Reception w/b 5th December
Date: 9th Dec 2022 @ 4:16pm
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Reception! We are fully embracing the festive fun and all of the enjoyment and learning opportunities that the season brings.
Phonics has continued as ever and will continue into next week as we find that maintaining this familiar structure and routine helps the children to have a calm and settled start to their day. This week, I have completed phonics assessments and was simply blown away by the progress made in sound knowledge and blending. Each and every child should feel very proud of themselves as their hard work and enthusiasm for phonics was evident. As a result of the assessments, there may be some slight movement for some children between groups and children may have changed their reading level or started to read ditty sheets/sound blending books. Next week, I shall send these books/sheets along with a message to explain. The slight technical issue with the RWI portal is now resolved so I shall also send across the phonics sounds/videos for the last two weeks. I have also completed name writing assessments this week and, again, could see huge progress from our baseline. Reception, you are absolute superstars!
In maths this week, we have been building on our understanding of the composition of numbers by investigating the composition of 3, 4 and 5. Composing and de-composing numbers involves the children investigating part–part–whole relations, e.g. seeing that 3 can be composed of 1 and 2. Through practical experience, we have consolidated our understanding of a whole being made up of smaller parts as well as beginning to recognise that numbers can be made by combining parts in different ways. A key focus has been the spatial arrangements that can be made with different combinations of the same number of objects. Therefore, we have been creating our own ‘stampolines’ for 4 and 5, inspired by the Numberblocks episode: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08dnngm/numberblocks-series-1-stampolines
We have also focused on the number 3 this week and have represented it in a variety of different ways, including making a collage picture of three presents! Our formation rhyme for 3 is: around a tree, around a tree, that’s the way to make a 3.
Our English task this week (and continuing into next week) has been to write a letter to Santa! We made sure our letters were very polite before asking for a gift. It was wonderful to see the children independently remembering to use their full stops and finger spaces as well as their beautiful handwriting and use of phonics to represent the sounds they could hear in each word. As part of this learning, we were introduced to the red words ‘no’ and ‘you’. We now know five red words: I, the, he, no and you.
We thoroughly enjoyed our trip to the New Vic Theatre to watch Alice in Wonderland. There was so much awe and wonder as the magic and mystery of the story unfolded and it was just an absolute pleasure to observe this. The children sat through the performance absolutely beautifully and showed respect and responsibility throughout – what wonderful representatives for our school we have in Reception! We then enjoyed watching another performance back in school on Tuesday – the Key Stage 1 Nativity. It was wonderful to see those familiar faces retelling a story we now know so well but from a new perspective. Well done Key Stage 1.
This clear understanding of the Nativity has really helped us in our RE sessions. We just loved looking at the beautiful Nativity set that Reverend Sandi brought in for us to see; it has been blessed in Bethlehem. The children impressed me with how confidently they had remembered and could retell the story. We thought about the fact that Christmas is Jesus’ birthday and talked about how we celebrate our own birthdays. We thought about babies we may have in our families and how their arrival changed the life of people around them. We asked “Why was Jesus so special?” It was because when he grew up he changed peoples’ lives.
In Tuesday’s Forest School session, we enjoyed making the Evil Pea. We just love reading ‘Supertato’ and all about the Evil Pea; Mrs North has crocheted an Evil Pea for us to have in the classroom – thank you Mrs North! On Thursday, we decided that, with a few children feeling a bit under the weather at the moment, it was perhaps just too cold for an hour out in Forest School. Therefore, Miss Toft and I headed out with the children for the first 15 minutes of the day to explore the frost. We explored some of the changes observed due to the temperature, like finding blocks of ice, crunchy hard grass or frost on every surface. We predicted that the frost may have melted by lunchtime as the sun rose and the temperature increased and were delighted when we realised our prediction had been correct!
In Friday’s PE session, Miss Toft taught the children a wonderful dance to ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’. This was just so much fun. There was also an opportunity to sit in a circle and invite any children up into the middle of the circle who wanted to freestyle dance. How lovely it was to observe the confidence displayed by the children in this session!
In the provision this week, we have enjoyed plenty of festive activities. The Christmas postbox has been particularly popular and it has been a joy to observe such enthusiasm for writing. Festivities continue into next week where we can look forward to making Christmas cards and decorations, festive baking etc.
It has been a fantastic week in Reception and a wonderful final week of term beckons. I hope that you all have a lovely weekend and shall look forward to seeing you on Monday.
With many thanks and best wishes,
Miss Witham
