What a great first week back.

The children have done some fantastic writing about their half term breaks and some children confidently read out their work to the class; it was so lovely hearing about your week off. I’m pleased lots of you have managed to spend some time outside going for walks and contributing towards our total miles on Strava for our pilgrimage!

We have also thought about our inner and outer selves. The children carefully sketched half of their own faces and then thought about all of the things that make them them – their favourite activities, food, places to visit, skills and talents and then drew them on their inner self. Take a look at some of the results…

Well we have completed a full half-term of remote learning and what a half term it has been! We have had our fair share of technical difficulties but we have had so much fun too.

I’m so proud of each and every one of you Reception. Give yourselves a big clap!

This week we have learned about Chinese New Year celebrations and had a go at making our own colourful decorations. Some children had a go at writing their names in Chinese – wow.

We have talked about how Lent helps us prepare for Easter and talked about how some people give things up for Lent. This lead us to discuss pancake day. Mrs Collins kindly let us help make some pancakes to sample and even let us have a go at flipping a pancake (with a cool pan.)

Just look how wonderful all of your artwork looks in our classroom.

Over the last two weeks we have been looking at the work of Russian painter, Kandinsky. We began by experimenting with colour mixing. We were able to create new colours and even some shades and tints using black and white paint.

This week, using our knowledge of colours mixing, we created our own versions of Kandinsky’s abstract piece –  Squares with Concentric Circles. I could only share a few examples but they were all amazing and will all be proudly displayed in our classroom.

As it is children’s mental health week, we have thought about what makes us special and wrote positive things about ourselves. Here is an example from Lucy (I am good at numbers.)

Today in English, we have been writing letters to each other as we are all missing each other very much!

We have had so much fun in our phonics lessons this week. On Wednesday we did a phonics scavenger hunt. The children retrieved all kinds of objects from around their houses including toothbrushes, watches, chocolate and even a pug! It was a great laugh!

I am very proud of the children continuing to practice their writing at home. I am seeing some very neat work and lots of progress being made.

Tuesday’s challenge was to see how many words the children could make using only these sounds. They had 3 minutes to write down as many words as they could then we shared them with the rest of the class. The children did a very good job at home and at school. Keep up the good work!

This week in maths we have had lots of fun exploring mass and capacity!

We started the week by weighing and comparing mass. The boys and girls at home were super creative and made their own scales – some of them even became the scales.

We then moved onto exploring capacity – the children at school used coloured water to fill and pour into different sized containers. It was lovely to hear them using some brilliant vocabulary such as “full” and “nearly empty”. The children thought that the small container had the most water because it was the most full. We put this to the test and discovered that this was not in fact true – it was most full but it did not have the biggest capacity.

Some children at home made some similar discoveries.

Ivy carried out a similar investigation. “At first she said the tall glass had the most but she explained that the bowl had the most after we had measured ‘because it is very wide’.”

Dana also “discovered that full doesn’t always mean the most when there are different sized containers to compare.”

Yesterday, we thought about filling boxes/containers. We found many objects small enough to fit in our box. We then had a competition to see who could fit the most in one box.

The children at school realised that you could fit most in the box when we used the smallest objects. The children at home agreed. Ellen managed to fit 22 objects in her box!

Well done everyone for another fantastic week of home learning.

Reception have worked their socks off again this week!

Yesterday we created some wonderful, snowy pictures using cold colours. The children got very creative using all different bits that they had at home including the snow itself! Take a look at our wintery artwork.

Jensen made us all smile this week by sharing a musical masterpiece. You can see this on our homepage.

It certainly has not been the return to school I was expecting but we made it the end of the first week and I have thoroughly enjoyed learning with you all!

I wish I could share all of your work but I have just chosen a few examples to show all of the hard work that you have been doing this week.

This is just a tiny snippet of the incredible work Reception have produced this week. The class have been so resilient – you would think we had been teaching this way for a long time! I am incredibly proud of each and every one of you.

Thank you to all of the grown ups that have supported the children at home. We appreciate it is difficult to juggle a range of responsibilities with remote learning but you have all been so dedicated and cooperative.

I hope you all have a restful weekend – you deserve it!

Reception are full of Christmas spirit this week! We have enjoyed many festivities including our Christmas party and a pantomime. We are looking forward to our end of term treat this afternoon – a Christmas movie (and maybe even some popcorn!)

We had the most magical experience on Monday as we visited Winter Wonderland to see Santa’s reindeer, make smores on the fire and drink hot chocolate – all before seeing Santa Clause himself (and his funny friend Olaf!)

We have also been learning all about the very first Christmas. We dressed up and performed our very own class Nativity!

It really is the most wonderful time of year!

Ralphie the Elf has been very busy this week whilst we’ve been asleep. He’s been writing sentences on the board, ordering numbers to 10 and matching the correct amount of teddy bears to the numeral.

He has not done any of these jobs well though (sorry Ralphie!) Luckily Reception class have been fantastic teachers and helped him do the job correctly!

We also enjoyed wearing our Christmas jumpers yesterday and eating our delicious Christmas dinner!

Christmas is in full swing in Reception class this week. We have been very busy creating our Christmas crafts and practising our performance.

Our classroom has had a festive makeover. The children have loved exploring the new resources. They have dressed up as Mary, Joseph, Shepherds and Kings to retell the Christmas story and helped wrap presents in Santa’s workshop.

We have also had a very special guest arrive in Reception…