Thank you for taking the time to come and look at the exciting learning that takes place in Reception. Please have a read of this blog to find some interesting information about life in Reception. We will keep this page updated regularly with blogs, pictures and information but please also regularly check Tapestry to see the exciting learning we have been doing in school! 

The Team

Our Reception Team consists of: Miss Miskowicz (RB Class Teacher), Mrs Yates (RW Class Teacher), Miss Taylor (Teaching Assistant) and Miss Rash (Teaching Assistant).

Learning in Reception 

As you know, children in Reception are on the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum (EYFS).  This curriculum is predominantly play-based and celebrates the whole child’s learning and development in a holistic approach.  Our planning comes from the children - through careful observations and assessments of their play, noting the gaps in their knowledge and primarily from their interests in an overarching ‘topic’.  

In school, we typically have a daily 20 minute phonics lesson, 20 minute maths lesson and a short topic taught session. In addition to this, we have 10 minutes reading a day. We support the children’s writing development with weekly small group guided writing sessions.  This is where the children can apply their skills and knowledge of letters and sounds from their daily phonics lessons. The rest of the day is child-initiated play in the learning environments inside and outside.  We call this COOL time (Choosing Our Own Learning)!  This allows children the time for totally uninterrupted play; they can apply their learning from the taught sessions in a range of different activities and contexts.  This ensures the learning is meaningful to them and that it becomes embedded.  We try to ensure that the children have a minimum of 1.5 hours in the morning and the same again in the afternoon.  

In line with our school values, we promote the Characteristics of Effectively Learning through our learning characters; use of the following learning skills; ideas iguana (creativity), have a go hippo (enthusiasm) and keep going koala (determination). 

Morning routines 

Each morning, we ask that the children are dropped off at the little wooden gate between 8:25 and 8:40am. The children will then independently enter their classroom to organise their belongings and get ready for an exciting day of learning. This time of day is a busy time for teachers so we ask that any messages are passed on via the teacher on duty who will then pass the information on to the class teacher. If you have any further concerns or questions then an appointment can be made via the office. 

End of day routines

At the end of the day, please come to the same wooden gate at 2:40pm, so that we can dismiss your child to you and pass over any messages about the day. If you are ever unable to collect your child, please either phone the office or pass it on to the teacher on the gate in the morning. We will not send any child home with anyone different unless we have had a message to do so and the adult has your collection password. 

Things to bring to school

Full school uniform, a waterproof coat, book bag with reading record and book, and a water bottle. In the summer months, please bring a hat and sun-cream. We also kindly ask you to leave a spare pair of clothes on their pegs just in case they are need to change or have an accident.  Please ensure that every item is clearly named – including water bottles and packed lunch boxes.

Reading books - changed on a Monday and Thursday / library books on a Friday

Your child will soon receive a reading packet and a reading record.  It is really important that these are brought into school every day in their book bags. We will change your child’s reading book every Monday and Thursday.  By practising re-reading the same book over a few days, it will help your child to become more confident with the text and fluent.  The children will visit our wonderful school library on a Friday morning, where they will get to choose their very own book to take home!  They will need to return their library back to school every Friday morning, in order to change it for a new one.  We kindly ask you support your child with taking good care of our reading and library books at home, so that we can keep them in a nice condition for everyone to enjoy.

P.E kit - P.E on a Monday

As independent changing for P.E is part of the of the Early Years curriculum, we will be supporting and encouraging children to get changed for P.E at school. Our P.E day is currently Monday but please leave your child’s P.E kit on their peg. We will send home the kits for regular washing. 

Outdoor learning - Wednesdays

Every Wednesday afternoon, we have outdoor learning. This is an amazing opportunity for the children to learn a range of skills from cooking on a fire, fire safety, making bird feeders, creating art using nature materials and much more!  Every Wednesday your child will need to come into school in clothes suitable for outdoor learning (they do not need to wear school uniform on this day) – old, warm and waterproof which you do not mind getting a little muddy!  They should already have their wellies at school which they will change into in the afternoon.

Snacks

Free fruit will be provided for all of the children in Reception. However, if your child would like to bring their own fruit then they are more than welcome to. In order to promote healthy eating, we do ask that children only bring fruit to school. 

Lunch times

The children will continue to receive a free school lunch each day. The menu will continue to be on the school website so please have a conversation with your child each morning about what they would like to have. Alternatively, your child is welcome to bring their own packed lunch.

We know that the children often get up to some amazing things out of school too. If you have visited somewhere interesting or achieved an award (swimming, karate etc.) then please let us know and upload onto Tapestry! We love to celebrate all types of learning and achievements. 

We look forward to letting you know more about Reception soon and sharing pictures and learning with you. 

This week we have continued our topic of 'The World Outside our Window' by exploring a contrasting place to where we live in Cornwall - we have explored the continent of Africa! We started by reading Handa's Surprise and discussed the setting and characters in the story.

We have danced to African drum music, created mud huts from clay, designed African necklaces by exploring the colours and patterns and much more! We ended the week by tasting some of the different delicious fruit that Handa had in her basket! What a brilliantly busy week- well done Reception!

We were very lucky today to have had a visit from 10-day old Dave and Daisy, the lambs. The children were amazed that they had come to visit and quickly thought about many questions to ask Mrs Brier. All of the children sat and listened well and were extremely inquisitive. As you can imagine, the children were all extremely excited but behaved beautifully. The most exciting part for many was feeding Dave and Daisy with a bottle! A big thank you to Mrs Brier for bringing them in and giving the children the experience.

Today, the children in the EYFS have celebrated St Piran's Day! We started by finding out all about Cornwall and sharing what we love most about the beautiful place where we live. The children shared their love of the nature - fields, plants and flowers. We then moved on to discuss our fabulous beaches and the fun times we like to have at different Cornish beaches. The children shared their ideas on Cornish foods (which made us super hungry!)

The children learnt about our Cornish Saint, St Piran and how he is linked to Cornwall and how he is special to people who believe in the Christian faith.

In our COOL time, the children have been very creative with making Cornish flags in different ways, listening to Cornish sea shanties, decorating pasties, making their very own pasty, create Cornish beach landscapes with oil pastels and much more!

St Piran's Day couldn't go without singing 'Trelawney Shout' and we even tried out some Cornish dancing!

A wonderful day was had by one and all!

What a strange way to finish what has been such a brilliant half term! Whilst we are sad we are not getting the chance to say goodbye for half term, we are glad that the children will be safely indoors at home tomorrow.

In school, we have short 'bursts' of carpet time adult-led teaching inputs throughout the day - a 20 minute phonics lesson, a 20 minute maths lesson, a short topic input and 10 minutes daily reading. The rest of our day is child-initiated play which we call COOL time (Choosing Our Own Learning). Play is the most powerful way a child can learn!

Please find the activities below which you can choose from to do with your child at home tomorrow:

- Look in your blue phonics book and practising forming your letters with the correct that point of the letters. Can you remember the sayings as you write them? For example, 'around the apple, up the stalk and down the leaf' for a.

- You have all had your reading book changed so you can sit in a comfy spot in your home and practise reading to a family member.

- This week we have been learning how to order two or three items in length (the children have learnt length goes across from side to side) and height (from the ground to the sky) Please find the attached PowerPoint on measuring and comparing heights. Remember, the golden rule of measuring it that all items need to start from the same point. Can you order two your three items around the house in height order?

- You have also had your maths home learning sheets today on the phases 'Alive in 5!' and 'Growing 6, 7, 8'. Please feel free to have a little go at these if you would like to.

- As we are moving on to the magic of stories and learning about 'What Happened Once Upon a Time?' after half term, enjoy time playing with your toys at home creating your own storylines in your pretend play.

- Most importantly (I believe!) is to remember to have your Friday dance party!

We hope you all stay safe tomorrow and we cannot wait to see you back on Tuesday 1st March, ready for another fabulous half term!

Best wishes,
The Reception team

After half term, we are moving on to a new and exciting topic! We are going to be learning about the magic of traditional tales.  A traditional tale is a story that has been told and re-told for many years, and consequently, becomes a story that almost everyone knows. Traditional tales are also referred to as fairy stories or fairy tales.
Stories such as The Gingerbread Man, Goldilocks and the Three Bears and Jack and the Beanstalk are all traditional stories.

Traditional tales play an important part in early literacy. These well-known stories are used to help develop reading comprehension and early writing skills. Traditional tales also provides excellent opportunities for role-play and support children’s creativity and imagination.

Our overarching topic question is going to be ‘What Happened Once Upon a Time?’ We are very excited to start our next topic and please check out our learning posts on Tapestry.

Best wishes and a very happy half term!
The Reception team

This morning, the Reception children all came together for snack time with a difference! Yesterday, they went to the cookery room to make Chinese stir fry using a soy and Chinese five spice sauce and a sweet chilli sauce. The time had come to try their cooking!
First, we had a starter of prawn crackers with two types of sauce; soy and sweet chilli. The children then took a vote on what their favourite was, and why.
Then it was time for the main - stir fry vegetable chow mein with the two different flavour sauces. The children really dug in and although some didn't like one type, they really liked the other! Some children didn't like either but still gave it a good go!
We then took another vote on which stir fry sauce they preferred. All children sat beautifully and waited patiently for their food.

This week our topic is Chinese New Year and we are learning about different customs and traditions. We started our week by learning the story about how the tradition began and about the twelve animals that represent the years. We watched a short film where we learnt about how people decorate their houses, wear new clothes and give red envelopes with money in. We have learnt how the whole family (including the children!) work really hard to give the whole house a spring clean before they decorate.

The children enjoyed learning about the delicious foods and the fabulous dancing dragons.
The children demonstrated great recall and as a class were able to remember all of the twelve animals.

In our guided writing, we looked at Chinese dragons and wrote words, captions and sentences to describe how the dragons looked. We then draw dragon pictures to match our writing.

In our COOL time, we enjoyed playing in a Chinese restaurant (with real chopsticks!), making dragon puppets, creating lanterns, exploring Chinese music, painting Chinese symbols and much more!

This morning, we carried out our ice experiment! We collected our balloons (which were filled with water) from the freezer. We first noticed that the balloons had changed as they were hard.

“It’s froze and it’s hard”.
“It’s solid”.
“I wonder if there is any water in there that hasn’t frozen”.

We discovered that water is a liquid and when it is frozen, it changes to a solid. Our mission was to melt the solid ice balloon back into a liquid. The children came up with ideas on how to melt the ice the quickest:

 “Hot water on it”.
“Put a fire on the tray”.
“Fire”.
“Putting it into a fire”.
“Putting it into a cannon and firing it”.
“In the oven”.
“Cold water”.
“Oven”.
“Fire”.
“Put a little fire into the water”.
“Hot water”.
“The sun”.
“Fire”.
“Fire”.
“Chucking it into a fire”.

The children had to choose which material (out of cold water, hot water and salt) would melt the ice the quickest. The all got stuck in to the experiment and were fascinated by their discoveries! One child noticed that the salt had disappeared and said, "Yes - it's dissolved!"

“It will break down”.

This led us on to a discussion about what 'dissolved' means.

What a super fun morning with our scientific learning!