Reception

Thank you to all the grown ups that came to the Reception Harvest Activity morning! It was lovely to see so many adults come to join us for; leaf crown making, scarecrow colouring, hedgehog painting, junk modelling, stick wand wrapping, pumpkin scooping, leaf weaving and conker tweezering!

The children have been settling into their new school over the last few weeks and have been busy exploring their new classrooms and outdoor spaces, including Ted’s Den. They have been playing games to get to know their new classmates and learn their names. The children have started their phonics and maths lessons and have been enjoying learning lots of new things. They have explored the areas in the classroom including the creative table, home corner and fine motor area (Twiddle Table.) Our topic has been ‘Ourselves’ and the children have spent time telling the class about themselves including what pets they have/would like and their favourite things to do. All the adults are very proud of how well they have settled and everything they have achieved in their first half term at school.

This half term our new topic is called ‘Around the World.’ The children started off by looking at maps, using Google Earth to look at Earth, the UK, England, Norfolk, Dereham and Toftwood. They even zoomed in to see if they could find some familiar places such as Tesco and Planet Zoom! They discussed how maps are birds eye views and looked at a map of the school, working out where their classroom, playground and the hall was. At the end of the week, they learnt some facts about Earth.

They then spent a week learning about rainforests! They learnt that rainforests are warm, wet and dark places. They looked on a map to see where rainforests are over the world and enjoyed finding out which animals live there. They played a game where they had to listen to some animal noises and work out which animal was making it! The children have also enjoyed listening to lots of stories that are based in the rainforest/jungle such as ‘Wake up sloth’ and ‘There’s a Rang-Tan in my bedroom.’

The children then learnt about deserts! They learned that desserts are hot, dry and have very little rain. They looked on a map to find out where deserts are in the world and enjoyed looking at some of the animals and plants that can survive in the desert. They also had a go at listening to a story while doing some desert themed yoga. Then they looked at the fennec fox and found out why it is able to live in the desert.

This half term our topic has been ‘Once Upon a Time.’ We have been reading lots of traditional tales such as Jack and the Beanstalk, The Three Little Pigs and Goldilocks and the Three Bears. We have also read some not so traditional versions of these stories such as ‘Blow your nose, Big Bad Wolf’ and ‘The Great Fairy tale Disaster.’

The first story we read was ‘Hansel and Gretel.’ We enjoyed making some of our own ‘sweetie’ houses using sequins, glitter and tissue paper. We also enjoyed retelling the story with stick puppets.

We then read ‘The Three Little Pigs.’ We took part in small world construction activities where we tried to make houses for the pigs using bricks, straw and sticks. We also made some stick puppets of the pigs and the wolf and enjoyed retelling the story, not forgetting the important lines such as ‘I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down!”

Our favourite story was ‘Jack and the Beanstalk.; We shared the story as a class and discussed how Jack’s mother was ‘furious’ at him for selling the cow and accepting magic beans. We acted out the story in a virtual workshop with Miss Helen and enjoyed playing the different characters. We also learnt some of the BSL signs for the story with Mr Tumble and had a go at singing ‘Chick, chick, chick, chick, chicken’. As a class we discussed the sequence of the story. We then created a story map to show what happened at the beginning, middle and end. We also had a go at planting our own seeds to take home to see if they will grow!

Next we read, ‘Goldilocks and the three bears.’ We enjoyed reading lots of different versions of this story, including ‘goldilocks and just one bear’ and ‘eat your greens, goldilocks!’ As a class, we had a go at re writing the story and we thought about what characters we would change and what they would get up to in the story. We also enjoyed making some porridge and having golden syrup with it. We decided ours was ‘just right!’ We also enjoyed acting out the story and using our best bear voices!

In the final week, we took part in a ‘Hansel and Gretel’ workshop where we helped to act out the story through science experiments. We helped the witch count the snakes, frogs and eyeballs for her potion, saw fizzing eyeballs, a foaming pumpkin and watched how to uncover a secret message.

We had a very exciting start to our new topic and have been on a trip to Gressenhall for a special ‘Once Upon a Time’ workshop.

To start the day we all had to gather in the Chapel for the grand opening of Mr Curator’s museum. He had invited some celebrities along; Cinderella and Jack from Jack and the Beanstalk. We were interrupted by the Wicked Witch from Snow White, who was very upset, as she hadn’t been invited to the opening. When Mr Curator went to reveal the objects, we were shocked to see they had gone missing! The Wicked Witch told us she had taken them and wouldn’t give them back! Our mission for the day was to take part in lots of different activities and see if we could find all of the museum artefacts.  

One of our jobs was to go on Jack’s Quest and search for the missing golden egg. We spent lots of time looking up and down and we found it near the playground. We helped Jack to retell the story of Jack and the Beanstalk as he had forgotten some of the words! Because we told the story so well, we got to climb down Jack’s beanstalk. 

We went to the woods and met the Wicked Witch from Snow White! We saw that the she had fallen off her broom, so we went to help her! She taught us how to make a potion; we had to look round her house for items to add and collected some magic water. We had to think of special words to make our potion magic!

We went into the old shops and looked for the other missing objects. We found Snow White’s apple, a trolls bogey and a sweetie from the Gingerbread House.

Down on the farm, we had to help Cinderella with her chores as she couldn’t go to the ball unless they were done. We offered to help her finish her jobs so she could go to the ball. We learnt how to use the water pump, dug up some potatoes, watered the flowers, washed some clothes and learnt how to milk a cow. In the house, we helped her to clean the table as it was a bit dirty. We scrubbed it with a brush all while singing songs which the step sister wasn’t too keen on! Once we had done the cleaning, we helped Cinderella to look for the rest of the missing objects from Mr Curator’s museum. We found Red Riding Hood’s cape and Cinderella’s glass slipper. Our next job was to pick up all the step sisters socks, they were very smelly!

While we there, we also got to go on a tractor ride around the farm! We saw lots of animals such as horses, cows, sheep and a pig that had recently had piglets.

We all met back in the Chapel to conclude the day. We were all really happy that we had managed to find all of the missing objects and the wicked witch was turned into an artefact too!

The children had a wonderful day and behaved very well. We are very proud of them all! 

This half term our topic has been ‘People Who Help Us’. We have been very lucky and have had some visitors come into school to help us learn more about the different jobs that people do to help us.

To introduce our topic, KonectBus in Dereham, kindly sent a bus to pick us up from school and took us for a drive around Dereham Town. We saw many familiar places in our local environment such as Planet Zoom, Toftwood pond park and Dereham leisure centre.

Before we went, we came up with some questions to ask the bus driver to find out about his job. When our journey had finished, we all went to the top of the bus and asked the driver some questions. They learnt that there are 8 drivers that drive the number 8 route, there is a big car wash that washes the buses and you have to be 18 and take a test to drive a bus.

When we got back into school, some of the children made their own bus and enjoyed looking at the timetables that the bus driver gave to us.

“I’ve been on this bus before with my sister. I know it goes into town.” Toby

“My house is down here. Look on the right and it will be there.” Hunter

“Down there is where you go to my Sister’s nursery.” Cole

“I’ve been on a double decker before.” Harry

“You need to be 18 to drive a bus.” Eliza

“He takes the bus through a giant bus wash like the one for cars but bigger.” Isaac

We also had a visit from the firefighters from Dereham. They told us about their job, some basic fire safety and explained that they don’t just put out fires, they rescue people and even animals too. They showed us their uniform and we learnt that they only have 2 minutes to put it on. We also go to look at a thermal camera and used it to look at our friends. We then went outside and got to look at the fire engine, we were shown all the equipment, tools where they sit and learnt how they get water from the truck to put out fires with the hose. We all had a turn at spraying the hose, which was very fun!

We spent a week learning about Vets. We learned that vets help animals that are ill or injured and can look after lots of different animals, not just cats and dogs. We had lots of fun in the role play pretending to be vets, working out what was wrong with the animals and then giving them the correct care. We practised our phonics to write out medical slips for the animals.

We then looked at what the RSPCA does and how they help to make sure that animals are being cared for properly. Our special visitor from the RSPCA, Leanne, told us lots of information about the work of the RSPCA and we enjoyed asking lots of questions to find out more! We each had a toy animal and had to decide if it was wild, a pet or lived on a farm.

We had a visit from Chloe, a dental nurse. She told us about why we need to go to the dentist and we found out that they check to make sure that your teeth and gums are nice and healthy. We discussed how to brush your teeth properly and when we should brush our teeth. We also looked at healthy and unhealthy food and drink and how unhealthy items that contain lots of sugar could affect our teeth. We had lots of fun practising brushing Marley the monkey’s big teeth!

In the last week of term, we met a police officer! He showed us his police van and told us about his uniform and some of the equipment he uses, such as a taser, radio and camera. He told us about what he does as a police officer and also answered any questions we had about his role. We learnt that the police keep us safe and if there is an emergency, to call 999. We also learnt that dogs and horses work for the police force.

Thank you so much to all of the visitors that were able to make this topic so exciting for the children, including Kieran from KonectBus, the Firefighters from Dereham Fire Station, PC James Jarvis, Chloe the Dental Nurse and Leanne Neave from the RSCPA.

This half term our topic has been ‘Fantasy’.  We enjoyed starting the topic with a dressing up day where we all came to school dressed as our favourite character! 

During the first week, we had a fairy come and visit our classrooms! The fairy left a letter by their fairy door and told us her name was Oak and that she had come to visit our school to find out more about what ‘school’ is and what we do. The children used their phonics knowledge to write and leave messages and notes by Oak’s door and as a class we replied back to her letter.

We have read lots of stories this half term and one we particularly enjoyed was ‘Room on the Broom’ by Julia Donaldson. We took part in many witch themed activities; creating potions and making up spells! We made a story map, practised retelling the story using puppets and even had a go at acting the story out, seeing if we could remember any of the lines.

We had a week learning all about superheroes! We were surprised to find the superhero, Supertato, in our classroom and he had been captured by the evil pea! We made ourselves into Superheroes, listened to lots of superhero stories and wrote veggie speech bubbles. We also worked on our drawing skills and had to do really good listening to learn how to draw Supertato!

We had another visitor, this time it was an alien! We received a letter from ‘Oob’ and it was covered in green slime. He asked us to write him a letter so he could find out about school on earth. We also created some alien pictures by sticking on googly eyes and then drawing around them. We also learnt about the scientist Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock and found out some facts about space.

This half term our topic has been ‘Celebrations.’ We started by learning about Bonfire Night, we found out who Guy Fawkes was, talked about the fireworks that we had seen at displays or from our gardens or windows, and created some firework art using paint and glitter! 

We also spent a week learning about birthdays! We wrote invitations and party food lists, created birthday cards and best of all, had a birthday party for ‘Home Learning Hattie’ with our favourite songs! We have been able to find out when our own birthdays are and learnt the months of the year.  

On 11^th November, we learnt about Remembrance Day and talked about why people wear poppies. We were able to make our own poppies to wear in class, and had a class assembly where we watched a video called ‘poppies’ that showed us how the poppies grew in the field after all the grass had turned to mud.

We have also been learning about Diwali; the Hindu festival of light. We have designed our own Mehndi’s, lanterns, rangoli patterns and Diva lamps. We were very lucky to have a dance workshop with Miss Helen where she taught us some dance moves and we helped to tell the story of Rama and Sita. We all enjoyed wearing Bindi’s, sari’s and sashes whilst we were dancing.