Reception Autumn 2022 Our first half term at school

During the first few weeks at school the children enjoyed sharing their family scrapbooks, talking about their lives and creating pictures of their families. This encouraged the children to talk about themselves with confidence and begin to form positive relationships and friendships with one another.

Our Literacy Learning Journey

Owl Babies

We created our own Story Maps to retell the story of Owl Babies

Our first key text was Owl Babies by Martin Waddell. We chose this story because the theme is around being separated from our parent but that they always return to us. The children enjoyed retelling the story verbally using a text map before creating their own. We also used Tales Toolkit to illustrate the characters and setting, problem and solution in the story.

As part of the Owl theme, we organised a visit from The Owl Experience where the children learned many facts about Owls and new vocabulary such as nocturnal and swooped. The children had an opportunity to hold the owls and see them up close.

Room on the Broom

Our next key text was Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson. This inspired lots of outdoor play, including creating potions and spells and flying on broomsticks. Once again the children retold the story in various ways, verbally and through pictures.

As children gained confidence through phonics lessons we began to include linking phonemes to graphemes in order to write words by segmenting the words for spelling. Children created their own spells and learned the features of a list.

Poetry Basket

Alongside our key texts and daily phonics lessons we have learned a range of poems linked to our topics and themes, including 'A Wise Old Owl' 'A Basket of Apples' and 'Leaves are Falling'.

our maths learning journey

Our intial focus was counting with one to one correspondence, learning to line objects up and touch each one as we count them before moving onto the corresponding numeral for the amount.

We began to practise our number formation daily and learned rhymes to support this. We know that all numerals should be formed from the top.

We then moved onto doubling numbers using practical resources to support our understanding.

Our outdoor learning journey

Learning outdoors provides a wealth of opportunities and a chance for children to engage in different experiences on a large scale. The children have enjoyed exploring nature, constructing on a large scale, experimenting with sand and water and natural resources in our texture kitchen.

The children have access to outdoor clothing and wellington boots the weather is not a barrier to learning outdoors. The learn how to co-operate with one another, talk about and modify their ideas and the importance of being active to live a healthy life.

PE

We have introduced formal PE lessons once a week this year to encourage children to learn to be independent and follow instructions. They are encouraged to undress and dress themselves and are learning about the importance of warming up before exercise and what happens to our bodies during physical activity.

RE

The Harvest Festival

Our first celebration of a Festival with a religious element was our Harvest Festival. We learned about giving thanks for the food that we eat and the importance of helping those less fortunate than ourselves. It was wonderful to share our learning with parents and carers at our Harvest Festival performance.

Parent Workshop

During Autumn Term 1 we delivered our first Parent Workshop on Early Years Curriculum and Assessment. We hope that the parents and carers who attended found this useful.

Spooky Disco

We ended the half term with our first school disco. The children enjoyed dressing up, dancing and playing games together before enjoying refreshments and a goody bag of sweets.

Appreciate

Credits:

Created with an image by RomixImage - "Beautiful maple leaves in autumn sunny day in foreground and blurry background in Kyushu, Japan. No people, close up, copy space, macro shot."