Me and My Community
Today, in Reception and Key Stage 1, we had a special visit from Wetherby in Bloom. They are a charity who make Wetherby a nice place to live and visit by planting beautiful, colourful flowers around the town. After we had discussed how the charity supports our community, we had the opportunity to plant our own daffodil bulbs. These will bloom in Spring!
Week 7
Hello everyone! I can’t believe we are coming to the end of our first term at school. As always we have had a busy week in Reception.
This week we have been been learning more about Henri Matisse. We have learnt about his life and his amazing artwork. We used our sequencing skills to re tell the story of his life and even had a try at creating our own piece of Matisse inspired artwork!
We were so inspired by the different colours we saw in the different pieces of artwork we decided to create some leaves using watercolours. We used our scissor skills to cut out the leaves and then carefully mixed the paint with water and watched how the different colours were made.
Our PE lesson was very colourful this week. We took advantage of the lovely Autumn weather and went outside to do some ribbon dancing. We loved making different movement shapes with our bodies and the ribbons.
A big thank you to everyone for reading our e-books. We hope you are enjoying the stories.
I hope you all have a safe, happy half term break and look forward to seeing you in November!
Mrs Payne
Week 6
Thank you to everyone who joined us for our funky phonics session this week. We loved welcoming you into our classroom, so we could share our fantastic phonics learning with you. There will be lots of opportunities for you to join us in the classroom so please keep an eye out for future dates.
We have had a super Autumn week in Reception. Our focus book has been leaf man and we have had lots of lovely discussions about Autumn and the changes that we see. We used our treasures that we found on our Autumn walk to create our own leaf people!
We loved looking at the different trees on our Autumn walk and decided to create our own Autumn tree images. We thought carefully about the different colours we saw and how the leaves were on the trees and also on the floor.
Maths, maths everywhere! We have been using our maths learning to help us with a game of skittles. It was lots of fun trying to knock as many down as possible and then counting who had knocked down the most.
Could you be our next maths superhero? In class we have decided that we would like to reward someone for working really hard in maths. If you are nominated you get to wear our maths superhero cape and eye mask in class. Please send any super home maths work into school so we can share it with everyone.
Next week we have parent teacher consultations in school. If you have not already made an appointment and would like one please let me know.
Happy weekend everyone!
Mrs Payne
Week 5
This week our focus story was ‘The Everywhere Bear’. In the story the bear gets lost and go on lots of different adventures until he finally gets back to school. We used pictures to help sequence the story and thought about how the bear must have been feeling. We decided we would like to create bear ears so we could be bears too. We used careful cutting skills to create a headband and ears.
We are continuing to build our hand and finger strength by doing lots of different funky fingers activities. This week we created bear faces in shaving foam and had a timed challenge! We had 1 minute to get as many Autumn objects out of our tray as possible. It was very tricky using tweezers but we all had great fun trying.
On Thursday we went on our Autumn local walk. We were all very excited to wear our wellies and go exploring in Wetherby. As we walked away from school we used our senses to explore our surroundings. We discovered that the trees we saw had lots of different coloured leaves and that some of them had fallen onto the ground. We had an amazing time collecting things that reminded us of Autumn. Please look out for how we get creative with these things next week! If you go on any Autumn walks we would love to hear about them too.
Thank you for working hard at home with e-books. It is fantastic that everyone is reading at home and in school everyday. If you have got any questions about phonics we are holding a parent drop in on Thursday 13 October. This is an opportunity for you to come into class and take part in a live phonics lesson. The session begins at 9am and finishes at 9:30.
As always, if you have any questions or would like to share any home learning including family photographs with us please use our reception email stjamesreception@spherefederation.org.
Have a great weekend.
Mrs Payne
Week 4
What a fantastic week we have had in Reception. On Monday we started our daily poetry work. We loved listening to the poem and learning actions to go along. Our poem this week was called ‘Chop Chop’ and all the children will bring it home with them on Friday to share with you. Check out the video below to see us in action.
We had our first visit to the school library this week. It was great fun looking at all of the books and choosing one to take home. Please can all library books be returned on Monday so we can return them and choose another exciting story.
We have been learning more about where we live and our families. We used google maps and street view to look at different places in Wetherby and then shared information about our families and things we like to do together. Thank you to everyone who has brought a family photograph in, the children love sharing them with their friends. If you would like to send a photograph into school we would love to add it to our frame wall. Photographs can also be emailed to our reception email stjamesreception@spherefederation.org.
On Thursday 6 October we will be going on a local Autumn walk. Please can all children come to school in a warm coat and sensible shoes. If you would like to send wellies in to wear that would be great!
Great learning in Reception
What fantastic readers we are! I wonder if you have heard any of our new phonemes at home that we have been working hard on this week? We have been using our magic air fingers and whiteboards to learn more about letter formation and have been trying to use these new skills in our different areas of provision.
We have been thinking more about ourselves and our families and decided to create some playdough self portraits. We used mirrors to look at our faces before choosing different loose parts to create our faces.
I would like to take this opportunity to introduce you to our new friend in Reception called Ted. Ted is our class bear and he will be visiting everyone very soon. Ted has a diary which will be shared with the class after a home visit. The children are very excited to be bringing Ted home with them to meet their families.
On Thursday 29 September at 6pm there will be a zoom meeting with myself and Mrs Beesley to discuss reading and e-books. Everyone should have already received the zoom link and we are looking forward to seeing you then.
We now have our own reception email address which can be used for sharing information and pictures of fun learning that has been happening at home. The email address is: stjamesreception@spherefederation.org
As always if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Mrs Payne
School Rules
In reception and nursery we have been learning more about our school rules. This week we have focused on ‘we keep hands, feet and objects to ourselves’. We have thought about what this might mean and how it can help us in school. After our discussion we all made a hand print poster to remind us of this school rule.
What a busy week!
This week in reception we have been busy exploring our indoor and outdoor classrooms. We have enjoyed making new friends and even started learning phonics!
Dates for your diary
Over the course of the year we will be holding lots of exciting events for you to get involved in.
If you have any questions about any of the sessions please do not hesitate to get in touch.
The Reception Team
Welcome to Reception
A big hello from everyone in Reception!
This week we have been busy creating an exciting learning environment for everyone to enjoy. We have welcomed our first group of children for transition sessions and are excited to see our second group on Monday.
We hope you enjoy looking at some of our provision that will be ready for you to explore next week.
See you all on Monday!
The Reception Team
