End of Spring Term 1- Reception

Date: 14th Feb 2023 @ 3:20pm

Hi everyone,

What a fun week leading up to the end of Spring Term 1! We thoroughly enjoyed Eric Carle's The Hungry Caterpillar. The children had a great time writing about their favourite part of the story, learning about the life cycle of a butterfly, and painting symmetrical butterflies. 

This week has been a special week because we have been really thinking about and discussing Mental Health. We talked about the different types of feelings we may experience on a daily basis and how they influence our decisions. We also had fun making yellow, sunflower headbands to reflect on mental health. We wore them with pride. The children enjoyed discussing ways to make themselves feel better; a spa day was even mentioned and we thought it would be a great idea to have our own Reception spa.  Everyone had a great time relaxing listening to some music, putting cucumbers on our eyes, enjoying some treats, and taking a relaxing foot soak! 

We learned the trigraph sounds 'ear' and 'air' in phonics this week. We have spent a lot of time this week consolidating these two sounds as well as all of the tricky words we've learned so far! We will learn the final two sounds, ‘ure’ and ‘er’, when we return to school after the half-term break.  The children have been given a phonics booklet which contains some fun phonics activities. There is no need to return the booklet to school, so please just do what you can and when you can.

This week in maths, we investigated capacity. We have expanded our understanding of full and empty to include half full, nearly full, and nearly empty. A lot of wonderful vocabulary was used to describe how much a container holds. The children have been given some fun home learning activities, which help to reinforce the work they have been doing in school.  There is no need to return the sheet to school, so please just do what you can and when you can. It would be lovely if you could upload a photograph of your child's work to Evidence Me so we can celebrate their learning.

During Wellie Walk, we enjoyed listening to the story of Ten Wriggly, Wiggly Caterpillars. We then thought it would be a good idea to make nature caterpillars out of natural materials. The children had a lot of fun creating their artwork together. 

We celebrated an early Valentine's Day by talking about how we can show others that we care about them. The children had a great time making cards and using their super phonic skills to write messages inside cards for those they care about.  

We hope that you have a restful, half term break 

The Reception Team