Welcome to Reception

Welcome to the class page for Lions

At Pinders Primary School we have two Reception classes - 'Lions' and 'Tigers'. Our Nursery children are called 'Cubs'.

Here you will find information about the Lions and all the exciting things we have been learning about at school!

What does our learning look like?

In Reception at Pinders Primary School we have developed our own long term plan. This outlines the different topics we base our learning around each half term, focusing on the seven areas of learning. Alongside this we also teach discrete maths, phonics and guided reading sessions. A big part of the learning in Reception is based around the children's interests. Each half term we enhance the classroom and plan activities based on these interests. The characteristics of effective learning (shown above) are also a key element. They detail the ways in which the children should be learning from their environment, experiences and activities.

More information...

Below is a useful booklet for parents/carers. The purpose of the booklet is to help you find out more about how your child is learning and developing during their first five years, in relation to the EYFS. Children develop more rapidly during the first five years of their lives than at any other time. This booklet has been written to help you as a parent know what to expect during these vitally important years by focusing on the seven areas of learning and development which are covered in the EYFS. Take a look at the '40-60 months' section of this parents' guide.

• 50p contributions every Monday.
• Milk money (£1.05 per day) to be paid online (from the term your child turns 5 years old).
• Library for Lions is every Thursday. Please come and borrow a book!
• PE kits can be brought in on a Monday and taken home on a Friday. This will be indoor PE so your child will need a white t-shirt and navy shorts/leggings.
• Homework (reading books/words to learn/home learning challenges) will be given out weekly.
• When your child is given a reading book you can put this in the tray when your child is ready for a new book. Can they sound out the letters in words and blend them together to read? Can they answer questions about the book?

  Attendance  

Congratulations to all the Lions who had 100% attendance this half term!

...and a huge congratulations to all the Lions who had 100% attendance all term! Wow!

  This half term's 'Star Writer' 

Rawah - for her super sentence writing!

Book week

We will be kicking off next half term with our whole school book week! The book we will be sharing in Reception during this week will be 'Handa's Surpise' by Eileen Browne. Why not borrow the book from our library? You can also watch a short video of the story here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1Vmf4Cwvls

After book week we will be talking all about our Mums and what makes them special.

Later on in the half term we will be getting ready to celebrate Easter!

Please keep checking the class page for more information.

Chinese New Year

Lions have been busy finding out about another festival this half term - Chinese New Year. They have learnt about how people celebrate Chinese New Year, created their own non-fiction book about Chinese New Year, eaten chinese food, performed a chinese ribbon dance and created a dragon head for a Chinese New Year celebration!

Following our interests...

Some children have been interested in creating their own books. We showed the children how they could put a book together using a hole punch and treasury tags. They have been very busy drawing/cutting out pictures for their books and writing words/sentences! The children have enjoyed sharing their books with the rest of the class.

Winter

We began this half term learning about the season of winter. We went on a winter walk to look for signs of winter, and discussed the changes from autumn to winter. Can you name some features of winter? Our story focus this half term has been 'One Snowy Night' by Nick Butterworth. We have sequenced the story, discussed hibernation, made clay hedgehogs and written captions for pictures from the story!

We had a magical, 'Frozen' time creating an ice mountain! We wrote some fantastic words to describe our mountain. For our whole school poetry week we wrote and recited our own winter poem. You can see us performing our poem in the video below!

Festivals

This half term we have been learning about different festivals. Take a look at our fantastic work!

  Christmas

We learnt so much about the Christian festival of Christmas. Can you remember how Christians celebrate Christmas? We decorated our classroom ready for Christmas and counted down to Christmas using an advent calendar. We read the nativity story and put on a fantastic performance for our families and friends! We made Christmas cards for our families and wrote a letter to Santa, listing which presents we would like him to bring to us. Our last week was filled with lots of Christmas fun! We loved celebrating Christmas at our Christmas party, we even had a special visitor - Father Christmas! We also made yummy mince pies - a traditional Christmas food.

Following our interests...

This Christmas time we have been listening to lots of Christmas stories. The Lions' favourite Christmas story has been 'Stick Man' by Julia Donaldson. They decided they wanted to make their own stick man and make him travel to different places like he does in the story!

    Diwali     

The children enjoyed finding out about the Hindu festival of  Diwali - the festival of light. We shared the story of Rama and Sita using a shadow puppet show. We made coconut barfi (Indian sweets) and lit divas (clay lamps) for our Diwali celebration! Outside the children wanted to build a house and celebrate Diwali! They drew rangoli patterns outside the 'front door'. The children explored their maths skills by counting and adding together groups of 'divas' in the maths area. We also made our own non-fiction book which explains how Hindus celebrate Diwali. You can find our book 'Diwali - by Lions' in our reading area!

    Bonfire night

We started off our topic of festivals learning about bonfire night. Why do we have bonfire night each year? We discovered the answer to this question by listening to a simple story about Guy Fawkes. We created super firework pictures using paint, we used our senses to think of adjectives to describe fireworks and wrote these down using our phonic knowledge, we explored patterns in maths and we made our own bonfire outside which we sat around to enjoy jacket potatoes for our snack! Thank you to parents for your continued support by bringing in 50p contributions each week.

Space

We kicked off this half term with a whole school space week - it was out of this world! Our story focus was 'Whatever Next' by Jill Murphy - a story about a bear who travels to the moon in a cardboard box. We made up our own stories about where we could go in our cardboard box! We got the chance to visit space in a space dome in our school hall. The children were also shocked to see a meteorite had crash landed on our school field! You can see all of our fun-filled space activities in the photographs below.

Autumn

Autumn has arrived! This half term we have been on a walk in the local area to look for signs of autumn. What do we see at autumn time? How is autumn different to summer?

We have also begun to harvest the vegatables growing in our Early Years garden. What did we find growing in our garden? Thank you to all the parents who brought in a tin/packet for our harvest donation. We really enjoyed delivering our donation to the Salvation Army!

Following our interests...

In our favourite book box we have lots of traditional tales. We have enjoyed listening to these stories and joining in with the retelling of the stories. A particular favourite of ours has been 'Rumpelstiltskin'. We had a big surpise when we came into school one day... broken decking in our outdoor area and a letter from Rumpelstiltskin saying he had broken it and fallen deep down in the dungeons below! The children did some problem solving on how they could get him out and they also decided to write him a letter. He is now free with the help of some rope and will hopefully come back to fix our decking soon!

Our story focus this half term has been 'Oliver's Vegetables' by Vivian French.

Which vegetable did Oliver find on Monday?

What was Oliver's favourite food? We made chips from potatoes for our snack. Thank you to parents for your 50p contributions.

Marvellous Me

This first half term in Reception we have been busy getting to know each other and the teachers by sharing 'Marvellous Me' boxes. Miss Mapp shared her box with the children which contained objects telling the children about herself. Can you remember what Miss Mapp had inside her box? The Lions have now been taking 'Marvellous Me' boxes home and have filled them with objects about themselves to share with the rest of the class!

The first Lion to take the 'Marvellous Me' box home...