Reception Bulletin

Messages emailed to Reception parents

1 week ago
Posted on 18th Apr 2024 by

A Time For Celebrations; Ramadan and Easter

During the spring term children in nursery and reception learnt about a range of celebrations from different religions and cultures in order to develop their knowledge of People and Communities. This also supports the school value of being respectful and prepares them for their future lives.

The children learnt about the Muslim celebration of Ramadan by looking at books, artefacts and participating in crafts. They learnt that the moon is very important to some Muslims who participate in Ramadan and talked about the countdown to Eid and fasting. The children learnt vocabulary related to clothing some Muslim’s wear like a hijab. One of the children brought in a hijab from home which further enriched children’s learning and made the new vocabulary even more meaningful.

The children learnt about the Christian celebration of Lent and made pancakes at forest school. Practitioners layer children’s knowledge through a range of experiences. They read and acted out the runaway pancake, luckily ours did not run away and we managed to gobble it all up! The children were able to safely sit around the fire. The children and staff explored the Christian story of Easter through storytelling eggs and designed Easter cards. The children participated in an ‘Easter Tea Party’ which was decorated with salt dough crosses they had made a Christian symbol of the cross.

Practitioners were able to draw out connections between the two religions with children.

 

 

2 weeks ago
Posted on 11th Apr 2024 by

Eid Mubarak

Eid Mubarak!

We have had an Eid celebration in our classroom. We really enjoyed hearing from our children of Muslim families. We have had Eid biscuits brought in and we enjoyed some sweet treats and discussed the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

Reception/Year 1 classes enjoyed a Eid forest school experience where we discussed the importance of the moon and stars in Islam.

 

2 months ago
Posted on 10th Mar 2024 by

Year 6 ~France 2024

Our Year 6 set off in the early hours of Monday morning to catch a ferry from Dover to Calais. After 16 hours of travelling they eventually arrived at Chateau Beaumont. They had a fantastic time and spent their days exploring le Mont St Michel, the zoo, markets, supermarkets as well as spending time climbing, archery, fencing and team building. French night meant that they could experience a French delicacy of snails and frogs legs!!

The experience was amazing and the children thoroughly enjoyed it!

Everyone arrived home by midnight on Friday and I imagine spent a lot of the weekend sleeping.

Well done and thankyou to the wonderful adults: Mrs Pigg, Mr Johnson, Mrs Adams and Mrs Wust that gave up their time to go and the parents for allowing your children this experience.

3 months ago
Posted on 08th Feb 2024 by

Our Community Walk

Reception/Year 1 have been learning about the facilities in our local community. The children have enjoyed the home challenge of sharing their favourite places in the community and our walk yesterday is developing our knowledge and understanding about mapping. We are also linking it to our art and design work, identifying textures and structures in our locality.

3 months ago
Posted on 21st Jan 2024 by

What makes a home a home?

This is our learning all about homes.

Practitioners here plan the curriculum with our unique children, families and community in mind. We choose topics that all our children can relate to and have had experiences of so that we can engage and motivate them. We set a home learning task and ask our families to share aspects of their lives that we may not know about. This supports children’s speaking and communication skills and develops their awareness that others may be similar or different to them.

We found out that most of our children live in houses but some of them live in bungalows. We explored the different features including the rooms in certain homes. Our core text of Peace at Last by Judith Kerr supported us to differentiate between rooms; having themed resources about different rooms develops children’s language in the best way possible, as they are able make connections. We sang songs about homes and looked at how homes are portrayed in books. Children acted out what they learnt about homes and applied this in our home corner provision. We compared different types of homes. Children built and designed homes in the small world provision and we enhanced it with a caravan. The project inspired us to construct and mark-make in a variety of contexts. We were able to innovate songs about houses to songs about a range of different homes. This project has allowed us to recognise and celebrate diversity.

This learning will continue and be extended in the Spring term, as we think about how our homes fit into our community in Sutton Hill and how homes have changed from the past. These threads are woven throughout our whole school Geography and History curriculum and will lay the foundations for later learning.

4 months ago
Posted on 14th Dec 2023 by

Our Sequence of Learning for Expressive Art and Design

We have designed and made baby food, following our whole-school sequence for learning in DT.

We were able to apply our knowledge of babies, their development and needs to this project. We learnt skills to cut and puree fruit and vegetables. This is key knowledge we will need to be successful in year 1 when we design and make a healthy smoothie.

We gave some to baby Rowan’s mother to give our learning a real purpose.

We used information books to follow recipes and the fiction book Avocado Baby to inspire us. We are hoping baby Rowan becomes as strong as Avocado Baby once he’s eaten our designs!