Upper Foundation – Ladybirds and Meerkats

Important information

Resources for home learning:

Websites now have their own page on the Year Group main menu page 

Follow the link below to sign up to a bank of online Rising Stars reading books (similar to the books your children bring home). Don’t worry if you don’t see any books to begin with as your account needs to be approved. Allow a day or two and then log in again and the books should have appeared. There are a huge variety of books so please spend some time choosing ones that are suitable for your child. We would recommend starting with the same book band that your child usually brings home.

Reading Books Sign Up – Adult E-mail Address Required

Please click on the files/resources below: Week Beginning 30th March

  Mrs Longo’s Ladybirds                                                          Miss Mussa’s Meerkats

Hello reception Ladybirds and Meerkats and welcome to your home learning area.  Mrs Longo and Miss Mussa will be adding activities twice a week for you to have a look at and decide which ones you would like to do. There are activities for Literacy, Mathematics and Topic (relating to this current Half Term’s learning). Have fun!

Literacy activity:

Reading

The new digraph this week is er. Click on the link below to watch Mr Thorne and Geraldine Giraffe and learn about er.

Can you practise reading words ending in er with the roll and read mat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaxZN4BZjgc

er – Phase 3 roll and read

Play Dragons Eggs on Phonics Play. Select er words. (use the link above under phonics)

Recap phase 2 and 3 phonemes and tricky words.

Phase 2 and 3 sound mats

Read Mr Pryce’s er words on Mr Pryce’s funny phonics

Mr Pryce’s funny phonics

Listen to the bedtime stories which will be posted each week on our school Facebook page. Last week Mrs Longo read ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ by Eric Carle, and Mrs Alvey read ‘Guess How Much I Love You’ by Sam McBratney.

Who will be reading this week’s stories?

Easter is an important time of the year for the children in reception. We have plenty of fun activities for the children to do and our special visitor from the church shares the Easter story with us. Here is the story for you to share with your child.

The Easter Story

Poem Recital:

This week across school, we are asking your child to learn an age appropriate poem off by heart and then to recite it to their family members. Your child’s selected poem is posted below.  This can be family members in their own home but it could also be shared using Facetime or sent by video to other family members outside of the home e.g. grandparents, aunties/uncles, cousins etc. The recitals can also be posted to Facebook to be shared with the school community! Have fun learning the poem, which links to some of this week’s activities!

Writing

The writing activity links to the topic activity so please look at the topic activities first.

Can you write a sentence or sentences about the life cycle of a frog?

Life cycle of a frog writing

For your topic activity, you have been asked to decorate an egg. Can you write a sentence about the design of your egg. (e.g. My egg is a…)

You can even try linking two ideas together by using and in your sentence.

Supporting your child with independent writing

When we write in class, we encourage the children to say the words out loud, use their fingers to work out the number of sounds/phonemes in a word and use their knowledge of phonemes and graphemes to write the sounds they can hear, for example: feeld for field, rokit for rocket. We remind children to leave finger spaces, use a full stop at the end and begin their sentence with a capital letter.

Maths activity:

Have a go at writing some teen numbers in the air with Jack Hartman

Jack Hartman- teen numbers in the air

Go on a number hunt around the house and look for the tricky number 12.

Can you sing along to five little speckled frogs and write down a subtraction number sentence every time the  frog jumps from the log!

Challenge yourselves by taking away 1 from a bigger number.

Click on the link below to watch and listen to the number song.

Five Little Speckled Frogs

Sing along to 10 little bunnies and do the actions.

10 little bunnies

Can you do some Easter subtraction with your grown up.

Easter subtraction

If you want challenge yourself, try counting back by using a number line or your fingers.

Here are some tips on some mathematical activities the children do at school that can also be shared at home.

Mathematics – Tips for parents

Topic  linked activity: 

What have our Buddy bears Oliver and Oscar, been finding out about in spring?

Buddy Bear exploring frogs

Share the power point and video with someone in your family to learn more about what our Buddy Bear has been learning about.

Frog Video

Frog Life Cycle PowerPoint 

Can you draw your own pictures showing the life cycle of a frog?

Now that it is Easter time, we would like you to decorate an egg!

Alternatively, you could choose to decorate an egg made from paper or card.

Decorate an egg template

Welcome to Reception!

At Horbury Primary Academy, we have two reception classes. Mrs Longo teaches Ladybirds and Miss Mussa teaches Meerkats. Mrs Garlick, Mrs Eyre and Mrs Blunden 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.

Half Termly Newsletter

Please click below for our Reception Spring 2 newsletter

Spring 2 newsletter

 

Spring 2 Our Whole Class Challenges

 

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. Spare wow cards can be taken at any time from the baskets outside each reception classroom.

Please take time to read our wow cards on display!

 

Autumn 1 ‘Share a story’

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.