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. After collecting a range of materials on a forest walk, we made Andy Goldsworthy inspired outdoor art! Many of these materials have added to our loose parts resources, supporting our maths learning when representing our numbers of the week in different ways.

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 Celebration assembly, where we invited parents in to share songs and artwork!

Term 3 

This term, we have journeyed far from Bristol and ‘explored’ Kenya in a range of ways, learning about a day in the life of a Kenyan schoolchild as well as traditional food, dance, music, clothing, buildings and the flag. Animals in Kenya have been of particular interest with the children and we have seen some fantastic creations using many different materials and loose parts.

Through the story, Handa’s Surprise written by Eileen Browne, a story set in Kenya, we have continued to develop our story-telling, reading and writing skills, including writing lists for Handa and creating our own versions of the story. This term we have been working on patterns, consolidating our subitising skills and counting out from a group. The children have been super math’s wizards learning all these new skills this term!

Term 5 

In Reception this term, we have been exploring the question, How Do Living Things Grow? We have been busy experimenting and testing to see how things grow in water, with little water and with no water! We planted runner bean seeds in wet kitchen roll and put them on our windows, watching as they started to grow and noticing the changes that take place. Other exploring has involved planting in the garden, looking at plants from around the world, taking apart plants to look at the different parts and looking at a range of books about growing. The children have had lots of interesting questions and really enjoyed noticing the changes in our experiments.

Our investigations into number have continued and the children continue to seek a range of ways to represent numbers and are show increasing confidence in recalling their number bonds to five.

The story of Jack and the Beanstalk has been an exciting way to think about growing and it has been fantastic developing our storytelling skills and making changes to create our own. Some wonderful imaginations have emerged and the increase in confidence to apply sounds to writing stories has been fantastic to see!

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 ExplorerDome!

The children worked hard rehearsing and learning the songs for our production of The 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 learning to count reliably, recognise numbers and find one more or less than a number up to 10. We have been exploring number lots in our play and enjoyed exploring capacity with ‘reindeer food’!

We have also been discovering our creative side this term and have made lots of lovely artwork including planets, stars and even rocket ships!

Term 4

Our Spring into the Farm topic has been fascinating this term! We have been learning all about what animals produce and how this helps us. We have also been learning about animals and their young and how they are cared for.

We have developed our storytelling skills through learning the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff – even changing the story to create and act out our own versions! Writing has taken off in the form of labelling, with the children taking a particular interest in labelling each other – we have been working hard to be able to practise applying our phonics skills in our tasks.

The children have continued to develop their use of loose parts to develop their play, some children choosing to build bridges for the Three Billy Goats Gruff!

Towards the end of the term, we visited Chew Valley Animal Park to find out more, even getting to feed the pigs and hold some goats! What an amazing term!