What a fantastic and busy week we’ve had in Reception!

Phonics
This week in phonics, we learnt the new digraph ng. The children practised blending words containing this sound and had a go at writing them. We also revisited last week's sounds, working on writing sentences using these phonemes. It’s wonderful to see their confidence growing with their writing skills!

Maths
In maths, we continued our work on counting and ordering quantities up to 10. The children used the words more and less to compare numbers. For example, "5 is more than 4." We also explored different ways to represent the number 8, discovering how it can be made up of 5 and 3. In addition, we began exploring length by comparing objects and using the words long and short to describe them.

Drawing Club
This week’s People Who Help Us book was Busy People: Police Officer. The children explored key vocabulary such as equipment, community, patrol, and emergency. Through their drawings, they imagined different police scenes, such as officers helping people, keeping the community safe, or directing traffic. They also designed their own police badges and created missing or wanted posters, thinking carefully about the sounds in the words they wrote.

RE
On Tuesday, we learnt about Pancake Day (Shrove Tuesday) and why it is celebrated. We discussed the meaning of Lent and what people do during this time. The highlight was, of course, decorating and enjoying our own pancakes! On Wednesday, we visited the church to celebrate Ash Wednesday and learn more about why it is an important day for Christians.

PE
In Dance on Wednesday, the children explored movement using different body parts and practised remembering and repeating actions. They even created their own versions of Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes, which they performed for their classmates. On Friday, during gymnastics, we focused on creating shapes on apparatus, linking our movements to woodland creatures – there were some fantastic squirrel jumps and hedgehog curls!

World Book Day
Thursday was a wonderful day of celebration as we dressed up as our favourite book characters for World Book Day! It was fantastic to see so many creative costumes. The children enjoyed sharing their favourite books and listening to exciting stories throughout the day.

Welcome Wednesday is every week from 8:30–9:00am—come into the classroom to read with your child or see what they have been learning!

Star of the week: Congratulations to Noah A, who is our star of the week, for fantastic participation in all of his subjects. Noah will be taking home his certificate and Wilfred the Elephant to write in the book all about his time spent with Wilfred over the next week and will bring him back next Thursday.

Please remember to read with your child, even for just 5 minutes! Please also remember to record it in the reading record. We will only change your child's book if you have read with them 2 or more times in that week! Please remember to have the library book in your children's book bag on Thursday to be changed. 

Any issues or concerns we need to know about, please speak to the Acorn team before and after school or email at: acorn@st-barnabas.kent.sch.uk

Thank you for another fantastic week of learning. We hope you all have a lovely weekend!