Welcome to Reception!

Teacher: Mrs. A Wadley

Teaching Assistants: Mrs. Caton and Mrs. Owen

Hello Reception children and families!

      Welcome to our class page. 

Here you will find information about what we are learning about this year. Click on  'Reception Curriculum' below to find out about what we are learning each term.

I will regularly update this page with information on routines, resources and ideas for you to help your child at home and also with what we have been learning in the classroom!

If you have any questions or concerns, you can contact me via Seesaw or by using the following email address:

rechomework@cottam.lancs.sch.uk

Mrs. Wadley

Our Forest School Day!

We had lots of fun at forest school! We spent the day outside taking part in as many of the activities as we wanted to. There was nature weaving, spray painting leaf pictures, making nature brushes, playdough making, den building, mud pie making and mini beast hunting. We even roasted marshmallows over the firepit! We showed great team work skills, fantastic turn taking and wonderful curiosity. What a fantastic day! 

Handa's Surprise!

This week we have been reading 'Handa's Surprise'. We did a great job remembering the 7 delicious fruits in Handa's basket and the animals that took them! We did lots of story telling and used our fine motor skills to weave our own basket. We also found out that the story is set in Kenya so we 'flew' there and learned lots about Kenya! We found out that it is in the continent of Africa and it takes 8 hours to fly there! We found Kenya and England on a map, looked at the flag and saw all the different landscapes - we liked the savannah the best! We did some fruit tasting and some African dancing too!

The King's Coronation

We had a special week celebrating King Charles III Coronation! We listened to the story 'The Colourful Coronation' which helped us understand what a coronation is. We learned all about the special objects that the King had to hold and we had our own coronation procession! We even made a carriage! The children made our home corner into a royal tea party, complete with menus, invitations and a throne!

We found out how many jobs the King has to do so we all wrote him a letter to say good luck and thank you. We also made him some special 'Happy Coronation Day' cards which we sent to Buckingham Palace - the children can't wait to receive a reply! We made some super patterns on crowns with shiny jewels, some red, white and blue paper chains and a Union Jack flag. 

Our week ended with a fabulous Coronation picnic, where we all wore our special crowns.

Spring Welly Walk!

To start our new topic 'Come Outside', we went on a welly walk to spot signs of Spring. We tried to find all the items our list and we were so good at looking that we found them all, even a nest! We stopped half way through our walk to do some tree rubbings - the patterns we made were lovely!

The Gingerbread Man

We loved learning about The Gingerbread Man. We listened to the story and had fun retelling it - we liked saying 'run, run as fast as you can!' We even put the words in the right order. We also used our fine motor skills to make bridges for The Gingerbread Man to cross the river. We made some gingerbread men and then, one morning we came into the classroom to find they had run away! We had to solve some clues to find them. The children were interested to find out what would have happened to The Gingerbread Man if he had fallen in the water so we carried out an experiment to find out. 

Learning to ride a bike!

This week, Carlee from Go Velo came to help us learn to ride a bike! We had a great time and showed lots of determination and perseverance. Everyone had a smile on their faces, even when it rained!

Lego Workshop

The children have enjoyed taking part in a LEGO workshop. They used their creative skills to build houses. Everybody's house was different! Then, we made an electric circuit to light up the houses.  It was great! 

World Book Day!

We had a fabulous day, listening to and sharing stories. We love to read in Reception!

Look at our amazing outfits - can you guess who we are?

UV Dodgeball

We had lots of fun trying out UV Dodgeball!

Travelling Tuesday

We enjoyed learning about China on our ‘travelling Tuesday’ this term.  We found China on a map and identified the parts of the map that were land and sea. We compared it to England. It is much bigger!  We looked at the flag, and the different types of transport. We even tasted some Chinese food.   It was also Chinese New Year so we learnt all about the year of the rabbit and did some dragon dancing.

16th December 2022

The last few weeks have flown by!

We have been very busy with our 'everyday superhero' learning, our Nativity and Christmas!

The children were fantastic in our performance of 'The Wriggly Nativity' and they all enjoyed the Pantomime trip - we were very proud of them! 

What a wonderful first term at school!

A visit from a dentist!

We have been learning all about the job of a dentist and dental health so we were very lucky to have a visit from a dentist! She had a special box that had lots of interesting objects in from her dental surgery. We had to guess what they were used for! She also told us how important it is to keep our teeth clean and showed us the right way to clean them.  Then we all got a special sticker for being wonderful listeners and asking great questions. 

Kung fu classes

The children have been taking part in weekly Kung fu classes on a Friday morning. Take a look at the photographs below to see all the children in action! As you will be able to see, they are all enjoying learning this Chinese martial art from the teacher Mr Faxiang Fan.

18th November 2022

To give our 'everyday heroes' topic an exciting start, we went on our first trip to the Little Lancashire Village! It was very exciting to go on a coach - some of us had never been on one before. We had lots of fun exploring all the different areas and acting out lots of different roles. We loved being mechanics, hairdressers, shop assistants, pilots, vets and dentists. We even had a go at working in a launderette, coffee shop and pizza place! 

A visit from the Police!

To enhance our learning on 'everyday heroes', we were very lucky to have a visit from our local PCSO's. We learnt all about the different jobs they have to do, what they wear and we even got to sit inside their Police car. The children listened very well and asked some fantastic questions.

4th November 2022

What an exciting week our first week back after half term was! We began the week with Halloween and the story 'Room on the Broom'. We listened to it and then retold it using lots of actions. We looked for spooky creatures in scary spaghetti and made silly soup in cauldrons. We practiced our cutting skills to make a pumpkin and went on a pumpkin hunt. We even made magic potions! At the end of the week, we celebrated bonfire night by making fireworks pictures and learning about Guy Fawkes. We found out that he wasn't very kind so we talked about what makes a good friend.  We all made a friendship bracelet and gave it to one of our friends. It made us feel happy to see our friends smile.  We also learned about the number 4. We used blocks to see how many different ways we could arrange 4. Have a look at the photos showing some of our learning from this week.

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21st October 2022

This week we have been learning about our senses. We listened to the story 'Peace at Last' and discussed all the sounds Mr. Bear heard. Were they loud or quiet sounds? We retold the story using actions and pictures. Then we thought about what sounds we might hear outside. We used our listening ears on a walk around the playgrounds.  The children listened very carefully to the sounds we could hear - we were surprised to hear leaves in the trees and keys rattling! We have also used our sense of smell to try and guess some hidden smells - it was quite tricky! Lots of the children didn't like smelling vinegar but they loved smelling chocolate! 

We also celebrated Diwali - we made diya lamps, coconut barfi and rangoli patterns.

In Maths we have been pattern making - we have been learning how to make repeating patterns from colours, shapes and even actions.

Another super week - well done children!

7th October 2022

We have had a very busy few weeks in the classroom, with lots of activities based around our topic 'All about me'. Our story of the week, this week was 'Once there were Giants'. A lovely story which helped with our discussion on how we have changed. We asked the questions - what could we do as a baby? What can we do now? The children came up with some super answers! 

We have been on our first welly walk to spot signs of Autumn and collect some Autumn objects. The children were all very sensible and were very good at spotting! 

We are doing daily phonics sessions and have been learning the sounds s,a,t,p,i,n,m,d,g. We have been playing lots of games and practising blending these sounds together to read some words e.g at, in, sat, tap, man. The phonics tab above has some suggestions for phonics games to play at home and there is also a short video to help the children with how each sound should be pronounced for when you are practising at home. Please look at the phase 2 video.

In Maths we have been matching, sorting, and looking at height using the words tall, taller, short and shorter. We have also met numberblock 1, 2 and 3 - they have been helping us spot groups of 2 and 3 hiding in bigger numbers! We have also been learning how to subitise to 3. This is a new skill where we say how many we see, without counting!

Travelling Tuesday!

On the 4th October we had our first travelling Tuesday! We got in our 'cars' and travelled all the way to England! We found England on a map of the world and saw how small it is compared to lots of other countries. Then we found out that it is the biggest country in the United Kingdom! We learned that the capital city is London and that is where the King lives. Lots of us have been to London! We looked at the shapes and colours on the flag and even watched a video all about Stone Henge. We had lots of fun trying to make our own Stone Henge, deciding on what we could use to make a flag and tried a cream tea - that got a big thumbs up!

Where we will travel to next time?

Mondrian

As part of our learning about colours, we have looked at the dutch artist, Piet Mondrian. He was most famous for paintings that used bold black lines to create squares and rectangles. He then filled some of the shapes in using one of the three primary colours.

We used our cutting skills to cut black strips and glued them on a piece of white paper. We used the words ‘horizontal’ and ‘vertical’. We know the primary colours are red, yellow and blue so we chose those colours to fill in some of the shapes, just like Mondrian did!

Look at the photos below to see our fantastic work!

We then decided to use our knowledge of primary colours to find out what happened when we mixed them together. We used pipettes to mix coloured water together. The results were amazing!

Our First Two Weeks at School!

We have had so much fun making new friends and exploring all the exciting things in the classroom. Look at the photos below to see some of the things we have been doing.