Reception Autum Term 2011 - part 3
When we came back to school we focussed on diwali. We learnt that other people, like our friend Shria, who is a Hindu have special stories and times of celebration. We explored Shria's 'All About Me Bag' that she had kindly left for us. We found Diwali cards, a doll wearing special clothes (sari), some dancing sticks. A diwali lamp, a statue of Rama, a recipe card for special foods and some pictures of Rangoli patterns that she had made to welcome in the Hindu New Year. Best of all she left us the special story of Rama and Sita which is particularly remembered at Diwali time. We made Diwali lamps, made up dances to tell the story and move to some diwali music. We acted out the story in role-play and with puppets. We looked at lots of patterns and decided that a pattern happened over and over again. We took out the Digi-blue cameras to find some patterns around our school.
Over the last two weeks we have revisited our favourite topic of trains. We used our imagination to think of original places that a train might take us. Then we thought about the exciting things that might happen in those settings. Together in groups we created a story and recorded it as a story map. We have role-played writing tickets and writing numbers on tickets. This has made us very interested in numbers. We loved this so much that we set up a role-play station indoors and a pretend train outdoors. Just lately the outdoor train has been breaking down and very soon there may be some maintenance reports that need writing. We have been making tracks from straight and curved media and looking closely at a steam train and drawing it carefully. We have learnt lots of new words like platform, funnel and siding. In PE we have moved to fast and slow train music. We are trying beating and moving to fast and slow rhythms in the music area of our outdoor classroom.
We are continuing to explore trains and particularly look at shape and using our phonic knowledge in writing over the next weeks. Soon we will be practising our Christmas play. It's all about a train ride. Then we will be thinking about our time of celebration Christmas and the special Christmas story.
Reception Autumn Term 2011 - part 2
Now we have settled into Reception we have been up to lots of fun activities. Before half-term we had a spooky time. Firstly we read the story Funnybones lots and lots. We became very good at telling the story particularly the introduction and the ending: on a dark dark hill, in a dark dark town, in a dark dark street, in a dark dark house, down some dark dark stairs, in a dark dark cellar some skeletons lived. A big, skeleton, a little skeleton and a dog skeleton.
We enjoyed playing hide and seek like the skeletons in the book. We did body counting. We pretended to be the skeletons in PE and travelled around the pretend park in lots of different ways: tiptoes, walking, marching, skipping, giant strides, fairy steps and walking tall. We explored moving forward, backwards and sideways. When we heard the signal we had to bend down low and pretend to hide ready to jump out at somebody and frighten them just like in the story. We made some very interesting skeletons too.
Secondly we read the story Meg and Mog. We thought about the sequence of events that occurred in the book and then we acted them out. We dressed up as the characters Meg the witch and Mog the cat and Tess, Jess, Bess and Cress, the other witches. We especially liked making up the potions because one potion bottle looked like it had real blood in it! We made up more spells like this in our number work and had a go at representing the numbers of worms, spiders and other gristly things that go into witches' cauldrons. We celebrated the last week before half-term with a Meg and Mog party. Everyone dressed up as something to do with the story, played lots of games and had a dance.
We also celebrated a special day about food. Amanda's Mum came to tell us about Brazilian food and way of life. We tasted fruits from Brazil. She taught us some songs in Portuguese and read a traditional tale from Brazil. We also looked at Spain and tasted some lovely Spanish oranges because Kyran's Mum comes from Spain.
Reception Autumn Term 2011 - part 1
Our new Reception children are settling well. Over the last three weeks the children have got to grips with their new learning environment. We have been learning all about me. Everyone has been getting to know each other. The 'All About Me' boxes have been invaluable.
Previous Years
Work, trips and stories from previous years can be found here.