Welcome to Reception

Term One in Reception 

During Term 1 we will be ensuring that the Reception children get to know one another, and us, by playing circle time games and doing lots of small group work.  We will also be focusing on speaking and listening and building up the children’s concentration skills, again using games and fun activities.

Our topics this term will include ‘All about Me’ where we have already begun to talk about the children’s families and pets, hobbies, likes and dislikes.  The children will explore this topic through creative activities, mark making, stories and play.

During our first couple of weeks we have been exploring a wonderful picture book, ‘You Choose’, which explores a range of scenarios where children can choose where they would like to live, sleep and play.  The book is great for encouraging discussion and the children have been really enjoying talking about it amongst themselves.

We will also be exploring ‘Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth’ in depth this term. This is a non-fiction book full of beautiful illustrations which helps children explore what makes our planet and how we live on it.  We’re really looking forward to this one!

We’ve already started our phonics programme and will build on this daily.  It is a very effective and enjoyable way of teaching the children early reading skills.  The children will be bringing their first individual reading books home to share with you later this term.

The children will enjoy a class story every day.  We have a great selection of books in school and will be reading favourites by authors such as Julia Donaldson, Eric Carle, Judith Kerr, Michael Rosen and Shirley Hughes, amongst many others.

For our maths learning, we use the White Rose scheme, through which we aim to build deep understanding, confidence and competence in maths.  This is all done through practical and engaging activities.  This term we’ll be exploring matching and sorting, making comparisons and pattern.

Term Two 

During term two the children enjoyed reading the story 'I am Henry Finch' and 'The Jolly Christmas Postman'. We based our literacy, numeracy and creative activities around these two books. For example, the children created their own finches using their painted fingerprints. They also explored speech bubbles, descriptive language and list writing. 

In mathematics the children focused on comparing numbers and quantities, along with the composition of small numbers. We also looked at shapes with three and four sides and explored time, positional language and length. 

Term Three

In term three the children loved learning about Space at home - their learning at home was out of this world! They created posters, information leaflets and even pretended to be astronauts.

The Ladybirds and Dragonflies also became pirates in term three - shiver me timbers! What good pirates they arrrrrr!! They explored floating and sinking with their own home made ships, designed treasure maps and created their own pirate accessories. We were so proud of our Reception children. Our Reception families worked extremely hard in a very tricky time in lockdown. 

Term Four 

The children became authors and illustrators this term! We enjoyed reading stories by Beatrix Potter and Julia Donaldson at the start of the new term. The children completed Term 4 by focusing on a book called 'Little Red' by Lynn Roberts. They used drama to retell the story and even innovated the story themselves. They explored different outcomes in independent role play and created their own cafe. They also designed their own story maps, designed signs for their role play area and tasted some delicious ginger beer (the focus drink of the story). 

Fun websites to explore

What to expect, when? 

A guide to your child's learning and development in the Early Years Foundation Stage.