Understanding the World and Expressive Arts and Design 

We have had so much fun this term in Reception. In our new topic, ‘My stories,’ we have been learning about authors, illustrators, characters and how stories are structured. We used the story boxes we made at home with our family to introduce the topic and present our favourite stories to our friends and teachers. We used our communication and language skills to talk about what parts of the stories we liked and who our favourite characters were. As part of our learning, we went on an exciting trip to Discover in Stratford, where we engaged in interactive activities to create our own stories and love of reading. When we got back to school we created a picture to match our story.

Maths

This term we have been developing our mathematical skills. We have started to use our maths table and resources table in our classes and at home. We have spoken about addition and we were able to say ‘get ready to get some more’ every time we see + and ‘get ready to take away’ when we see -. We have tried our best to revise our numbers and think about if they are odd or even. We also used our maths skills during independent learning time and forest school by counting sticks and pieces of woods to put in the fire. We also loved to count characters in different maths books such as ‘A Squash and a Squeeze’.

Literacy

In Reception, we’ve been exploring the world of Julia Donaldson, celebrating her stories and the wonderful characters she has created. This has helped with understanding of parts of books and story structure. The children have been captivated by her books, from The Gruffalo to The Smeds and the Smoos, and have enjoyed bringing their own favourite tales to with their story boxes. We have developed our mark making skills and wrote sentences to describe characters from the Gruffalo story.