Reception Week Beginning 7.6.21

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Welcome back!

I hope you all had a wonderful half term break. The children were very excited to be back on Monday morning, full of lovely stories about their experiences over the week!

This week, the learning focus has been about the life cycle of butterflies and the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. The children have shown such a strong interest in the mini beasts outside recently and so were very quickly captivated by this mini topic. To bring the learning to life, Reception took delivery of some tiny caterpillars on Monday. The class have been observing them daily and noticing the changes; it has been incredible to see how quickly they have grown already! The children are really looking forward to watching them transform into butterflies and have been using their scientific skills to make predictions about size and colour.

On Wednesday another exciting thing happened! As part of their transition program, Reception ate their lunch in the dining hall for the first time, just like the rest of the school! As they are all going into Year 1 soon, it is really important that they become familiar with the different staff, routines and rooms around the school. The class had a practise in the morning and learnt where to sit, when to go to the serving hatch and what to do when they have finished eating and so they all knew exactly what they needed to do at lunchtime. They were absolutely brilliant!

This afternoon for fun, every child was given a random country to support during the upcoming Euro football tournament. The country name is in their school bag. If possible, please can they make a flag of their given country and bring it into school at the start of next week. Thank you!

Have a wonderful weekend,

The Reception Team

 

Reception Week beginning 24.5.21

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‘May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit’ 

Romans:15:13

This week, Reception became closer to God, by taking part in Spirituality Week, along with the rest of the school. The week’s activities had the overarching theme of ‘God of Hope’. 

On Monday, the children made ‘Butterflies of Hope’ for their Year 6 prayer partners. These were exchanged later on in the week, when they spent some time sharing them with each other in the peace garden.

The children also created some art work symbolising ‘hope‘, for our church community; these will be given to Father Shaun to share.

On Thursday, the children were given the opportunity to reflect on ‘The God of Hope’ by participating in the prayer stations, set up and led by our wonderful Year 6. The class absolutely loved the experience!

This week, Reception also had an exciting problem to solve. Some large empty eggs had been found on the field by Mrs Lennox, yesterday morning! The children were invited to write down where they thought the eggs had come from and predict what had been inside! Maybe you saw them outside the Year One classroom today at home time. What do you think?

The school is completing 30 days of wildness, so we can appreciate the nature around us.

Each day in June the children will complete a different activity. If possible, please try to do the first six activities in the half term and bring a photo of one of the activities to school.

1st June – Feel the wild between your toes – squelch your toes in sand, grass or mud.

2nd June – Look up at the clouds – What shapes can you see?

3rd June – Find a creepy crawly, be gentle and observe the way it moves.

4th June – Thread a daisy chain

5th June – Make a nature table, collect wild treasures like feathers, fossils or bones.

6th June – Have lunch in the wild.

Have a wonderful, sunny week!

The Reception Team

Reception Week Beginning 17.5.21

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If you’re in trouble, then look no further…. call the Reception team of superheroes!!!

This week, Reception have been having lots of fun pretending to be superheroes. They each created their own superhero name and wrote about what their special superhero power is. They then acted out their character in the new superhero headquarters! The children have enjoyed listening to superhero stories this week, these include: Traction Man, Supertato, Charlie’s Superhero Underpants and Zippo the Super Hippo.

Next week, Reception will be focussing on real life superheroes.

In Religion this week, the children learnt about Pentecost.

They looked at different paintings depicting the story and then created their own pictures. The children also made Pentecost kites which they flew outside in the wind!

In Maths, the children have been focussing on addition, and have made up their own addition stories using the language ‘first, then, now’ to retell them.

Wishing you all a lovely weekend,

 

The Reception Team

Reception Week Beginning 10.5.21

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This has quite possibly been the most exciting week in Reception EVER!!

The children came into school on Monday and discovered something shocking- the dinosaur egg that they had been looking after for the Natural History Museum was on the floor cracked wide open…..with no dinosaur inside!! The area was sealed off to preserve the scene and after listing what needed to be done, a full investigation undertaken by the children began to take place.

 

 

On Tuesday, Reception were told by the police, that a passing motorist on the M25 had spotted the dinosaur on the farmer’s field next to the school. The children went about making warning posters for the walkers regularly seen on the field. At this point, the children didn’t know whether they were dealing with a herbivore or a carnivore and so they were a little worried about the safety of the dogs and other small animals. In the afternoon, the class went for a walk on the field to put up their posters and to see if they could spot the dinosaur. At one point during the walk, Archie definitely spotted it up by the pond, but by the time the class got there, it had disappeared again!

For the next couple of days, it all went quiet. No sightings at all. The police as always, were working quietly in the background trying to locate the dinosaur. The class had just about given up hope, when on Friday morning, Mrs Heymoz excitedly burst into the classroom to tell everyone that the police had found the dinosaur and that it had actually been discovered by the police team that Lucas’s dad worked with! The children were ecstatic!

On Friday afternoon, a very special visitor then dropped by- it was Lucas’s dad. He rode his police motorbike into the outside area and told the children how they had caught the dinosaur and what has happened to it since. Everyone was allowed to sit on his motorbike and they all enjoyed looking at the flashing blue lights and listening to the really loud siren.

What a fantastic end to an exciting week!

Have a lovely weekend,

The Reception Team

Parent’s Meeting

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Dear Parents,

It was lovely to see you all at the meeting this morning. If you couldn’t make it please don’t worry, as you can access the PowerPoint and other materials on Google Classroom.

Once again, thank you for your support,

Ms Pemberton

Reception Week Beginning 3.5.21

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Despite being a three day week, Reception have fitted a lot of experiences and learning in!

On Tuesday, the class received a letter from The Natural History Museum asking them if they would be prepared to take care of a rare dinosaur egg while they had their new cabinets fitted. Reception were over the moon to be asked and immediately wrote back to accept!

The next day, Mrs Heymoz visited Reception, bringing with her a very special package that had just been delivered by a security guard! It was the dinosaur egg! The class were so excited! They noticed that the package had an unfamiliar word ‘fragile’ written on it. Luckily Joe knew that this meant ‘delicate’ and Noemi also knew that it meant that it was breakable! The children decided to put it on the prayer table for the time being and everyone thought that it was a probably a good idea to write signs, asking people not too touch the egg. Reception then began to plan ways to display the egg while protecting it and will implement these plans early next week!

Today Reception Class joined the rest of the school in their first ever May Procession to honour Mary.  The children made their teachers so proud with their reverence and exemplary behaviour.

This afternoon, the class joined their Year 6 reading partners once again, for a special PE session on the field. It really is so wonderful to watch their special relationships slowly develop!

Wishing you all a lovely weekend,

 

The Reception Team

Reception Week Beginning 26/4/21

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This week, Reception class have been learning all about the story of St George and the Dragon.

The children had lots of fun acting out the story using props that they had made. They also enjoyed story building with the small world knights and dragons set, painting and making 3D dragons and thinking of lots of interesting words when writing about them. In English, the children wrote about how they would defeat the dragon. There were so many fantastic ideas such as, building a trap in the ground, making friends with it and catching it and pinning it down onto the ground in a net! The children are all really keen to write, as their confidence in their own ability grows!

In Maths, the children have been learning how to recognise, build and practically partition numbers 11,12 and 13 and they have been trying hard to learn the number that comes before and after it on a number line.

Today Reception got to spend time outdoors with their reading partners. They began by asking each other lots of questions and finished by playing football with each other. It was so wonderful to see the children’s happy, smiling faces!

Wishing you all a wonderful bank holiday weekend,

Ms Pemberton

Week Beginning 19.4.21 Reception

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It has been a very busy and exciting start to the new term!

For the past two weeks, the children have been focussing on farm life and the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff. This all began with a letter that Reception received from some local goats in Potters Bar. They claimed to be having problems with an unreasonable troll, who was being particularly mean and not letting them cross their bridge. They asked the children for some urgent help. The class wasted no time at all designing and making new troll proof bridges and thinking of creative ways to cross the river safely. The children have also been very busy writing their own versions of the story, role playing and hot seating the different characters, making puppets, painting pictures, creating clay models, making and playing with masks and writing apology letters from the troll!

In Religion, the class have been learning about some of the Resurrection stories and demonstrating their own understanding through a number of different creative ways.

This week, Reception had a fantastic time getting to know all of the visiting farm animals. Everyone decided unanimously, that they couldn’t possibly choose a favourite, as they were all so cute! Grace and Matilda said that it was the best day of their lives and everyone else agreed! The experience inspired the children to do lots of fabulous drawing and writing about the animals they saw.

Have a wonderful weekend,

The Reception Team

Reception Week Beginning 19.3.21

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It’s been another exciting week in Reception!

The story focus has been ‘The Enormous Turnip’ and the children have have had lots of fun learning the Enormous Turnip song, acting out the story and writing their own enormous object story.

In Religion, the children learnt about The Last Supper and demonstrated their understanding of the story, through role play. They also learnt about The Eucharist and how the prayers and readings during this part of the mass remind those taking part of that final meal that Jesus shared with his disciples.

Today, the children celebrated Red Nose Day by taking part in a special egg and spoon daily mile, telling jokes to each other and thinking about what makes them laugh. It was decided that Joseph S and Ayrabella told the funniest joke and they were given the opportunity to tell it to the rest of the school in a special live assembly this afternoon!

In the glorious sunshine this afternoon, Reception once again met with Year 6 for an Act of Worship led by Jamie, Ava, Dejon and Emilia.  Thank you Year 6!

Thank you for your positive feedback regarding the online reading books. This is of course a temporary measure, but it is comforting to know that we are able to provide an extra layer of protection for our families, in our fight against Covid. It is also wonderful as a teacher to be able to see how much time you are spending with your child reading every day. Thank you parents!

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend,

Ms Pemberton

Reception Week Beginning 8.3.21

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It was wonderful to welcome all of the children back to school on Monday. To celebrate being back together again, we had an exciting class disco in the afternoon!

On Tuesday, we took advantage of the glorious weather and went for a walk together on the farmland next to the school. The adults were so impressed with how far they could walk and the fact that there was no complaining whatsoever!

On Wednesday, Reception had a road safety online workshop, where they were taught the importance of using a seat belt when inside a car and how to stop, look, listen and think, when crossing the road with an adult.

On Thursday, we joined the rest of the school in celebrating World Book Day. The children looked fantastic in their costumes and had lots of fun showing them off. They were even treated to a story read by a special visitor- the old woman from the book ‘A Squash and a Squeeze’.

Today, Reception finally got to meet their Year 6 reading partners, in a socially distanced Act of Worship, led by Matthias, Bella, Thomas and Emily. It was a truly special moment.

Parents, please remember to return all reading books from last term. We will continue to use the Collins online reading books for the foreseeable future, until all restrictions have been lifted.

If your child wears a school shoe and not a trainer every day, please supply them with a plimsole that can be left in the classroom for when we do PE outside. Thank you all for bringing in welly boots this week. They have been well used on our muddy daily walks!

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend,

The Reception Team