Welcome to Reception!

Miss Fletcher-Jones is the class teacher and Mrs Smith, Mrs Bardwell and Mrs Racher are the teaching assistants across Year R and KS1. On this page you will find information about Reception class news, pictures of things we've done and more.

Early Years

To find out more about Early Years at St Luke's, please visit our Early Years page.

Reminders

Arrival and Collection Times

All children should enter and leave school via the external Year R/ 1 base doors.

All children should arrive between 8.45am – 8.55am.  

All children should be collected at 3.20pm. 

Breakfast Club & After School Club -  Children in Year R, 1 to 6 in Breakfast Club should arrive as normal and be taken to the Breakfast Club room. They will be taken to their Classroom ready for lessons. Breakfast Club will be open from 7.45am. After School Club will be open until 5.45pm. 

Stationery

We will provide this equipment where required.

P.E. 

Children in Class R will need to ensure that their P.E. Kit is in school from the start of the term. It will be sent home for washing at the end of each half term. P.E. Kits should consist of jogging bottoms, shorts, a house-coloured t-shirt, jumper and trainers.

Maths

As a school we use Maths No Problem. To find out more, visit https://mathsnoproblem.com/en/parent-videos/ to watch videos all about how we teach Maths at St Luke's. The table below highlights the Maths No Problem topics that we will be learning in Year R in the Summer Term.

In addition to the above, the children will also have a short, daily 'Number Talks' session in order to support them in developing a good sense of number.

Phonics

In the Summer term, the children will be reviewing Phase 2 and 3 sounds and reading Phase 4 words, using the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Phonics scheme. At the end of the Spring Term, you will be given an overview of what sounds are being learnt each week and a copy of the tricky words. To find out more about how we teach phonics, please visit our phonics page https://www.st-lukes.hants.sch.uk/phonics/.

Our Class Country

We will be learning all about England. We will investigate where it is in the world and find out facts about England.

Our Classroom Environment

Through our engaging and stimulating classroom environment, children have lots of opportunities to play, explore, learn actively, create and think critically. This area of the blog will be updated with photos as the term progresses.

On a welly walk, the children discovered some 'mushrooms.' We talked about toadstools and mushrooms and they were introduced to the word funghi.  We also talked about the dangers of touching funghi.  After that, we put our Maths skills of matching and comparing to the test and played a game of leaf snap!  The children gathered some different leaves then played the game with a partner, looking for how their leaves were the same.  Some matched in colour whilst others matched in shape.

Creating leaf creatures!  Friday 11th October

After sharing the book Leaf Man by Lois Elhert, the children had a go at making some of their own leaf creatures.

This week, the children have enjoyed making lego marble mazes, playdough robots, shape rockets and pipe cleaner mermaid dolls!  They have also played games including snakes and ladders and flip/show/build.

This week has felt very Christmassy! The children have enjoyed making paper chains and decorating the class Christmas tree. They have raced wind up Christmas characters, made salt dough hanging decorations (drying and ready to paint next week!), fed the reindeer carrots by rolling a dice to see how many, had a go at wrapping presents and played with the Winter Wonderland small world.

Our Heartsmart principle this half term is 'Too much selfie isn't healthy.' We have been talking about how we can recognise how other people are feeling. The children were able to identify when children in photographs were experiencing a good or bad feeling and many of the children were able to use different words to describe feelings beyond 'sad' and 'happy' eg miserable, mad, lonely, angry.

The Reception have had a wonderful half term exploring 'All Creatures Great and Small.' From dinosaurs to minibeasts, birds and reptiles to wild animals and pets, they have had lots of fun learning in many different ways. Some of the highlights included making bird feeders, holding an ostrich egg, discovering dinosaurs eggs, controlling Beebots, painting butterflies and role-playing in the dinosaur museum!

This week the children have been exploring patterns. They have created their own patterns and learnt about units of repeat. Many of the children are able to describe patterns, for example, AB or ABC patterns where 2 or 3 things are repeated. They know that patterns can be made using objects but also actions and sounds.

The children thoroughly enjoyed this topic! We had lots of fun making and eating marmalade sandwiches, playing in the role-play bakery or with the London small world and learning all about famous London landmarks.

We have had a really, lovely first day back after the Easter holidays and a brilliant start to our new theme 'Growing in the garden.' After talking about the things that we have growing in our own gardens, we explored the school grounds, looking for things that grow. We found lots including buttercups, rhubarb, bluebells, fennel and even some wild garlic that we are looking forward to using in our mud kitchen! Back in the classroom, Miss F-J read the story Sam Plants a Sunflower by Kate Petty then we talked about what a seed needs to grow and looked at a dried sunflower head full of seeds before planting our own sunflower seeds. The children are very excited to watch them grow and will be completing a 'Sunflower Diary' over the next few weeks.