Term 1 - Autumn

Welcome to Reception! The first half term we will be focusing on settling in, making friends and learning about school life and routines. The main aim of this half term is for your child to grow in confidence and feel happy and safe.

This term our topics will be ‘What makes me Special, ‘(with a mini topic on Autumn’) and ‘Festivals & Celebrations’. The children will be looking at how they have changed since being a baby, making self-portraits, sequencing events and talking about their families; looking at the changes Autumn brings, exploring colour and texture, Bonfire Night and other celebrations.

In Reception, like the rest of the school, we will be following our new set of Rainbow Rules. We will be encouraging the development of these rules daily through all our activities helping your child become a well-rounded, confident individual who is able to work well with peers, in small groups and as part of a team.

Term 2 - Spring

Reception love to learn through play. We use play to develop our thinking, creativity, problem solving, communication and many other skills.

This first half term we will be looking at our topic: Mirror, mirror on the wall, whose the fairest of them all? In which we will share some traditional tales, write a little book, letters, discuss characters and make some posters. We will look at story mapping and use drama to re-tell our favourite tales.

In maths we will continue to develop our counting skills from 0-10 and then to 20. We will look at one more and one less than a group of objects and will explore practical problems such as making sure both Red Riding Hoods baskets contain the same number of food items or what would happen if the wolf ate 1 little pig, how many would we have left?

Our topic will also see us getting busy creating trolls, learning some new songs, constructing bridges and houses from an array of materials, painting and playing games to develop our spatial awareness like what’s the time Mr Wolf?.

We will finish the first half term off by looking at the festival celebrations for Chinese New Year to support our knowledge and understanding of the world.

Watch out for the crafty gingerbread man!

The second half term takes us onto our new topic of ‘animals’. We will look at farm animals, jungle animals, night and day animals as well as extending our understanding of the wider world by looking at animals and their young and the role of the vet. This will give us plenty of opportunities to extend our writing. We will be trying to build on our phonic knowledge to help us form simple sentences as well as captions and labels.

We will be talking and thinking about how we can look after animals and the responsibility we have to care for our pets. We even hope to have some furry visitors!

Towards the latter half of the term we hope to go on a school trip to meet some of the animals we have been learning about. And of course we will be learning all about spring and the celebrations around Easter.

We will continue to build on the maths skills from the first half term for our number work but will also look at money and animal patterns. We will improve our skills of estimation as part of our Easter activities.

Term 3 - Summer

This term we are looking at ‘What makes a Superhero?’ and ‘Splish, splash, splosh.’

We will read a range of relevant stories and base our Literacy activities around these. We will make Superhero outfits and accessories and one of our role play areas will be turned into a Superhero den. As part of this topic we will be looking at ‘Everyday Superheroes- People who Help Us’. These will include doctors, dentist, firemen, police etc.

In ‘Splish, splash, splosh’ we will be looking at water and exploring floating, sinking and bubble blowing to extend our understanding of the world and our science skills. We will read some great books such as ‘The Rainbow Fish’ which links to our PSHE.

We will continue to develop our maths and literacy skills through our indoor and outdoor learning, building up to helping the children with their transition into Year One towards the end of the year.

Information

PE will be on a Wednesday morning. Please make sure that you have a named PE kit in school. These get sent home each half term for a wash and need to be returned the first week after a break.

As the weather is never predictable, please send your child to school with a waterproof coat each day. You may also prefer to send in a set of wellies on some days (or leave a spare in school) that children can change into when playing in the mud kitchen for example.

• Reception Termly Newsletters