Spring Term 2019

Comic Relief

We had a great time dressing up to raise money for Comic Relief. We know how important raising money for charity is. We thought about the different ways we can help people and thanked God for what we have.

Maths

We have worked so hard this term, developing our Maths skills. We have been working with numbers to 20 and solving addition and subtraction problems. We can also tell you how many tens and ones a number has… we’re doing so well!

 

Spring

We went on a lovely walk around our school grounds, looking for signs of Spring. We found different flowers that were beginning to grow and could hear lots of birds chirping in the trees. We then made some beautiful spring pictures using our painting, colouring and collaging skills.

Multi Skills Event

Reception went to Newton Aycliffe Sports Centre to join in a Multi Skills event alongside other schools. We had so much fun practising physical skills such as running, jumping, balancing, kicking, catching and throwing. We even got the highest score on 2 of the stations!

 

Chinese New Year

Reception enjoyed tasting Chinese food to celebrate Chinese New Year. We also made paper lanterns and learned how to say Happy New Year in Chinese… KUNG HEI FAT CHOY!

 

Winter

Reception were so excited when it snowed. We had been learning about how to keep warm in Winter and were able to practise this when playing outdoors. We wrapped up warm and had fun jumping in the snow and throwing snowballs!

 

Autumn Term 2018

From exploring our new classroom and learning new skills, to performing in our EYFS Nativity, Reception have enjoyed our fun filled first term together!

 

Spring Term 2018

Sickman

We have enjoyed lots of independent craft activities linked with the Julia Donaldson’s book ‘Stickman’. The children used their imaginations to create beautiful collages, amazing paintings and fabulous 3D characters with junk modelling resources, play dough and lolly sticks. Applying their super phonics skills, the children have independently labelled much of their work with captions. 

Judo

Reception had a great introductory session with a Judo coach from ‘Destination Judo’.  We had lots of fun playing games and learning new skills!

Multi-Skills Event

Reception were invited to take part in an afternoon of fun PE activities in Spennymoor with other schools from the area. We behaved beautifully and thoroughly enjoyed this great experience.

Snow Fun

Reception were so excited by the huge snow fall we had in February. We enjoyed throwing snowballs, making snow angels and sculpting amazing snowmen! Also, we used this time to learn about ice and the process of melting. As always, this inspired some beautiful independent art work from the children.

Chinese New Year

A class trip to ‘The Oriental Museum’ in Durham was an enjoyable start to our Chinese New Year topic. We had a super time learning lots about the history of Chinese New Year and how it is celebrated today. Highlights for the children were dressing up and acting out the story of the Chinese Zodiac and being able to dance with ‘Gerald’ the dragon! Lots of fun was had by all, including the teachers!

We continued our learning back at school especially Chinese food tasting and making concertina dragons. Some of the children made a giant pattern dragon using large boxes…he was amazing! We used ‘Red Pockets’ and coins to solve money problems during Maths.

Music

The lovely Miss Hughes joined us every Friday morning this term for some super music sessions! We have learnt lots of new songs and also how to play some different musical instruments. A really enjoyable time had by all!

World Book Day

Reception joined in with the rest of the school as we celebrated World Book Day by dressing up as our favourite characters and sharing our favourite books. At the end of the day, the children were given a pound voucher towards a book of their choice.

Spring

We have enjoyed beautiful walks around the school grounds looking for sign of Spring. The children showed a particular interest in Daffodils, leading to lots of focused and independent art and craft. We also attempted observational pastel pictures of the plants that have grown from bulbs we planted a few months ago.

Easter

Parents were invited to join Early Years for an Easter themed ‘Stay and Play’. During the afternoon the children had fun decorating an egg for our competition, eating hot-cross buns and taking part in an egg hunt. A fabulous time was had!

During RE we talked about Shrove Tuesday and tucked into some delicious pancakes! We also re-enacted ‘The Last Supper’ and ‘Palm Sunday’. Reception have learnt about what happened to Jesus at Easter-time. This was followed by our school Eucharist Service at St John’s Church. Conversations continued regarding ‘new-life’, including learning about different animals which are born in Spring-time. We have looked at various life-cycles, building up to a new topic on Mini-beasts.

Mini- Beasts

Reception have loved learning about all sorts of creepy crawlies during our Mini-beast topic. We have been on mini-beast hunts around the school grounds investigating habitats of various creatures. In the classroom we have been using our phonics skills to write sentences from our observations and have created some lovely independent paintings and drawings. During Maths we have been sorting mini-beasts by size and other criterion.

Autumn Term 2 2018

Room on the Broom

We have been learning about rhyme through the Julia Donaldson story ‘Room on the Broom’. We have had fun dressing up and role-playing parts of the story. We have enjoyed lots of messy and exciting activities, including finding rhyming objects in red witch’s potion and green slime! We have used our fine motor skills to carefully thread spider webs and witch’s hats, and made patterned wands with the beads.

Guy Fawkes Night

We have been learning about Guy Fawkes and have made lots of beautiful firework art!
Also, Early Years was very excited to have a visit from some Firefighters from Bishop Auckland Fire Station. Following a classroom discussion about how to keep ourselves safe on Bonfire Night, the Firefighters showed us their amazing engine and let us try on their helmets! Then the most exciting part! We all had a turn squirting water using the huge hoses- lots of fun was had by all! Including the teachers!
Following the visit, we enjoyed small world role play with our wooden fire station and truck. We role played and built our own class bonfire. We drank yummy hot chocolate with marsh mallows, and dipped melted matchmakers in sprinkles to make edible sparklers- delicious!

Diwali

We have learnt about Diwali, the Hindu festival of light. We shared the story ‘A Row of Lights’, teaching the children of the significance of Diva lamps. We made our own coil Diva lamps from clay, and painted them beautiful colours. We have also enjoyed learning about repeating patterns while creating sparklers made from pipe cleaners and beads. We used paints, chalk, collage and junk model resources to make incredible fireworks too!  We have been interested in the different music listened to in India….during PE we had enormous fun making up our own Bollywood dances! We have talked about the different foods eaten in India, and had a go at making some Indian coconut sweets- they were delicious! We designed Mehndi patterns with felt pens on cut out hands and also created symmetrical Rangoli patterns with 2D shapes. During Literacy, we have labelled our Diwali pictures.

Christmas

We had an amazing time celebrating Christmas in Reception! We have learnt about the birth of Jesus, and performed a wonderful version of the Nativity to parents and carers. We dressed up, remembered our lines and sang beautifully! We were truly fantastic!

We have enjoyed lots of Christmas craft activities, including making tree decorations, cards and calendars, moulding chocolates, and making and decorating biscuits.

We wrote letters to Santa and posted them ourselves in the letterbox opposite school. We have loved role playing as Santa and his elves and have listened to lots of Christmas stories!

During the last week before the holidays, we learnt about Christingle. We made our own Christingles in class which we took to St John’s Church for our Christmas service. Reception were very sensible when having their candles lit, and stood so still to sing Silent Night. A beautiful moment!

We had a fabulous time at our Early Years Christmas party! We played games, danced, ate party food and had such a fun time! The afternoon as finished off with a visit from a very special man, dressed in a red suit…….can you guess who it was?

In addition to all the excitement this half term, we have also completed our phase two phonics sounds and have been learning to blend to read. Many of the children now have reading books with words- fantastic!

We have continued to practice letter formation, particularly in our names; some of us have begun to label our picture with cvc words or beginning and end sounds.

We can’t wait to tell you about more exciting times and the progress we will have made next term- Thank you for your continued support.

Autumn Term 2017

Our first week

We have had so much fun settling in to our new classroom, learning new routines (especially lunchtimes) and making new friends!

Over the Summer holiday we were given ‘Whatever Next’ to read with our grown-ups. We have enjoyed talking about the story together and making some of our own rocket creations and lolly stick puppets.

We have been investigating the new areas in Reception and have particularly enjoyed learning in our outdoor area.

‘I am special’

As part of our R.E topic we have been learning about ourselves, and what makes us special. During circle-time we have chatted about who is special to us, what we are good at and how we are all unique- ‘it’s ok to be different’.

We have loved painting self- portraits and practising writing our names.

Physical

We have been learning to get ourselves undressed and dressed independently for P.E. We’ve had fun practising our balancing and jumping skills using the apparatus.

We have begun a gross motor skills programme, taking part in activities which promote muscle strength, endurance, and stability. We have particularly enjoyed ‘Dough Disco’ and dancing the ‘Breaky Bop’ in the hall.

To help us at lunch-time we have also been practicing cutting techniques in the classroom.

Autumn/Harvest Stay and Play

We went on a lovely walk around the school grounds looking for signs of Autumn. We noticed lots of exciting things such as crispy, coloured leaves, fallen apples and spikey pine cones! When we came back, we made some beautiful Autumn collages and used our phonics knowledge to label our work with initial sounds.

We had an amazing time at our Harvest ‘Stay and Play’! Many thanks to parents and carers who came to support this event. We bravely performed ‘The Little Red Hen’ and sang Harvest songs to our grown-ups, the finale being a very enthusiastic ‘Our God is a Great Big God’! Before going to play in the areas, we enjoyed a tasty oaty biscuit that we’d made the previous day. Grown-ups and children alike had lots of fun vegetable printing, making Little Red Hen masks and creating woodland animals with the play-dough.

Well done to Reception class for being the top attenders in September