Week 7

 Love Monster

As part of our Valentine's Day themed week we listened to the story "Love Monster" by Rachel Bright.  Love Monster sets out to find someone who will love him just the way he is. His journey is not easy and he finds out that love can find you when you least expect it.  We enjoyed a range of loved themed play activities.

Three Bears Maths Challenge

Reception were invited to explore the challenge of independently finding one more and one less than a number.  They found a number shape for Mummy Bear and then found the number shape that is one more for Daddy Bear and one less for Baby Bear.  This was a fun way to develop mastery of comparing numbers and quantities.

 Story Maps and Speech Bubbles

We sequenced the events and used a story map to retell "Goldilocks and The Three Bears" in our own words.  Reception thought about what each character might say.  They selected a character and wrote a speech bubble.   

Week 6

 Goldilocks and The Three Bears

Blue room explored the story of "Goldilocks and The Three Bears" and it inspired LOTS of learning!  We listened to different versions of the story and loved "Beware of the Bears" by Alan MacDonald.  The bears visit Goldilocks cottage while she's out and wreak havoc everywhere. But when Goldilocks arrives back at the cottage, the Bear family realise they've made an awful mistake.

Size

The story even helped learning in Maths when children used props from the story sack to practise mathematical vocabulary relating to size.  We also enjoyed working in teams to play bingo.

 A New Bed for Goldilocks

Reception completed a STEM engineering design challenge.  They helped Baby Bear design and make a new bed for Goldilocks.

What Makes Porridge Delicious?

Reception carried out a science experiment which focussed on investigation.  The children experimented making different flavoured porridge and tested them out.

Week 5

 Kung Hei Fat Choi!

Reception have been learning all about Chinese New Year and listened to the story "Maisy's Chinese New Year" by Lucy Cousins.  We set up a Chinese take away in our role play area, counted out money to pay for food and made menus.  Reception tried Chinese food and talked about their likes and dislikes.  Using chopsticks was tricky!  We made paper crafts and completed a Numicon dragon in Maths.

Week 4

 I Am a Tiger

We loved listening to this funny story about a little mouse with big ideas.  Thank you to the charity ‘The Book Trust’ for giving each Reception child their very own copy to share at home.  Please read some of our fabulous tiger writing descriptions below.

 Ladybird Spots Pairs Game

This week in Maths the children continued to develop their understanding of the numbers 6, 7 and 8.  They looked at different representations of these numbers and then matched representations that show the same number.  We encourage them to recognise how many objects are in a set rather than counting them if they are able to.  Here we are playing a pairs matching game with a partner.

Colour Mixing

This week we have been exploring colour mixing.  Reception helped the confused colour monster figure out difficult  mixing questions.

Blow Painting with Straws

Reception mixed paint with lots of water to make it runny.  We then used a straw to blow paint around the paper to make our own ‘Colour Monster’ designs.

Week 3

The Colour Monster

"The Colour Monster" by Anna Llenas is a lovely book which explores feelings and colours associated with feelings. The children made  their own colour monster and explained why they chose the colour and how it makes them feel.

In the story yellow is happiness, blue is sadness, red is anger, black is fear, green is calm and by the end of the story the monster is pink, he feels loved.

Dominoes 

Reception continued to develop their understanding of how all numbers are made up of smaller numbers. They explored how 7 spots can be arranged on a domino.

How many are hiding?

In Maths we could see some animals and some were hidden.   Then we were told how many animals there are in total.  We represented the animals we could see on the grass with red counters on a 5 frame.  How many more counters to make the total?  We practised copying and saying the number sentence.

Week 2

Six Dinner Sid

Our story of the week is "Six Dinner Sid" by Inga Moore.  It is a fabulous story about a sly cat who manages to get six dinners a day!  We made lost cat and 'how to care for ...' pet shop posters.

 How many are hiding?

In Maths the children were shown some farm animals. They were told there were 5 in total and that some were hiding.  Reception counted how many they could see and worked out how many were in the barn.

How many children are there altogether?

Reception had to count how many children are on the bus and how many are waiting at the bus stop.  We represented the children using red and yellow counters on a 5 frame and then counted how many children there are altogether.

The Happy Puzzle Company

We worked in small groups to complete challenging puzzles.  These games helped to develop our social and thinking skills.

Week 1

 Owl Babies 

This week Reception listened to the story "Owl Babies" by Martin Waddell.  We followed simple instructions to make an 'owl on toast' snack and told the story in our own words using a story map.  Reception discussed what the owl characters could be saying and wrote their own speech bubbles.  In Maths we have started a new White Rose Maths topic 'Alive in 5'.  The children worked out 1 less when singing number rhymes, learned about the number zero and the composition of 5.