Reception 2023 - 2024

Welcome to Reception 2023-24

Mrs Williams

Mrs Olsen

Mrs White

Welcome to Reception 2023-2024

We warmly welcome you and your child to Reception and hope that you will find this class page useful throughout the year. We will regularly update the page with notices of forthcoming events and general messages. It will also include the areas of learning that we will be covering and activities that you might want to try at home to help support your child's learning. 

Autumn Term 1

We are enjoying getting to know your children and it is lovely to see them making friends and settling into the routine of school. We have lots to look forward to this term including getting to know each other, developing new friendships and seeing the children grow in confidence and independence. The children are learning to follow the rules that keep them safe, how to share and turn take and be responsible for choosing activities and keeping their environment orderly. We will be reading, sharing and retelling lots of stories, playing games that promote good language and vocabulary skills and singing a variety of nursery rhymes and songs.

Snack & Drinks We provide the children with milk, water and fruit for snack. Please don't send in any food for your child (unless it is for their lunch). Your child can bring a bottle of water into school each day but NOT juice. We also have children in Reception with severe nut allergies - please DON'T send in any products that contain NUTS.

Clothing & Belongings Please label all items of clothing, footwear and belongings. We have 60 children in class and it is very difficult to find missing items, especially when they are not labelled.

Photographs As part of getting to know each other, we will encourage the children to talk about their families and the people who are special to them. It would be really helpful if you could send in or email a photograph of your child and family. We will put these on display and send home later on in the school year.

Wellies The children use the outdoor area just as much as the indoor. As the weather gets wetter, the children need to wear wellies when playinging outside to avoid their shoes getting wet. Please send in a labelled pair of wellies that can be kept in school until the end of the year.

'Foodie Friday' will be introduced this term. The children will learn essential food preparation skills and love tasting the foods they have made. As one of our Favourite Five books is 'Pumpkin Soup', we will be making our own pumkin soup this term and a variety of biscuits. 

Identity Box Each class will send an Identity Box home with a different child each week until everyone has had a turn. Please help your child to fill the box with items which represent and reflect their identity and send it back in after the weekend. This is a lovely opportunity for the children to share and talk about things that are special to them. 

Story and Knowledge Boxes We have beautiful sharing boxes that contain high-quality texts and various treats inside. One child from each class will take a box home weekly and the idea is that you share the text together. Please support your child with their illustration/fact after reading the information book. We would love to see photos of your children reading these books at home and tell us any comments they make about what they've read (speech bubbles included in boxes). 

Maths

Maths is everywhere in our classroom inside and outside!

Counting is a skill we do throughout the year and it's great for you to count together with your child, just for fun. You can help your child to learn to count by making counting a fun part of your day. You might count the steps as you walk up them or the buses as they go by. This helps children begin to move towards matching one thing at a time with the number as they say it. Count socks as you sort them; count the juice boxes in your refrigerator; count the cars and buses going by. The more experience children have with counting, the more they will learn the meaning of numbers. Understanding the meaning of numbers takes experience with counting lots of things, and you can help by giving your child this experience regularly.

Phonics

We follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds phonic scheme of work.

We will be starting to learn the letter sounds from Phase 2 which are - s, a, t, p, i , n, m, d, g, o, c, k, ck, e, u, r, h, b, f, l.

The tricky words we will learn to read on-sight are 'is', 'I' and 'the'.

Your child will be bringing home a reading book and it is essential that you listen/support them to read this every day. Please record a comment in the reading record each time you listen to to your child.

There are lots of fun phonic games online that are free and can also support learning. Some of the ones we use in school include PhonicsBloom, Phonics Play and Top Marks phonics.

RE

The question we will be investigating this half-term is 'What is a prayer?' and 'How and Where do people pray?' The children will start on their journey towards understanding what prayer is and the different ways people of faith talk to God.

Our Favourite Five

Books are at the centre of everything we do. We love books in Reception!  Each half-term we focus on five different texts to get to know them really well. We  read them many times together and act them out with story props. We also use story maps to help retell the story. Throughout the year, via this page, we will show you the story maps so you can retell them at home too.

Here are 'Our Favourite Five' books for this half term :-   

So Much by Trish Cooke

The Colour Monster by Anna Llenas   

Pumpkin Sooup by Helen Cooper

Transient Rhymes and Jingles by Clare Thompson

The Three Little Pigs (any version)                 

Open Door Policy

We love to communicate with YOU the parent. If you have any worries or questions please come and talk to us at the door, at drop off or collection time. Also we have a class email address that you can contact us on directly:

https://outlook.office.com/mail/kingfishershomelearning@chesterbluecoatce.cheshire.sch.uk/  - This is the email address if your child is in the Kingfisher class (Mrs Olsen & Mrs Williams).

https://outlook.office.com/mail/robinshomelearning@chesterbluecoatce.cheshire.sch.uk/ - This is the email address if your child is in the Robin's class (Mrs White).

Many thanks for your continued support. 

The Reception Team