all their belongings. They should have their waterproofs and wellies in school each day so that they can continue their outdoor curriculum learning no matter what the weather decides to do. We will be continuing our usual Forest Fridays with Hazel.
Book bags should be brought in daily as we like to read with the children at any given opportunity. Every Tuesday, we visit the library bus to change our reading for pleasure books please make sure your child returns their book so that it can be changed. Reading books will be changed weekly on a Tuesday or a Friday.
Dates to remember:
Tuesday 23rd April- Visit to Gibside
Wednesday 22nd May-Reception Sponsored Rainbow walk to Blackhill Park- Parent’s Welcome
Useful Websites for Parents and Carers:
A Parents guide to EYFS
CBeebies – Alpha Blocks
CBeebies Get Squiggling
Crick Web Early Years Games and Activities
Dough disco
ICT Games
Number Formation Rhymes that we use in school
Teach your monster to read
Top Marks Maths Games
Phoneme pop! A fun interactive game to support letter recognition
Phonics Games
We have been having lots of fun learning in Reception!