Term 1
During our first term, we have been busy settling into life in Reception, exploring our environments and making new friends!  We have been woodland detectives exploring our school forest, going on nature walks and learning lots of interesting facts about woodland animals and their habitats. We have become experts in recognising a range of nocturnal woodland animals that will only come out at night!  As artists we used natural materials in the classroom and outside to recreate some Andy Goldsworthy inspired art! Many of these materials have added to our loose parts resources, supporting our maths learning when representing numbers and subitising.

It has been great fun learning our phonics and we have enjoyed spotting graphemes and common exception words all around our classroom.  It was wonderful to be able to share many of our activities in a Harvest stay and play session, where we invited parents in to share out artwork and join in with our harvest provision!

Term 2

In Reception this term, we have been thinking about the question, what is up in the sky and beyond? We have been exploring colour and light and all the names of the planets in the Solar System. The children have also built amazing space stations in their outdoor areas! We even got to have a visit from the Explorer Dome!    The children worked hard rehearsing and learning the songs for our production of ‘The Bossy King’ Nativity. Their performances have been amazing! 

We have continued our phonics sessions, and the children are working hard on learning to write their letters. We have also been learning about instructions and made fruit rockets for Baby Bear to take to the moon, following our own instructions using ‘bossy’ words. We have been using our imaginations to reinvent parts of our story and make new story maps.  

In maths, we have been becoming super maths wizards! We have been working on our subitising skills, this is when we are able to see an amount without needing to count. We also tried out positional language and have really enjoyed explaining where things are. 

We have also been discovering our creative side this term and have made lots of lovely artwork including planets, stars and even rocket ships!  We were also able to work with technology experimenting with the Beebots and thinking about programming.