Big cook, little cook

This morning, we have made our own sausage rolls! We brushed the milk onto the pastry, and rolled the sausage up! We can’t wait to eat them at snack time!

Subitising 3

Did you know…we can now subitise 3! This means, if we see 3 objects together, we no longer need to count them! We know there are 3 objects just by making links and noticing patterns.

Octopus Opener 🐙

We have been familiarising ourselves with our new driver text Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and learning lots of new vocabulary. Today, Octopus Opener helped us to sequence the events from the beginning of the story.

Chinese New Year

This morning, we have started our Chinese New Year Celebrations! We talked about all the special things that are done during this festival, and we found out the red is a special colour: it brings good luck! We used our fine motor skills to thread gold ribbon through our own red envelope and added a special coin 😋

What is safe to go into my body?

Today, we talked about what is safe to go into our bodies. We know that food and drink are safe, but we must remember to ask adults first. We might think a bottle looks like it has juice, but we should check. We talked about how medicine is safe, but we should never take medicine without a grown up – only medicines that are meant to be for children are safe. We also had a go at opening a medicine bottle…but it was too tricky! The special lid is to keep us safe.

Year 3 Performing Poetry

Today, Year 3 enjoyed performing and reciting the poems we have been exploring in lessons.

Sharing knowledge in RE!

One of our pupils gave a fantastic first-hand insight into the Muslim faith during a Q & A session today.
Such a valuable way for children to learn from each other and celebrate diversity!

What is safe to go into my body?

Last week, we talked about what was safe to go onto our bodies such as sun cream, soap, plasters. Building on our learning, this week we talked about what is safe to go into our bodies. We talked about medicine and how this is only safe when it is given to us by a trusted grown up. We also looked at vitamins and at first, we thought they were sweets! Vitamins and medicines come in special bottles and tubs with lids that we can’t do to make sure we don’t have too much.

Tasting Chinese food

Yesterday, we continued our Chinese New Year Celebrations and tasted some Chinese food! We tasted spring rolls, prawn crackers and rice! We even tried using chopsticks for the first time!

Life savers big question 3!

What can we use our money for?

We discussed how often we consider our life saver values when we make a financial decision and shared ideas of how to be generous, thankful and wise with money.
Many of our children said that they believe they should save for the things they want but only after spending on the things they need. Some said that they would like to give more to charity too.

Dogs Trust

KS2 had a lovely visit from Angela at the Dogs Trust this morning. We discussed how to be safe and kind to dogs out and about.

Our link school in Qatar

We were so excited to meet the children in Flamingo class all the way in Qatar! We sang some songs, read a lovely story and made some new friends 🥰 see you again soon Flamingo friends 🦩

Den Building

We have worked hard to build a den using our words ending in ing such as: building, playing, pushing, pulling, clipping and covering.

CO (Carbon Monoxide) safety assembly!

We learnt an important message today about Carbon Monoxide (otherwise known as CO) safety.

You can’t see it, hear it, smell it, taste it or touch it!

Homework task:

• Check if you have a CO alarm in your home!

• Make a note of the signs and symptoms to look out for and also the number to call if you suspect any CO in your home.

Tubes + cars = FUN 🤩

We’ve made our own car tracks and tunnels with some tubes and boxes today! We balanced the tubes on the furniture and drove our cars down to see how fast they could go! We had to work as a team.

Big Cook, Little Cook

Have a look at our ingredients…what do you think is on the menu today? We had to listen really carefully to Mrs Sefton as she told us the steps of the recipe…

Collaboration and communication in action!

5M helped each other to improve their writing by sharing ideas and giving feedback. Some used a dictionary to check difficult spellings.

Staying safe, indoors and outdoors

Last week, we talked about how we stay safe both indoors and outdoors. The children were fantastic – they knew straight away that we must follow rules to stay safe. The children were able to confidently talk about the rules we have in nursery to keep our classroom safe and happy, so we moved outside. We looked at the road, and talked about some of the dangers we might come across and how we can keep ourselves safe.

Stay and Learn

Thank you to all our families who joined us for stay and learn this morning! It was a huge success and the children really love welcoming their families into their classroom. We made our own dough, made some porridge and tasted it just like Goldilocks, cutting and sticking, and fine motor activities. The children really enjoyed it and we hope you did too 🥰

School Council meeting

Our school council were busy this morning, thinking of ideas for special rewards for reading at home and also for charities to donate to as part of our Social Impact Schools Award.

Valentine’s hugs

Today, we talked about how Valentine’s Day is all about love and friendship. We talked about all the people we love, and spoke about ways we can express our love to our family and friends. Lots of children suggested hugs, so that’s exactly what we did! How better to spread joy than to paint each other a picture, and give each other a cuddle…then our paintings will match! True friendship ❤️🥰

Visit to ‘the park’

We enjoyed visiting the new ‘park’ today! We conquered some fears (because crossing a wobbly bridge is much scarier than it looks sometimes!), and used our core muscles to help us keep our balance. We had 2 children who initially wouldn’t cross the bridge, but with some encouragement, they not only did it with help, but they then did it all by themselves! We create safe opportunities for children to take risk 🥰

Big cook, little cook

Today we made shortbread biscuits! We weighed the ingredients, and mixed them together. Once they were ready, we let them cool…but they didn’t last much longer than that! 😋

Tasting pancakes

We tasted some pancakes and some toppings today! They were absolutely delicious 😋 happy Pancake Tuesday!

Pancake races!

We took turns to race with our pancakes to the gate and back! We cheered for our friends as they balanced the pancakes carefully. We dropped some, but that all adds to the fun 🤩

World Book Day

We are dressed in beautiful colours today to celebrate World Book Day! We talked about all the colours we could see on our clothes – our carpet looked like a rainbow today 🌈 we read the Colour Monster book, and spotted the colours from the story on our clothes!

World Book Day

Reception have explored lots of books this week. We especially loved The Colour Monster and The Little Mermaid! We have been inspired creatively by our books. Look at our creations:

Science Week 👩🏻‍🔬👨🏽‍🔬🔬🧬

Today Reception have explored engineering. We programmed the Bee Bots to move across the grid.

Science Week 👩🏻‍🔬👨🏽‍🔬🔬🧬

Reception enjoyed their butter this morning on crackers for snack!🧈

Spring 💐🌷🌻

Today Reception explored the parts of a flower!🌺 We have begun to look at how the season of spring is when plants and flowers start to grow and bloom after winter.

Science Week- Zoom with an engineer

Today Reception had a zoom with an engineer! They told us how rockets get into space! 🪐🚀🛰️

Little Red

This week reception have continued to plan their own version of Little Red. Today build up bear helped us to plan the next section.📝

Our new home corner !

We have had lots of fun choosing our learning in our new home corner. We are very lucky and have lots of new resources.

Science week

We are enjoying celebrating Science week! We’ve learnt lots of new things…did you know, if you put double cream into a pot and shake, shake, shake and shake some more…it turns into butter!!! We each made our own butter, then spread it on to some crackers to enjoy for snack. Isn’t science amazing 🤩

Science Week 🧬👨🏽‍🔬👩🏻‍🔬🔬

Today reception explored weather for science week! We did an experiment to show how clouds rain 🌧️. We used water, foam and food colouring for our experiment🧪

PE- Fundamentals

Reception have been exploring fundamentals in PE. Today we practiced throwing and aiming towards a target. We used bean bags and hoops.

PJ day for Alder Hay

Today we wore our PJs for Alder Hay hospital. We know how much they help us!

Science Week

During Science week, we made our own butter! We poured double cream into a jar, and we shook, and shook, and shook some more until…it turned into butter! We then enjoyed our butter on our crackers 🥰

Problem Penguin

We are a couple of weeks into our half term, and we have now sequenced our Problem Penguin! Only the Elephant Ending to go and then we will have yet another story under our belts 📕

Spring has sprung!

Thursday (20th March) marked the first official day of Spring, and we cannot wait to spend more time in our beautiful garden. We celebrated the first day by planting some beautiful plants in our planter 🪴

Stay and Learn

Reception had a fun afternoon with their adults! We showed our adults our classroom. We took part in different activities such as; colour mixing, flower blooming, Easter egg designing, tulip printing and tower building with 3D shapes!

Happy Mother’s Day!

We hope all of our Mum’s, Grandmothers, Godmothers, Step-Mum’s and all the other motherly figures in our lives had a wonderful Mother’s Day ❤️ 🌷

Making daffodils

We have noticed all the wonderful daffodils 🌼 that are starting to grow. In our tuff tray, we had to use different materials to construct our own daffodil!

Maths – tall and short

We have been learning about tall, short, taller and shorter. We compared beanstalks, and talked about which was the tallest and which was the shortest.

Stay and Learn – Science

Thank you to all our families for joining us for stay and learn! We really enjoyed completing our science experiments with you – making rainbows and potions is so much fun! Thank you for supporting our stay and learn sessions 🥰

Blossom fun

We noticed that the trees had blossomed over Easter half term! We had so much fun exploring the blossom that had already fallen…and the blossom that was ready to fall 😉

Watching the crane!

We were so excited when we spotted the crane from our garden! The children used words to describe the size of the crane (huge, gigantic, enormous) and we took turns in talking about what we thought the crane might be doing.

Big cook, little cook

Mrs Sefton made us smile today…we walked into Nursery and spotted the scales and baking ingredients and we knew straight away it was time for big cook, little cook! We weighed all the ingredients, and carefully mixed them together to make lemon tarts! We enjoyed eating them at snack time.

Well-being week

We are enjoying our well-being activities this week. Today, we sat in the cool shade to listen to our chosen story for the day. This was a wonderful idea from one of our children ❤️

Picnic

Year 4 came and shared their picnic with us! They worked very hard and reception enjoyed their food. Thank you Year 4!

Julia Donaldson 📚

This week Reception are exploring the work of Julia Donaldson. The first book we read was Cave Baby. Using natural resources such as; twigs, leaves, flowers and grass, we made our very own cave paintings.

Julia Donaldson

Reception have explored the text Superworm! We created our very own super worms using card and pens!

The Natural World 🌎

Reception have been exploring and understanding the natural world this week!

Julia Donaldson

We have explored Julia Donaldson’s texts The Gruffalo and The Gruffalo’s child. We have created our own deep dark wood and made the characters!

The Seashore

This week reception are exploring the sea and the seashore. We have explored different textures in our tuff tray. We used rice crispy for sand, jelly for the sea, rocks for rock pools and shells. Around our classroom there are lots of sea activities to explore!

The Storm Whale🌊

This week we have started to learn all about our new book, The Storm Whale. When we arrived at school there was a letter with different items left. We have been using our imaginations to think where the letter could have come from and how we could help the whale. We had some fabulous ideas!

The Seaside

This week reception have been exploring the seaside and animals under the sea. Our new English text The Storm Whale has inspired us! Using pastels we coloured different animals that we find under the sea. We traced the patterns to help us improve our fine motor skills!

All about out half term ☀️

We have done some independent writing this week! We have written all about our half term and all the fun we had. 😁

Dobbies Garden Centre

Reception had an amazing time at Dobbies Garden Centre. We made our own flowers and played in the soft play. We all have lettuce seeds, a pot and soil to take home to plant 🪴 . Thank you Dobbies and thank you to everyone who helped us to walk there!

Cloud dough

We have had so much fun making our own cloud dough today! F said it felt like slime! It’s really stretchy, and smells amazing 🤩 it has definitely helped to wake up our hand muscles today!

The Storm Whale 🐋

Reception have been enjoying our English book The Storm Whale 🐋! We have been writing lots of sentences with the help of our story friends. Today Wise Owl helped us to use capital letters, full stops and finger spaces.

Our trip to Dobbies Garden Centre!

This week we walked to Dobbies Garden Centre and we got to be like Joe, The Extraordinary Gardener! We had lots of fun making flowers and we even got to take our very own seed home to plant. We had the best time, Thank you Dobbies. 🪴👩‍🌾

Milo’s Money!

This week we have been learning all about money. We have focused on how we can save money. We had lots of whole class discussions about different way we can save money, we had lots of different ideas!

When I Grow Up

Reception were excited to show and talk about what they would like to be when they grow up! Throughout the day we heard about lots of different jobs and explained why we would like to do the jobs chosen.

When I grow up I’d like to be a …

Aspirations Week!

Yesterday we all came to school dressed up as what we want to be when we are older! We spoke all about why we wanted to be this, drew a picture of ourselves and wrote all about our aspirations.

Aspirations Week

This week we have been thinking about all of the amazing things we can do when we grow up. On Monday, we were able to come to school dressed as something that we think we’d like to be when we are bigger! We had some doctors, nurses, an explorer, police officers, fire fighters…we had such a lovely day talking about the important jobs.

Tiny Tasters !

This week was our first session with Tiny Tasters. Our reception families had lots of fun during the session. They spoke all about healthy eating, focusing on the correct and safe way to prepare their food. The children got to prepare and make their own wrap, which they even got to eat! Thank you Tiny Tasters we look forward to next week. 🥗

Bike Right

Reception had fun learning to ride bikes safely. We used the safety helmets to keep ourselves safe. They had lots of fun playing different games when riding the bikes!

Reading for pleasure

Every Thursday, we bring our book bags into school and choose a new book to share with our family ❤️

Making wraps!

Yesterday, we made our own wraps at snack time! We named smelt the ingredients first, and talked about whether we had already tried them before. We had the chance to taste each ingredient before deciding whether we would like them on our wrap. And then the fun part…we had to make our wrap! It was trickier than we expected 😉

Understanding positional language

We are learning about positional language. This game is a great way for us practise! We have to look really careful at the pictures and listen to the position of the objects.

Pirate Week

This week Reception are exploring pirates. Across our classroom are lots of pirate 🏴‍☠️ activities for us to explore such as; pirate colour by numbers, pirate tuff tray, pirate map making and pirate stories!

Music Week

This week reception are exploring music. Today we have explored lots of different instruments, learning their names and playing them ourselves. We have also followed and repeated a beat!

We have also watched a music zoom with different musicians who showed us how they play different instruments!

Imagine That!

Reception had an amazing time at imagine that! We made snow, slime and a fridge magnet. We had lots of fun exploring the science, art, imaginative and outdoor areas!

Making lemon cheesecake pie!

In big cook little cook, we made delicious lemon cheesecake pie! Mrs Sefton made us close our eyes so we could use our sense of smell to guess which fruit we would be using! Nice try Mrs Sefton, you couldn’t trick us! 🍋

Bastille Day

Reception have learnt all about Bastille Day! We have completed lots of activities to help us to understand Bastille Day and France. 🇫🇷 We have made our own flags using paint and our hands, we had our own French Bakery, and learnt some French words!

Our reception Memories !

As it is coming to the end of the year, we have been talking all about our favourite memories in reception. We all had big smiles on our faces thinking and looking at all the fun times we have had. 😃

Reception R’s Class Motto

Today the children discussed what they want their class motto to be. The children said that they love to play with kind friends and we talked about how we can be a kind friend.
At the end we decided that our classes motto is going to be:

Always Be Kind

All the children agreed and signed the motto with their handprint 🖐️

We found a hole 🕳️

Today reception found a whole outside! We were all very shocked and we don’t know where it has come from. We think it might be The Gruffalo or a wolf 🐺. Watch out for the whole on our yard!

RE- The Creation Story

The children have explored the Christian creation story. They created their very own jellyfish 🪼 and discussed why the creation story is important to Christians. We used scissors to cut out our jellyfish and glue to stick the tentacles on!

PSHE

In reception, we have been exploring ourselves. In PSHE we shared our favourite things and why they are so important to us.

Friendship

This week reception have been exploring what makes a good friend. We said that; kind hands, kind words and kind actions are what make a great friend!
Today we have made a friendship potion where we’ve added: kindness, happiness and smiles to our potions 🧪.

Harvest Festival

In RE, reception explored the Christian Harvest Festival. We explored the foods that are included in the festival. We discussed the season Autumn and the crops and foods that grow during this time.

Emotions Week!

This week reception have explored emotions. We have read lots of stories to help us understand different emotions including; The Colour Monster, The Worry Monster and The Worrysauras. The children have used a range of materials to create their very own Feeling Jars inspired by The Colour Monster!

PSHE-SCARF

In our PSHE SCARF lesson this week, we discussed the word ‘trust’. We thought about the people who we trust and why. We discussed our family and friends. Then we wrote and drew the five people that we trust!

Phonics

Reception have been working hard on their phonics! This week they have been helping Fred 🐸 to blend CVC words and learn their first 10 sounds.

PE

Reception have been exploring spatial awareness and ball skills in PE. We understand how important it is to know where we are and where our friends are, so that we don’t bump into each other whilst playing! This week we worked with our partners to pass the ball to each other.

Maths

In Maths, reception have been learning about sorting and matching. This week reception used the Autumn objects to create their own sorting rule. The children made many different rules including:

-brown and not brown

-round and not round.

Emotions Week

Reception explore The Worrysaurus by Rachel Bright this week. Using the story puppets and the story cards the children ordered the story and recreated the story in our small world.

Emotions Week- The Very Hungry Worry Monster

This week, Reception explored the text The Very Hungry Worry Monster by Rosie Greening. We discussed when and why we might feel worried. We also discussed what we can do if we feel worried and who we can talk to. Reception created their very own Worry Monster using cotton pads, pipettes and coloured water.

English

Reception had a visitor today! Build up Bear came to help us plan our own version of The Something. We have enjoyed reading The Something for English and can’t wait to write our very own story!

Making our own cereal snack!

We were so excited when we found out what our activity was…we could make our own cereal snack! We had to choose which cereal we wanted, and then scoop it into our bowl. We talked about what a full bowl might look like, and aimed to get our bowl about half full. We then had to carefully pour our milk…a couple of small spillages later and we were able to enjoy eating our cereal! We even got to wash our own dishes afterwards!

Watching how water travels

When tidying up, we noticed that the water was travelling down the gulley into the grid! We could see all the tiny pieces of dirt and dust travelling quickly towards the grid – it was fascinating to watch. We noticed there was a blockage in the drain, and H said “if we get it out, the water will go faster!” So we used some tools, removed the blockage and…H was right! It did move faster!

Making snips with scissors

In our strong hands carousel, we used scissors to make snips in some of the leaves we collected from the garden. The children noticed that the leaves were a bit trickier to cut than the paper, and we chatted about how the leaves felt different to the paper.

Making marks in foam

Sorry about the mess…we were too busy building our muscles and making different marks in the foam!

Build up bear

We have been building the story of The Gingerbread Man.

Making cheese scones

We carefully measured and weighed out the ingredients and made our own scone. We had to wait a while for them to cook and cool, before enjoying our scone for our snack!

Learning about Autumn

We went for a lovely walk around our school grounds to look at the signs of Autumn. We noticed how the leaves are changing colour and starting to fall. We even had a little shake of a branch and watching some loose leaves fall! We used an information book to help us identify some things that we had found.

Autumn Week

Reception have learnt all about Autumn. 🍂 We have been on an Autumn walk and found lots of different things that show us that we are in Autumn. We found leaves that have changed colour and fell off the tree. We also saw pine cones and conkers.

Autumn Week

Reception used the leaves they collected to create a fine motor tuff tray. Using tweezers and a bowl the children carefully picked the leaves out to sort them! We are working hard to make our hands strong!

Hedgehog bread

Whilst exploring Autumn, Reception have learnt all about the different Autumn animals that we can see. We baked our own Hedgehog Bread. Mixing flour, water, yeast and salt we made our own dough. We let the dough rise and then shaped our hedgehogs ourselves!

Leaf People Pictures

Reception have used the leaves that they collected on our Autumn walk to create their own Leaf People pictures. Using card, leaves and glue, Reception glued and stuck the different leaves to their card to create an autumn picture.

English Writing

Reception have worked hard on their stories inspired by The Something by Rebecca Cob. Today Reception finished writing their story with the help of Elephant Ending!

The colour of us

We read ‘The Colour of Us’ today as part of our PSHE lesson, which linked really well with our learning of Black History Month. We spent some time looking at our own face in the mirror and talking about what we could see. We talked about the ‘skin colour rainbow’ in the book and added our own hands to the rainbow. Did you know that every persons skin colour is unique to them?! That’s part of what makes us special 🥰

Black History Month

Today in Reception we explored how we are different and how we are the same! We looked at our hair colour, eye colour and skin colour. We discussed how even if we look different we are the same inside and we should always be kind to everyone!

Learning about Autumn

Following our Autumn walk, we collected lots of Autumn treasure 🍂 we spent some time talking about what we found, and learning new words like conker, acorn and pine cone. We read some beautiful Autumn poems and talked about the rhyming words that we could hear. We then used magnifying glasses to explore our Autumn treasures.

Maths- Recognising numbers to 5

In Reception, we have been exploring and recognising numbers to 5. Today we completed a colour by numbers sheet to help us to recognise the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.

PSHE- Calm Shakers

Today, in Reception we discussed our feelings. We talked about how we can help ourselves when we are feeling sad or angry. We spoke about using our heart breaths, colouring and doing things that make us happy when we are feeling sad. We created calm shakers using; water, cornflour, food colouring and glitter!

Making our own sandwiches

This week, we enjoyed building our own sandwiches! We talked about the health and hygiene aspect of handling food, and made sure we thoroughly washed our hands. We carefully spread the butter, then had to choose between chicken or cheese for our filling…and then our favourite bit…time to eat!

Learning how to match

Following on from colour recognition, we have been learning about how to match. We found out that if two things are the same, they match. We looked at our shoes, and how our shoes match each other, but they may not match our friends shoes; they could be different sizes, colour, shape, pattern, design etc. Even after our lesson, our friends H and B found balls outside that matched by colour!

Learning what makes us special

Today, we read a story called ‘Hey you!’ by Dapo Adeola. This is a story about hope and dreams – we can dream anything, and we can be anything. It’s full of positive affirmations which we loved repeating. We talked about all the different attributes that make us special, including our skin colour. #blackhistorymonth

Diwali – Rangoli Patterns

We have been learning about the festival of Diwali! The children independently made some of their own Rangoli patterns on the carpet using our magnetic shapes 🥰

Music

This week in Music, Reception explored following a beat. Using a range of different instruments they listened carefully and repeated the beat.

RE

In RE this week Reception have read the story of the Precious Pearl from the Bible. We discussed what Christians believe this story symbolises and why it is an important parable to Christians. We created a box to put our own precious things inside to keep safe. We used; card, scissors, glue and felt tip pens to create our boxes.

Yellow Day

Reception had fun on Yellow Day. We discussed our feelings and how we can help ourselves when we are feeling sad or upset. We created yellow paper chains to brighten up our space!

Sensory play

We really enjoyed exploring this tuff tray…even if it did make our hands very red 😅 we used some amazing vocabulary to describe it such as slimy, wet, cold, gooey, squishy, sticky and sloppy!

Autumn colour drop

We built an autumn tree using sticks and branches, and then created our own autumnal leaves by dropping different colours onto our cotton pad leaves! The children made links to our autumn walk, and discussed the different colours we could use. We found it tricky to draw the coloured water up into the pipettes but with some practise, we did it!

Pumpkin soup 🎃

The children have really enjoyed learning more about autumn and Halloween 🎃 👻 This week, we have read the story Pumpkin Soup, and then made our very own! We helped Mrs Sefton hollow out the pumpkin, and then she carefully carved a spooky face into it. We then weighed and chopped the potatoes and pumpkin and Mrs Sefton cooked it before blending it into a delicious soup 😋

Stay and Learn – DT week/maths

Thank you to all our families that were able to attend our stay and learn today! The children always enjoy welcoming you into our classroom. Our stay and learn today was all about DT week – the children had to think really carefully about the resources available to them and design and build a trap for the gingerbread man! We had to think about the sizes of the boxes, and choose things that were the right size for our model – some things were too big, some things were too small. We talked about the materials we could use to connect them – wet glue, glue sticks, cello tape, strong wide brown tape, masking tape or even string! Lots of opportunities for discussion and new vocabulary. Thanks again to all our families – we can’t wait to invite you in again soon!

Sorting by size

The children are getting really good at sorting, and today we had to sort by size! We started by talking about the sizes we could see – both big and small, but today there was also another option…medium sized!

Diwali

Reception have learnt all about Diwali- The Festival of Light! We have had lots of fun exploring different Diwali activities; we made our own diya lamps, paper chains, festival food and Rangoli patterns.

Reception Stay and Learn

Thank you for coming to our stay and learn! Reception had lots of fun showing their adults what they do in school!

DT Week

This week is DT Week! Reception are focusing on our local area. Today, we looked at Runcorn Bridge, we spoke about what a bridge is for and what they look like. Using foam blocks and shaving foam we created our very own bridges!

DT Week – building walls

We had so much fun building different walls in our garden. We found that if we stagger the bricks, it makes the wall so much stronger!

Making spooky gloop!

We have had so much fun making our own spooky gloop this morning (and made lots of mess in the process – sorry Mrs Clovis!). We used spoons, scoops and ladles of different sizes to scoop the cornflour out onto the tray. Then we used spoons to pour the orange water onto it and watched it change from powder to liquid! The children may be coming home messier than usual, but they have had so much fun 😍

Baking gingerbread men

This half term, we have been using The Gingerbread Man as our vehicle text – we have even learnt how to retell it from start to finish! To mark the end of this text, we have baked our own gingerbread men! Mrs Sefton was careful to watch the oven the whole time to make sure they didn’t run away…as we know, they are quite fast!

Black History Month

We used play dough to create faces, and then used pipe cleaners and google eyes to make a smiley face. We talked about how all our faces are different – different colour hair, different colour skin, different colour eyes too! We read a beautiful book called The Colours of Us.

DT Week – looking at structures

We spent some time looking at structures in our outdoor area. We looked at the kind of materials that had been used, and how they had been connected together to make them strong. We even had a quick turn on some of the equipment!

DT Week/Black History Month

Our designer/inventor that we have been learning about is Lonnie Johnson. He invented the nerf gun! We talked about what an inventor is, and how inventors turn their ideas into something real and amazing. We learned a little about Lonnie Johnson, and talked about nerf guns.

RE – The Nativity Story.

Today we started to talk about why we do a Nativity play. We read about the birth of Jesus and learned what happened on that special night. We spoke about the different characters in the story, such as Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, and the wise men, and discussed why each one is important. Then we drew our own pictures of the characters we thought were most important and shared our ideas about why they were important.

Bonfire Night

This week reception have learnt all about bonfire night. We have learnt about Guy Fawkes and why we celebrate bonfire night on the 5th of November. We have also learnt lots of important ways that we can stay safe on bonfire night.

Today we created our own fire works using; salt, glue and coloured water!

Bonfire Night

This week, we have been learning about Bonfire Night. We watched videos of fireworks and used our voices and bodies to copy their movements and sounds. Then we had fun making our own fireworks picture! The children enjoyed splattering glue and sprinkling glitter, making their fireworks sparkle!

Number 1

We have been learning about number 1! He likes all things 1, and guess what his favourite number is…number 1! We made a party plate for him, but he only wanted 1 of each food.

Baking cherry scones

We’ve made cherry scones! We carefully followed the steps on the recipe, and we are now patiently waiting for them to cook. Sorry to our families if children come home covered in flour! But we had so much fun.

Remembrance Day

Today Reception have learnt all about Remembrance Day and the poppy. We have made our own poppy fields to remember all the men and women who have fought in wars to keep us safe.
Using apples, paint and card we printed poppies onto card.

Remembrance Day

Nursery paid our respects to the brave soldiers today at 11am. We made our own poppies using our handprints, and talked about what the poppies represented. We will remember them ❤️

Music

Today reception had fun watching a musician show them their instruments and play them. We sung along and clapped to the different beats!

Big cook, little cook

We enjoyed making our own sausage rolls in our cooking session this week. We had to carefully roll the pastry around the sausage, then brush them with milk! This was trickier than it looks, and some of them kept tricking us by unrolling themselves! We then enjoyed them at snack time (some children enjoyed some delicious meat free rolls too 🥰)

Children in Need 2025

We have had a lovely start to Pudsey day! We have done some PE with Joe Wicks and Pudsey, and have enjoyed some printing – Pudsey’s eye patch was missing its spots!

PE

This half term Reception are exploring dance in PE. This week they have worked in teams to create their own dance!

RE

This week in RE reception have explored the Nativity Story. They have created Christmas cards which show the Nativity scene. Reception used pencils, coloured pencils and card.

Space Week

This week Reception have explored space. We have completed lots of different space activities, learning all about the; planets, rockets and the stars.

Space Week

This week Reception have explored space. Today we created our own rocket fuel to make our rockets ‘fast’ and make them ‘blast off’. We also used the blocks and connectors to create our own rocket that could take us to the Moon and Mars!

Story dough

The children always enjoy story dough, but this morning they got a little shock at how cold the dough was! We always have to warm it up with our song, but it needed a little extra warming this time! The children were busy making a cheesy wolf 😅😎

WellComm games – pronouns

One of our games this week focussed on pronouns. The children are getting really good at using pronouns accurately. This game also focussed on lots of verbs.

Banana muffins

This week, we made banana muffins! We carefully weighed out the ingredients…but mashing the bananas was definitely our favourite bit! They really were delicious 😋

Cold walk

Even though winter isn’t quite here, the children noticed the weather is starting to change. They also noticed that on their walk to school today, the ground was “sparkly” so we went to investigate! The colder weather is changing how our environment looks and we had lots of fun exploring. We found that the water in the tray had frozen! So we chipped away and broke some off to hold.

Julia Donaldson

This week Reception have been exploring the author Julia Donaldson. We have made: Gruffalo pie from ‘The Gruffalo’s Child’, made the highway from ‘The Highway Rat’, put all the characters from ‘Room on the Broom’ onto the witches’ broom, made our own paper dolls from ‘Paper Dolls’ and made our own Stickmen from ‘Stickman’.

Shapes

Reception have been exploring shapes. We have made our own stars by cutting rectangles and triangles out and gluing them together. We have also been on a shape hunt searching for squares and rectangles.

Build up bear

We built our ‘build up bear’ section of our story: The Elves and the Shoemaker! We orally rehearsed this part of our story together, putting some actions to it 🤩

Exploring different textures

We had the choice of different ingredients, and we explored how they felt, smelt (and even tasted!) in our tuff tray.

More repeating patterns

We further consolidated our learning about patterns, and printed some using cotton reels. This proved trickier than we thought, as we had to really concentrate on which reel we were picking up. Some children then even recreated their own patterns in provision independently!

Book reviews

Children have really enjoyed completing their first book review in school with our helper Gill. We have started to bring these home this week, and if we bring them back into school, we will get a sticker! A polite reminder that our book bags are due in on Thursdays.

Art Week

Our first art week activity: sketching shoes! Our driver text this half term is The Elves and the Shoemaker, so we decided to try sketching our shoes, just like a shoemaker would when they were designing them. We looked closely at the details and shapes we could see.

The Gruffalo – Julia Donaldson

This week we have been learning about Julia Donaldson. We explored one of our favourite books, The Gruffalo. Using play dough and describing words from the story, we created our very own Gruffalo models. In the mud kitchen, we used our reading and writing skills to make “Gruffalo pie,” following recipes and using lots of imaginative language. We had a wonderful time taking part in so many fun and engaging activities!

Letters to Santa

Today Reception posted their letters to Santa. We wrote down what we would like for Christmas and then put a stamp on the letter to send it to the North Pole. We even got a surprise gift- we think it might have been from the elves?

Hanukkah

This week Reception have been learning all about the Jewish celebration Hanukkah. We made our own menorahs and potato latkes. To make the menorahs we cut a paper plate in half and painted it gold with a big paintbrush.
To make our potato latkes we mashed the potatoes and grated the onions. Then we mixed the flour and salt into the mixture.

Art week

We used different materials to make marks – felt pens, crayons, pencils, graphite, chalk…then we had to decide which one we preferred and talk about why.

Christmas has arrived!

Wow what a magical day we had on Tuesday. We walked to the post box and posted our letter to Santa. We were so grateful to our friend at Premier for our selection boxes – it was a lovely surprise. Then on to All Saints Church to meet Rev. Phil to learn all about the meaning of Christmas 🎄

Art Week

Art week continues…our driver text this half term is ’The Elves and the Shoemaker’ so we decided to collage some shoe templates! Spreading the glue was a little messy, but we are learning, so mess is okay! We talked about the colours that we were using.

The Nativity Story

We consolidated our learning about the meaning of Christmas from visiting the church by rereading the Nativity story. We used our story props to help our story come to life. Children were amazing at remembering some of the key names like Mary, Joseph and Jesus. We talked about how much of a special time this is for Christian families.

Marvellous Me – things I like

Together, we read ‘Things I Like’ by Anthony Browne. We discussed all the different things that the monkey of the story likes and made connections with each of those things – do we all like the same? We learned that, actually no, we don’t all like the same things, and that’s okay! We then had to pick different objects out of the bag, and make connections with each item – if we pulled a pencil out of the bag, we had to talk about what things we could do with the pencil, before talking about whether we liked those activities, or not.

Consolidating patterns

We looked further at patterns in Maths, looking at patterns with more than two attributes! We then showed off our skills in provision, making patterns of our own!

People who are special to me

Every family is different – and they are all special ❤️ we read a lovely book that showed how different families can be. We then discussed who lives in our house, but also the family members who don’t live in our house.

ART week

For ART week Reception have continued their exploration of our story The Star and The Jar by Sam Hay. They created their own night sky using chalk and black card and their own jars with pictures and labels of their favourite things.

Reception Nativity

Well done Reception you did amazing in your nativity. You learnt all your lines and lots of songs. A big thank you to all the adults at home who helped the children learn their lines and pick their costumes. Thank you for coming and watching the show. A big round of applause for the children’s amazing performance!

Quiet Place

Today Reception had a visit from quiet place. We practiced our heart breathes and using the magic button when we feel overwhelmed. We each got a smelly tissue to use to help us relax when using the magic button.

English- Star in the Jar

Sam the Star is missing. This week Reception are writing a Poster to ask if anyone has seen Sam around school.

Reindeer Food

Reception have created their own reindeer food to help guide Santa’s reindeers. We measured oats and magic into a pot, then we mixed it up and poured it into a small bag.

Me and my friends

In PSHE, we read the story Elmer. We discussed how the elephants were different – some are small, tall, old etc. We linked that to ourselves – we all look a little bit different, and we all like and dislike different things. We then made elephants out of play dough and noticed that none of them were exactly the same – they all had differences!

Hanukkah

This week, we have been learning all about the Jewish festival of light – Hanukkah! We learned all about the menorah, and how each day, a new candle is lit using the special candle in the middle (the shamash). We had fun counting the candles on our own Menorah, and even printed one to take home, being careful to count exactly 9 candles. 🕯️ 🕎