Reception Blogs
w/b 15th December 2025
I do hope these photographs from the last week capture the true festive magic that we have enjoyed as a class. A Christmas party, Christmas dinner, visit from an elf, hot chocolate/juice in Forest School, gingerbread making, Christmas crafts, festive games and lots of festive fun in the provision.
Thank you Reception for such a superb first term together. We feel so very proud of each and every child and it has been a pleasure and a privilege to teach them all in their first term of school.
We wish you and your families a blessed, joyous and merry Christmas and peaceful New Year.
With love from Miss Witham
w/b 8th December 2025
Well, goodness me, what a joyful celebration of your wonderful children we all enjoyed on Wednesday morning. We are so incredibly proud of the hard work, bravery, enthusiasm, joy and ‘sparkle’ that we observed on the stage. The Reception staff team feel so very proud of the children and we hope that the children feel just as proud of themselves after all of their hard work over the last few weeks. It really is an incredible achievement to stand on a stage and perform in front of so many people at only 4 and 5 years old. Such superstars! Thank you ever so much for your wonderful support with costuming, learning of lines/songs (I’m sure many of you know the songs as well as we do!) and your encouragement and belief which no doubt helped the children to perform so beautifully. A joyous experience!
I was also extremely proud to take Reception to the theatre today as they represented our school so wonderfully. We absolutely loved the pantomime and joined in with great enthusiasm! I hope that the children have had lots of stories to share about the performance; my favourite part was most definitely looking across the theatre to see so many beaming smiles and hear the laughter. A brilliant first school trip, Reception – congratulations!
On Thursday, we were invited to visit Reverend Sandi at St Oswald’s Church. We enjoyed a beautiful service together, most especially retelling the story of the very first Christmas complete with actions and repeated refrains. It was a lovely day to walk to church in the morning sunshine; we were very grateful for the lovely winter weather.
Whilst phonics and reading have continued, we removed any other adult led inputs this week so as to, as far as possible, reduce demand on the children in such a busy, different week. Whilst unplanned, we were also grateful for Mr Simmons’ offer of a Forest School session on Thursday, after his change of plans, as an afternoon of fresh air, winter sunshine and nature was just what we all needed! It was just a joy and a delight to complete most of the phonics assessments with the children and to observe their confidence and pride in their amazing progress. I am so looking forward to sharing more information with you next week and celebrating these achievements.
We are looking forward to returning to our normal routine next week, just with a festive theme and festive enhancements. Christmas is well and truly in full swing in Reception!
I hope that you all enjoy the restful, relaxing weekend that you most certainly deserve.
Well done Reception and many thanks to all parents and carers,
Miss Witham
w/b 1st December 2025
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Reception! On Monday 1st December, we arrived to a classroom decorated for the season. The children were thrilled to work together to decorate the Christmas trees and they were ever so careful when threading baubles onto branches. It really is a magical time and brings to mind the lyric ‘tiny tots with their eyes all aglow’. Wonderful!
Nativity preparations are in full swing as we have had three sessions in the hall this week. We have been blown away with how quickly the children have picked up the ‘flow’ of the performance, learning their cues, lines and positions ever so well. It promises to be a real treat. A reminder that we also ask for costumes to be brought into school on Monday 8th December, ready for our dress rehearsal the following day. Please do get in touch if you are struggling to find a costume; many of the costumes have already been borrowed but I am sure we could work together to create a costume. It would be wonderful if children could continue to practise their lines at home and sing the songs.
Our phonics teachers continue to share how each and every child is making wonderful progress with their sound knowledge and blending skills. I can’t wait to complete reading assessments next week and to celebrate the children’s progress as a result of their hard work. Name writing also continues with equal success; the children only get better each week with remembering the letters in their name and how to correctly form them.
In maths, we have continued to develop our counting skills, focusing on 1:1 correspondence, matching collections of objects to their representations and numerals, understanding the concept of cardinality (the last number in the count tells us ‘how many’ things there are altogether). We have applied these concepts to count more abstract things, such as claps and jumps. We have also explored verbal counting to larger numbers, counting together to numbers larger than 20. We have looked at the pattern of number names beyond the tricky ‘teen’ numbers. Finally, we have explored conservation of number by investigating what happens to quantities of objects when they are rearranged.
In Forest School, Mr Simmons showed us how to make reindeer using pinecones, clay and natural objects. These reindeer look wonderful!
In our PSED lesson, Mrs Harrison continued last week’s lesson to share any final photographs of our homes and families. Thank you very much for sending these photos as the children loved sharing them and talking about their loved ones.
What a festive week it has been! We are very much looking forward to welcoming you all to our performance next Wednesday. Please do get in touch if you have any queries at all.
With many thanks for your wonderful support,
Miss Witham
w/b 24th November 2025
It has been a week of celebration in Reception! We have thoroughly enjoyed exploring birthdays and loved ending our week by wishing Fred the frog a very ‘Happy Birthday’.
We continue to see excellent progress in phonics sessions as we read and write words. The children continue to expand their sound knowledge and are applying this knowledge with confidence to carefully form letters and segment words. The children are also enthusiastically choosing to apply their knowledge to read and write within the provision – phonics superstars!
In maths, we have been investigating the composition of 3, 4 and 5. We have continued to investigate part–part–whole relations (e.g. seeing that 3 can be composed of 1 and 2) and consolidated our understanding of a whole being made up of smaller parts. We have also explored the different ways that parts of a whole can be combined, including the spatial arrangements that can be made with different combinations of the same number of objects. Numberblocks have helped us with our exploration and the ‘Stampolines’ episode has inspired lots of our activities.
We were thrilled to once again open our ‘Drawing Club’ as we focused on the story ‘Kipper’s Birthday’ by Mick Inkpen. Our vocabulary for the week has been: celebration, generous, slumber, perplexed, devour, scrumptious. On Monday, we focused on the character (Kipper), designing an imaginative birthday hat for him to wear. On Tuesday, we explored the setting, asking ‘Where could Kipper host his birthday party?’. On Thursday, we thought about the cake that Tiger baked for Kipper at the end of the story and imagined the exciting cake that could be baked and what could happen next in the story. This week, we challenged ourselves to write numerals and CVC words as our codes, such as ‘hat’, ‘fun’, ‘big’ and ‘yum’. With three birthdays in the class, it was the perfect week to be celebrating. We ended the week with a birthday party for Fred! The children had baked cakes for him in the playdough area, acted out birthday parties in the role play, made birthday cards and wrapped presents independently. A wonderful celebration indeed!
In Forest School, Mr Simmons suggested that the children make something to give to one another as gifts. We were all very generous!
In our PSED lesson with Mrs Harrison, we enjoyed sharing the photos of our homes and families. The children loved talking all about their special people.
We have also been practising singing our Nativity songs and saying our lines within the classroom. Next week, we are very excited to be able to practise on the stage! Thank you for your support with learning lines at home.
I hope that you all have a wonderful weekend.
With many thanks,
Miss Witham
w/b 17th November 2025
Well Reception, what a wonderful week we have all had! I must just take this opportunity to say how proud we continue to be of our superstar class. They are making superb progress and are just a joy to spend time with.
Phonics success continues as the children are now very settled in their new groups for the half term. Our phonics team are all very much enjoying teaching the Reception children. We are working on reviewing previously taught sounds to ensure a strong, secure foundation as well as beginning to introduce some new sounds. We are also continuing to work on our blending skills, specifically with CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words. We are just thrilled with the progress we have seen with reading and writing CVC words in just three weeks! Well done, Reception! You will find the sounds that they have focused on this week in the ‘How to help at home’ document. Please do continue to practise sounds and blending at home.
In maths this week, we have been exploring composition by focusing on the concept of ‘wholes’ and ‘parts’. Key language in this area can be tricky as we needed to understand a ‘whole’ and how it is different from a ‘hole’; gesture was useful to support this. We investigated our own bodies and familiar toys to begin to understand that whole things are often made up of smaller parts and that a whole is, therefore, bigger than its parts. For example, my foot is a part of me and the whole of me is Miss Witham! A tail is a part, the whole is the cat. We enjoyed looking at the parts to predict what the whole would be. Towards the end of the week, we applied this understanding to the composition of 2 and 3. E.g. 2 is a part, 1 is a part, the whole is 3. 1 is a part, 1 is a part, the whole is 2. This NCETM focus made links with the Numberblocks episode ‘The Whole of Me’ https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08dr1l3/numberblocks-series-1-the-whole-of-me .
Much of our learning this week has been inspired by Diwali, ‘the festival of light’. This year, Diwali fell on Monday 20th October, during our final three-day week of Autumn 1. We wanted to ensure that we dedicated a whole week to Diwali and, as we have been thinking about Bonfire Night in Week 1, and Remembrance Day in Week 2, we waited until Week 3! The festival celebrates the victory of good over evil and light over darkness. As part of the celebrations, people around the world retell the Diwali legends, one of which tells how Rama rescues Sita from the evil Ravana. We have read and listened to several retellings of this legend. We learnt that Diwali is celebrated in lots of different ways, including: cleaning and tidying the home, wearing new clothes, lighting lamps called diyas (or divas), creating rangoli patterns, visiting the temple, having a festive family feast, exchanging gifts (often sweets and dried fruits), and huge firework displays. In the provision, we have created our own rangoli patterns with: chalk outside the Reception area, coloured rice in trays, paint, playdough and loose parts, Numicon and 2D shapes. We have also explored Mehndi, detailed patterns that are sometimes painted onto a person's hands or feet using henna during festivals and celebrations. We used black pen to design our patterns and have also used brown paint as part of our exploration of how henna is applied. In Forest School, we used clay to create our own diya lamps and we have been patiently for them to have fully dried out in order to paint and decorate them. Throughout the week, we have listened to Hindu legends, read stories (such as ‘Dipal’s Diwali), listened to Diwali music, explored non-fiction books and looked carefully at photographs. In our literacy books, we have sequenced the story of Rama and Sita and written CVC words to answer questions about the story, such as that Ravana had ‘ten’ heads and lamps were ‘lit’ to guide Rama and Sita back home. The children have been so engaged with this learning and have asked wonderful questions. You may enjoy sharing some of these links at home:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/watch/lets-celebrate-diwali
On Thursday morning, we had a beautifully wintry walk to church as we noticed all of the frost sparkling in the sunshine. It was so wonderful to be together as a whole school for a Christingle service with Reverend Sandi. Reverend Sandi explained the special meaning of each element of the Christingle:
- The orange symbolises the world.
- The red ribbon shows God's love for the world and the blood of Jesus.
- The fruit/sweets represent God's creations.
- The four cocktail sticks represent the four seasons.
- The candle represents Jesus being the light of the world, bringing hope to those in darkness.
The children were role models both on the walk and in the church; we were so proud of them!
Our PSED lesson with Mrs Harrison was entitled ‘Same and Different Families’. We have been celebrating difference and also showing the things we have in common. We started by asking: What did you have for breakfast? We noticed that there were lots of differences as a prompt for starting to talk about how families are different to each other. Mrs Harrison asked: Does every family have children? Does every family have to have a mum and dad? Are we (the class) a family? What other families can there be? We read The Great Big Book of Families, talking about what makes people the same as each other and also different from each other – all of these families were wonderful! For next week’s PSED lesson, Mrs Harrison has asked for any photographs of our families and our homes as part of our discussions and celebrations in our PSED lessons. She would really appreciate if any photographs could be sent to earlyyears@breretonprimary.org.uk
In our celebration assemblies, we have started to receive ‘2%er’ certificates. This is based on work that we do in school around the ‘Art of Brilliance’ https://www.artofbrilliance.co.uk/ A 2%er is somebody who is positive, encouraging, hopeful and with a ‘can-do’ attitude. They light up the room, regularly commit random acts of kindness and are radiant people who glow on the inside and outside, spreading joy! The idea of a ‘2%er’ comes from the estimation that only 2% of the population choose to adopt this joyful, kind and encouraging mindset. If children come home with a 2%er certificate, we have voted them as part of this 2% of the population!
In RE we have continued to learn about Jesus’ birthday – the very first Christmas. All of our Nativity discussions are certainly aiding our understanding. We have also been learning lots and lots of new signs as we sign and sing along to our new Nativity songs. I would have ordinarily sent out costume letters and lines today but it has taken the children a little longer to decide on their top three parts and whether they would like to speak; we didn’t want to rush them! I shall instead send them digitally over the weekend but will also have paper copies ready to send home on Monday. It would be wonderful if you would please begin to look at your child’s lines together to best support them in our Nativity preparations. We are so proud of how they are already progressing with these preparations. It promises to be a wonderful performance!
I hope that you all enjoy a lovely weekend.
Miss Witham
w/b 10th November 2025
The photographs below show some highlights of another brilliant week in Reception. My highlight was most definitely meeting with you all for parent consultations to celebrate your truly wonderful children. It is a joy and a privilege to teach them all!
Miss Witham
w/b 3rd November 2025
It has been an absolute pleasure to welcome Reception back to school this week, eager to ‘dive in’ to a new half term of fun, learning and exciting enhancements. Mrs Mayson, Mrs Downing and I have thoroughly enjoyed observing children so enthused by enhancements in the classroom during our first week of Autumn 2.
Firstly, I must express sincere thanks for all of your support over the half term break. From our first phonics lesson, it was immediately clear to see that so many children have been working hard, practising their sounds and blending. This really helped the children to ‘hit the ground running’ so we are so very grateful. After a Tuesday phonics recap as a whole class, we were ready to launch our new phonics group teaching. This approach proves so valuable for all children as it allows us to tailor our phonics teaching even more closely to individual needs and, due to small group sizes, the children benefit from even more support. The children have been most excited to work with new adults in new spaces – they feel very grown up! Our phonics teachers are myself, Mrs Mayson, Mrs Downing and Mrs Marshfield, who is a teaching assistant in Year 1 as well as having a Reception phonics group each year. This means that each group may be working on different sounds each week. I shall therefore update you with the sounds of the week for your child via the ‘How to Help at Home’ document.
In maths this week, our focus has been deepening our understanding of 5 as a quantity by linking the number itself to the 5 fingers on one hand. We have been inspired by the rhyme ‘5 Little Peas in a Peapod Pressed’ and the Numberblocks episode ‘High Five’. We have explored ways to represent numbers to 5 using our fingers, die patterns and five frames. We especially enjoyed our ‘5 hunt’ looking for collections of 5 objects that were: exactly the same, different colours, different sizes and completely different objects.
This week, we launched our new topic – celebrations! Much of our learning has therefore been inspired by Bonfire Night. Firstly, we enjoyed reading our new story ‘Little Glow’ full of beautiful illustrations of celebrations throughout the year. We focused on the Bonfire Night page and learnt that Bonfire Night is celebrated on the 5th of November each year…‘Remember, remember the 5th of November’. We shared photographs of Bonfire Night celebrations, discussing our own experiences and traditions, such as using sparklers or eating toffee apples.
In our literacy adult led task, we have been writing three CVC words: ‘pop’ to represent the sound of the fireworks, ‘red’ to describe the colour of the firework and ‘hot’ to describe the bonfire. Children have recorded either whole words (e.g. hot), some sounds they can hear in the words (e.g. ‘ho’ or ‘ht’) or initial sounds (e.g. h). We have been so impressed with the Fred Talk and the letter formation skills applied in this task. Well done Reception writers!
In the provision, the children enjoyed using a variety of techniques to create firework artwork, including: printing with a snipped cardboard tube, printing with forks and drawing with chalk. Other enhancements have included: making Bonfire Night posters, using playdough to make fireworks, creating firework rockets with 2D shapes, making ‘sparkler’ sticks, exploring the fire station small world area and the Bonfire Night stall.
On the 5th of November, we had such a wonderful Forest School session to further enhance our learning. Mr Simmons helped us to learn our Bonfire Night safety rules. Using sticks to represent sparklers, we talked about: wearing gloves when holding a sparkler; never running around with a sparkler; putting the sparkler in a bucket of water/sand when finished; only using sparklers with the permission and supervision of a grown-up. Mr Simmons used his bottle rocket launcher to represent a firework, showing us how to stand way back whilst a grown-up lights the firework and never touching the firework, even after the display has finished. Finally, we created our own ‘bonfire’, standing one stick in the middle and leaning the others against it to create the perfect shape. We then used leaves to represent ‘flames’, another opportunity to talk about the colours of autumn. Mr Simmons then talked about a safe distance from the fire and making sure to always walk near the bonfire, not run. A brilliant morning indeed!
In addition to our music lesson with Mrs Harrison, we enjoyed our PSED lesson entitled ‘I’m special, you’re special’. We learnt Harold the giraffe’s song and especially enjoyed the chorus:
I'm special. You're special.
There's no-one quite like me.
I'm special. You're special.
Clap if you agree. (Clap, clap).
We thought about what makes each person so special. In this first week, we focused our thinking on how we look; feeling our faces very gently and thinking about what is on our faces –nose, hair, cheeks, mouth, eyebrows, ears – and studied our faces in the mirrors. We said, “I am special” to our reflection in the mirror and told our friends “You are special.” In the provision, we enjoyed building jigsaw’s of faces, thinking about our features.
Almost unbelievably, the first week of Autumn 2 brings with it our first Nativity song! Our RE time involved an introduction to the Nativity; the story of the very first Christmas and Jesus’ birthday! We will explore the Christmas story in detail over the coming weeks. Next week, we shall think about the parts that children are going to play in our performance. It would be useful to have a chat about this at home; how would your child feel about saying a line on the stage? Please feel welcome to get in touch to share how your child would feel about saying a line in our performance.
What a wonderful first week it has been! On Monday, I shall be out of school updating my paediatric first aid training. Mrs Harrison shall join Mrs Mayson and Mrs Downing to spend the day with Reception. I hope that you all enjoy a restful weekend after a busy week and I shall look forward to seeing you all next week, most especially for parent consultations.
With many thanks,
Miss Witham
w/b 20th October 2025
Congratulations Reception on completing your first half term of school. You have settled into school life absolutely beautifully and are working ever so hard. Mrs Mayson, Mrs Downing and I have adored spending these eight weeks with you and are already looking forward to the excitement that next half term will bring.
This week. I have completed Read Write Inc. phonics assessments. It was such a joy to see the progress that the children have made in such a short time of learning phonics. Inside your child’s diary, you will now find a grid of sounds that have been highlighted to show the sounds that are not yet fully secure. Please practise any sounds that are highlighted and keep recapping the known sounds. We would advise securing a row at a time. For example, if ‘t’ is a gap, we would practise this as a priority over ‘u’ as a gap.
In our phonics lessons, we have learnt the sounds: v and y. We used the following handwriting phrases:
v – down a wing, up a wing
y – down a horn, up a horn and under the head
Now that phonics assessments have been completed, children will work in small groups to access phonics teaching after half term. This will allow children to work on their target sounds, at their stage of blending and at a pace that works best for them. This tailored approach, with lots of repetition, will best support the children to progress with their phonics. The children will work with phonics teachers from across the key stage. After half term, we will introduce the staff to the children before completing any phonics work! We will also inform you of your child’s phonics teacher via the Friday Dojo message in the first week back. We are very excited to begin; this approach works wonderfully each year.
Today has been our day for celebrating Pumpkins of Peace. We have been amazed by all the effort and creativity that have produced such wonderful carved pumpkins reflecting this message. With pumpkins from each class in the school gathered together, it was an incredible spectacle to observe the pumpkin lit messages. This week, our creation station was enhanced with some pumpkins and we have loved the artwork that this has inspired, as the children have used watercolours carefully to consider shades and tones. We have been using our ‘pumpkin playdough’ to shape pumpkins, engaged with a ‘missing number’ pumpkin challenge; and explored the inside of the pumpkins. We have then had such sensory fun, scooping out the insides of the pumpkins! We have then been using our fine motor skills to pick up the seeds with tweezers, and counting them. We were amazed by the number of seeds contained in each pumpkin. We have saved the seeds to wash, dry and then hopefully plant later in the year. In Forest School, we loved our pumpkin fine motor challenge. We used our hammer to cover the pumpkin with golf tees. The children were ever so careful and had lots of fun.
With Mrs Harrison, we enjoyed our ‘No Outsiders’ lesson focused on the book ‘You Choose’ and understanding that we all like different things. This was a lovely way to conclude this half term’s PSED unit.
Goodness me, what a busy few days we have had! I am sure that the children are all now sleepy and ready for a rest after eight weeks of hard work and excitement! We hope whatever you do this half term will be enjoyable and be a lovely break from the routines of school. We look forward to welcoming everyone back after the holidays on Tuesday 4th November, rested and keen to embark on a new adventure together.
With many thanks for your wonderful support,
Miss Witham
w/b 13th October 2025
What a wonderful Reception class we have! Mrs Mayson, Mrs Downing and I have had such a lovely week with the children and are thoroughly enjoying observing the magic of learning as the children are making such amazing progress. Well done, Reception superstars!
It was a busy week in phonics with Fred the Frog introducing us to a new sound each day: l, e, h, r, j. We used the following handwriting phrases:
l – down the long leg
e – lift off the top and scoop out the egg
h – down the [horse’s] head to the hooves and over its back
r – down its [the robot’s] back and then curl over its arm
j – down its [Jack in a box] body, curl and dot
We are gaining speed and confidence each day in our ‘word time’ as we read CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words and spell them using magnetic tiles. There are more ‘learning to blend’ videos on the How to Help document, along with handwriting sheets and videos for each sound. The children really should be so proud of their progress as a result of their hard work and enthusiasm.
Within our NCETM Mastering Number sessions, we have been comparing sets of objects using the language of ‘more than’ and ‘fewer than’. ‘Fewer than’ is used rather than ‘less than’ because the focus is on countable things. Language has been a key focus, using the stem sentence _________ has more/fewer than ________ . E.g. Counting Croc has fewer buttons than Fred.
This week, our focus story has been the traditional tale ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’. Our focus vocabulary was ‘slumber’, ‘demolished’, ‘piping hot’, ‘guzzle’, ‘cramped’ and ‘perfect’. As ever, we have found plenty of opportunities to use this vocabulary throughout the day, as well as continuing to use previously taught vocabulary. Visitors to our classroom are very impressed with Reception’s brilliant vocabulary! In our Drawing Club, we have drawn Goldilocks, the bears’ house and a gift that Goldilocks gave to the bears as an apology. I am thoroughly enjoying listening to the children’s ideas as to what will happen when the ‘magic code’ is pressed! We are writing single letter sounds, numbers and are even beginning to write words. Another fun-filled week of literacy lessons!
On Wednesday, we found that Goldilocks had also visited Forest School and demolished one of Mr Simmons’ chairs. We enjoyed investigating this set up, especially the sawdust porridge! We then had wonderful fun continuing to explore signs of autumn in our forest as we collected fallen leaves in autumnal colours to make autumn leaf crowns.
In our PSED session with Mrs Harrison, we continued to think about our feelings. This week, we particularly thought about feeling sad. If you saw someone looking sad or upset in the playground what could you do to help them? If you were feeling upset about something, who could you talk to about it? At home? At school? We then discovered that a letter had been delivered to the class from a boy called Sam as he had heard that we were very kind children with great ideas. Sam told us that he has a best friend called Ben. Ben’s dad has a new job and he has to move far away in a few days’ time. Sam asked if we could think of anything he could do to cheer himself up. Lots of children chose to draw pictures for Sam to show their ideas which we have posted back to him. Well done, Reception!
Our music Listen and Respond song was Our House by Madness; we found the pulse. We have continued to sing songs from the bank of songs we have built over the half term: Pat-A-Cake, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, This Old Man, Name Song, 5 Little Ducks and Things for Fingers.
We have also continued to explore harvest, have been working on our gross motor skills on the climbing frame and have had great fun learning in the provision, such as constructing conker rolling tracks, enjoying drawing and writing on large rolls of paper, junk modelling in the creation station and printing Numberblock 4!
There are now just three days to go until our Reception class have completed their first half term of school and they really should be ever so proud of themselves. Reception, not long to go until you can all enjoy a rest and recharge over half term after nearly 8 weeks of absorbing new routines, fostering new friendships, working hard to learn lots of new skills and knowledge and having such fun together. Well done all!
I hope that you all enjoy your weekends and I shall look forward to seeing you all on Monday. We shall be exploring all things pumpkins and will look forward to Pumpkins of Peace worship on Wednesday.
With many thanks,
Miss Witham
w/b 6th October 2025
Wow, we have enjoyed, achieved and experienced such a lot in our sixth week of school! A particular highlight for us all was our Learning Exhibition on Wednesday. We were so excited to explore the areas of our classroom together and share our learning with you. My apologies if we didn’t manage to catch you on the photographs as our photographers were having fun in the provision and having lots of lovely conversations with you all! Thank you so much for coming along (even though it meant sitting in the tiny chairs!).
With a few different events this week, it was once again a three sound week. Fred the Frog introduced us to the sounds: u, b, f. We used the following handwriting phrases:
u – down and under, up to the top and draw the puddle
b – down the laces to the heel, round the toe
f - down the stem and draw the leaves (as shown on the ‘How to Help’, we form ‘f’ differently to Fred’s f!)
We have also been practising ‘word time’ in small groups. We have been using magnetic tiles to spell some CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words using our known sounds (e.g. mat, sad, mad). In the ‘how to help’ document, the ‘learning to blend’ videos will help to support this skill; I have also used small cards in pocket charts when modelling this week, so this will be familiar. Continuing to ‘talk like Fred’ is also helping us to develop our oral blending skills. Links to videos for each sound, along with oral blending videos, can be found in this week’s ‘How to support at home’ document. You will also find handwriting sheets for each sound if you would like to practise forming u, b and f home.
In maths, we have been building on our subitising skills. We have been saying the number of sounds that we can hear, such as claps or drum beats, without needing to count. We have enjoyed a memory game where we were encouraged to look closely at small quantities and observe whether the quantity has changed or only the arrangement. We have also been investigating number 4 and beginning to notice the sub-groups that can be perceived within a larger set. For example, we have explored that Numberblock Four can be arranged with 2 blocks on top of another 2 blocks or as a line of 3 with 1 on top, and connected both to 4. This has further developed our understanding of part–whole relations.
On Thursday, we were most excited to make bread, just like the Little Red Hen. We first looked at the recipe, noticing that it had a title, a photograph, a list of ingredients and then step-by-step instructions. In small groups, we then mixed the ingredients together. We talked about the necessity of warm water and adding the salt in a different spot to the yeast. We were especially fascinated by the yeast and how its job is to make the bread rise. Once all ingredients were incorporated, it was time to knead the dough. We each worked hard to knead our dough until it was smooth and stretchy; this was great for our fine motor skills and hand/arm strength! We then needed to leave the dough over lunchtime, in a warm space and covered over. After lunch, we were amazed by how much our dough had increased in size and noticed the bubbles and how the cling film had fogged up. The yeast was working! In the afternoon, we each shaped our bread rolls. We were then able to use the oven after school to bake the bread; all of the teachers felt very hungry as the aroma of freshly baked bread wafted through the corridors!
In our literacy lessons, our focus story has been ‘Pumpkin Soup’ by Helen Cooper, one of Miss Witham’s childhood books. We were able to revisit vocabulary such as ‘collaborating’ and ‘aroma’. In our literacy books, we have been identifying and writing initial sounds for pictures from the book: ‘s’ for ‘squirrel’, ‘p’ for ‘pumpkin’, ‘d’ for ‘duck’ and ‘c’ for ‘cat’. We used our sound mats to help us to recall the correct letter formation. Reading Pumpkin Soup inspired some more cooking; Miss Witham’s mum and grandma made us some soup for us to dip our bread in. They used the vegetables that we had harvested from the garden last Friday, and remembered to include a ‘pipkin of salt’! It was a lovely to end our Friday with an extra snack of soup made with our harvested vegetables and bread that we had all made from scratch, bringing together our literacy learning, focusing on The Little Red Hen and Pumpkin Soup, and our understanding of harvest.
All of this cooking and baking from scratch and using vegetables that we have observed growing has helped our understanding of the process from farm to fork. In our RE lessons, we thought about why Christians give thanks to God at harvest time and what they may give thanks for. We wrote a prayer of thanks together and ended our lesson by praying together. Dear God, Thank you for the sun. Thank you for the rain. Thank you for the soil. Thank you for the grain. Thank you for the farmers. Thank you for the food. Thank you for the harvest. Amen. Reception demonstrated a brilliant understanding. It was lovely to celebrate our Harvest festival with you in Church on Thursday. At this time of harvest, we think carefully about our hard-working farming community and, of course, the very important work of Chance Changing Lives and the Brereton Food Pantry.
Our Forest School sessions had seasonal focuses this week. Lots of children had talked to Mr Simmons about the spiders that have been making their way indoors in the colder temperatures so he invited us to make spiders using clay and nature. In our additional afternoon session before the Learning Exhibition, we went on an autumn leaf hunt. We had lots of wonderful conversations about autumn, the colours of the leaves and why they were falling from the trees. We have loved using these leaves in our artwork!
In our PE lesson, we focused on partner work with our balloons. We practised patting the balloon to our partner, throwing and catching the balloon and throwing the balloon into a ‘hoop’ that our partner had made with their arms. Balloons are great for practising throwing and catching skills as they take longer to fall to the ground.
In our PSED lesson with Mrs Harrison, we read ‘Friends’ and talked about the different feelings in the book. Our Drawing Club vocabulary helped us as we used words like ‘enraged’ and ‘sobbing’. We then used the SCARF All About Me book and, focused on the page ‘What can you do when you feel sad?’ In our circle time, we used the phrases: ‘I’m am happy when…’; ‘I sometimes feel cross when…’; ‘I’m excited when…’ etc.
Our music Listen and Respond song was ‘Happy Birthday’ by Stevie Wonder. We found the pulse in different ways, using the Pat-A-Cake, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, This Old Man, Name Song, 5 Little Ducks and Things for Fingers games.
I have also enjoyed time spent with the children creating their timelines this week. This has generated lots of lovely conversations between friends about their lives outside of school and the children have demonstrated an understanding of growing and changing. I am looking forward to finishing some more timelines next week; thank you ever so much for sending these photographs.
Goodness me, what a busy week it has been! With just a week and a half to go, we absolutely understand how tired all of the children are as they are very ready for a break soon. They are doing ever so well and, as much as we have enjoyed all of the exciting experiences this week, I am sure that they will look forward to a more ‘normal’ routine next week. I am very much looking forward to our Goldilocks focus as we chat, play and learn with our lovely class. I hope that you all have a wonderful weekend and enjoy the beautiful autumn sunshine.
With huge thanks for your continued support,
Miss Witham
w/b 29th September 2025
A busy week indeed but, as it draws to a close, we are feeling ever so proud of each and every child! There is such a lot to celebrate as detailed in the blog below.
With a visit to church this week and a Monday where I was out of school, we have introduced three new sounds. Fred the Frog introduced us to the sounds: o, c, k. We used the following handwriting phrases:
o – all around the orange
c – curl around the caterpillar
k - down the kangaroo’s body, round the tail, down the leg (we form ‘k’ differently to Fred’s k!)
We are also regularly showing the sound cards to children throughout the day e.g. when sending them to wash their hands. These repeated, ‘quick-fire’ opportunities help children to practise and embed their sound knowledge. This would also be great to practise at home. For example, writing the known sounds on a post-it note each and sticking them around the house. How many can children recognise? ‘
In our maths lessons, we have been exploring how numbers can be composed of 1s and, from this, we started to investigate the composition of 3. Composing and de-composing numbers involves children investigating part–whole relations, e.g. seeing that 3 can be composed of 1 and 2. The children are learning from practical experience that a ‘whole’ is made up of smaller parts and is, therefore, bigger than its parts. We especially enjoyed creating a ‘3 picnic’ for the 3 bears!
This week, our focus story has been the traditional tale ‘The Little Red Hen’. Our focus vocabulary was ‘baking’, ‘ingredients’, ‘concocting’, ‘unhelpful’, ‘collaborating’, ‘aroma’, ‘famished’ and ‘devour’. It has been an utter delight to learn the retelling of this tale with the children, listening to the voices that they add as they join in enthusiastically with the repeated refrains and their enthusiastic actions for the vocabulary. We have also heard the children using the language throughout the day, such as when they are ‘collaborating’ to build a farm in the construction area or when they are ‘famished’ as the ‘aroma’ of lunch drifts down to the classroom before we ‘devour’ our food! In our Drawing Club, we have drawn the Little Red Hen, the farm including a new character and a bread with our choice of an unusual topping! We have continued to use our single letter sounds to write magic codes. We are having great fun!
The traditional tale ‘The Little Red Hen’ has been a wonderful hook for learning all about harvest. Learning about the steps the Little Red Hen has to follow to ensure the journey from seed to bread has helped us to understand the concept of growing and harvesting food. Next week, we are looking forward to making our own bread, just like the Little Red Hen.
‘Harvest’ is also one of our RE units this half term, running alongside ‘I am special’. We revisited the story of Creation and the Christian teaching that God made the world and everything in it, for us to enjoy and share. God created an amazing variety of plants and animals and therefore we have wonderful food to eat. Christians give thanks to God for the wonderful food, the sun and the rain which helped to grow the food and the farmers who worked hard to grow and harvest the food. Therefore, a harvest church service is an opportunity to say thank you to God for all his gifts to us, especially the food at harvest time. This work links beautifully to thinking about our Brereton Harvest Appeal for 2025 and this year we shall be supporting the great work of CHANCE Changing Lives and the Brereton Food Pantry. If you would like to donate items for our Harvest collection, please either bring them directly to church on the day of our Harvest service or bring them to the classroom on Thursday 9th October. The charities would be particularly grateful for donations of tea, coffee, juice, tinned meats and fish, sugar, cereal, tomato sauce, hot dogs, tinned fruit, jam and marmalade. Thank you for your support. Next week, we shall be holding a short Harvest Service for parents, carers, grandparents etc. of children in EYFS and Years 1 and 2, on Thursday 9th October at 9:30am, at St Oswald’s Church. We would please ask you to meet us at church rather than walk with the children.
We thought that the best way to develop our understanding of harvest time would be to harvest some food ourselves! Last year’s Reception cohort absolutely loved planting and nurturing our Reception fruit and vegetable garden, just as this cohort will in the spring and summer. We had already harvested the broad beans, strawberries and tomatoes in the summer but there was plenty still to harvest! When the rain had eased to a drizzle this afternoon, I invited any children who would like to join me to come to the garden. The rain did not dampen our spirits and most children were keen to head into the garden! Our Year 1 friends came to join us, enjoying the results of their hard work. We discovered that carrots and potatoes grow underground, thoroughly enjoying pulling the carrots up and digging for potatoes. There were a few last tomatoes to harvest as well as lots of ‘baked potato’ squash. Well done, Reception gardeners!
In the photos below, you will also notice some photos of our Reception gardeners missed from last week’s blog. In much sunnier weather last week, we we worked together to plant our garden in our outdoor classroom. We planted bulbs at the bottom of the planter boxes; we will wait patiently for them to grow and will be rewarded with beautiful new flowers in the springtime. In the meantime, we have planted winter pansies at the top of our planter boxes to enjoy through the colder weather. We have also planted an herb garden and are already enjoying exploring the scents of each plant. Later in the year, we will be able to use these herbs in our nature kitchen recipes! We have so many keen gardeners in Reception and the children have been ever so helpful, from covering bulbs with soil, to ‘tucking the pansies into bed’ and then giving the garden a good watering. We can’t wait to watch this garden grow with us throughout the year and change with the seasons.
A highlight of our week was our first visit to St Oswald’s Church. We were very grateful for the dry weather as we thoroughly enjoyed the beautiful walk to church. All of the staff were so proud of how safely and sensibly the children walked with their partners, chatting about what they noticed on the walk. We passed ‘landmarks’ such as the park, post box, bus stop, archway, horses and rectory. Reverend Sandi was so pleased to welcome us to church and was keen to answer our questions about the church and God. We enjoyed exploring and finding out about our church before a few songs and a prayer. Reverend Sandi kindly gave us juice and a biscuit to give us energy for the walk back! Well done, Reception.
We have enjoyed a few exciting lessons with Mrs Harrison this week. In PE, we have continued to practise negotiating space and moving energetically through games and challenges with balloons. Our ‘Listen and Respond’ song in music was Sing A Rainbow by Peggy Lee. We found the pulse in different ways, using the Pat-A-Cake, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, This Old Man, Name Song and Things for Fingers games. In our PSED time, we thought about people who are important to us and people who can help us if something is wrong or making us unhappy. We talked about a ‘helping 5’, holding up one hand and counting on our fingers and thumb, thinking of five different people we could turn to if we had something that was upsetting us.
Reception, I have thoroughly enjoyed the week with you all. What superstars we have in our class! It was especially joyful to see your beaming smiles in your first ever school photographs. We are already looking forward to next week with another visit to church for Thursday’s Harvest service and some cooking experiences as we read Pumpkin Soup. We also hope to see many of you at our Learning Exhibition on Wednesday 8th October at 2pm. For Reception, it shall be chance to join the children in the provision; I am sure that they will just adore showing you their favourite areas of the classroom, completing some challenges together, and showing you new things that they have learnt. We can’t wait!
I hope that you all enjoy a lovely, cosy weekend.
With many thanks,
Miss Witham
w/b 22nd September 2025
We have thoroughly enjoyed Week 4 of Reception life! Having packed such a lot of wonderful learning experiences into just a week, I am sure we are all feeling rather sleepy again at the end of the day but I am also so thankful for such a fun week with our lovely class.
Phonics lessons have continued with enthusiasm and the children have been ever so keen to reveal our next five sounds. What a joy it is to see such enthusiastic, excited learners! Fred the Frog introduced us to the sounds: t, i, n, p and g. In addition to recognising/reading these sounds, we have also practised writing them, in some small groups. Unusually, our first two phonics sounds this week didn’t follow our ‘rule’; normally, our pencils stick to the paper until we have formed the whole letter. However, we need to lift our pencil off the paper to finish forming t and i. For n, p and g, our pencils were back to being sticky, making sure we went down and then back up again, or around and down again! We used the following handwriting phrases:
t – down the tower, across the tower
i – down the [insect’s] body, dot for the head
n – down Nobby, over his net
p – down the plait, over the pirate’s face
g – round her [the girl’s] face, down her hair and give her a curl
Continuing to ‘talk like Fred’ is also helping us to develop our oral blending skills. Links to videos for each sound, along with oral blending videos, can be found in this week’s ‘How to support at home’ document. I have also included handwriting sheets for each sound if you would like to practise forming t, i, n, p and g at home. Thank you ever so much for supporting our Early Reading and Phonics meeting on Wednesday. I shall most certainly be uploading the slides but have made it a weekend job as it may take me a bit of time to upload!
In maths this week, the children have engaged with activities that draw attention to the purpose of counting – to find out ‘how many’ objects there are. We have been helping Counting Croc to improve his counting skills! Last week, we used subitising to identify the number in a set; this week we have been developing our counting skills to enable us to identify how many there are in a set that cannot be subitised. This connects subitising and counting to cardinality whereby the last number in the count tells us ‘how many’ things there are altogether. We have also helped Counting Croc to use 1:1 correspondence, by counting numbers at the same time as moving or tagging the objects. We have also explored how all sorts of things can be counted, including sounds. This focus will continue into next week. Accurate counting is an essential skill for children to learn from an early age. Although this may seem straightforward, there are many counting concepts that young children need to master in order to become effective lifelong mathematicians. When a young child begins counting, they count by rote, meaning they will be able to say the number names in order simply because they have remembered the words and the order they go in. From this starting point, children then need to begin to master five counting principles. You will find information about these principles and activities to support children to develop these skills in our ‘how to help at home’ document. Remembering the names of the principles and all of the research behind them is certainly not essential! The important part is understanding what the 5 different skills are and supporting your child to master each of them.
This week, we added a new card to our visual timetable…‘literacy’. Sometimes, our literacy activities will be more teacher directed, as we ask children to write certain letters, words and then sentences. However, this year, we are also teaching lots of our literacy through Drawing Club! Drawing Club was created by a practitioner called Greg Bottrill and it brings the magic of story into the classroom. It is a way to share skills including fine motor, maths, early writing, vocabulary and most importantly, imagination and excitement! Each week, we shall focus on a new quality text. We shall learn new and exciting vocabulary which links to the text, using actions to help children to remember the definitions. We shall draw characters, settings and invented adventures related to the story. Each time the children draw, they add a 'magic button'. To make the magic work, they have to add a secret written code. At the moment, these are single letter sounds, but we shall build to words and then sentences. This week, our Drawing Club book was ‘The Colour Monster’. Our focus vocabulary was ‘discombobulated’, ‘tranquil’, ‘sobbing’, ‘timid’ and ‘enraged’ – ‘discombobulated has been a particular favourite! We have drawn our own Colour Monsters and thought about what the Colour Monster might do at school! We have then labelled our drawing with a letter to be the magic code. We have had great fun and the children have been ever so keen to work in their literacy books.
To begin our PE lesson, we warmed up by travelling in different ways like Mr Slow, Mr Jelly, Miss Strong, Miss Bounce, Miss Hop, Miss Tall, Mr Small etc. We were then very excited to be using balloons in our PE lessons! We firstly played a game of Simon Says, placing the balloons on different parts of our bodies. We then practised moving the balloons from head to toe (and vice versa) and, as an even trickier challenge, moving it around our tummies, having to pop our hands behind our backs to reach. We then had fun patting the balloons in the air with both hands, one hand, walking around the room etc. Next week, we will use the balloons once again when practising throwing and catching – balloons fall more slowly, giving us more time to get ready to catch!
During Forest School, we went on a worm hunt! Mr Simmons also showed us how to make worms using nature; he had drilled holes into acorns that we could thread onto string. We had great fun!
In our PSED lesson with Mrs Harrison, we thought about our special people. We asked: Who are your special people that you like to spend time with, outside school? Does everyone have the same special people? We have different types of families and we have different people who are special to us, both inside and outside our family.
We also enjoyed a music lesson with Mrs Harrison. Our ‘Listen and Respond’ song was Sing by The Carpenters. We had fun finding the pulse and talking about the song. We continued to focus on the nursery rhymes Pat-A-Cake and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 whilst also adding ‘This Old Man’.
In our ‘understanding the world’ time, we read ‘Once There Were Giants’ by Martin Waddell. In the story, the main character grows up on each page, gaining new skills with the passage of time: sitting up, walking, talking, running, starting school. At the beginning of the story, she thinks the grown-ups are giants – we recognised that this was because she was a baby and the grown ups were so much taller than her! At the end of the story, she herself is a ‘giant’ when she has her own baby. After reading the book, we sequenced the images from the story, creating a timeline. Next week, we would love for the children to create timelines of their own lives, sequencing photos and talking about the similarities and differences between themselves as babies, toddlers, young children etc. It would be wonderful if you were able to email photographs of the children at different stages of their lives for us to sequence in school. Many thanks in advance.
In our RE lesson, we continued to think about how Christians believe that God made everybody and that we are all special and unique. We listened to the story ‘Happy in Our Skin’ by Fran Manushkin. We thought about our skin; everybody is different and God’s children are a rainbow of colours. We enjoyed using the Crayola ‘colours of the world’ pencils to draw ourselves and our friends.
Well, my goodness me, the children have accomplished such a lot this week! We are very proud of them. There is lots to look forward to in Week 5 of Reception, particularly as we start to learn about harvest. ‘The Little Red Hen’ is always a firm favourite, especially as it will involve some baking in the next couple of weeks!
Just a few notes about the upcoming week:
- I shall be out of school on Monday and so the children shall have a wonderful treat – an extra Forest School morning! Our Monday is going to look very much like a Wednesday – Forest School with Mr Simmons in the morning, and Mrs Harrison will be in the classroom in the afternoon. This should feel familiar for the children. I will miss them and look forward to seeing them on Tuesday!
- A reminder that Thursday is school photograph day – Reception shall be first to have their photographs taken!
- We will be taking the children for their first visit to St Oswald’s Church on Thursday; this will be a good opportunity to explore the church and talk to Reverend Sandi before our harvest service in the following week.
I wish you all a wonderful weekend and hoping that you manage to stay cosy in the autumn temperatures.
With many thanks,
Miss Witham
w/b 15th September 2025
It has once again been a joy and a delight to spend the week in Reception, observing the magic of new learning opportunities, some beautiful explorative play and many wonderful friendships blossoming. We are so proud of all of the children!
In phonics, the children were most excited to be introduced to our first single letter sounds, with the help of Fred the frog. On Monday, we looked at the last 5 pictures that correspond to the sounds so that, when we teach the sounds, the pictures which may have been otherwise unfamiliar (e.g. the v v vulture and the y y yak) are recognisable. From Tuesday to Friday, we introduced the following four sounds: m, a, s, d. In addition to recognising/reading these sounds, we have also practised writing them, in some small groups. Each sound has a handwriting phrase:
m – ‘down Maisy, mountain, mountain’
a – ‘around the apple, down the leaf’
s – ‘slither down the snake’
d – ‘around the dinosaur’s bottom, up his tall neck, down to his feet’
We were very careful to start in the correct place and keep our pencil stuck to the paper until we had formed the whole letter. We have been very impressed with our Reception phonics superstars! Links to videos for each sound, along with oral blending videos, can be found in this week’s ‘How to help at home’ document, as well as handwriting sheets for each sound if you would like to practise forming m, a, s, d at home. We are looking forward to sharing more information about early reading and writing in our parent meeting on Wednesday (24th September) at 3:15pm and again at 3:45pm.
This week, we also started our NCETM Mastering Number sessions. Our focus has been quantifying sets of objects by subitising (or, as we call it, speedy spotting), rather than counting. When subitising, children can say how many there are in a small group of objects by ‘just seeing’ and knowing straightaway without needing to count. More information about subitising can be found in this week’s ‘How to help at home’ document. This week, we have:
- Looked at a set of objects and shown the same number on our fingers
- Named quantities with number words, (e.g. “I can see 3.”)
- Matched sets to numerals
- Made our own arrangements that can be subitised
We have particularly focused on ‘speedy spotting’ groups of 1, 2 and 3 and have matched these sets with the corresponding numerals and Numicon shapes.
For our first activity in our literacy book, I have thoroughly enjoyed time spent with the children as they have drawn their families and talked all about their loved ones.
On Monday afternoon, it was time for PE, and we were very impressed with how well the children had remembered the PE routines. We practised travelling around the hall in different ways (e.g. tiptoeing, slow motion walking, skipping, jumping, galloping, crawling), moving into big spaces and freezing when we heard the tambourine. We especially enjoyed a game of ‘cars’ using cones as steering wheels. We were able to ‘drive the car’ (running into big spaces), ‘brake’ (freezing on the spot), ‘beep the horn’ (jumping up and down in place) and ‘park the car’ when it was time for a cool down.
On Wednesday morning, Mr Simmons felt the rain reached the point of being too heavy for a session outside so he brought Forest School to the classroom! The children thoroughly enjoying using natural treasures and clay to make self-portraits. We had acorns for eyes, sticks for mouths and leaves for hair as just some examples. It was great fun!
Due to some visitors coming to see just how truly wonderful our Reception class are on Thursday afternoon, we had a little swap of the timetable for this week; Mrs Harrison was in the classroom on Wednesday afternoon. Whilst I was out of class all day on Wednesday, the children had such fun with their Forest School, music and PSED sessions! In the PSED session, the children thought about what makes them special. They talked about their favourite books, activities, places etc. Mrs Harrison asked: Did we all have the same things as our favourite thing? We are all different - sometimes we like the same things as each other and sometimes different things. This makes us special.
In music, our ‘listen and respond’ song was ‘Happy’ by Pharell Williams – such fun! We practised finding the pulse in different ways, played copycat rhythm games and high and low (pitch) games. We then focused on singing ‘Pat-A-Cake’ and ‘1,2,3,4,5’.
Our RE lesson was a beautiful end to our week as we thought about how special we all are. We recapped last week’s conversation around the story of Creation and thought about the fact that God made people. Christians believe that God made each one of us the same but different; we are unique! The Bible tells us that we are made in the image of God, he knows everything about us and he loves us. We listened to a beautiful book, ‘When God Made You’ by Matthew Paul Turner. We then tried to guess how many hairs are on our heads. Miss Witham even tried to count the hairs on her head – it was much too tricky! Christians believe that God even knows how many hairs are on our heads! As we left the carpet, we were each invited to have a look inside a box. Inside the box was a picture of somebody that God thinks is very special and He loves very much. I wonder if the children could tell you who was inside? In the provision, we loved working together to make a heart of fingerprints, thinking about how each fingerprint in our class community is unique. It was a lovely way to end our week!
Of course, we have spent most of our time in the provision, with some favourite activities including: making mountains, snipping snakes, dotting a d, a playdough bakery, drawing our special people, using our speedy spotting skills to play dominoes, loose parts patterns, Orchard Toy games, listening to stories on the Yoto player, obstacle courses, cooking in the nature kitchen, creating dinosaur worlds and much more!
Goodness me, what a lot of learning has taken place in Reception this week! It has been such fun and next week will certainly bring more brilliant learning and many exciting activities. I must congratulate the children on completing another full week and being such superstars. As we approach the middle of our first half term, we are aware that the children still have lots to absorb within the busy school week and have no doubt that they continue to be very tired once they get home. Please rest assured that we are continuing our gradual build-up of the timetable and are here to gently and warmly support the children. They are doing ever so well and we are so very proud of each and every one of them. Enjoy a lovely rest and we shall very much look forward to beginning a new week on Monday.
With best wishes,
Miss Witham
w/b 8th September 2025
Congratulations to our wonderful Reception children on completing their first full week of school, and what a fantastic week it has been. Mrs Mayson, Mrs Downing and I have been delighted with how well the children have settled into the routine of the school day with confidence and we have thoroughly enjoyed spending more time getting to know each and every child. We can hardly believe the children have only been in school for a week and a half; they are superstars!
The children are great at referring to our visual timetable to recognise the sequence of the day and then turning over each activity once it is completed. This week, we were most intrigued to find a new visual timetable card…’phonics’. On Tuesday, we were introduced to Miss Witham’s friend Fred the Frog who can only talk in ‘Fred Talk’. We thought that this was rather funny! He has helped us to play some Fred games such as ‘Fred says’ and ‘Fred spies’. Fred used his ‘Fred talk’ (e.g. “tap your h – ea – d”; “Fred spies a p – e – g”) and then we blended for him by saying the full words (e.g. head, peg). Fred also introduced us to our Read Write Inc. silent signals: ‘Team stop’, ‘My turn Your turn’, and ‘Turn to your partner’. We have been practising these signals and are now experts; embedding these routines will help our phonics sessions to run speedily and smoothly throughout the year. We have also been introduced to 20 out of the 25 pictures that correspond to the 25 single letter sounds (5 more to look at on Monday). This will help us when we introduce the single letter sounds over this term e.g. we will recognise the ‘dinosaur’ picture when we teach ‘d’ and learn to associate the two. I can tell that we are going to be phonics experts! Fred will help us next week as we begin more formal, whilst remaining short and fun, phonics sessions, focusing on a new sound each day. We hope to see many of you at our Early Reading and Phonics meeting on Wednesday 24th September (3:15pm and 3:45pm). This will be a good opportunity to find out all about how we teach early reading and writing at Brereton and how best to support your child at home.
We have also noticed a ‘maths’ card on our timetable this week. This week, this has involved lots of number songs (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, once I caught a fish alive; five little speckled frogs; five little ducks) and counting stories (e.g. Ten Little Dinosaurs). Having some scheduled maths time this week will help us to settle into some short maths lessons from next week as we begin our NCETM Mastering Number journey – a session that is always popular!
We enjoyed spending Monday morning with Mrs Taylor, with a story time looking at the book ‘You Choose’ and plenty of time for playing in the provision. On Monday afternoon, we were most excited for our first PE lesson. The first PE session of the year always involves lots of time finding out how to get to the hall, how we sit when we arrive in the hall, how to travel safely around the space, making sure you stand in a big space etc. There is so much to learn when you start Reception! We practised moving around the hall in different ways based on feelings, thinking about how would we move if we were happy, grumpy, sad etc. We practised freezing when we heard the tambourine! We also used cones, ‘sticking’ different body parts to the cones before travelling over and around the cone in different ways.
On Wednesday, it was time for our Forest School morning with Mr Simmons as we popped on our waterproofs and wellies with enthusiasm. The children thoroughly enjoyed exploring the Forest School environment and the seasonal changes that autumn brings. Some of the children also spent some time making fairy gardens for the fairies who live in our Reception outdoor area!
To begin our music time with Mrs Harrison we listened to and enjoyed ‘Celebration’ by Kool & The Gang, moving to the music and thinking about how the music made us feel. We focused on the nursery rhyme ‘Pat a cake’, singing it and finding the pulse by marching, jumping, tapping etc. We clapped the rhythms of our names and the names of our friends. Finally, we played a game where we identified which sound was high and which was low.
Our first PSED (Personal Social and Emotional Development) with Mrs Harrison was ‘All About Me’! We read an ‘All About Me’ book about Harold the giraffe, including his likes and dislikes. We have enjoyed sharing our favourite things as we explored things that make us the same and things that make us different, noticing how wonderful it is that we are all unique.
This afternoon, we had our very first RE lesson, beginning our ‘Why are we all different and special?’ To begin, the children shared what they already know about Christianity and God. We then looked at a Bible and listened to the story of Creation, introducing the Christian teaching that God made the world and everything in it, for us to enjoy and share. Christians believe that God made each one of us the same but different and He loves us all. We are unique and special.
This week, we have also been completing some baseline activities. We have all painted self-portraits will now be proudly displayed in the classroom. The children used mirrors to help them to draw and then paint their faces, and these look just beautiful. We also completed a baseline of name writing and pencil grip and, on Wednesday morning, I began the government baseline assessments. The children were very excited to complete this ‘special job’!
Our ‘book change’ routine has continued this week. It will be a little while before the children will bring home decodable books, so the children are currently choosing from our ‘Reading for Pleasure’ books; books to share with a grown up at home. We will collect in books and diaries on a Thursday and the new book will be sent home on a Friday. This is our book change system throughout KS1 so it will be useful to establish this routine now, ready for receiving our decodable books later in the year. I shall explain more about the book changing routine in the meeting on Wednesday 24th September.
Routines such as breaktimes, using the toilets, lining up, register etc. continue to be absorbed with confidence. We have enjoyed our yummy lunches this week in the hall and are already experts at the lunchtime routine. It was also super to rejoin the school for today’s celebration assembly and the children listened so very well. A new routine that we introduced this week was our carousel of ‘morning jobs’. These are some calm, soft start activities that the children will rotate around throughout the week, allowing them to access everything by the end of the week. This routine enables us to start our day in a calm, positive manner as well as working on lots of skills such as fine motor dexterity and strength. The children have been so impressive in the mornings as they unpack their things with more independence before finding their group and settling to an activity.
Of course, we have also enjoyed lots of choosing time with all of our friends. The photos below show the fun that was enjoyed by all and just a snippet of the purposeful, focused, exciting play that all adults in Reception have delighted in sharing and observing.
Phew, what a busy week! I am sure that the children will be feeling very sleepy. Many children chose to have some well-deserved rest time this afternoon! Despite this being the children’s first full, tiring week, they have just been absolutely delightful and Mrs Downing, Mrs Mayson and I are so proud of each and every one of them. It has been a week full of fun and learning so, whilst I hope that the children have lots of stories to share about their exciting week, I am sure that they must be ready for a good sleep!
Reception, we are so proud of you all. We hope you have a lovely, restful weekend and look forward to the excitement that next week will bring.
With many thanks and best wishes,
Miss Witham
Our first week in Reception
It has been a complete and utter delight to welcome our wonderful Reception class to Brereton Primary School. We are so proud of how confidently the children have settled into routines and how beautifully they have played together as wonderful friendships begin to blossom. It has been a truly wonderful week.
This week, our focus has been ensuring that the children feel settled and secure at school. We have therefore allowed lots of time for children to explore their environment and choose their own activities, demonstrating their interests and things they enjoy doing at home. We have concentrated on establishing routines, including:
- Putting our things away in the morning. Next week, we will start to introduce ‘soft start’ early morning activities.
- Taking the register, including choosing our snack. Next week, we will order lunch!
- Using the bathrooms and washing our hands properly before eating. The children know that they can access the toilets and their water bottles at any time. We have then enjoyed sitting in a circle for ‘snack and chat’ and it has been so lovely to listen in to some of the conversations between the children during this time.
- Our class are amazing at tidying up! We have learnt to “choose it, use it, put it away” and our classroom is still looking beautiful on a Friday afternoon – such an achievement thanks to such helpful children.
- Collecting all of our things for home time, including how best to pack our things away so that we can easily carry them!
Wow, what a lot of new information to learn! I am sure you can understand why we are therefore so very impressed with how quickly and confidently these routines have been absorbed. This is absolutely fantastic and will set us up wonderfully for a great year with lots of familiar routine and smooth transitions.
This week, we have spent lots of time getting to know the areas of the classroom in order to understand the continuous provision which will be here all year. This familiarity will allow us to soon enhance the areas.
When the playground was empty, we also enjoyed practicing for playtime this morning on the playground and learning the boundary for this area. We will be ready for lunchtime play on this small area of the playground beginning next week.
Yesterday, we were so very excited to have our first Forest School session with Mr Simmons. This session was a chance to explore our Forest School environment and start to learn the rules and routines of Forest School. The children impressed us as they tried to be as independent as possible when putting on their outdoor clothes and wellies. Please do ensure that wellies/school shoes/waterproofs are clearly labelled. It would also be useful to help your child practise putting their own coat on. We will, of course, always help them but will be encouraging children to have a go independently – a great skill to learn. We love this trick for anybody finding it a bit tricky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3F7x2ad5upI Children are welcome to leave wellies on the welly stand and waterproofs in their trays/on their pegs.
Our week concluded with a celebration assembly. The rest of the school thoroughly enjoyed the chance to welcome the new cohort!
At the end of the week, the children also received their reading diaries and borrowed their first library book. During the parent meeting on Wednesday 24th September, I shall share lots of information about early reading and phonics, including our systems for taking home reading books and recording in the reading diaries. For this half term, we ask that the children bring their diary and library book back to school each Thursday, where it shall stay overnight to allow time for checking and changing books. The children will then borrow a new book from the library each Friday; we do not expect the children to read these books themselves as they are intended to be books to share with their grown-ups. You are more than welcome to begin to use the diary to record any comments about how your child enjoyed their library books and any other favourite books they have enjoyed at home each week. There will be lots more information to follow in the Early Reading and Phonics meeting.
It has been an exciting and busy week and I am sure that the children were very tired this afternoon. They have done ever so well and have certainly earned a rest! Next week, the children will begin full days in school and so will finish at 3pm. This week is usually the hardest for the children and they often become very tired and more emotional, and perhaps having a bit of a regression with things like sleep and toileting. Please be assured that we will be taking things easy and having time for quiet moments with cushions and blankets if needed. If you feel that your child would benefit from a more staggered transition, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Next week promises lots more fun and some activities to complete together, beginning with painting portraits to display in our classroom. We will also begin our baseline activities, showing us children’s existing knowledge of number, letters, sounds and language as well as their fine motor skills, including pencil grip. This will help us to plan our work going forwards so that we can best support all of the children. We will then be able to begin teaching sounds in phonics sessions in the following week (week 3).
As you can see from the timetable, each Monday shall be our PE slot in the hall. Every Wednesday, we shall enjoy a whole morning of Forest School with Mr Simmons, Mrs Mayson and Mrs Downing. I shall also be out of class each Thursday afternoon; during this time, the children will have a lovely PSED session and some exciting music time with Mrs Harrison. She has already popped in to meet us all this week and had a lovely time choosing with the children.
I wanted to also let you know that I shall not be in school on Monday – I am very disappointed to miss a day of fun with Reception! As I am out of school on a course, you will see two other smiley faces on Monday. Lovely Mrs Taylor shall be in class on Monday morning and lovely Mrs Harrison, who we shall soon see each week, will be in class on Monday afternoon – a bonus afternoon of Reception fun for her to enjoy! I shall include photos of Mrs Taylor and Mrs Harrison below. Mrs Mayson and Mrs Downing shall be familiar faces in class and I will really look forward to hearing all about the wonderful first full day.
If you have any further queries, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. At the moment, this would be best via email (earlyyears@breretonprimary.org.uk) or a chat at the door. We must thank you ever so much for your patience as we get set up with our new system, Compass. We predict that the messaging feature will be active by the 15th September.
Mrs Mayson, Mrs Downing and I have thoroughly enjoyed our first week and we look forward to watching the children flourish together as the year progresses. How lucky we are to be spending the year with such wonderful children! I hope that you enjoy lovely weekend with lots of rest!) and we shall look forward to seeing you all next week.
With many thanks and best wishes,
Miss Witham
Mrs Harrison
Mrs Taylor
2024 - 2025
Our final week in Reception
The time has come to say goodbye to such a lovely Reception class. It has been a joy and a privilege to have taught your truly wonderful children this year. It is the most magical job in the world and I feel very lucky to have spent each and every day playing, laughing and learning with each and every child. We are so very proud of our Reception class who really have flourished. Just like our butterflies, they are most certainly ready to soar in Year One, where new learning and adventures await.
We are also extremely grateful for all of your support this year; I have thoroughly enjoyed working together in partnership with you all in your child’s first year of school.
We have had such fun together over the last week (and all year!) and we hope that you enjoy the photographs below, most especially our ‘last week’ photos and Forest School day photos.
I hope that you all have a lovely, fun and restful summer break. I am already looking forward to seeing the children in September where we will welcome them back as Year Ones.
With love and thanks,
Miss Witham
w/b 7th July 2025
w/b 30th June 2025
w/b 23rd June 2025
It has been a week of growth in Reception, as we have harvested strawberries, observed the next stage of our butterfly life cycle and grown in sporting skill. It has felt like the Brereton Olympics as we prepared with enthusiasm and determination for Sports Day and what a truly brilliant afternoon it was! We were very lucky with the beautiful sunshine and we were so grateful to see so many of our family members who came along to support us. Thank you ever so much for your encouragement and perhaps even participation for any who chose to join the parent races! Reception all feel so proud of their speedy running, careful balancing, accurate throwing and long jumps which made it appear that they had springs in their feet! It is a long time to focus in the heat, with a lot of events to participate in and often a little overwhelming with such a large audience so we equally feel proud of our resilience and determination. Each child participated in each event and Mrs Mayson and I loved listening to the children supporting each other. A truly wonderful first Sports Day!
On Monday, we spent lots of time observing and discussing our chrysalises – a change from the caterpillars that we had left at school on Friday! We watched the videos of the caterpillar skin splitting and then the chrysalis spinning round as it attached to the lid. It was then time to move the chrysalises into the butterfly net. Mrs Mayson pulled the lid off the pot and Miss Witham used a cotton bud to remove any webs, spun by the caterpillars, that surround the chrysalises. This is so that, when the butterfly emerges from the chrysalis, it does not become entangled in the webs and damage its wings. The chrysalis shook rather a lot, a clever deterrent for any potential predators. In the heat, some of our chrysalises had dropped off the lid but our non-fiction book advised us not to worry! Miss Witham followed the advice and moved these chrysalises with a spoon to rest on a paper towel in the enclosure. And now we wait! Throughout the week, the children’s writing, drawings and crafts have been inspired by our soon to be butterflies. We can’t wait for them to emerge.
We were thrilled to notice that a handful of our strawberries were ripe and the children were so keen to harvest them. After washing the strawberries, we each enjoyed (just a piece!) of the first fruits that we have grown ourselves. We have also spied our first tomatoes; our squash are getting bigger; our pumpkins have flowers; and we have some broad beans ready to harvest. The children are very knowledgeable gardeners!
It has been an excellent week of phonics and guided reading. Mrs Mayson, Mrs Marshfield, Mrs Coles and I have been delighted with the super sentence writing and sound knowledge that the children have demonstrated. We have also observed such fluency, speed and superb comprehension when reading this week.
In maths, we have been consolidating our knowledge and assessing the following Early Learning Goal: Have a deep understanding of number to 10, including the composition of each number. We have demonstrated our understanding and recall of number bonds of 10 (e.g. 7 + 3, 1 + 9). We have also demonstrated our ability to see the ‘numbers within’ numbers for all of the numbers within 10. For example, ‘seeing the 5’ in numbers (5 needs 2 to make 7, 5 needs 4 to make 9 etc.). The rekenreks were useful tools to demonstrate this knowledge. We have also showed understanding of the magnitude of numbers to 10, playing games to support a growing understanding of the relationships between numbers, recognising quantities that are fewer than, more than or equal to other numbers within 10.
In our literacy time, we have been thinking about the story ‘The Extraordinary Gardener’. We considered what we would like to grow in an extraordinary garden. Suggestions included a chicken nugget tree, a colouring pencils plant and a flower made of chocolate! We drew our ideas and accompanied them with the sentence ‘This is my…’.
In RE, we were learning about Pentecost, the birthday of the church. Pentecost is an important festival for Christians that celebrates the time the Holy Spirit descended to the 12 disciples of Jesus. Christians believe that the Holy Spirit blessed them with the ability to speak different languages. This meant they could spread the word of the Lord to 3000 people in one day! This is why it is believed to be the start of the Christian church. In the provision, the children made windmills and headbands to represent the tongue of fire, celebrating the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Our music lesson was once again inspired by ‘The Tiny Seed’ by Eric Carle. We learnt the following song to the tune of ‘I’m a little Teapot’:
I’m a little seed
So small and brown
Get some soil
And press me down.
With some sun and water
I will grow
Up into the world I go!
We added movement and actions to the song and then added percussion instruments. We explored making quiet /loud sounds and slow/quick sounds as well as different ways of producing sounds (tapping, scraping, shaking etc.). We then watched a time lapse of seeds growing and composed some ‘growing’ music to play alongside the clip.
In PSED, we were thinking about human life cycles as we read ‘Once There Were Giants’. We answered questions about the story and discussed the changes that we noticed on each page as the girl grew up. We then recapped the different stages of life in this story and connected them to the stages of the human life cycle.
We have also been continuing to think about seaside holidays in the past. This week, we especially focused on bathing machines, Punch and Judy shows and donkey rides. In the provision, children especially enjoyed making their own puppets and acting out their own Punch and Judy shows!
Wow, what a busy and exciting week! Reception have worked ever so hard and were understandably very tired by this afternoon, with many of us choosing to rest during provision time. I hope that this rest and relaxation continues for all over the weekend as we enjoy some more sunshine.
With huge thanks for your continued wonderful support,
Miss Witham
w/b 16th June 2025
A week of glorious weather and glorious fun in Reception! The summer season is affording us so many learning opportunities, and we are most especially adoring learning linked to our caterpillars and growing our plants.
In phonics, we have been wowing our phonics teachers with our ability to ‘Hold a sentence’, writing sentences linked to the books that we are reading. Thank you for your continued support with practising sounds and reading the books at home.
In maths, we have been consolidating our knowledge and assessing the following Early Learning Goal: Explore and represent patterns within numbers up to 10, including evens and odds, double facts and how quantities can be distributed equally. We know that, when we can split numbers into 2 groups that each have an equal amount, these 2 equal groups make a double e.g. 2 equal groups of 3…double 3 is 6 altogether. We know double 1 is 2, double 2 is 4, double 3 is 6, double 4 is 8 and double 5 is 10. We have represented these doubles on our fingers, with counters, on a tens frame and on a rekenrek. We also understand that double patterns are even; they have ‘flat tops’ because they are made of 2 equal groups. Odd numbers cannot be split into 2 equal groups; they’re not doubles, they have an ‘odd block’/’odd one out’.
In literacy, we at last read the whole story ‘The Extraordinary Gardner’ by Sam Boughton. After talking through the story and discussing the vocabulary, we wrote sentences to describe Joe’s garden. We used the sentence starter ‘I can see…’. We then completed a ‘silly sentence’ challenge as an assessment. We had some funny pictures to look at and we were very motivated to independently compose, recall and record a sentence, such as ‘The pig is in the bath.’ ‘The fish can run.’ ‘The sheep is pink.’ Brilliant sentence work, Reception!
In Forest School, we enjoyed hunting for wildflowers and naming them with the support of Mr Simmons.
Our music lesson was inspired by the story ‘The Tiny Seed’ by Eric Carle. We thought about things that grow, where they come from and what they need to grow. We had lots of gardening experience to talk about! We then pretended to be seeds that grow, acting out starting off like a small seed on the floor and growing until we were stretched up on tiptoes pointing at the sky. We sang the notes C C D D E E F F G G A A B B C using the words Grow-ing grow-ing get-ting tal-ler up and up and up I go. We grew with the upward movement of the notes. Mrs Pirie sang a mixture of high and low sounds/pitches to ‘la’ for the children to copy and identify if they were high/low. Mrs Pirie also played some high and low notes on a glockenspiel and a recorder. We listened to ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ which starts off low (and quiet) and gets high (and loud). At the start, the seed is in the ground, beginning to slowly grow and gradually grows roots, spreading upwards more quickly and waving in the wind. We moved to the music to match the pitch (high/low) and tempo (speed).
Our Reception historians have continued to think about seaside holidays throughout time. This week, we learnt that going to the seaside on holiday hasn’t always been something that people have done. Before cars, trains and aeroplanes were invented, it was very difficult for people to travel as it took a long time for them to get to places using horses and carriages. Most people couldn’t afford to do this so, a long time ago, it was only very rich people who went to the seaside. About 150 years ago, there was an invention that changed this. The steam train made it possible for lots of people to travel to the seaside. It was quick and cheap. As the steam train became more popular, more and more people starting going to the seaside for day trips, weekends or holidays. Going to the seaside became a British tradition and people looked forward to enjoying the fresh air, the sand and the sea which were thought to be good for your health. The children showed an excellent understanding and asked thoughtful questions. We enjoyed making a seaside with our small world resources and created a train track for our steam train to transport people to our seaside.
As we continue to practise athletics skills during PE time, this week it was time to prepare to demonstrate these skills on Sports Day. We practised sprinting, relay, and egg and spoon. We were very grateful for the help of our friends in Year 4 and Year 6 and we loved supporting each other and cheering for all of the children. We will continue to practise next week, most especially the logistics of the relay race!
To end our Friday, we enjoyed a story and a song in the sunshine. I hope that we may still see some sunshine this weekend! I am very much looking forward to Monday as I know that lots of children will be eager for a caterpillar/chrysalis update on Monday morning!
With many thanks,
Miss Witham
w/b 9th June 2025
Whilst the weather definitely has not felt like it is mid-June, I can most certainly tell that we are in Summer 2 from Reception’s confidence, independence and wonderful attitudes to learning. They are rising to the challenge of each structured input and activity and are accessing the provision with such purpose and creativity. A joy to observe!
Phonics and guided reading continues to progress beautifully; thank you for all of your support with practising red words and listening to your child read their Read Write Inc. books at home.
In maths, we have been consolidating our knowledge and assessing the following Early Learning Goal: Automatically recall number bonds up to 5. We have enjoyed using 5 Little Speckled Frogs, Numicon shapes, Numberblocks, 5 frames, die frames and rekenreks to support our learning. One of the best ways to assess this skill with your child at home involves a ‘hiding game’. Choose 5 objects (e.g. 5 buttons, 5 pegs, 5 cars, 5 pasta shapes). Ask your child to close their eyes. Hide some of the objects under a blanket (e.g. hide 2 buttons). When your child opens their eyes, they will see the remaining objects (3 buttons). Can they tell you how many must be hiding? If they can, they automatically know this bond. Although the game itself has resources involved, the child isn’t using the resources to know the bond – they do not need to look and count the two buttons, they are using their knowledge that 3 needs 2 to make 5, so 2 buttons must be hidden. It would be very beneficial to practise this at home. We would love to see any photographs of you playing at home!
In literacy, our first writing task of the week involved recounting our wonderful visit from the lambs. Mrs Mitchell was keen to find out more about the visit; we answered her questions and each wrote her a sentence to tell her more about Daisy and Peach. This week, we also finally revealed our literacy text for this half term: ‘The Extraordinary Gardner’ by Sam Boughton. We began by only reading half of the book! We paused at the point where Joe had planted a seed but nothing had happened; he was ever so disappointed. We hot seated ‘Joe’, with some children volunteering to act as this character. We asked him some questions, ending with how he was feeling when he had planted the seed but nothing happened. We therefore decided to write cards to cheer him up and encourage him.
On Monday, an extremely exciting parcel arrived…caterpillars! We have explored all of the equipment we will use as we watch them grow. We have also enjoyed reading a non-fiction book about Painted Lady butterflies as we found out more about the life cycle that we will observe over the next few weeks. We are very much looking forward to watching our Painted Lady butterflies emerge. Below are some links to find out more about how we will look after our butterflies.
- Setting up your Chrysalis Station: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Prw99oojY0
- Caring for your Chrysalis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcwOzy72vcM
- Feeding your Butterflies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wup0WdPnDOc
- Releasing your Butterflies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_ImYSNCqBs
In Forest School, Mr Simmons talked to us about the importance of looking after nature and avoiding picking the flowers in Forest School, as tempting as it may be! He also talked about safety, for example, talking to us about foxgloves. We then focused on identifying flowers and Mr Simmons was impressed with our knowledge as we named the flowers.
We continued to be historians this week, thinking about seaside holidays throughout time. We explored looked at photos of modern seaside holidays and photos of seaside holidays from a long time ago; we identified which photo was which and explained how we knew. We noticed clothes that people were wearing, hairstyles, modes of transport etc. We then looked at several photos to find clues about what seaside holidays were like in the past. We noticed that, in the past, people often wore swimwear that covered most of their body when swimming in the sea. In Victorian times, they could also change in small, rented huts, called bathing machines. We noticed lots of deck chairs in the photographs from the past, rather than lying on towels. We also spotted several donkeys on the beach in the photos from the past. We can’t wait to find out more over the next few weeks.
We did not do our athletics PE today as our nonuniform footwear may have not been the safest for athletics and races so we instead had another gross motor session outside. In the classroom, children were keen to learn the Makaton signs for ‘Happy Father’s Day’ and many children chose to independently make cards during provision time.
Reception have been ever so welcoming to the adults who have been in class throughout the week, and we have all enjoyed spending time with them. Next week looks to be a little less busy; I know some children have found it helpful to know the plan in advance, so I will once again share the days that I will be out of class. I will not be with the class on Monday morning, together with Mrs Mayson as our new starters shall be visiting. Reception will be in Forest School as usual, with Mr Simmons and Mrs Mitchell. I shall also be out of class on Thursday morning and Friday morning.
I hope that you all have a lovely weekend and here’s hoping that more of this sunshine is on the way.
With many thanks,
Miss Witham
w/b 2nd June 2025
A warm welcome back for the final half term of our very first year of school. It has been such a wonderful week and we have had so much fun together. It is a joyful collection of photos indeed!
This half term, our learning is inspired by the story ‘The Extraordinary Gardener’ by Sam Boughton. The book itself hasn’t yet been revealed to the children (although we are very excited to discover our focus text on Tuesday) as this week has been an opportunity to spark excitement and curiosity about our focus. We have therefore spent much of our week (wherever we had a break in the rain) gardening. We have been delighted by the growth of our plants; our beans are much taller, our squash are flowering, we have spied our first tomato flowers and we have lots of strawberries just waiting to ripen. At the end of our Reception year, we hope to have lots of delicious fruits and vegetables to enjoy eating! We have also each planted a sunflower seed this week. We are going to give these as a gift to our new starters with love from Reception class, welcoming them to our school.
In maths, we were most excited to be introduced to a key piece of equipment which is used lots in Year One: a rekenrek. This looks a little bit like an abacus – two rows of 10 beads. On each row, 5 of the beads are red and 5 of the beads are white. This links well with the subitising (speedy spotting) skills which we have established throughout the year. After discussing what we noticed about the rekenrek, we practised moving different quantities of beads. To aid our mathematical fluency, we encourage children to move beads with ‘one push’ i.e. moving 4 beads at once rather than individually sliding across 1, 2, 3, 4. We then spent time focusing on the top row of the rekenrek – 10 beads. This half term, we will use the rekenrek to help to review our knowledge and skills – making doubles, showing bonds of 10, adding and subtracting etc.
Phonics lessons continued like we have never been away – the children delighted their phonics teachers with their independence and focus. Guided reading sessions have also been such a pleasure. At this stage of the year, the world of reading is beginning to become ‘unlocked’ to the children and the joy that this inspires is a special thing to observe.
On Thursday, it was Reception’s turn to visit St Oswald’s Church. We were very lucky with the weather and managed a mostly dry walk both to and from church. We were delighted to see Reverend Sandi and enjoyed helping her with the service. Our service focused on kindness and we thought about the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The children remembered this story from our RE unit ‘Stories Jesus Told’ and had brilliant answers to share. Thank you, Reverend Sandi.
This week, we enjoyed our half termly No Outsiders session. Our book was ‘The Perfect Fit’ by Naomi Jones and James Jones as we asked: How do I fit in? In this story, Triangle doesn’t feel like she fits with the other shapes e.g. she can’t roll like a circle or stack like a square. She eventually finds other triangles and enjoys playing games together. Whilst it is great fun to play with shapes who are exactly the same, she realises that she misses the games she played with the other shapes, such as balancing the seesaw for the rectangles. By the end of the story, all of the shapes have fun playing and working together. In provision time, children drew pictures using each of the different shapes and showing how each of the shapes can join in.
Our focus in athletics this week was jumping. We practised our hopping skills, jumping skills, long jumps and hurdles. We especially enjoyed jumping as far as we could, using cones to measure (and try to beat) our own records. We also had great fun learning the best technique for tackling the hurdles! Super work, Reception.
In our PSED lesson with Mrs Field, we have been thinking about cycles – how things go round and round. We thought about the cycle of the seasons, and the changes that each season brings. Seasons create a cycle throughout the year and this happens because sometimes the earth tips towards the sun, so we're a bit nearer to the sun. This means we get warmer weather and things grow better. Gradually the earth tips the other way, so it's a bit further away from the sun. Then the weather gets colder and things like plants die or don’t grow very much, if at all. That's why we have different seasons.
This half term, we will be historians as we think about seaside holidays throughout time. This week, we shared our experiences of holidays. We discussed the main school holidays that we have and the seasons in which they take place – Christmas holidays (winter), Easter holidays (spring) and Summer holidays (summer). We learnt that the word holiday comes from the words ‘holy day’ and that a very long time ago, most holidays were based around religious festivals. Today, we have holidays to rest and take a break from working so we can spend time with our families and do the things we enjoy doing. We shared our experiences of the seaside, thinking about features of modern seaside holidays.
The highlight of our week was most certainly the visit from the lambs! We are ever so grateful to the Pace family for bringing the lambs to visit us and sharing their knowledge and expertise. The lambs were 8 weeks old and were named Daisy and Peach. We helped to make milk by whisking the milk powder into warm water. We were then thrilled to be able to feed the lambs; they were very hungry! The children were ever so gentle when stroking the lambs and it was magical to see the joy on their faces. We talked lots about how we could keep ourselves safe and make sure that the lambs felt comfortable. We particularly focused on hand hygiene and keeping our hands away from our mouths etc. Mrs Mayson and I supervised thorough hand washing as soon as we were back in the classroom. What a wonderful way to end our week! Thank you ever so much to Mr and Mrs Pace and, of course, Daisy and Peach!
Finally, I just wanted to make you aware that I will be out of the classroom lots next week so you will not see me at drop off until Friday morning; Mrs Mitchell will be in the classroom with Mrs Mayson. I will be in each afternoon apart from Wednesday afternoon, when Mrs Field shall be covering once again. Whilst I will be out of the classroom at various points this half term due to new starter home visits/preschool visits/stay and play sessions among other school commitments, next week certainly seems to be the busiest week and things should return to normal for Week 3. Thank you so much for your understanding.
Wow Reception, you have worked very hard this week! I can already tell that this is going to be such a super half term. I hope that you all have a lovely weekend and I shall look forward to seeing you all on Monday afternoon, when our caterpillars should arrive!
With many thanks,
Miss Witham
w/b 19th May 2025
One small step for man, one giant leap for Reception! Wow, what a fantastic Space Day we all enjoyed! Our activities included:
- Making rocket straws – the children designed, drew and cut out a small picture of a rocket. They then attached their rocket to a thick straw. They selected a thinner straw which would slot inside the thicker straw. When they blew through the thin straw, the rocket straw flew off, making it look like a zooming rocket! We enjoyed experimenting with ways to make our rockets travel further.
- Making rocket fruit kebabs – the children selected a variety of fruit and chopped up the fruit into different shapes, using butter knives and under very close supervision. We all chose a shape to represent the top of the rocket and some children also chose to make repeating patterns with their fruit. It was great to see the children selecting a variety of fruit and they all enjoyed eating their kebabs at snack time. The children impressed us with their fine motor skills as they did all of the cutting themselves (although I did slice the grapes another time before we ate them, just to be extra safe!).
- Wax resistant artwork – with wax crayons, we drew space pictures, including planets from our solar system. We made sure to colour each object solidly. As wax is water resistant, we could then paint over the top of our pictures with a black watercolour wash, creating very effective solar system artwork.
- Making ‘asteroid’ rock buns – in Reception, we like to bake each half term and, this week, we made rock buns. We especially enjoyed rubbing the butter into the dry ingredients with our fingers!
- Fizzing planets experiment – this was a fun science experiment to observe the reaction between baking soda and vinegar. We first created a paste from baking soda and vinegar. Next, we added food colouring and shaped the paste into a ball to make it look like a planet. Finally, we used pipettes to gradually add vinegar to the ‘planet’. The children simply delighted in observing the fizzing and bubbling reactions. This fun continued into the provision.
- To end our space day, we enjoyed an astronaut picnic. Everybody tried an asteroid bun and they were a hit – well done, Reception bakers! We also thought about the fact that, as space missions got longer, astronauts needed to find ways to take food that would last a long time without going off. As a result, they take lots of tinned and dried food. We thought about how quickly a peach and a banana would go off. However, tinned peaches and dried banana slices last much longer! We also thought about ice cream and how it wouldn’t be very practical to take on a space mission. This led us to looking at freeze dried ice cream! We all tried some, just like astronauts.
Wow, what an unforgettable day it was! Thank you ever so much for your support with our Space Day; we are so very grateful.
Another space related highlight of the week was our trip to Jodrell Bank! We hope that you enjoyed reading the blog below and sharing lots of photos from our trip. Our writing session was inspired by our trip as we focused on writing recount sentences. We each wrote a sentence about our favourite part of the trip; the Space Dome show had been especially popular. I treated this as an assessment activity, and so the children composed, recalled and recorded their sentence with total independence. We were impressed with the children’s ability to retain their sentence and use of sentence features. Well done, Reception!
This week, it was once again time for our half termly reading assessment. It is always a delight to spend this time with the children, celebrating their reading progress. New books shall come home after half term; for half term reading, I have sent home double the books as it will be two weeks before they are changed. This selection includes a non-fiction book. Wherever possible, please do practise reading these books with your child, as well as practising red words and sounds. It will really help them to ‘hit the ground running’ with their new books after half term.
In our maths lessons, we have been thinking about the number line to 10. We have been developing a deeper understanding of the magnitude of numbers and where numbers to 10 are in relation to each other. We have thought about more and less, considered numbers that are far apart, near and next to each other (e.g. 10 is a lot more than 2 but 5 is only 1 more than 4), as well as using language such as before, after and between to describe the position of numbers in relation to others. We enjoyed using a die to roll a number and then completing this number of jumps along the number line, until we reached 10. This involved lots of addition skills. Marvellous mathematicians, indeed!
In Forest School, Mr Simmons was inspired by the children’s recent fascination with transporting water. He therefore taught us all about aqueducts and we enjoyed constructing and using these in Forest School. Brilliant fun!
On Monday afternoon, Mrs Taylor’s son Jack visited us to teach a dance lesson. He was very impressed with the dance skills that the children have been practising over the half term! The children followed the instructions brilliantly to remember the dance but especially enjoyed the freestyle section at the end!
For our final lesson in our RE unit, we revisited and discussed our knowledge of churches, mosques and the mandir. We then asked: What would be the same in each of these places of worship and what would be different? The children had lots of knowledge to share.
It has been a wonderful Summer 1 half term in Reception and Mrs Mayson and I have adored every minute with our fabulous class. The children are truly flourishing each and every day and we are wowed by their accelerated summer term progress! Thank you so very much for your continued support; I end this half term bursting with pride and feeling very grateful for our wonderful Reception team of staff, parents and children. I hope that you all have a week of rest and family fun! I am already looking forward to seeing the children again to begin our final half term together.
Miss Witham
Jodrell Bank 20th May 2025
What a fantastic day we have all enjoyed! Reception have been on a trip to Jodrell Bank to consolidate and extend our learning about our Solar System, Earth and space.
Firstly, we started our day exploring the outdoor exhibits in the sunshine. We were just amazed by the sheer scale of the Lovell Telescope, especially after being so excited since spotting it on our coach journey. We loved engaging with the gravity playground, making predictions and observations as we completed the experiments. The whispering dishes were fascinating and we had great fun sending messages to our friends.
Next, we visited the clockwork orrery. This was a brilliant opportunity to understand more about how the planets orbit the sun at different rates and from different distances. We each enjoyed turning the wheel to make the planets move.
After that, we arrived at the Jodrell Bank classroom for a special story time. We listened to ‘Bringing down the Moon’, complete with puppets from the story. We were interested to realise that the moon doesn’t generate its own light, it reflects the light from the sun, just like a mirror.
Then, we had plenty of time to explore the exhibits and we enjoyed how interactive they were. Particular favourites were the telescopes, black hole simulator, Big Bang simulator, infrared camera and plasma globe.
At last, it was time for lunch! The children had been excitedly awaiting lunchtime all day, eager to tuck into their delicious packed lunches.
Finally, it was time for our show in the Space Dome. Ted the astronaut visited all of the planets in our solar system with his friend, Plant. We learnt some facts about each planet and thought about why the plant would not grow on each of the planets. The children helped Ted to decide that Earth was the best planet to live on, as it is best suited to human life. Plant could grow on Earth because of the air quality, light, water and temperature. Reception enjoyed a sing-a-long during their cinema experience, as they learned about all of the planets and what it would be like to live on them. The Space Dome show was a highlight for many, with the huge screen inspiring awe and wonder for all as we could see the stars and planets all around us, including above our heads!
Reception, thank you for such a wonderful trip. The children represented our school beautifully and it was so very lovely to observe their knowledge and enthusiasm throughout. All of the grown ups thoroughly enjoyed spending the day with Reception at Jodrell Bank. Well done, Reception!
w/b 12th May 2025
w/b 5th May 2025
We were absolutely delighted to welcome many of you to our final Learning Exhibition of our Reception year. We are so proud of each and every child and the progress that they have made in all areas since our very first Learning Exhibition! We hope that you enjoyed sharing in our fun and learning; thank you so much for giving up your time to visit.
It has been another super week of learning new sounds in phonics and writing sentences with ever increasing independence. The children continue to read their more challenging books with determination and increasing confidence which is lovely to see. If you are finding the new books to be a bit of a jump in terms of length, you and your child may enjoy a ‘take turns’ approach, reading a page each so that it doesn’t feel like quite so much to read!
In our literacy lessons, we have been writing our finding stories, innovations of our story ‘Star in the Jar’. The children can orally retell and sign the story map with fantastic fluency, so it is no surprise that this is translating into beautifully written stories. We are thinking about our story in three parts: the opening, the problem and the ending. On Wednesday, we wrote the opening, each choosing a main character and the treasure that they would find. On Thursday, we thought about the problem with finding the treasure. Was a fairy unable to cast magic without her missing wand? Was Iron Man unable to lift the hammer that he had found? Was a hermit crab missing its shell home? The children had such imaginative ideas and I can’t wait to find out their creative resolutions to these problems as we write the endings to our stories on Tuesday.
In our maths lessons, we have revisited ‘odd and even numbers’ and ‘doubles’ as we further explored the connection between even numbers and doubles. All doubles are even numbers as they can be split into two equal parts. If we have an even number of objects, we can pair all of the objects without an ‘odd one’ left over. This week, we have looked at each of the numbers to 10, representing them pair-wise on a ten frame. We first thought about whether the number was odd or even. If each counter had a pair, creating a ‘flat top’ shape, the number was even. This means that it is also a double! For example, 6 is an even number. 6 can be split into two equal groups of 3 – 6 is double 3! For an extra challenge, we represented this in a number sentence: 3 + 3 = 6. We then thought about the odd numbers, with an ‘odd one’ without a pair. We correctly identified that odd numbers are not doubles as they cannot be split into two equal parts.
In our numeral formation session, we practised forming 10, ensuring that we were writing the 1 before the 0.
Our focus on special and holy places has continued in our RE lessons. This week, we started looking at a photograph of people removing their shoes when visiting a mosque. Muslims go to worship at the mosque. Before they enter they take off their shoes. We thought about why this may be. We then looked carefully at photographs of mosques. We asked: What do you notice? What questions would you like to ask? We watched a short clip (https://youtu.be/hg_CbiGE9kk) helping us to understand more about Mosques, a holy place for Muslims. We learnt that most mosques have a dome, and some also have a tall tower called a minaret. In some countries, the minaret is used to call Muslims to prayer five times a day. When Muslims go inside a mosque, they take off their shoes and wash themselves in a special way, called wudu. Women and girls cover their heads. The children spied that a difference between Christian and Muslim places of worship was that, in a church, Christians often sit on pews but Muslims don’t pray on chairs in the mosque, unless they are needed. There is carpet on the floor and prayer mats to kneel on. Muslims always pray facing Makkah, the holiest city in the world for Muslims. The mihrab, a niche in the wall, shows the direction of Makkah. At Friday prayers the Imam shares Islamic teachings and leads Muslims in Salah. That’s a prayer with special movements. Each set of movements is called a Rakah. Muslims do the prayer five times every day, either at the mosque or wherever else they are.
Our Understanding of the World time focused on VE Day. Firstly, we looked at the the flag that represents the countries of the UK – England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It is called the Union Jack or Union Flag. Between the years of 1939 and 1945, the UK and other countries around the world were at war. This was a very difficult time. Soldiers had to go and fight for their country. We were also shocked to realise that some children had to move out of big cities to stay safe and food was rationed to make sure that everyone had enough to eat. The children thought that this must have made everybody feel sad and scared. On the 8th May 1945, Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister, announced to the UK that the war was over in Europe. The children thought that this was such good news and that everybody must have felt so joyful that this time of war was over. The 8th May 1945 became known as Victory in Europe Day, or VE Day for short. People went out in their streets to have a party and celebrated the war being over. They waved Union Jacks, put up bunting, danced and shared food with each other. We very much enjoyed our picnic lunch and we thought that this was a bit like having a street party! We were then delighted to welcome our friends from Brereton Preschool into our classroom to enjoy some VE Day activities and crafts together. We made Union Jack flags; decorated red, white and blue bunting; made medals; explored red, white and blue loose parts and playdough; we decorated red, white and blue biscuits to eat! It was a wonderful celebration with our wonderful friends.
We have also enjoyed time in the sunshine as we created our movement sequences on the field for our PE dance lesson; we planted our strawberries into our strawberry planter and continued to nurture our plants and seedlings; and we enjoyed listening to stories outside.
For anybody who may not have seen Mrs Forrester’s message, due to unforeseen circumstances, Reception will not be visiting St Oswald’s church before half term.
Finally, the school photographer will be in next Friday 16th May so all the children need to wear full school uniform, please.
We hope that you are able to enjoy more of the sunshine over the weekend!
With many thanks,
Miss Witham
w/b 28th April 2025
What an absolutely wonderful week we have all enjoyed! We have been making the most of the glorious sunshine as we are so lucky at Brereton to have so many beautiful outdoor spaces to explore and enjoy – all the more beautiful in the sunshine.
Children continue to progress brilliantly in their phonics sessions and I was just delighted to read so many comments in reading diaries about reading at home. It sounds like the children have been ever so proud to read their new books at home with confidence and success. Well done, Reception! We hope that you enjoy reading your next two stories.
Our literacy lessons have focused on oracy, comprehension skills and retelling the story of Star in the Jar. We are fantastic at retelling Star in the Jar with the aid of our story map and actions, beginning to do so with superb fluency and expression. This should give us lots of ideas, story language and structures to help us to write our own finding stories over the next couple of weeks. Our adult led tasks have involved writing a ‘Lost’ poster for the missing star and a rhyming challenge, an opportunity to revisit and consolidate rhyming skills.
In maths, we have continued to focus on learning number bonds of 10. This week, the children have been recalling the bonds (e.g. 8 + 2 = 10, 1 + 9 = 10) with more speed and confidence. We have also noticed that, when you add numbers, you get the same answer if you swap the numbers around (commutative property). For example, if we know that 7 + 3 = 10, we also know that 3 + 7 = 10. This week, we have continued to use ten frames and Numicon shapes to spot the number bonds. We have also enjoyed creating a part-whole model to show the bonds of 10. The children were so confident with their bonds that they were set an extra challenge – one part was visible and the other part was covered with a blanket. Using their number bond knowledge, the children were challenged to tell me the part that was hidden. For example, if we can see 4 buttons, there must be 6 buttons under the blanket because 4 + 6 = 10. Towards the end of the week, we practised writing some of these number sentences on our whiteboards. We continue to sing along with ‘Ten Again’ to help to embed these bonds for speedy recall. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0bn5k6h/numberblocks-series-3-tenagain?seriesId=b0bl5v3r
You may also enjoy playing some of these online games at home; we have played some of these games on our Interactive Whiteboard during washing hands times this week.
https://wordwall.net/resource/11260765/maths/number-bonds-to-10
https://whizzbots.co.uk/whizzbots-links/ks1-maths-games/number-bonds-to-10-2/
In our numeral formation session, we practised forming 9 by saying, “A loop and a line, that makes 9.”
It was a beautiful Forest School session on Monday! Whilst the sun shone, we enjoyed exploring our Forest School environment; as it changes along with the seasons, we are noticing lots of evidence of spring and are starting to think about and predict future changes for the summer. We used lots of the nature that we had found to make nature aliens and nature rockets. We also enjoyed working as a team to build a 3D ‘rocket’! Mr Simmons is hoping to be able to use a bottle rocket launcher in the next few weeks!
Our RE lesson began with the story of Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:41-52). When he was a boy, Jesus visited the Temple in Jerusalem. The Temple was the most special, holy place for God’s people (the Jews) at that time. He went there with his parents for a special celebration. We asked: Have you ever been to a place of worship for a special celebration? This led to our focus this week on the church, a special and holy place for Christians. We looked at photographs of churches around the world. We explored the features of churches and thought about what happens in a church service. Finally, we looked at a photograph of the doorway of a church in Sri Lanka in which lots of shoes were left outside. When people go to church in the UK, they usually keep their shoes on, however this is not the case in other countries around the world. We asked: Do you visit any places where you take off your shoes? Why do you take off your shoes when you go there? We will revisit these questions as we think about mosques and mandirs in the next few weeks.
In our dance lesson (PE), we went on a journey to the Moon! We skipped, hopped, jumped, tiptoed, jogged and galloped around the room in between putting on our astronaut equipment. We created ten different poses to accompany our countdown from 10. We worked in teams to create a rocket shape and we chose our own way to travel around the hall like a rocket. Finally, we put the movements together to make a dance sequence, before cooling down with deep breaths, imagining that we were comfortably floating in mid air, travelling in a spaceship towards the Moon.
To begin our music lesson, we repeated the game ‘Don’t clap this one back’. We listened and sang along to ‘You’ve Got a Friend in Me’ before thinking about how the music makes us feel and how we might move our bodies to it. To develop our rhythm skills, we then practised saying and clapping the names of Toy Story characters rhythmically (e.g. Slink – y – Dog. Woo – dy) before tapping out the rhythms with percussion instruments.
In Spanish, we recapped the five colours that we learnt last week: rojo = red; amarillo = yellow; azul = blue; verde = green; gris = grey. This week, we learnt how to say five more colours in Spanish: blanco = white; morado = purple; marrón = brown; naranja = orange; negro = black.
Our Expressive Arts and Design focus for the week has been colour mixing to create tints and shades. We have enjoyed adding white to make colours lighter and black to make colours darker. We were most excited to discover how to make pink and grey!
In our Understanding the World time, we have been learning more about our solar system, particularly thinking about the order of the planets and their features. We have lots of fantastic non-fiction books about space which we have thoroughly enjoyed exploring.
We have, of course, also enjoyed lots of provision time. A favourite area to help to keep cool has been our water area! Mrs Mayson has been setting up exciting activities including whisking bubble bath into the water to create even more bubbles, and washing dolls clothes and pegging them onto the line. We have also absolutely adored time spent in our developing garden area. This is an ongoing project and we are ever so grateful to Mr Moore for all of his efforts and Mr Simmons and Mrs Ball, who rival Monty Don and Alan Titchmarsh with their brilliant ideas and helpful tips. In our beds, we have already planted out our broad beans and sown our carrot seeds. On our window ledge and in our outdoor area, seeds are sprouting, seedlings are growing, and tomatoes are hardening off after being potted on. It is a hive of activity and we have a class full of extraordinary gardeners!
A glorious week in glorious weather! I hope that you all have a lovely Bank Holiday weekend and are able to enjoy some more sunshine.
With many thanks,
Miss Witham
