Week 15 in Class R

Class: Reception Year: 2022 - 2023

Happy New Year!

We hope that you have all had a wonderful Christmas break and enjoyed a well-deserved rest. 

The children have come back to school with great enthusiam. They have settled back in well and are showing us how grown up they are, ready to learn.

Thank you so much to those of you who sent in baby photos. The children have absolutely loved playing Guess the Baby. We have been discussing how we change when we grow up, physically and within what we can do, and the children also noticed some things that stay the same. They came up with great ideas as to how they could recognise their classmates from physical features. We have some future detectives in the class! The children were interested to see photos of Miss Wootton's mum and how she has changed from a young child to a grandparent. They discussed the physical changes but were also intrigued to see that lots of the photos were black and white and only the grandparent photo was in colour. We have spent a lot of time talking about our families, discussed family trees and looked at the different generations. It was lovely to hear about all the different people in your families and interesting to hear that some of the children are lucky enough to know their great-gradparents. We would welcome any photos that you and your children would like to share. 

Next week, we will be starting to learn the Phase 3 phonics sounds and practising blending these in words. These become a bit trickier to remember, so please look out for the homework in the reading folders on Thursdays to help you to practise at home. This week, we have really focused on learning the tricky words. You will have seen these in their reading folders this week. Please have a look at these with your children and practise them little and often. The children need to read these by sight. 

In maths, we have explored the number 6. We have looked at how all the numbers to 6 look on dice and tried to recognise them in these standard dot patters as well as irregular arrangements. We talk a lot about how we see the quantities within these patterns. I can see a 3 and a 3 when seeing 6, for example. We have explored how the number 6 can be represented in different ways. The two ways we have seen it so far is using the '5 and a bit more' method on our ten frames  snd rekenreks and seeing it as 3 and 3 on a die pattern. 

In PE, we started our first gymnastics lessons. We talked about the importance of making ourselves strong and how improving your core muscles can help in lots of ways, but especially in gymnastics movements. We spent the first part of our lesson working on our core strength and coordination by working in pairs. Then, we moved on to learning all about the pencil roll. The children enjoyed trying out the pencil roll on their own mats, but did find it quite tricky to maintain the position and had to use their core strength to propell their bodies over to complete the rolls. In reception and at this early age, it is really important for the children to work on their core strength and stability too to help them to be able to hold their position to sit correctly at a table or on the floor to write. The more strengh they have, the better they will be able to make the movements to form letters and also to sustain the position to begin to write at more lenght. 

Next week in Reception, we are looking into the culture and celebration of the Lunar New Year. We will be exploring where in the world this festival is celebrated, how families  celebrate at home and in their communities, and we will be learning the stories that tell us all about it. We hope that the children really enjoy this wonderful cultural experience and come home to tell you all about what they know. 

We hope that you all have a lovely weekend and week ahead. 

Miss Wootton and the reception team