Personal, Social & Emotional Development
We have loved exploring our new school and going on a tour. We meet some of our staff who we will come into contact with during our year at school.
We learnt about the importance of our school rules and how they are here to keep us safe. The Caterpillars are getting very good at remembering them, following them and helping others do the same.
We read 'Dirty Birty' and discussed in a circle time ways to keep clean. We talked about the importance of flushing the toilet and washing our hands with soap! The Caterpillars came up with some great ideas and listen carefully to others ideas.
We read The Colour Monster and talked about our feelings. We matched the Colour Monster emotions to our '5 point scale' at Walkley Primary School. We talked about the trusted adults we can talk to if we are sad or worried. We had a great time exploring our feelings talked about ways to help each other.
We read 'It's okay to be different'. A book about the differences in us and why that makes us special. We talked about lots of ways we are all different and noticed all of the different colour eyes, hair and skin we have in our classroom. We looked at our eyes and made a graph of the different colour eyes we have. Look at our beautiful unique eyes.
We read 'Little Glow' and talked about our favourite celebration and why we like it. We talked about Eid, Diwali, Bonfire Night, Christmas, Birthdays and Easter! We had a great conversation and learnt lots about each other.
Physical Development
We are strengthening our fine motor skills by threading leaf necklaces and writing our new letters in glitter.
We have enjoyed exploring the provision and using our gross and fine motor skills! This year we will be working hard to make our bodies strong and ready for learning!
We have made lots of playdough faces, cakes and pizzas. It has been great to see imaginations flourish as conversation have begun!
We loved our first visit to the dance studio. We met Miss Burton and found out what we do in our dance sessions.
We danced to Gummy Bear, You’ve Got a Friend in me, I Like to Move it, Ballet Barn, Family Madrigal and The Ants Go Marching! We are looking forward to learning to routines and being able to know which moves are next.
We practised our threading skills using ribbon and Colour Monsters.
We strengthened our fine motor skills by using the tweezers to sort our the mixed up Colour Monster.
We love using the Trim Trail to strengthen our bodies and muscles for writing. The Caterpillars used great communication skills and were fabulous at climbing.
Literacy- Phonics
We are learning to write our names.
We have started our Read, Write Inc scheme. The Caterpillars have met Fred the Frog and are doing a great job with segmenting and blending. They will be reading before we know it! Well done everyone. We always keep trying to form our letter correctly!
We have started using our Fred Fingers to write words on our Magnetic Boards. The Caterpillars are impressing us with their reading skills using their Fred Talk to segment and blend.
We are loving 'Squiggle Me into a Writer' by Shonette Bason Wood. We use our 'Flipper Flappers' to dance to the shape of the sound we are learning in our phonics. We have great fun learning the new moves for each letter and dancing to a new song.
We have done our first piece of golden writing. The Caterpillars are starting to hear initial sounds in words and use their Fred Fingers. Look at our fantastic writing! The Caterpillars are working hard to from each letter correctly.
We went to The Message Centre when we found a message from The Little Red Hen in the book. She wanted help so we wrote our messages back offering our help.
Maths
We read Dear Zoo and talked about capacity, size and weight. We explored fitting animals into boxes which were too small, heavy and light boxes and containers to see how much liquid they held. The Caterpillars did a great job using lots of mathematical language to describe our findings.
We have been learning all about subitising. We have looked at dots and said how many there are without counting... this is subitising. We have started with numbers 1-3 and they are experts. We have been finding groups of 1s, 2s and 3s in lots of places around the classroom.
We made counting wands to help the Caterpillar count using a 1:1 correspondence. We taught our caterpillar that to count correctly he needed to;
The Numberblocks helped us figure out that 1 and another 1 is 2. We found lots of items in our classroom and then found another one to make it 2.
We have been continuing to subitise (having an instant recognition of a quantity). We listened carefully to sounds, claps and drum beats and made subitising cards for our friends to subitise.
We have been looking at more, fewer and the same. We played lots of games and the children quickly figured out that the person who had more had the larger amount/the bigger number. We even tried to trick the children and show them a smaller amount, with bigger object. They quickly worked out our trick and found the group of more.
We sang '5 Little Peas in a Pea Pod Pressed'. We have learnt that we have 5 fingers on one hand. We put 5 of the same object on each finger and we had 5. We used 5 different objects and still had 5. We tried it on a dice frame and still had 5! When we put 5 lots of 5 together... we have 10!
Understanding the World
In RE this term the children have been learning about role models. They learned how Jesus is a role mode, to Christians and acted out a bible story where he walks on water.
We looked at our class story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We realised that the Caterpillar is very good at eating! We talked about what we are good at and draw some fantastic pictures of ourselves.
We learnt about Goldilocks and talked at artefacts that we might have at home. We discussed who we know would use them. We decided a baby might use a bottle, dummy and bib and a grown up might use keys, a phone and a diary. We looked at pictures of different families and talked about who might be the parents, grandparents and the children.
We recapped our story of Goldilocks and discussed who the characters were. We acted out the story with our friends and then talked about who lives in our house. We draw fantastic pictures of our families.
We went an a fabulous Autumn Walk about the school grounds. We chatted about the signs of autumn we could spot. We saw the leaves beginning to change colour and the temperature was cooler. We thought it would not be a good idea to wear a swimming costume outside anymore! We found fruit on the trees in our orchard and are wanting to get cooking with our findings.
With the apples we collected, we made apple cookies. We grated the apples, mashed bananas, stirred in the oats and squished them into balls. We used lots of fine and gross motor skills to make our cookies. Whilst they were baking in the oven, we coloured in apple pictures whilst the smell of our baking filled the air. We took them back down to the classroom and ate them whilst we watched a program about the life cycle of an apple. They were delicious and loved by many!
We had a visit from a police officer. He came to tell the children about his job and how he keeps people safe. The children were very interested in catching baddies, but P.C Gordon wanted the children not to be scared, but to remember the good things they do. Thank you P.C Gordon for such a great morning!
We read ‘Little Glow’ and chatted about the different celebrations. We look our own Little Glow and found the best place for it to shine bright. Everyone began making their own Little Glow.
Expressive Art and Design
We have drawn portraits of ourselves. This is something we do every term and love looking at the incredible development the children make in the details of their drawings during their time in Reception.
We started our Eric Carle art project. We looked carefully at the types of art he produced to illustrate his books. We watched a video of him at work creating painting with textures, brush strokes and patterns within. We saw him cutting up pieces and sticking the together to make his fantastically bold, bright pictures. We had a go at painting in the style of Eric Carle!
We cut the pieces of our artwork using our scissor skills and covered plates with our collaging skills. We are going to make The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We learnt how to use the PVA glue and how to make sure it fully coats our collage to make every piece stick. We worked together to decorate as many plates as we could.
Look at our fabulous caterpillar. We are so proud of our first piece of art. Well done Caterpillars. A super job!
We have been colour mixing and finding out which primary colours mix to make a secondary colour. We loved watching the colours change as we rubbed our 2 different colour hands together.
We used broccoli to print on Autumn trees. We used our colour mixing knowledge to mix the colour we wanted and then printed using a broccoli floret.
We have used all of our skills we have learnt about colour mixing and put it into practise. We have painted some beautiful pictures whilst learning about the skill of washing our brush between each colour.