Upper Foundation – Ladybirds and Meerkats

Welcome to Reception!

At Horbury Primary Academy, we have two reception classes. Mrs Longo teaches Ladybirds and Miss Mussa teaches Meerkats. Mrs Garlick, Mrs Kilroy, Mrs Thickett and Miss Ellis are also practitioners within the Reception team. We work together to challenge and support your child’s learning and development in their early years.

Our children are happy and excited  to learn through rich and challenging learning experiences. We have high ambitions for all our children and recognise that children have different starting points to their learning. We plan according to children’s stages of development so all can thrive and develop. We aim for children to be well-rounded individuals who are independent, resilient, and confident in themselves and with others.

Yearly overview of topics

Please click below for the yearly overview of topics

UFS Long Term Planning Overview of Topics

 

Indoor Provision

Outdoor Provision

 

 

Our Wow Wall!

In our reception classrooms we have a ‘Wow Wall’ so that we can record special events in your child’s life. Wow cards, completed by parents/carers, give a wonderful display of achievements and events that the children feel very proud of. They don’t need to be amazing feats, just special to your child. So it could be that, ‘Matthew rode his bike all by himself’, or ‘Jane used her knife and fork and ate all her dinner’, or ‘ Tom practised his target and wrote his name all by himself’.

Wow cards are a huge boost to your child’s self esteem and confidence, and show them that their life events are truly important to the adults around them. Each time your child brings in a new wow card, we place the previous card in their individual learning journey folders.

 

Reception 2020-2021

Summer 1 newsletter

Here you can see some of the experiences in reception from the school year 2020 – 2021

Spring 1

Understanding the world

In reception, we celebrated the Chinese New Year at home and at school The children tasted Chinese food, made lanterns and dragon masks for our dragon dance.

Autumn 2

Reading

Here are the nursery rhymes that we learnt for our Nursery Rhyme Challenge Week beginning on the 16th November 2020 to the 20th November 2020.

Five little speckled frogs

The wheels on the bus

Old Macdonald had a farm

Hickory Dickory Dock

Miss Polly had a dolly

Understanding the world

The children in reception went to the forest to find a stick to make their very own stick people! Here are some of the children’s creative ideas. They thought about the colours they were wearing when making their stick people.

Autumn 1

Understanding the world

The children put on their wellington boots and visited our forest to search for signs of Autumn! Their excitement and visible displays of awe and wonder were infectious and they are already talking about their next visit!

‘Mrs Longo, I love this forest’. (Henry)

‘I’m hiding from Aurora’. (Ava)

‘Look, I found a worm’. (Eleonora)

‘There are some nettles there. I stood on them but I didn’t hurt myself’. (Jacob)

‘Mrs Longo, follow me, I’ve found something cool. A pine cone’. (Cruz)

Phonics

We have had fun jumping in hoops and blending phonemes to read words.

Construction

The children have worked together in the outdoor construction area to build their own dens. They have played cooperatively, taken turns and taken account of one another’s ideas about how to organise their den building.

Physical Development (Fine motor)

Reception have enjoyed using the tweezers to hunt for spiders in our huge web!

Expressive Arts and Design

The children have explored the materials in the modelling area and found ways to join materials together to create their models.

Halloween Day

In reception the children had lots of fun dressing up, dancing and playing games in the hall. They looked at and described a variety of pumpkins in our curiosity cube and made some observational drawings. They fed the spider in the finger gym, using tweezers and pegs to pick up the bats and flies. They listened to the story ‘Room on the broom’, and designed their own truly, magnificent brooms!

Here you can see some of the experiences in reception from the school year 2019-2020.

Autumn 1 ‘Share a story’ 2019

Reception Meerkats and Ladybirds were thrilled to invite members of their family to share some of their favourite books, in our classrooms. We would like to say a big thank you to everyone who came to read with the children, it was a wonderful afternoon.

 

EYFS Phonics Meeting for Parents

Thank you to all our parents who came to our phonics meeting, it was lovely to see you all. We hope you found the evening informative and supportive. If you were unable to attend, you can see our presentation attached below. We have also listed a range of websites and phonic booklets to support you with your child’s phonics at home.

EYFS Phonics Presentation

Useful Booklets

Phase 2 Booklet

Phase 3 Booklet

Phase 4 Booklet

Useful Websites

Letters and Sounds

Phonics Play

ICT Games

Oxford Owl

 

Autumn 2 World Nursery Rhyme Week – Sponsored Event

All our reception children took  part in ‘World Nursery Rhyme Week’. They learnt the five rhymes and they performed each rhyme fantastically, to Mrs Kenworthy and all our nursery children. We would like to thank all  parents for your support with this and in particular for your huge effort and generosity in collecting sponsorship. We raised a total of £418.65. We used some of this money to pay for the performance for the children, from Tell Tale Hearts Theatre Company, ‘Suitcase Stories’.

Suitcase Stories

A well travelled lady captivates her audience with stories she has gathered on her journeys around the world, from Yorkshire, through Poland and on to India!

Using only the contents of her suitcase she creates landscapes of mountains and jungles, costumes for shepherds and kings and finds unique ways to bring characters to life. The children become a part of the story by helping our teller to create waves of water, make the sound of an army, hide away their dancing fairies and organise a troop of monkeys.

The performance was created to inspire children’s love of stories and enhance their knowledge of different cultures from around the world.

Our children loved listening to and interacting with the story teller. Below are some photographs for you to enjoy.

Secret Reader

Story time in reception is a very special time of the day. Each half term we will be inviting a special guest, ‘Secret Reader’ to come and read to our reception classes at story time. The children were very excited and curious when we introduced ‘Secret Reader’, this week and they loved guessing who it could be.

Autumn Term Secret Readers

Thank you Father Christmas for coming to read to reception Ladybirds and Meerkats!

Autumn fun in the forest

Our children have loved exploring the Autumn season in our forest as part of their learning and development  in Understanding of the world. They looked at the similarities and differences between the autumn trees and learnt about the changes in the forest during the season of Autumn. Below are some of the photographs and comments taken from our children during their explorations.

“I’ve found this leaf, it’s green brown and yellow”.  Paisley

“It’s like a circle leaf, it’s brown, it’s an autumn colour”. Henry

“Look what I’ve found, sticks. We can build a campfire”. Isabella

 

Autumn 2 A rainy Day!

The children had lots of opportunities this week to explore the rain! Playing in the rain gives children an opportunity to learn about where the water we use comes from, that rain comes at different rates of intensity, wind affects the direction of rain, that water seeks its own level so puddles collect in holes and slanted ground.

This is what the children had to say about the rain:

“I love the rain. Look at the big puddles”. Millie

“I’m wet. I like to get my hair wet. The rain makes me cold”. Joni

“I like to splash in muddy puddles”. Billy

“Help me fill my bucket with rain. When it’s full I’ll pour it down the drain”. Joseph

“I like to get wet”. Oscar

 

The Christmas Story

Mrs Davis, from Saint Mary’s Church, visited our reception classes. She brought both classes an advent calendar and told the children the Christmas story.

Spring Term 1

Our topic this half term is, ‘Help, I need somebody’. The children have had discussions at home and school about people in the community who have jobs that help us.

Mrs Lister kindly gave her time to speak to the children about her job as a paramedic.

 

Chinese New Year

We all came to school dressed in the lucky colour red, to celebrate Chinese New Year. This year is the year of the rat. The children listened to the story to learn how the years got their names. We learnt how to say Happy New Year in Chinese, Gung hay fat choy! We even tasted some Chinese food, it was delicious!

 

Winter in  the forest

We put on our wellington boots and set off to hunt for signs of winter in the forest!

Back inside we experimented adding white to blue paint to create different shades of blue. We made some wonderful winter paintings.

 

‘Share a story’  – ‘Winter’ themed stories

Once again we invited our parents to share stories with us in our classrooms. Thank you to all who joined us for another special afternoon!

 

Spring Term 2   

Pancake Flip Challenge

This week the children learnt about Shrove Tuesday and why we eat pancakes on this day. They learnt that this is a Christian tradition before the start of Lent.

Children and staff had lots of fun taking part in the pancake flip challenge, where they flipped their pancakes as many times as they could within one minute. We would like to thank all parents for your wonderful support in collecting sponsorship for this event and we will let you know the total amount raised as soon as we have collected all the donations. This will be a wonderful contribution for us towards purchasing some new books and accompanying resources to engage and enthuse our reception children even further with reading!

Below are some photographs of the children enjoying the challenge and tasting the pancakes. They were delicious. Happy Pancake Day!

 

World Book Day 2020

 

In reception the children and staff celebrated world book day by dressing up as one of their favourite book characters. We spoke about this character and designed front covers for books. We brought our favourite books from home and shared them with a year 6 reading buddy! Can you recognise which book characters we are?

 

Ian’s Mobile Farm

Our reception children had fun learning about farm animals as part of our new topic this half term ‘Down on the Farm.’

Ian brought a variety of his animals for the children to see up close and handle. He spoke to the children about each animal telling them interesting facts and information. Some of his animals included Floss and Candy the guinea pigs, Mr Cockerel and Mrs Hen, Quack and Quackers the ducks and Ben and Holly the miniature goats.

Please enjoy looking at some photographs taken on this truly memorable day.

Thank you Ian for bringing your lovely animals!

 

Our animal paintings

We have learnt how to make secondary colours using the primary colours. We have mixed different colours to create paintings of some of our favourite animals.