Reception w/b 2nd December
Date: 6th Dec 2024 @ 3:44pm
Well, goodness me, what a joyful celebration of your wonderful children we all enjoyed on Tuesday. We are so incredibly proud of the hard work, bravery, enthusiasm, joy and ‘sparkle’ that we observed on and off the stage. The Reception staff team feel so very proud of the children and we hope that the children feel just as proud of themselves after all of their hard work over the last few weeks. It really is an incredible achievement to stand on and next to a stage and perform in front of 120 people at only 4 and 5 years old. Such superstars! Thank you ever so much for your wonderful support with costuming, learning of lines/songs (I’m sure many of you know the songs as well as we do!) and your encouragement and belief which no doubt helped the children to perform so beautifully. A joyous experience!
On Wednesday, we enjoyed another ‘first’ with our wonderful class – our first school trip! We were all so excited to be travelling on a coach together and the children were very sensible as we walked into the theatre. We then enjoyed a performance of The Three Musketeers. As the lights went down and the performance opened with a fighting scene, some of us were understandably nervous but all then settled into the story with smiles and enjoyment as the performance progressed. We were very thankful for all of the lovely grown-ups who joined Reception class on the trip to reassure and look after us during our first school theatre experience. All of the grown-ups were delighted to observe the awe and wonder that the experience inspired for the children. I must apologise for the lack of photos inside the theatre – every second that we were not actively watching the performance seemed to instead be taken up with toilet trips! Well done Reception, a very successful first school trip.
On Monday morning, we were most excited to discover a new festive friend in our classroom, along with a present and letter under our Christmas tree. The letter revealed that Father Christmas has sent one of his new elves to our class to learn from the children as he has heard how kind our class is. The elf plans to bring us a new Christmas book each day and set an ‘elf challenge’ each day. On the first day, our challenge was to name the elf! In provision time, the children wrote their suggestions on slips of paper and popped them into a box. The elf chose the name ‘Snowdrop’ from the box. Throughout the week, the other four challenges have been: to try our very best on the stage; to write a message for Snowdrop; to make a festive friend for Snowdrop using nature (inspired by Stickman); and finally, to create a winter scene, inspired by Friday’s book ‘Jack Frost’. We have thoroughly enjoyed reading each new Christmas/winter story that Snowdrop brings and are already looking forward to next week’s stories and challenges. We have also been opening the Advent calendars each day, using lots of mathematical language during this discussion.
Forest School was inspired by the story ‘Stick Man’. We used clay, sticks, string and natural decorations to create stick friends and snowmen, just like in the illustrations.
In literacy this week, we have spent lots of time thinking about sentences. The children have been feeling (quite rightly!) very proud of themselves as we have started to read and write sentences. We thought about the sounds that we know; we can combine sounds to make a word. This helped us to understand that words can be combined to make a sentence. We have been reading simple sentences such as: ‘a dog can dig’ and ‘sit on a mat’. We introduced the concept of a ‘finger space’ and realised their importance in spacing out words in a sentence, making it easier to read. We have used a ‘finger space’ action between each word as we worked together to read the sentences. We also talked about another sentence feature – a full stop. We discovered that a full stop comes at the end of a sentence to show that it is finished. We have not yet discussed capital letters – these will be introduced in time. We did, however, introduce our very first red word – I. Red words are common words, used regularly in speech, which have exceptions to the phonics rules. These will be gradually introduce throughout the year. This week, we have practised saying ‘I’ in a sentence (e.g. ‘I am in Reception’ and ‘I like dancing’). We have then used this word in our secret superhero message writing. We have each written a secret sentence to describe our superhero powers. For example: ‘I am fast’, ‘I have fire powers’, ‘I can freeze people’. We have been very impressed with the segmenting and letter formation skills observed! Reception, you truly are wonderful writers and I have been very proud to add your writing to our ‘Wonderful Writing Wall’.
Phonics continues with success, a familiar routine to which the children respond so very well. After phonics, when the groups meet together on the carpet once again, all of the children are always so keen to share what they have learnt in their group which is always such a pleasure to observe. Next week, it shall be our Read Write Inc. assessment checkpoint. I shall, of course, inform you of your child’s sound knowledge and reading level after these assessments. As I completed some early assessments last week, please do not worry if your child has not moved this time; I shall complete early assessments again in Spring 1 if necessary. I shall also complete some name writing assessments as a progress check for name writing and pencil grip.
Today, we had a very exciting visitor…Father Christmas! We each had the chance to speak to Father Christmas if we wanted to and he also brought us a Christmas present for our class – a Yoto player, along with some story cards. He also brought some chocolate – thank you, Father Christmas!
It has been a busy but wonderful week with our Reception superstars. I hope that you all enjoy the restful, relaxing weekend that you most certainly deserve. If you are coming back to school this evening, I shall look forward to seeing you there for lots of festive fun!
Well done Reception and many thanks to all parents and carers,
Miss Witham
