Welcome to the Blue and Red class page!

2022-23

24/05/2023- Minibeasts

This week in Reception we have been using our creative skills to make minibeast masks! We used different materials to make our masks and decorated them to look like our favourite minibeasts. We made butterfly, bumblebee and ladybird masks.

16/05/2023- Developing Our Communication Skills

In Reception this week, we are trying to be good listeners and talkers. We make sure to look at our friends when they are speaking as well as taking turns to talk and have a conversation. We practise this during carpet sessions while we are learning and whilst we play. We have also been talking about our feelings. Each morning and afternoon we place our faces on an emotion card, which lets the adults and our friends know how we are feeling. We then talk about how we feel and what is making us feel this way. From there, we decided on actions we can take to help ourselves feel better.

10/05/2023- King Charles III

We have been learning about the King’s coronation and why it was a special event. On Friday we had a party with food and lots of fun party games. To celebrate in Reception this week, we made crowns, painted portraits of King Charles and built our own castles. We had great fun celebrating this special day with all our friends.

04.05.2023- Preparing for the Coronation

We enjoyed some sunnier weather this week and had a great time playing outside. We enjoyed climbing up the wobbly bridge and down the pole. We had fun playing in the water area, watching the water travel down the different pipes. We also began preparing for the King's coronation next week by making our own crowns and building our own castles.

26.04.2023- Climate Week

This week in Reception we had a great time using recycled materials to make different things for Climate Week. We made musical instruments using scrap paper and plastic bottles to make colour fish. We learnt what recycling means and what happens if we don’t recycle and where our rubbish ends up. To visualise this, we cleaned out a mini ocean in our garden using nets to clear out rubbish.

20/04/2023- Welcome Back!

Our first week back in Reception was a very busy one. We have started reading a new book called ‘Arghhh Spider!’ Which has inspired lots of different writing opportunities for us. We began by drawing spiders and using our sounds to label the different parts of the spider. We also managed to find another minibeast in our garden, a snail! We built a home for the snail, provided food for it and drew pictures of what we could see. We challenged ourselves to write a sentence about them too using our sounds.

29/03/2023- Easter!

We have been learning about Easter this week and why it is a special celebration for some people. We carried out many fun Easter activities such as making egg glasses, creating Easter cards and solving Easter puzzles. We incorporated our maths learning in this also and designed Easter eggs with shape patterns. Outside, we had our own version of an Easter egg hunt, instead of hunting eggs we looked for Numicon bunnies and chicks. A great end to this term!

22/03/2023- Shapes and Patterns

This week in Reception we have begun learning about shapes and patterns. We have been partaking in problem solving activities such as arranging shapes to make squares and rectangles and using shapes to design and build a home for the Gruffalo. As we have also been learning about oral hygiene and our teeth, we’ve been using play dough to make and add teeth into mouths that do not have any. We counted how many teeth we could add before thinking about what one more or one less might be.

15/03/2023- Creative Creations

In Reception this week we have been getting very creative. We have been learning about plants previously and the different parts of a plant, this week we are making our own plant pictures in the style of a collage. We are also using our imagination to make jet packs using recycled materials such as bottles and cardboard boxes. We are using our problem solving skills to try and fix parts of our creations we are unhappy with, thinking carefully about how to make our work even better.

07/03/2023- Making Origami Foxes

In Reception we have been challenging ourselves to make origami foxes, inspired by the fox from our story ‘The Gruffalo’. We carefully followed instructions, folding our paper carefully to make a fox. We also challenged ourselves outside to make a home for the Gruffalo using large construction. We thought about what his home might look like and worked together to carry crates and blocks safely.

1/03/2023- Locusts in Reception!

We have had some interesting visitors this week in Reception, locusts! We have been Exploraptors and have been observing and exploring the different body parts of the locusts and how they move around. We decided to draw what we could see and use our sounds to label our drawings. We also learnt how to look after the locusts and what they might eat. 

22/02/2023- Science

We have had a busy first week back. As we are approaching spring, we began thinking about plants and what they need to grow and survive. We found out they need water, air and sunlight. We decided to test this out and planted some seeds of our own! We planted cress and observed how the plants grew each day from a tiny seed. We noticed the different parts of the plants too and talked to our friends about what we could see each day. 

07/02/2023- Our Feelings

We have been focusing on our feelings this week in Reception and how to be a good friend. We have been using our feeling charts every morning as we come into school and again after lunch. We talk about how we are feeling and what has made us feel this way. We also enjoy doing calming activities too, such as painting and using putty. As well as talking about our feelings we have been thinking about how our friends feel also. We make sure we are kind to our friends and help them if they are feeling upset or worried. 

31/01/2023- Chinese New Year

We have been celebrating Chinese New Year this week. We learnt about why Chinese New Year is a special celebration to some people and how they celebrate this. We made our own Chinese dragon puppets using card and lolly sticks as well as beautiful fans. We’ve also been busy learning all about number 9 this week. We have made number 9 pizzas, counting out the toppings on our pizza and writing number stories to match.

24/01/2023- Pre-Writing Skills

This week we have been enjoying writing in Reception. To strengthen the muscles in our hands we have been partaking in lots of different fine motor and gross motor activities.Inside, we have been using playdough to make firefighters as we have been learning all about them in English. We have also been creating and painting our own fire engines by cutting and sticking different materials. Outside, we have been using the large construction toys to make huge pirate ships! We worked together lifting the different sized wooden blocks and crates to make our ship.

19/01/2023- Reading

We have been reading about vets this week in literacy, learning all about what they do! This has inspired us to be Pretendasaurs and role play as vets ourselves. We also enjoyed reading in our cosy reading room with our friends. We tried our best to read the words on the page and enjoyed explaining what we could see in the pictures.

12/01/2023- We love to talk!

This week in Reception we talked a lot! We spoke about big ships and decided to draw our own giant ships, whilst explaining all the details we are adding to them. We also took our new fascination outside and tried to make a ship using large construction. We invited all our friends to sail in our ship, deciding it was best to go to a beach far away from the rain. We also enjoyed talking about the natural resources we have in our area. We used natural objects to create pictures and spoke about what we could see and feel. We had a great week!

7/12/2022- Exploration and Curiosity in Reception

This week in Reception we have been exploring how balls can travel in different ways. We talked about how we can make them move faster and slower. Look at us exploring the balls...

30.11.2022- Pirates!

This week in Reception we have been role playing as pirates and creating props for our play. We rolled up paper to make telescopes to spot evil pirates approaching our ship as well as a huge pirate ship! Inside we practised our cutting skills by trying to make snowflakes. It was a little bit tricky but we tried our best. We also enjoyed drawing maps of our journeys to school, we thought about how we travel to school and the things we see along the way.

24/11/2022- Paint Printing

We had another great week in Reception. We were very lucky to have a visit to Manor Park Library and have a look at all the fantastic books available. At school, we decided to make a new home for Blue Penguin, the main character from our story in literacy. We used recyclable materials to create a cosy and creative home for our penguin friend. We also enjoyed making our own number blocks! We used cubes to create a number block before covering it in paint and stamping the cubes onto a piece of paper.

16/11/2022- Speaking and Listening

Speaking is a huge part of our daily lives in Reception and this week we talked a lot about penguins! We are reading ‘Blue Penguin’ in literacy and took part in many fun penguin related activities. We made craft penguins and were able to explain what we are doing, as well as navigate our way through the Arctic using positional language. We have also worked together to create a home for Blue Penguin in the garden and have begun role playing the story so far.

10/11/2022- The Blue Penguin

We had a great week in Reception. We enjoyed reading our new book in Literacy. It is called the Blue Penguin. We are exploring different feelings through reading this book. The Blue Penguin felt very happy when he made a new friend! We have helped the Blue Penguin and his penguin friends to move around the icebergs and to travel safely over obstacles in their way. Here we are exploring positional language and playing on a huge map. 

1/11/2022- Halloween

We had a great first week back in Reception. We enjoyed lots of different Halloween related activities such as making playdough spiders, stamping spooky paint ghosts and even decorating pumpkins! We were also very lucky to receive some pumpkins from space as Mae Jemison surprised us with some from her most recent travels.

20/10/2022- Black History Week

This week we have celebrated Black History and diversity in Reception. We learnt all about Mae Jemison, the first African American female astronaut to orbit the Earth! To celebrate Mae Jemison, we made playdough astronauts, created giant rockets using boxes and role played as astronauts ourselves! We also painted portraits of Mae Jemison and made number 6 rockets. We had a great week!

12/10/2022- Diwali

We have been learning all about Diwali. We used toys to learn the story of Rama and Sita and why Diwali is such an important celebration. To celebrate Diwali we have made Diva lamps using clay and plain and colourful paper lanterns. We used salt and chalk to trace out and draw beautiful patterns and fireworks. We loved learning about Diwali.

4/10/2022- Science

This week in Reception we have been learning about the different parts of our bodies. We cut out pictures of our faces and placed them on a large sheet of paper. Then we used a pencil to draw our bodies from our heads. After that, we used paint to add some colour to our bodies. We thought about the important jobs our bodies do and how we use our bodies when we move and play. We have also been exploring different materials and how they feel. We used a range of materials to make our own collages which we very much enjoyed.

28/09/2022- Reading

This week, we have been exploring a range of different books in Reception! We have been thinking about how to handle and take care of our books. We were very excited about our Reading tent and could not wait to go inside to read an exciting book. We also changed our books and carefully picked the perfect book to read at home! We also have other texts around in our classrooms that we can read and explore such as the Lego books that can help us build different structures.

22/09/2022- Number

This week, we have been learning all about number 2 in Reception! We have been thinking about all the different ways we can make 2. We used different resources, toys and even our fingers to make 2 in many different ways. We also saw what 2 looks like on a 10 frame this week, and noticed no matter which 2 boxes we coloured in, 8 boxes always remained empty! It has been an exciting week in Maths this week, we cannot wait to see which number we will be learning about next week.

14/09/2022- Making Self Portraits Using Natural Resources

We had an adventurous week in Reception! We enjoyed exploring our new classrooms and had great fun to explore all the new activities. We loved using the natural objects to create portraits of ourselves. We were so excited to create the pictures!

07/09/2022- Our First Week in Reception!

We have had a fantastic first week in Reception! We have enjoyed exploring our new area, making new friends and having fun. The outside area has been particularly popular, the children have been challenging themselves to climb up the wobbly bridge and slide down the pole! We have also been enjoying partaking in many different activities inside too, such as painting, making cube structures and drawing some of our favourite things. We can’t wait to show you all what we get up to next week!