Make Believe continued...

Alien day...

The children made alien hats, space ship collages and they had their faces painted green.

The children built alien space ships out of the construction kits inside and outside.

The children found pink goo around the classroom which inspired the Alien themed day.

The children had alien eyeballs (grapes) and alien water (lime squash) at snack time.

The children found letters and maps which lead them to a parcel hunt in the playground.

The children could feel inside the package but they could not see it...

This helped the children to use and understand describing words...

We read a story called Alien Underpants...

The children decided to design their own pants and have an alien pants race.

We also played an alien space ship game, which involved flying asteroids (tennis balls) and space ships (hoops).

World Book day was fantastic! A huge thank you to all the parents for the brilliant efforts made with the costumes.

Another visit to Sanfield Farm. The children had another excellent day learning outdoors, they seemed to mostly enjoy making homes/dens for different fairy tale characters.

Zumba day was very energetic and Reception really enjoyed there chance to learn new dances to some fast upbeat music.

The children in Reception have been working hard with the rest of the school to lower the amount of electricity being used each week. If the school uses less electricity than the previous week then the children win a token. We had to reach 10 tokens as a school to achieve a reward, and when we did our class wanted to bring in a special toy or game from home. The weather was beautiful so we decided to share and play our games outside together in the playground.

Before we broke up for Easter the children learned all about why we celebrate this time of year. To help us remember this important time of year for Christians we had an Easter egg hunt and a whole school Easter egg decorating competition.

To help our school become more Eco friendly and work towards earning our green flag for Sedgeberrow First School the children had to think about how we could attract more wildlife to our school.  Our task for reception was to attract more birds, so the children designed their own bird tables that we could possibly make and use in our pond area.

Wedding day...

The children made and designed a wedding cake.

The children made flowers out of tissue paper for button holes.

They built a wedding car for the bride and groom.

We talked about all the different people who may be at the wedding and their roles/jobs and responsiblities.

We made wedding presents using our junk modelling skills and conffeti for to throw over the bride and groom.

We had a vicar, DJ's, photographers, best men, paige boys, ushers, father and mothers of the bride and groom and of course the bride and groom! Everyone had a part and the children especially enjoyed the stag and hen do aswell as the Reception party.

Children have worked really hard this term and we have been very fortunate to have good weather to do more learning outdoors. The children really enjoyed measuring things inside the classroom and taking rulers outisde to investigate size further.

The children really like the dinosaurs so this was a reason for creating a dinosaur land in our outdoor classroom and the reason why we will be including dinosaurs into our next topic in Reception.

The children made porridge and retold Goldilocks and the Three Bears story in the Forest Area.

The children learnt abbout floating and sinking and all children loved finding things from around the classroom to see if it floated or sunk. It was surprising for the children to see a tissue float, then sink and then float again!

Children have enjoyed the new writing area and we discussed what sort of things they would like to go in this area of learning.

Children have enjoyed the science table which is changed weekly, Oliver and the rest of the class enjoed looking through the magnifying glasses and sorting natural and man made objects.

The role-play area is still a very popular place to be found in the Reception class. Next term it will be a Pirate Ship which I am sure will be loved by the boys and the girls.

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.