Reading Workshop Briefing

Click here for our Reading Workshop presentation. 

Click here, to access the video above. 

Online Home Learning Links

Reading Eggs is an amazing website/app that you can use from home. You can have great fun playing games and reading.

Children have their own individual reading login which you should have received by email. If you cannot find your child's login details, please ask a member of the Reception team and they will gladly give this to you!

Happy reading! 

Click on the image to access the website. 

Mathseeds is part of the Reading eggs app that you can use from home.  You can have great fun playing maths games.

The login for this amazing app is the same as your child's reading login. If you cannot find your child's login details, please ask a member of the Reception team and they will gladly give this to you!

Click on the image to access the website. 

Rhyme Time Challenges 

Each half term we launch a rhyme time challenge with our children. We will always share this on Tapestry. We practice the rhyme, and previous rhymes, in class. Orally rehearsing and performing poems and rhymes can help children with their oracy skills. Our rhymes are available below. 

Practice the rhyme at home and send a video of your child's performance on Tapestry. We'd love to see it. 

Rhyme Time Challenge - Autumn 2

Rhyme Time Challenge - Spring 1 

Rhyme Time Challenge - Spring 2

Rhyme Time Challenge - Summer 1  

Rhyme Time Challenge - Summer 2 

Autumn 2 Family Overview

Spring 1 Family Overview

Spring 2 Family Overview

Summer 1 Family Overview

Summer 2 Family Overview

Tapestry

Our new environment 

The children have settled in beautifully this week and are thoroughly enjoying being in Reception.  They have been exploring their new classroom and learning lots of new routines. Their behaviour has been excellent. Well done everyone! What a super first week!

Me and My World 

This half term as part of this wonderful topic we read a variety of themed stories including Incredible Me and Super Duper You. The children have been learning about their bodies, families, being healthy, their emotions and where they live. The reception children loved looking at google earth and drawing maps of where we live. 

Our school library

Reception now visit our school library each week. They have been choosing books independently and reading and looking at them with their friends. We have been teaching the children how a library works and the children are choosing a new library book to take home each week to share with their family. 

Maths

We've been super busy in maths this term learning about matching objects, numbers and amounts.  We've been counting objects, actions and sounds and we've been learning lots about the numbers 1 to 5 and how we can represent these numbers in different ways.  The reception children have also been developing their vocabulary of size and ordering objects by size.

Super star maths! Well done guys! 

Life Skills

During our life skills session, children learnt about the British value, tolerance. We talked about how we can be tolerant in school, and that children can be playing with the same toy but making different things and that’s okay. We then talked about how we can be drawing the same picture of a cat and that they can all look different.

Sparkle and Shine 

Reception have loved our Autumn two topic ‘Sparkle & Shine’ this half term. We’ve enjoyed learning all about Diwali, bonfire night, birthdays and Christmas. We feel that the children especially loved learning about Diwali by creating diva lamps, dancing to Diwali music and tasting some Indian party food. We’ve enjoyed celebrating and learning together. Well done everyone, we can’t wait to learn more next half term. 

Christmas 

The children have been learning about Advent and what this word means by preparing our classroom and getting ready for Jesus' birthday. The children performed their first nativity, The Wriggly Nativity and they were all wonderful! We've been listening to lots of Christmas stories and we wrote a letter to Santa then posted them at the post box. It is definitely our favourite time of the year in reception and we hope that you all have a magical Christmas at home with your families. 

Chapatti Moon 

Our first story of the week was The Runaway Pancake and we retold the story and wrote a list of all the characters that chased the pancake,

Today we shared our new story and talked about what a chapatti is. We then made and tasted some chapattis. What a super afternoon of learning!

Once Upon a Time 

Reception have loved our Spring One topic ‘Once upon a Time’ this half term. We’ve enjoyed listening to and retelling lots of traditional tales. Well done everyone, we can’t wait to learn more next half term. 

The Big Bad Wolf

You won’t believe what happened today! Someone hungry made a big mess in our classroom. We followed the clues, very excitedly, and decided the Big Bad Wolf had made the mess!!
We made posters and put them up around school so that everyone knows he is bad and to watch out for him. The children also made a look out outside and used the binoculars to look for the wolf. Luckily, Mr Gritto saw our posters and came to reassure us that he’ll make sure the wolf can’t come back. Phew!

Mindfulness Day 

To mark 'Children’s Mental Health Week' we’ve enjoyed a mindfulness day today. This morning we’ve talked lots about how to keep our minds healthy. We practiced some breathing, enjoyed some yoga, enjoyed the spa and even stopped to look at the clouds. This afternoon, we enjoyed the story Geoffrey gets the Jitters. We enjoyed listening to how Geoffrey had worries and found these hard to manage. His ‘jitter’ got bigger until he tried some deep breathing, stretching and talking to his friend. We talked about our own worries and made our own jitters. We shared ideas about how we can help keep our worries small and not let them grow. 

The 3 Billy Goats Gruff

We’ve been sharing lots of versions of the text, The 3 Billy Goats Gruff and retelling the story using characters and masks. We made ugly, stinky, horrible trolls out of potatoes and these looked amazing! The children were set a challenge to create their  our own bridge using lots of different materials and they created maps so that the 3 billy goats gruff could get from the mountain to the meadow. We used non fiction books and the internet to find out interesting facts about goats such as they have 4 tummies and rectangle eyes! 

Safer Internet Day 

We ended our day by taking part in this special event and learning about how we can stay safe on the internet. The children now know that they need to always be with an adult if they are on the internet and if something goes wrong then they need to tell a grown up straight away.

Seeds and Vegetables 

This half term we've have been learning that all vegetables start as a seed and then they grow into a plant. We had a great time planting seeds and watching them grow. We've spent time exploring and looking closely at the seeds and carrots that have grown with magnifying glasses, and some of other vegetables too. 

Smithill's Farm Trip

We had the best time on our trip! It was certainly a busy day at the farm. We enjoyed riding on a donkey, taking a tractor ride, feeding animals, playing on the park, visiting pets corner and even watching milking time. We had the best time. ⭐️

The next day we talked about our visit to the farm and each team looked at a video collage of photos taken on the day. The children loved talking about their experience.

Then we talked about our favourite part and wrote short sentences about it.

Making chips and crisps  

We’ve learnt today that a potato is a vegetable and that we can make chips and crisps from potatoes. The children helped to wash and cut the potatoes and then we took them to the school kitchen to cook in the oven.

The children understand that vegetables are healthy food. We thoroughly enjoyed tasting and eating them too. They were delicious!

World Book Day 

We've had an amazing world book day in Reception. The children shared which character they were dressed up as and which story they liked the best.

We listened to the story, The Very Hungry Caterpillar and then created our own caterpillars. We joined the rest of the school for a celebration assembly and Mrs Barrington and Miss Burgess came to read us a story at the end of the day. 

Frogs and Spring

This afternoon we took a walk around our school grounds to look for signs of Spring. We saw buds on trees and green shoots in flowerbeds starting to grow. We also managed to find some frogspawn in our school pond! When the children got back to class they drew a map of where we had been and what signs of Spring they had seen.

We shared our book of the week, Tad and the children created their own life cycle of a frog.
We have also enjoyed watching the frogspawn grow and change into tadpoles. Some of us looked very closely and drew what we could see.

Growing

Reception have loved our Spring Two topic ‘Growing’ this half term.  Well done everyone, we can’t wait to learn more next half term. 

Pirates 

We shared our book of the week; Pirates love underpants and Portside Pirates. We looked at google earth to see what our world looks like and we saw lots of blue, which is the ocean and sea. The children loved seeing the World in this view. The children enjoyed creating their own stories in our pirate ship and they've been busy learning in provision.

They’ve had the best time exploring all of our pirate activities, including digging for treasure, making treasure islands, drawing and writing about pirates, creating messages in a bottle, treasure maps and telescopes! We even found a treasure chest and a message from a pirate!

Under the Sea

Today we introduced our new book of the week, Under the Sea. We shared the non fiction book with the children and talked about the different oceans in our world and the creatures that live in them.

The children designed, created and then wrote about the ships that they made. We've watched video clips about creatures that live in the ocean and explained that there are a lot of oceans on Earth and that these are different depending on where in our world they are. The children also got the opportunity to hold, feel and smell a real fish that had come from the ocean. The children then created some observational drawings of the fish

Oceans

This half term we enjoyed our oceans topic so very much.

We started the half term with pirate fun and moved onto creatures that live in our oceans. We learnt so much and worked so very hard. Take a look at our fabulous learning journey for the half term.

We can’t wait for our final half term of learning. ⭐️

Aeroplanes 

This afternoon we introduced our theme of 'Journeys' by sharing our book of the week, Choo Choo Clickety  The teachers explained that a journey is travelling from one place to another and that journeys can be short or long and that you might walk, cycle, run or travel using different transport.

We introduced lots of new vocabulary and shared some photos of journeys that our children had made over the school holidays. The children also got the opportunity to play in role in our new role play area, which has been transformed into an aeroplane. I wonder which countries we are going to visit…..

Maths 

We’ve certainly had a busy half term learning lots of new concepts in maths. We’ve been exploring;  one more and one less, counting on and back, odd and even numbers, learning about numbers from eleven to twenty and writing calculations.

We’ve also been continuously revisiting previous learning by  practising our number formation and number bonds to five and ten.

Our teachers are so proud of us as we’ve worked extremely hard.

Transport

We continued with the theme of transport, particularly buses, by sharing lots of bus related stories  We talked about how buses in the past are different to the buses that we use now, We learnt what a London bus looks like and we looked at the similarities and differences in buses in Africa and Manchester. The children then drew and talked about them in great detail and their similarities and differences. The children have also sequenced some photos of buses on a time line. 

We’ve had a wonderful few weeks applying our skills in our classroom independently. We’ve enjoyed exploring  transport and much more and the children have created lots of different types of vehicles throughout this theme. Well done everyone. ⭐️

Ambition Day 

Today we talked about ambition day and what an ambition was. During life skills we told our friends what job we had come dressed up as and why we wanted to do that job when we were older.

We explored lots of different jobs and wrote about what job we would like as we become older. 

We took part in our whole school assembly and we've had a wonderful day!

Handa's Surprise 

We’ve continued our ‘Journeys’ topic with lots of learning about a cold country called Iceland and a hot country called Kenya. During literacy we shared stories and talked about what it would be like to go on a journey to a hot or cold country and how we would get there.

The children looked at some photos of where they live in Little Hulton and then we looked at some photos of Africa. The children talked about the similarities and differences in the places and we located it on a world map.

After learning about Africa the children were given a number of photos to look at and discuss. The children had to sort the photos into sets of where we live and Africa. We also talked about the similarities and differences in the countries. Many of us would like to go on a journey to visit Africa.

We also named all the fruits from our book of the week Handa’s Surprise. The children then got the opportunity to taste and smell them and write sentences about they had tasted. 

Journeys

We’ve really enjoyed our final topic in reception this half term.

We’ve had some busy weeks learning about different transport and places around the world. We’ve loved talking bout hot and cold places around the world. We even compared different counties with where we live. We also enjoyed being historians when we talked about the first airplane flight and even a horse drawn bus from the past.

Well done everyone. You made our last topic an enjoyable one.