What a fantastic first week back we’ve had in Reception! The children have settled straight back into school routines and have been busy with lots of exciting learning and activities.

This term our new topic is ‘Traditional Tales’, where we will be learning all about different fairy tales. We will explore some much-loved stories, look at their characters, and talk about what happens in the beginning, middle and end of each tale. 

In Phonics, we began the week with a shared read, revisiting all the sounds we have learnt so far. We were also introduced to two new sounds — ‘n’ and ‘m’. The children have practised saying the sounds with their actions, finding words that contain them, and writing each sound carefully on their whiteboards.

In Maths, we have been learning to represent numbers on our fingers and were introduced to the new vocabulary ‘more’ and ‘fewer’. We explored what these words mean and used the sentences to help us compare different amounts.  Sentence stems: “___ has more than ___.” and “___ has fewer than ___.”

This week we have also been busy creating our Christmas cards, which will soon be sent off to be made into real cards for you to purchase — they look fantastic! We have also started practising our Nativity songs, ready for our performance at the beginning of December. The children are already singing beautifully and full of festive excitement!

In PE, we have been focusing on following instructions and stopping safely. The children began as part of a “friendship train,” working with a partner to move and stop when asked. Later, they took part in a fun game where they had to listen carefully to instructions such as, “Run if you have a sister!” or “Run if you are in Yellow Disciples!” The children also worked on developing their balancing skills, practising balancing a beanbag on their head while moving around the room in different ways.

We also had an exciting visit from Dentaid, a dental charity that came to talk to us about looking after our teeth. The children learnt how to brush properly, how long to brush for, and how many times a day we should do it. Everyone enjoyed practising brushing teeth on “Dave the Dinosaur,” and each child received their own toothbrush and toothpaste to take home.

Finally, as part of our ‘All About Me’ topic from last term, we looked at how we have changed since being babies. The children loved playing a game of “Guess the Baby!” using their baby photos — there were lots of laughs as we tried to work out who was who!

Star of the week: Congratulations to Skye, who is our star of the week, for coming into school so confidently this week. Skye will be taking home her certificate and Wilfred the Elephant to write in the book all about her 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! Reading books are changed on Tuesday's and Friday's. 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

It’s been a brilliant start to Term 2 — well done, Reception!