Please see below for some examples of the amazing work we've been doing

Well February and March just went by in a flash!

We started February with our next key text ‘Blue Penguin’ by Peter Horacek. The children enjoyed holding ice, as well feeling different types of material, to inspire them to create a Word Bank to describe the setting of this story, Antarctica. The children blew our socks off with their thoughtful responses to the penguin being different as well as some awesome knowledge of Penguins. We enjoyed using information texts to find out more facts and the children even wrote their favourite facts down.

We had a wonderful time celebrating Chinese New Year with the help of some amazing mummys! The children learnt to say special greetings and all about the animals in the Great Race story. They created their own and hung up beautiful decorations all around the classroom and tried some delicious steamed buns. Oh, and we can’t forget our dragon dancing where the children got to parade around school in the wonderful dragon they helped make, holding instruments or lanterns!

We continued to develop our marvellous Maths skills learning to combine groups. We used some new vocabulary to compare and describe the height and length of objects. We then started some new learning all about building the numbers 9 and 10.

The children came back from Half Term raring to go with our new topic Growing! We started looking at people. We absolutely loved looking at pictures of ourselves as babies – thinking about what we could do then and what we have learnt to do now, as children. We read the hilarious story ‘15 Things Not to do With a Baby’ and did a super job at organising some newly learnt vocabulary into a timeline.

Our next key text ‘Errol’s Garden’ by Gillian Hibbs got us in the mood to create our very own Reception container garden. We enjoyed talking about plants and experiences of planting at home and what seeds need to grow and how to keep plants alive. The children picked from a variety of types of sunflower as well as helping to plant vegetables in the growing area in the Outdoor Area.

We just love our PE Fridays and the grown-ups think we are mighty movers! We finished our Gymnastics skills and began a new unit. We have started and will continue to learn to move forwards and sideways at speed, demonstrate agility in a variety of games, participate in chasing games safely and with control and perform as part of a team in running games.

January has been a very busy month for us in Reception. We hit the ground running in 2022 learning about the season of Winter. We went on a Winter walk to the allotment where we lit a fire to inspire thinking of vocabulary linked to Winter. On very cold mornings, we loved finding ice and inspecting frost with magnifying glasses.

Next up, we started our first topic of 2022 ‘Animals’. We used the story Owl Babies as a stimulus for the topic, reading the story a little at a time. We began by looking at the front cover and first page in a dark room with woodland sounds! The children blew our socks off with the brilliant words they used to describe the owlets feelings when their mummy went and returned! After writing mummy owl a letter, she made a visit to our classroom! We learnt how to navigate a tablet to take pictures of the clues she left.

Shortly after this, we got stuck into planning our very first Screen Your Story competition. We used the theme ‘Saving the Planet’ to investigate problems our woodlands face. The children then planned a story thinking of a character, problem and a way to save the day. We may be a little biased but we think Receptions stories are the BEST!

Our maths learning has kept us on our toes, starting the month learning about zero and comparing numbers to 5. We moved onto comparing mass and capacity. A definite highlight was making balance scale cupcakes. Yes Chefs! Back to number learning we explored the numbers 6, 7 and 8.

In PE, our focus has been and will continue to be developing confidence in fundamental movements. Experience jumping, sliding, rolling moving over and under apparatus and develop coordination and gross motor skills.

We finished the month learning about, preparing for and celebrating the festival of Chinese New Year. More to follow in next month’s edition!

Reception started the month of November by looking at Bonfire Night. We enjoyed watching videos of fireworks and sharing their own experiences of watching them. We explored using tools (e.g. potato mashers to toothbrushes) to make our very own, whizz, bang firework pictures.

Shortly after this we learnt about the special celebration of Diwali. We read the very exciting story of Rama and Sita then retold it using actions and then puppets. The children had lots of opportunities to create decorations to making their own mehndi hand designs.

Next up was Remembrance Day. We spent time talking about why we wear poppies and then creating our own poppies to plant in our sandpit in preparation for taking part in the two minute silence. All the children were incredibly thoughtful and sensible during this time.

We have finished the month off with a mini topic all about light and dark. We loved learning about nocturnal animals reading the book ‘Flashlight’. We impressed everyone using our fantastic writing skills to create a list of items we had to prepare for a game to Nursery to play. Finally, finally we learnt about the special celebration of Hanukkah. We read the story, learnt how it is celebrated, sang songs, made hats and played a game. Wowee what fun!

At the end of this month in our maths learning we have loved learning about the numbers 4 and 5 – they are pretty special to us!

December brings lots more exciting learning, all about the celebration of Christmas. We are really looking forward to performing our first Nativity show! As well as making decorations, cooking some Christmas treats and if we are really lucky we might even get a visit from a certain elf on the shelf.

What a superb half term! We can't quite believe we have come to the end of our first half term in Reception!

We started the month learning about Africa, this coincided with Black History Month. We read the story A is for Africa to learn about culture, traditions and animals. Then we moved onto another story 'We're Going on a Lion hunt' the children loved the familiar language of the story and the adventures the two little girls went on! This was followed by reading the story 'Handa's Surprise' by Eileen Brown. The children absolutely loved retelling the story using actions and then props.

The children have made wonderful progress with their phonic knowledge and are enjoying the challenge of blending words with taught phonemes we have learnt and are starting to read short sentences. They are certainly feeling very grown up taking home their own super jazzy Word Sparks books to share with grown-ups. Over the last few weeks we have started our writing journey first writing posters about footprints we had found in the allotment and then shopping lists for Miss Tittle and Mrs Hughes to get at the shops in preparation for making a fruit salad!

We have continued exploring our environment learning how to make toast in the cooking area, mixing our own powder paint in the creative area and ….

Our final topic of the half term was Autumn. We completed a reading trio with the story 'We're Going on a Leaf Hunt' and went on an Autumn walk. The children got busy making autumn themed crafts from crowns, to making leaf rubbings and their very own leaf people!

We rounded off this wonderful half term performing in our very first whole school assembly. We enjoyed learning our songs Dingle Dangle Scarecrow and the Lowther classic Big Red Combine Harvester and LOVED performing them in front of the big children and grown-ups!

Next month we are looking forward to learning about Halloween, Bonfire Night and Diwali. We can't wait to get cracking again after a well deserved half term break!

We couldn't be prouder of the way the children have settled into life at big school!

The children have had lots of fun exploring the many areas of their new classroom. Learning how to safely use a hammer in the woodwork area to paying for their fruit in the snack shop and enjoying eating it with friends. Oh and outside too, creating delicious dinners in the mud kitchen and potions in the potion area. On windy days the children have made their own kites and have enjoyed physical challenges from basketball to tennis, climbing and creating obstacle courses.

In Phonics we have been working on our oral blending and segmenting skills. We have been super impressed by the children's ability to listen carefully to all the sounds in a word (e.g. p-e-g) and then 'blend' or 'put' the sounds back together (e.g. a child hears p-e-g and says peg). The children have then had the challenge of segmenting words, breaking them up to say each individual sound. We have enjoyed playing lots of games such as I spy, silly soup, cross the river and Kim's game to practise these skills.

In Maths we have explored the concepts of matching, sorting and counting. We had lots of fun matching objects like socks and animals. We moved onto sorting objects into categories such as food, not food, yellow and green as well as the children creating their own categories and playing 'guess my rule' when sorting objects. The children have loved playing the beanbag game, skittles and having a basketball shoot out to practise the skill of counting remembering our two special things putting objects in a line and using our pointing finger to touch each object as we count.

The children have done a super job at sharing as well as listening to peers share their 'All About Me' bags. It has been a delight to hear and see the children so proudly show favourite books and toys, family photos and importantly their favourite food!

We have really enjoyed reading Michael Rosen's We're Going on a Bear Hunt. In preparation for going on our very own Bear Hunt around school, we have retold the story with actions and props, created bear crafts and even made them some dens (in the small world area).

At the end of the day we have been busy with our five minutes of fine motor fun from paper scrunching to peg dancing and next week we will start dough disco. All with the aim to strengthen our fingers for writing! Finally we have loved our brand new 'singing and rhyme time', having a fantastic time singing familiar songs as well as learning new ones. Phew we have been busy! We know the coming month will bring more blossoming friendships and we can't wait for more adventurous exploring and wonderful learning!

The Early Years Foundation Stage (Nursery and Reception classes) at Lowther has an exciting and creative curriculum. To find out more about life in Early Years at Lowther and our curriculum offer please follow these links:

Here you will find some helpful calculation guides for early years through to year 6 for maths learning and practice. Please click on the images to display/download the full documents in PDF Format.