Make Believe Topic

Our topic this term is "Make Believe". We have been looking particularly at traditional fairy tales and fables. The children have really enjoyed the role-play area, pretending to be all the characters from the stories we have read together.  During the last week the children hosted a film premiere, we sold popcorn, squash and gingerbread men that was all made and sold by the children.

Here are some photos of the other things we have been doing in Reception this term...

The children have all made good progress with their phonics, children are decoding words really well and it has been brilliant to see them reading and writing longer irregular words in their Literacy books.

The girls helped make a chair for the prince or princess to sit on in the castle. (role-play area)

The play tray in our classroom has been changed regularly with fine motor skill activities, this has helped the children with pencil grip and their hand eye co-ordination.

We made Cinderella dresses by dipping the corners of folded tissues in different coloured dyes.

The children have enjoyed the role-play area this term pretending to be knights and princesses. A big cardboard box is always welcome in Reception: this time it plays the role of Sleeping Beauty's bed.

 The children created a beanstalk in the classroom once they saw the Giants legs hanging down from the roof! On the leaves the children wrote lots of words they knew how to spell.

One day the Witch from Hansel and Gretel was in our forest area and shared a story with Reception. The children then created their own list of things they would put into a cauldron if they were a witch making a potion.  

 The children made and decorated a gingerbread house by tearing, ripping and scrunching coloured paper and pasting it on the walls and roof.

The children have been doing Music on a Tuesday afternoon, they have been working this term on recognising sounds, sound effects and they have continued to reinforce beats of music by matching percussion instruments to familiar songs.

The children made dancing split pin knights. The process was a list of step by step instructions they had to follow to independently complete the activity.

 In gymnastics we have continued with balancing and we have moved on to box jumps and log rolls. Each P.E session has been reinforced by the children retelling the key techniques.

We have also been doing dance this term, this session was a piece of music called Giants and Fairys. The children include a starting and finishing position, gesture and most importantly they match their movement to the music. We also listen to different types of music: discuss what instruments they can hear and how it makes them feel.

 The shoemaker came into our shop one day and the children learned about money, a tricky concept for children but as we opened our own shoe shop it helped with their understanding of why we need and use money.

 The children built their own houses made of straw, sticks and bricks from the story 'The Three Little Pigs'.

This term we looked at a famous artisit called Ruth Faison Shaw, a talented finger painter. For our film premiere the children used the technique of the famous artisit to recreate paintings of fairy tale characters. We used the pictures to decorate our classroom.  

 The children decorated and wrote their own tickets/invitations to the film premiere.

We read the story of Red Riding Hood and I set the children an investiagtion of having to find a good waterproof material for Red Riding Hoods coat. The children had to work as a group to sort the materials into waterproof and not waterproof just by touching and looking. We then tested them as a class with water and sorted them from the best waterproof to the worst. Children made predictions, experimented and tested we all finished with a conclusion to the problem.

 We introduced large sheets into the construction area outside, the children were all very keen to make dens and hide-outs from stories we have read this term.

 On the last day we walked around the village and to the the park to find the Wolf from the 3 little pigs and little red riding hood. I pinned up the wanted posters the children had wrote around the village to read on our hunt. We also found the Wood Cutter and Red Riding Hoood on our way...

 The children found the wolf in the park hiding in the tree!

On the wanted posters the children wrote rewards such as extra play and sweets. So with some of the money raised from the shop at the film premiere the children had 10p to buy some sweeties in the village local shop.