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!

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 😋

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!

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.

Hard work pays off!

Out-of-school success for a proud member of 5M.
If you believe, you can achieve!

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…

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 🥰

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! 😋

Celebrating our families

This week in reception we have been discussing our families! We drew pictures of our families and made paper chains to celebrate! Using our fine motor skills we were able to glue and stick to make the chain.

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 🤩

Forest fun

We’ve explored our forest this morning! We played hide and seek behind the trees! We had to be careful not to trip!

PE

Reception are working on their fundamentals in PE. This week we worked on our throwing and catching skills.

Fine motor

The children are enjoying driving the cars on the new and improved road this morning!

Science Week 🔬👩🏻‍🔬👨🏽‍🔬🧬

Today reception have explored changing materials! Today we turned cream into butter and buttermilk. We shook the cream until it separated into butter and buttermilk. We can’t wait to use our butter tomorrow for our crackers for snack!

Science Week 👩🏻‍🔬👨🏽‍🔬🔬🧬

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

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.📝

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🧪

Art Week 🎨🖌️

For Art week reception have been exploring Spring animals. We used cotton wool, glue and paint to make a chick or a lamb.

Art Week 🎨🖌️

In reception we have been making our very own superhero’s for Art Week! We have used scissors, glue, card and sticks to make them.

PE- Fundamentals

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

Maths- Odd and Even

Today in reception we have explored odd and even numbers. We made our very own odd and even monsters 👹

ART Week 🎨🖌️

Reception created their own superhero city using; paint, card and glue. We were inspired by the book Juniper Jupiter!

Eid Moon and Star decorations

Reception have made Eid moon and star decorations using card, scissors, glue and glitter! 🌙⭐️

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!

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.

Life Cycle of a butterfly

This week reception have been exploring the life cycle of a butterfly 🦋 . We looked at the text The Very Hungry Caterpillar 🐛 to help us explore. We have completed lots of activities to help us understand caterpillars and butterflies.

Well-being yoga

We started our morning with some lovely yoga! It’s trickier than it looks!

DT Week 🍓🥝🥭🍍

This week is DT week! Reception have explored preparing food and tasting different fruits. We have practiced our cutting and knife skills.

DT Week 🪚🖌️✂️

For DT week, reception designed and made their own cars! 🚘 We used scissors, card, tape and oil pastels to create our cars!

DT Week

We have been exploring materials this week in understanding the world. We use blocks and foam to create houses that were stable!

Sports Day

We had a fantastic morning at our sports day with our wonderful families! We cheered for all of our friends, and are so proud of each other. Even our families enjoyed a race or two…although they are a little bit more competitive than us 😉 thank you for coming everyone 🥰

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!

Sports day 🏃‍♂️

This week was our Sports day. We had lots of fun completing our racers. We all loved watching our parents race, Thank you to everyone who was involved. We all had a lovely and exciting afternoon.

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. 😁

Making marks, making mess…and making memories!

The children absolutely LOVED getting messy today, and practised making marks in the foam. It seemed to get into all sorts of places, including on some of our faces! Our Nursery smelt amazing afterwards 🥰

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.

Cricket Day!

5M had an excellent session of cricket this morning! There was an opportunity for us to practice our resilience skills too!

Watch out for information on how to join free cricket sessions at Austin Rawlinson.
Tuesday – girls and boys after school and Sunday – girls only!

Cricket

A fantastic day of cricket in upper KS2 today. Huge thanks to Paul from Lancashire Cricket Club for delivering the sessions. Great fun at the end with a staff v pupils game! We have some incredible batters, fast bowlers, wicket keepers and fielders. Thanks to Y5 and Y6 for making it such an enjoyable day and a big shout out to all staff who were brave enough to take part! Think we’ll all sleep well tonight!

Year 6- Raft building

Year 6 had to work together to build a raft which would float and and travel 200m. Were they able to do it….

Year 6 Residential- Testing the rafts

The children took to the water in their rafts but some things didn’t go to plan…

Threading pasta

We are warming our hands up this morning and threading some pasta! A suggested we can tie them to make necklaces! This is great to help make our fingers stronger, especially as some of us will be going to Reception soon!

Now I am grown up

This week reception have been exploring growing up. We have been thinking about how we have changed since we were babies. We have used crayons to draw a picture of ourselves as a baby and then as us grown up now!

2025 Residential Completed

The children were fantastic and the memories made will last a lifetime!

Bikeability Balance !

This week had lots of fun taking part in Bikeability Balance. We learnt lots of new skills, it was very exciting! 🚴

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!

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 😉

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! 🍋

Visiting the park before it gets too hot! 😎

We made a quick dash to the park this morning before it gets too hot later! Poor Mrs Sefton’s heart was in her mouth as we got even braver on the trim trail! We are learning how to stop and assess risk when it feels too tricky or scary.

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!

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!

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.

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!

Obstacle course

Our obstacle course had a pattern today…up, down, up, down! Movements like this help to develop our core muscles and gross motor skills!

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!

Tracing maps

We’ve loved dancing to the tracing map videos! Activities like this help us to cross our midline. Our scarves looked amazing waving around the classroom too!

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!

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!

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!

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!

Maths

This week reception have been exploring the numbers 1, 2 and 3! We have been practicing our number formation and exploring different ways in which we can make the numbers.

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!

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 😋

movement in PE

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!

Maths Party Day

Reception had lots of fun on maths party day 🥳. We explored lots of different maths activities that helped us with; patterns, numbers, counting and shapes!

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 – cutting skills

As part of DT week, we have been developing our cutting skills. We made snips in both paper and card, talking about how much trickier it is to cut the card than the paper. We made sure our hands were in the right place.

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!

DT Week – cutting skills

As our final scissor control activity, we made snips in different kinds of pasta!

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!

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!

Visiting the park

We got our larger muscles working today, working on our balance and coordination. Some things felt a little scary, so we are learning to take some risks, assessing each risk as we go.

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.

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 😅😎

Mark making

The children were so excited to get the magic mat out! All we need is water, and the marks appear like magic!

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 😋

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.

Exploring different textures

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

Repeating patterns

In maths, after learning all about number two, we are now learning about patterns that have two attributes. We now know that for a pattern to work, the attributes have to take turns! We made a pattern on our carpet of girls and boys, and then consolidated in small groups making a threading pattern, which doubled up as an excellent work out for our fingers!

Big cook, little cook

Big cook, little cook focussed on a particular skill this week – we have been learning how to spread! It’s a lot harder than you think!

Fine motor Christmas tree

We used our strong hands to place ‘baubles’ on the Christmas tree 🎄

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?