Reception (4-5 years)

Lots of exciting changes have happened this week. Our tadpoles are growing nicely, we have noticed their bodies changing in size, shape and colour but no legs yet!

We have been learning about the life cycle of a butterfly. The children are very excited to be observing some real caterpillars and watching how they grow and change each day. We have also enjoyed reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar and used props to help us retell the story, developing our storytelling and sequencing skills.

We practised our maths skills by throwing 5 bean bags into the very hungry caterpillar and working out our score. The children counted how many bean bags landed in the target and how many missed, helping them to find different ways to make 5 in a fun, active way.

We learned that butterfly wings are symmetrical, meaning both sides are the same. The children explored this by using paint to create wing prints and using loose parts to design patterns, helping them to understand symmetry through hands-on, creative activities.

At the forest the children made their own wooden caterpillars by safely banging nails into a long piece of wood and then carefully winding colourful wool around them. This hands-on activity helped develop their fine motor skills while encouraging creativity and teamwork in a natural setting.

The children have been excited this week to begin learning about the life cycle of a frog. We have real tadpoles in our classroom, and over the coming weeks we’ll be watching closely as they grow and change from tiny wriggling tadpoles to froglets developing their legs, the children will have the chance to observe each stage of this fascinating transformation. It’s a wonderful opportunity to spark curiosity and help them experience nature’s magic right before their eyes.

The children have been getting creative this week by re exploring how to mix different shades of green to paint their own frogs. They experimented with blending blues and yellows, noticing how the colours changed as they added more of each.

At Forest School this week, the children were thrilled to discover that Dino Dan, a palaeontologist, had left them a special note asking for help to find out which dinosaurs might have lived there millions of years ago. Inspired by the challenge, they set off on a fossil hunt, searching the woodland floor for bones, fossils, and clues. Working together, they used their discoveries to recreate dinosaur skeletons, piecing together their own prehistoric creatures with great excitement and imagination.

Easter is a festival in spring celebrated by Christians. To celebrate Easter, we made some Easter cards to give to our families.

The children had a wonderful time making their own cards. They explored bubble painting, cutting, sticking and printing to create a cheerful chick hatching out of an egg. The children were so proud of their colourful creations, and the activity helped them understand how the chick symbolises new beginnings and the joy of spring.

The children loved creating their own clay Easter eggs. They began by rolling out the clay and using a variety of tools and natural objects to make interesting imprints and patterns. Once the eggs had dried, the children carefully painted them in bright spring colours before adding a string so they could be hung up for everyone to admire. It was a wonderful way to explore creativity while learning about Easter traditions.

The children have been learning all about the life cycle of a chick. They worked together to sequence each stage, from egg to fluffy chick, and enjoyed acting out the process themselves. The highlight was ‘hatching’ from a large cardboard‑box egg, which brought the learning to life with lots of laughter and excitement.

The Easter Bunny had left a trail of carrots which led us to the forest to do an Easter egg hunt. It was a lot of fun!

We have been talking about how we all change and grow as we get older. The children loved sharing their baby photos and spotting the differences between then and now—tiny toes, fewer teeth, and lots more hair for some! We discussed the new things they can do now that they couldn’t do as babies, like running, talking, and making friends. It was a lovely way for the children to celebrate how much they’ve grown and to understand that change is a natural and exciting part of life.

We had lots of fun discovering why it gets dark at night because the sun has set and our part of Earth has turned away from its light.

We talked about why our bodies need sleep to grow big and strong. Weatherby, our class bear, practised a calm bedtime routine. They loved helping him have a bath, brush his teeth, get into his pyjamas, and settle down with a story before sleep.

We used torches to make shadows which helped us understand why it gets dark at night. The children noticed that when something blocks the torchlight, it creates a shadow—just like our side of Earth becomes dark when it turns away from the sun. They loved experimenting with different objects and watching the shadows appear and disappear!

In Reception this week, we enjoyed reading The Three Little Pigs! The children had great fun retelling the story in order, using repeated phrases like “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down!” They worked together to remember what happened first, next, and finally, showing super sequencing skills and lots of enthusiasm as they brought the tale to life.

The children explored colour mixing to make the perfect shade of pink! They loved experimenting with red and white paint to see the colour change, then used their new mix to paint their very own pigs creating a wonderful collection of pink pig artwork.

The children had lots of fun exploring their own ‘huff and puff’ in our blowing game! After building little houses with the junk modelling, they tested to see if they could blow them down just like the Big Bad Wolf. The children loved predicting which houses would fall and which would stay standing, using big breaths, little breaths, and plenty of giggles as they experimented.

We celebrated World Book Day by coming to school dressed up as our favourite book characters, which included The Highway Rat, Stick Man, Fantastic Mr Fox, Zog and Squirrel Nutkin. We had a lot of fun and enjoyed sharing lots of stories, completing a book scavenger hunt and taking part in a book quiz with the rest of the school.

This week in Reception, we’ve been learning all about the Chinese New Year, which begins this year on 17th February. The children have absolutely loved exploring the traditions, colours, stories, and celebrations that make this festival so special.

We discovered that red is a very lucky colour in Chinese culture, so the children made their own beautiful red lanterns to decorate our classroom. They practised their cutting and folding skills brilliantly and were so proud of their finished creations.

To bring the celebration to life, we created a large dragon head and a lion head, which the children used to take part in lively dances. There was plenty of music, laughter, and teamwork as they moved together just like in real New Year parades!

The children also tried ribbon dancing, using long, colourful ribbons to make swirling patterns in the air. This activity was a wonderful way to explore movement and rhythm.

To finish our celebrations, we prepared a delicious vegetable stir fry. The children helped prepare the ingredients before we cooked it together. They all enjoyed tasting the final dish and challenged themselves to eat it using chopsticks, which proved quite tricky!

We finished this half term with a wonderful time at Forest School, making pancakes and cooking them over the fire. The children carefully mixed the batter, learned how to stay safe around the flames, and watched with excitement as their pancakes bubbled and turned golden. The best part, of course, was tasting their delicious creations in the fresh woodland air!

This week in Reception, we have been proudly demonstrating our growing writing skills. The children have been using their phonic knowledge to write labels for an amazing animal kingdom they created in class, carefully sounding out words and choosing the correct graphemes.

Outside, the writing continued in our role-play takeaway pizza shop, where the children made pizzas, wrote menus, labels and orders to bring their imaginative play to life. It has been wonderful to see their confidence and enthusiasm for writing shine through in different areas of provision.

We continued our investigations by exploring how ice melts helping the trapped animals escape! We predicted whether salt or warm water would work best, then tested our ideas. We watched closely as the ice began to melt and were excited to see which method freed the animals the fastest. It was a brilliant hands-on investigation full of curiosity and teamwork!

We also had lots of fun making cloud dough, noticing how the texture changed as we mixed and moulded it. The children loved feeling, squeezing and shaping the dough, using wonderful descriptive language to talk about what it was like.

This week in Drawing Club, we were inspired by the classic animation Tom and Jerry. We loved exploring the characters and talking about the mischief they get up to! We then used our growing phonic knowledge to write simple words and sentences linked to the animation, thinking carefully about the sounds we could hear in each word.

After writing, we retold our own version of the story, adding imaginative twists and creative ideas. Mrs Riches was very proud of how we expressed ourselves confidently through drawing, writing, and storytelling.

We have been taking part in the Big Bird Watch, and the children have been full of excitement! We have made our own bird feeders and fat balls to help attract different types of birds into the forest area. We also created our own binoculars and used them to sit patiently, watching carefully and recording the birds we spotted.

This half term our topic is ‘Winter Wonderland’. We found out about things associated with winter, including animals and clothing. We have reflected on the changes that have happened in the weather and day length since starting school in September.

We were so excited to be able to explore winter in real snow!

We had a wonderful time exploring in the snow. We enjoyed making snowballs, creating snow angels, and using our hands and feet to make interesting patterns in the fresh snow. It was a lot of fun, and everyone noticed how cold and crisp the snow felt as they played.

We were fascinated by the ice, so we made our own to explore with. We noticed that it felt very cold and smooth when we touched it, and slippery and hard. As the ice began to melt in our hands, we observed water dripping and talked about how it was changing. We then added warm water to the ice to see what would happen. We noticed it starting to melt quickly. We talked about why ice feels different from snow.

We have been working hard rehearsing for our Nativity show. Mrs Riches was very proud of us. We sung beautifully, danced with enthusiasm, and acted out our roles with confidence. We were so proud to perform for our family and friends, sharing the joy of this special festive celebration.

We have also been busy baking Christmas cakes. We weighed out all the ingredients, mixed them together, and put them in the oven. We decorated them with icing and a sprig of holly and wrapped them up to give to our families. We can’t wait to taste them!

We had fun at our last forest school of the year, we toasted marshmallows over the fire, made Santa sticks and used the saw to cut log slices which we will turn into Christmas table decorations.

We have explored hedgehogs through a range of fun and interactive activities. We listened to stories and watched short videos to learn about where hedgehogs live, what they eat, and how they protect themselves.

‘Hedgehogs sleep all through the winter and wake up in spring’ Aria

‘Hedgehogs eat slugs and beetles and snails and some small eggs’ Jasper

‘Hedgehogs are spiky’ Daisy

We enjoyed hands-on tasks such as creating hedgehog crafts using a variety of materials and discussing how to care for wildlife in their gardens. This helped us to develop an understanding of the importance of looking after animals and their habitats in a simple, engaging way.

We worked as a team to create our own nests to hibernate in, goodnight!

At forest school we made hedgehogs by hammering nails into pieces of wood.

We’ve had a very busy week. We found out about Remembrance Day which is a special day in November that gives people the chance to remember those who fought and lost their lives during the war and to honour their memory. We made our own poppies, painted poppy scenes and made poppies with the loose parts.

We have been learning all about apples this week. We found out that apples grow on trees and the seeds can be planted to grow new trees.

We talked about things we can make with apples and then made an apple and blackberry crumble. We prepared the apples by peeling off the skin and chopping them up. We then put the apples and blackberries in a dish, added the crumble and cooked it. Then we ate it, it was delicious!

We also helped support Children in Need by donating money which will support children all over the UK. We had a lot of fun making Pudsey masks, measuring the height of Pudsey’s friends, painting and cutting out Pudsey bears and practising our counting skills by adding the correct amount of spots to Pudsey.

We have been learning about Diwali. It is a festival celebrated by Hindus in India and all around the world. This year Diwali started on 20^th October. It is known as the festival of lights.

We created Rangoli patterns by painting, chalking and using the loose parts.

We made Diva lamps by moulding clay into a pot shape. We left them to dry hard and then painted and decorated them with glitter. Once they were finished, we lit candles and sang a Diwali song.

We listened to the story of Rama and Sita and decorated hands with mehndi patterns.

We also had a lot of fun with pumpkins and spooky activities!

We made pumpkin soup using the pumpkins grown in the school garden. We cut the pumpkin up, peeled and chopped the onions. Then we put all the ingredients into a big pan and boiled them until they were soft.

We then warmed up the soup on the fire at Forest School, it was delicious!

Autumn has inspired our learning this week. We enjoyed reading Leaf Man. It follows the journey of leaf man as he is blown across the land. A Leaf Man's got to go where the wind blows.

We went on an autumn walk around the school grounds and noticed many trees were losing their leaves and the leaves were changing colour. We found red, yellow, orange and brown leaves. We also spotted acorns and blackberries and learned that the acorns had fallen off an oak tree.

We then used our collection of leaves to create our own leaf people.

In the creative area we painted our own autumn trees, explored leaf printing and rubbing and made an autumn leaf by threading wool through the holes of a leaf shape.

At forest school we have are observing the grandmother tree as she changes through the autumn. She has lost a lot of leaves already and many have turned yellow and brown. We have used some of these leaves to print with, make autumn bracelets, leaf rub and make caterpillars.

This week we have been learning about people who help us, at home, in school and the wider community.

‘Firefighters put out fires and use the hoses with water’ Theon

‘Police Officers keep us safe’ Aria

‘Paramedics take poorly and hurt people to hospital’ Elias

We have had a lot of fun role playing at people who help us. We have put out fires, arrested people, made pets better and fixed lots of things as builders.

We explored colour mixing; we found out that red and yellow make orange.

We also created our own map of a town to show all the places in our community where we meet people who help us including a doctors, school, fire station and our homes.

We noticed that the sunflowers in our garden had died so we harvested the seeds. In the spring we will plant these seeds to grow more sunflowers. We can’t wait! 

We have been thinking about our families. We have shared the books The Great Big Book of Families and Families, Families, Families. We found out that there are many kinds of families, but they are all special to us.

We enjoyed drawing, making and talking about our families in a variety of ways.

We also talked about our class being our school family and painted our portraits to display. We looked at our different features and talked about how we have many similarities and differences but are all special.

We have been making lots of new friends and a lot of fun collaborating to collage them.

We were very excited to go to Forest School for the first time. We met the Grandmother Tree, learnt about keeping ourselves safe in the forest and the important rule of ‘No pick, no lick, be careful with a stick’. We had so much fun climbing trees, making mud pies, tackling the rope bridge and exploring the forest. We can’t wait until next week!                

This week we have been enjoying plenty of activities both inside and outside to strengthen our muscles which will help us improve our ability to write.

We have used our large muscles in our body to help develop our whole body and coordination and our small muscles in our hands and fingers to develop precise movements.

We have welcomed all our new Reception children into school and have been so proud of how they have settled in.

We have been learning school routines such as sitting on the carpet for registration, lining up for lunch and what we need to do at tidy up time. All the children are settling well into school life, making new friends and having so much fun!