Welcome to Reception

Robots! Robots! Robots everywhere!

It's been like a robot factory this in Reception. We've had so much fun planning, building and adding finishing touches to our very own robot designs. We designed robots in play-doh, painted them, added labels to our own drawings and even made them dance on the light-box.  We then made the real thing!

Reception Robots

 

Towns and Cities

With so much interest in transport and the different ways we move around happening this last couple of weeks, we've found that many new towns and cities have appeared in class each week. From large scale castles to railway systems and main roads, we've had them all. The map reading with magnifying glasses to find other cities really has made us all smile!

3D Shapes

Putting our building skills to use in Maths, we have also spent some time this term learning about 3D shapes. To find out about curved and flat surfaces, we practised building towers. Realising that curved faces were useless unless they were at the very top, we soon knew exactly what to do to build towers that were tall and more importantly stable. We even learned that the point at the top of a cone is called an apex and was also not very useful as a foundation for our towers.

 Gymnastics

As we were so quiet during Y6 SATS, their teachers decided we'd earned a really big treat! To our surprise, the Y6 children gave us their gymnastics lesson with Tanya! It was amazing! We loved every minute and can't wait for the next time we get to go!

 Transport

When our topic moved into Transport, we were so excited (especially the boys). There were cars and buses everywhere - including a visit from the very Naughty Bus himself (a character from one of our stories). We spent the week exploring how we can move around Thorney Close and the city safely and really enjoyed reading different maps and looking for symbols to help guide the way. However, the best bit was building our very own cars. With just some simple instructions, we independently made our own cars. The next day, like good engineers do, we tested them on different surfaces to make sure they were safe. It was so much fun - we've definitely found some mechanics of the future.

To continue our work on Transport, we also started to explore air and sea vehicles. We read the story Ema-Jane's Aeroplane She took an amazing journey across land and oceans, visiting many places and picking up many friends along the way, until disaster happened and a storm hit.

As we are slowly trying to prepare for Year 1, we decided to create our own story maps to show her journey. These were quite tricky and we chose different ways to create them, but we were all very proud of our work when we’d finished. They definitely helped us to retell the story to our friends the next day!

Pretending to be in the story, we even wrote our own letters home so we could be rescued. A fire truck and jet pack were definitely some of the faster ways to get home that day!

Even though we'd built and tested our very own cars the week before, we realised this wasn't going to help Ema-Jane return home. We need a boat. Collecting lots of different materials and making our own predictions, we tested out their buoyancy. From twigs to feathers, marbles to toy cars and paperclips and pine cones, we tested each item carefully in preparation for building our own boats. With lots of materials to choose from, we created boats from cork, plastic and even paper. Everyone thought the paper boat would get very soggy and sink, but to our surprise it held the most people!

 Butterfly

It's been such a busy half term and we've been working so hard, developing our Writing, Reading and Maths skills in readiness for Year 1 that we’ve hardly stopped!

We began the term by investigating different life cycles and looking at how we grow from being babies into adults. We realised that animals and insects also follow a life cycle and with the help of the Hungry Caterpillar we explored how the butterfly gets her wings. Using our scientist eyes, we looked at different butterfly images carefully and tried to copy them, colours, lines and patterns. Like a little boy in a video we watched, if we weren't happy with our attempt, we tried and tried again. Here are some of our amazing sketches.

Stand aside Jamie Oliver and co!

We've been busy in Reception perfecting our peeling of carrots and chopping of celery and why....to make the most delicious bowl of soup! This afternoon we all came together to give it a try. Even those of us who don't normally like to eat our vegetables at lunch had a taste and some of us were shocked by how much we actually liked it. The mmms were loud enough for everyone to hear and cries of "It was delicious!" "Can I have some more please?" and even "I could eat this everyday!" could be heard from Reception. Now to do the washing up!

World Book Day

We had a great day celebrating World Book Day.  We used our dressing up clothes to dress up as some of the characters in our books. Some of us made story crowns showing our favourite character or book.

Ernest Shackleton

We have been learning all about about Ernest Shackleton - one of the first men to reach the South Pole. We learned about his journey and how he had to try so hard to overcome lots of challenges. It was so much fun preparing our own maps, packing all of the warm clothes we could find before recreating his journey in our very own 'boats'. We even drew the penguins we'd seen on our travels when we returned home.

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Arctic Adventures

As part of our topic Arctic Adventures, we worked as a team to create a boat. We spotted penguins,polar bears, caught fish, held on tight for the high waves and learnt to walk in the snow.  We also had the opportunity to create our own icy lands.

Winter in Reception

This week our topic is all about winter. Take a look at some of our activities.

Windy Weekend

After a very windy weekend, we realised that the playground was strewn with twigs from our trees. We began to collect them up and make quite a pile. So, when we saw Mr Unsworth start to tidy during our afternoon play time, we lent him a hand to fill his wheel barrow too.

Reception Class Band

Drum roll please..... we'd like to introduce The Reception Class Band.  Every Thursday, we have been learning to play new instruments. This week, we played together for the first time, each having a go at playing the drums, cow bells, snare drums and shakers. It was so much fun...

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 To Space and Back

 

We've been to Space and back several times in our fantastic rockets. We've packed our own bags to visit the moon with baby bear in his story 'Whatever Next', tried to catch a star to help find the boy a friend in 'How to Catch a Star' and even listened to stories read by REAL astronauts in space too! In fact, we've had so much fun that we're going to stay in space next week too, exploring some very strange planets and even meeting aliens who love underpants.

Star Moment

We have to show you some of the work we've been doing in English . As we've learned all of our first set of sounds this term already, we've begun using them to create words by segmenting each word into sounds. We've planned our own sentences (yes, you read that correctly - sentences), repeated them to ourselves and each other and then begun to write.  We are so proud of their work, using capital letters and even full stops!  What an amazing difference since September!

Bang! Pop! Fizz! Whoosh!

We've had such a bright and colourful time this week. Across the world, Hindus have celebrated the Festival of Lights, Diwali and so we decided to explore too. We've retold the story of Rama and Sita, created diya lamps to light the way home, designed our own Rangoli patterns and even had our own parties in the home corner. We even compared it to our own favourite festival, Christmas. It's been so much fun finding out about other children and their celebrations so if you'd like to find out a little more, you can watch Jessica and her friends here:

 Let Celebrate Diwali

To end Diwali, our Hindu friends fill the sky with fireworks and as it was also Bonfire Night yesterday, we decided to have some fun of our own. Talking about how to keep safe, we even learned about why our pets need to stay inside safe and warm. We explored light and dark and made our own firework displays in paint, loose parts, building blocks and even in Maths too.

As easy as 1, 2, 3!

As easy as 1, 2, 3! What a great week of Maths we've had. Learning about the real meaning of each number and how they can be represented in so many ways, has been great fun. We've been on number hunts around the school and even practised our formation of the numbers too. Can you spot 1, 2 or 3 at home or on the way to school?

 A good breakfast fuels you up and gets you ready for the day!

Willow class and Beech class joined together for breakfast in our studio room. They had a choice of cereals and some had a bagel too! Yummy!!!

 Home is where the heart is!

In Reception, we've focused on Carson Ellis' book - Home. We've talked about our families and the people who care for us and shared each others pictures from home. We've painted houses, created houses and even become master builders outside. 

 If you'd like to listen along to our book for this week, here's the link.

 

We Sang, danced and played a drum

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 Pairs

Welcome to Thorney Close Primary School Reception

We are delighted that you have been successful in being allocated a place for your child to join our school family in September 2021. We would like to extend a warm welcome to you and your …

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