2014-2015
Upcoming Christmas Term Events in Reception
-Phonics Evening Tuesday 11th November 6pm in the Infant Hall. All parents welcome to attend and learn more about how we teach the children the initial skills needed to read and write.
- The Reception Christmas Performance: 'Hedgehog's Happy Christmas' on Friday 5th December at 10am in the Infant Hall.
-Our Christmas Cinema Trip: 'Penguins of Madagascar' on Friday 12th December (morning)
-Christmas Party Day: Monday 15th December. Children are encouraged to dress in their best party clothes.
Autumn Term 1 2014
During this half term we have been getting to know one another, and learning about our new school routines. We are all enjoying our delicious school meals, and we are learning to decide for ourselves what we would like to eat from the selection each day.
Every Wednesday, we have been using the large apparatus in the Infant Hall, and developing our balancing and climbing skills.
We celebrated Harvest with the whole school at St Andrew’s Church, and joined in singing the songs we had practised in Singing Assembly. We have been reading the story of Handa’s Surprise, and have tasted all of the fruits in Handa’s basket – our pictograms showed that pineapple was our favourite fruit! We wrote shopping lists in our shared writing sessions and made a fruit salad with the fruits we had chosen. It was delicious!
We explored the school grounds to look for signs of Autumn, and collected leaves, acorns and pine cones to place in our Investigation tray.
Autumn Term 2
This half term, we will be exploring Light and Dark, finding out about different celebrations across the world, including Diwali, Bonfire Night, Remembrance Day, and, of course, Christmas!
Spring Term 1 2015
Happy New Year!
Welcome back to the Spring Term in Reception. In the first half of this term, our topic is 'Lets bake!', and we will be planning all our curricular activities around two main texts. The first is the traditional tale of 'The Gingerbread Man', and we are all looking forward to baking and decorating our own gingerbread characters. The second story is 'The Biscuit Bear' by Mini Gray, which follows the adventures of another baked creation as he comes to life and discovers the world around him, but has a happier ending than that experienced by the poor Gingerbread Man!
The hall is now free from Christmas rehearsals and performances, and the children are very excited that they are able to explore the large PE apparatus again. We have been making the most of the recent snowy weather in our outdoor provision, experiencing first hand what happens to water when the temperature drops below freezing point. The children also discovered how strong the wind can be when they helped to stop the tarpaulin blowing away in the recent gales. As the term continues, we will be looking out for the first signs of Spring, and preparing for our next topic, 'Growing'.
Also this half term, we will be celebrating Chinese New Year and Valentine's Day, and learning more about another of our key school values, Respect.
As a conclusion to our work on 'Stickman' by Julia Donaldson the Reception and Nursery children joined together for a morning of fun 'stick' activities and a 'stick' themed snack time.
Have a look at some of our photographs below.
Spring Term 2
Our topic for this half term is 'Growing', and we will be reading the story of 'Jack and the Beanstalk,' growing our own bean plants and looking closely at the world around us as Spring arrives and nature comes back to life after after the long winter.
There will be an opportunity to abandon the school uniform and be creative with clothing as we dress up as a favourite literary character fro World Book day on Thursday 5th March. We encourage the children to bring their favourite book into school to share with us.
Parent's evenings will be on Monday 9th and Wednesday 11th March. Sign up sheets are now on display in the Reception cloakroom.
There is another chance to be creative on Friday 13th March, when we encourage the children to make their faces funny for Red Nose day - we look forward to seeing the results.
We are planning a series of exciting experiments during during Science Week, starting on 16th March and we will finish the Spring term on Thursday 26th March with a week dedicated to Easter activities.
As part of our World Book Day celebrations, we all really enjoyed a visit by Caroline from Penrith library. She showed us how easy it was to join the library and shared with us three of her favourite stories. We particularly enjoyed the one about a sleeping giant.
Summer Term 1
Welcome back to the summer term. We hope you had an enjoyable Easter holiday and you are all ready for an exciting run up to the end of the Reception year.
Our new topic for this half-term is 'Transport and Travel'. The first book we are basing our activities around is 'The Naughty Bus', and the children are already producing some fantastic work linked to this interesting story. Our whole unit assembly is on Tuesday 12th May, and you are all welcome to join us at 10.20am as we share what we have learnt about our transport topic so far.
In our maths lessons, we have conducted surveys to find out how we travel to school, which types of vehicles pass the school during the day and what is the most popular car colour in the school car parks (a close result between silver and black!). We will be learning to count in 2's, 5's and 10's, and are practising solving simple number sentences in our weekly Big Maths Challenge every Friday.
As the weather becomes warmer and drier (we hope!), our Wednesday PE sessions will be outside on the playground or field. Please could each child have a pair of pumps or trainers available at school to change into for these sessions.
The outside learning sessions with Mrs Thomas will include exploring our pond area, investigating the small creatures who share our school grounds with us, and building dens from tarpaulins on the field. The RE focus with Miss Thwaites will include discussing the qualities of a good friend and the school value of caring.
On Friday 8th May, from 9 to 11.30am, you are welcome to 'Stay and Play' with your child. The focus of the session will be making vehicles from a range of materials, with a view to racing them against each other at the end of the day. All donations of junk modelling materials gratefully accepted in preparation for this activity! Thank you.
We are currently planning a school trip with a transport theme for the latter part of the summer term. More details will appear in a separate letter, and on the website.
As always, thank you for your continuing support and if you have any queries relating to your child, however big or small, please speak to any of the Reception Unit staff.
Here are some pictures from our fabulous model-making morning. Thank you for your donations of junk which, as you can see, were used to create some fantastic model vehicles. Also, a huge 'Thanks' to the parents of Rosie, Joshua, Jacob and Chloe who joined us for the fun. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.
Date of our trip: Friday 3rd July to Lakeland Motor Museum and Haverthwaite railway. More details to follow.
Summer Term 2
Welcome back everyone to the final seven weeks of this school year. Where has the time gone?
Our topic for the next few weeks will be 'People who help us', and we will be using the book 'Emergency' to help us focus on the key services available to keep us safe throughout our lives.
The first date for your diary is Thursday 4th June when, weather permitting, it will be our Infant Sports afternoon. The children will need to come to school in trainers or pumps, shorts/leggings, T-shirt and a warm fleece on that day. Should the weather be too unpleasant, the back-up date will be Wednesday 10th June. Thank you to everybody who has volunteered to help us lead the teams and run stalls.
This year's trip is on Friday 3rd July and builds on our previous topic looking at types of transport. It involves a visit to The Lakeland Motor Museum near Windermere and a steam train ride on the Haverthawaite Railway. We plan to leave promptly in the morning and return by 3.15pm. Further details about the day can be found on the trip letter, which is on display in the Reception cloakroom. Please return the consent slips and payment as soon as possible.
We also start to look forward to next year with two Transition days, when the Reception children will spend 2 days with their new teachers on 25th June and 9th July. We aim to make the movement into Year 1 as stress-free as possible for the children, and we will be starting to talk about transition into Key Stage 1 with them in the next few weeks.
As always, thank you for your continued support and if you have any problems or queries, please don't hesitate to ask any of the Reception staff.