Reception

Letters

Reception Class Summer Term Information - 22.04.2025

Reception Class Spring Term Information 2 - 25.02.2025

Reception Class Spring Term Information - 06.01.2025

Reception Class Autumn Term Information 2 - 07.11.2024

Reception Class Autumn Term Information - 05.09.2024

Forest School Information - 05.09.24  

 EYFS Blogs

16 May 2025

Lots of exciting changes have happened this week. Our tadpoles are growing nicely, we have noticed their bodies changing in size, shape and colour and some even have back legs! Our caterpillars are also growing as they munch their way through the pot of food.

We have been getting up close to snails this week and finding out lots of facts about them.

After closely observing the snails, we were inspired to paint them. We carefully drew a snail, then we used the watercolours to paint them. 

We found out about an artist called Henri Matisse. He created a famous piece of artwork called The Snail. He made it by creating a collage using cut up pieces of painted paper. We then created our own collages of snails.

We found plenty of snails at Forest school. We found many of them underneath the logs and climbing up tree trunks.

9 May 2025

This week we learnt about VE Day. We found out it was a special day celebrated on May 8th, 1945, to mark the end of the war in Europe. It was a time for people to be happy and relieved that the fighting was over. 

Lots of people went out in their streets to have a party and celebrated the war being over. They waved Union Jack flags, put up bunting, danced and shared food with each other.

We had our own celebration to help us remember this special day. We made and decorated celebratory hats in the colours of the Union Jack by cutting and sticking different materials.

As lots of people celebrated by waving Union Jack flags, we studied it closely and used red, white and blue paint to paint our own Union Jack flags. It was quite difficult but we were very proud of our finished flags.

25 April 2025

It has been all about frogs this week. We have been learning about the life cycle of a frog. We have loved the story of Tadpoles Promise. Tadpole loves his rainbow friend, the caterpillar, and she tells him she loves everything about him. "Promise that you will never change," she says. But can tadpole keep his promise?

To observe the life cycle of a frog first hand we have a pond in our classroom with live tadpoles in it. We are going to look after the tadpoles and observe how they grow and change into frogs. We are very excited about this but know we need to be patient as this takes time!

“The female frog lays the eggs in a pond” Esmae

“The tadpoles gets back legs first then front legs and then its tail shrinks” Ronnie

“It is a froglet and then the tail goes and it is a frog” Ava

“An amphibian lives on the land and in the water” Lyla

We have practised our colour mixing, creating green by mixing yellow and blue. We found out that you can make dark green and light green.

“More blue makes it dark green” Ida

We have been doing a lot of collaborating with each other this week in our play and enjoying exploring the resources and demonstrating our creative skills. This has included digging for treasure and discovering gold! Building dens, painting stones to see them shine, putting out fires, baking in the mud kitchen and recreating the Wacky Races inspired from Drawing club.

4 March 2025

Easter is a festival in spring celebrated by Christians. To celebrate Easter, we made some Easter cards to give to our families. We used paper to create a chick hatching out of an egg to symbolise new life.

We made some clay Easter eggs, we rolled out the clay, cut out an egg shape and then use objects to print patterns into the clay. Once the clay had dried we painted them.

As a class we managed to collect 20 stars in the jar and were rewarded by cooking smores on the fire at forest school. The Easter Bunny had also left a trail of carrots which led us to the forest to do an Easter egg hunt. It was a lot of fun!

21 March 2025

We had a lot of fun at the forest this week. After reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears we wanted to make our own porridge, so we made it on the fire. As it was also Red Nose Day, we added a red jammy nose!

The porridge tasted delicious, it was not too hot, not too cold or lumpy, it was just right!

We used the loose parts and red noses to play different games in the forest. We built a track to race the red noses down and practised our aiming skills by trying to throw them into a bucket. It was very difficult but we didn’t give up and after a while we managed to get the noses into the bucket.

14 March 2025

This week was British Science Week, the theme for this year was ‘Adapt and Change’.

We created a new type of animal and talked about the habitat it lives in and how it has adapted to the environment it lives in by talking about any special features it has.

“My animal lives in the rainforest, it is green so it can camouflage in the trees. It eats plants and has sharp claws to climb trees. It comes out in the day and night”.

“My animal lives in the forest, it eats leaves and has big ears to hear well”.

 “My animal lives in the Arctic, it has white fur to camouflage and keep warm and it has big ears to hear with”.

“My animal lives in the ocean, it has sharp teeth because it eats sharks and it is blue so it can camouflage”.

We also explored bubbles, we made our own bubble mixture using water, washing up liquid and sugar. We used a straw to blow through to create bubbles and made our own bubble wands to blow bubbles into the air.

  

7 March 2025

We celebrated Shrove Tuesday this week which is also known as Pancake Day. It is celebrated the Tuesday before lent.

We had a lot of fun mixing up some ingredients to make toppings for our pretend pancakes. We used sugar, lemon, flour and sprinkles.

Our toppings smelt delicious but were very, very sticky! 

At forest school we had a fire and on the fire, we cooked real pancakes which tasted delicious with sweet sticky syrup on top!

28 February 2025

This week in Drawing Club we have shared the story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff. This has inspired our learning in all areas of the provision.

We have retold the story using small world resources and acting it out ourselves. Retelling the story was lots of fun, we focussed on retelling the story in sequence and remembering key repetitive phrases.

“Who’s that trip, trapping across my bridge?”

“It’s me the big, billy goat gruff. I want to eat the lush, green grass”.

We have created Troll potions using petals, leaves and water.

‘If you drink the potion you turn into a gruesome troll’ Ida.

‘My potion is Troll blood, it will turn the goats invisible and then they can cross the bridge’ Arthur.

At Forest School we challenged ourselves to climb trees, enjoyed exploring painting with mud. The ground was very wet so lots of worms had wriggled to the surface. We found out that if you put them on a piece of paper and listen carefully you can hear them moving as their bristles touch the paper.

14 February 2025

We have been measuring length this week. Finding out which items are longer and shorter, ordering items by length and measuring using cubes.

We found out about an artist called Joan Miro. He was born in Barcelona, Spain and was a painter, sculptor and ceramicist. He was known for his simple shapes and bright colours. We created our own paintings inspired by Miro’s shapes and colours.

 

31 January 2025

This week we have been finding out about the Chinese and Lunar New Year. This festival signals the beginning of spring and is celebrated in January or February. It is a time when families and friends get together to say goodbye to the old and welcome the new.

This year the Chinese New Year started on 29 January. It is the year of the snake.

We made lanterns to decorate our classroom, we used red and gold as these colours are believed to bring good luck. We also made our own dragon masks.

We had a lot of fun in our role-play Chinese restaurant and making dragons and patterns using red and gold from the loose parts.

We prepared and cooked a Chinese stir fry with mushrooms, peppers, noodles, rice, and prawn crackers. We challenged ourselves to eat it using chopsticks, which proved quite tricky!

We found out during the Chinese New Year people participate in lion and dragon dancing. This is to bring good luck into the new year. We made our own lion and dragon’s head and tried out the dancing ourselves accompanied by Chinese music. We had a lot of fun!

10 January 2025

We were all very excited to return after our Christmas break because we had a special delivery turn up to school in a really large lorry.

We watched the lorry crane lift some huge bags up and lower them onto our playground.

Some of the bags contained sand to fill up our new sand pit. Once the delivery had been made, we got a chance to look more closely at the enormous lorry.

Whilst we filled up our wheelbarrows, transported the sand and tipped it in the sand pit we developed our gross motor skills, social skills, sharing, taking turns, and collaborating. It was a lot of fun and took nearly all day to do! 

Once it was full we had a lot of fun digging and building in the sand.

We had a great time at forest school, it was a beautiful cold and frosty morning. We made marks in the frost, explored the frozen puddles, made fat balls for the birds and took up the winter scavenger hunt challenge.

20 December 2024

For the last couple of weeks, we have continued our preparation for the celebration of Christmas.

We made Christmas cakes for our families. We weighed out all the ingredients, mixed them together, and put them in the oven. We decorated them with icing and a sprig of holly and wrapped them up to give to our families. We can’t wait to taste them! 

To decorate the top of a Christmas tree we have made angels. We had to follow the instructions carefully to create our beautiful angels.

We found out that people send Christmas cards to their family and friends to wish them a Merry Christmas. We are very proud of our Christmas cards for our families.

Our last Forest School this year was a chilly one. To keep us warm we had a fire which we toasted marshmallows on and put between two biscuits to make a smore. It was delicious! We also created some Christmas table decorations by attaching holly using nails to some log discs we had sawed.

We performed our Nativity show to our families and friends. We retold the story through singing, dancing and acting. It was brilliant! Everyone was very proud of us.

6 December 2024

We have been very excited this week as we put up a Christmas tree in our classroom. We added baubles, lights and tinsel, it looks beautiful.

We decorated our home corner with Christmas decorations and cooked a delicious Christmas dinner! We have been retelling familiar stories and making up our own using the small world resources.

In maths we have been investigating composing and decomposing number 5 using baubles.

‘3 and 2 make 5 altogether’ Arthur

‘4 and 1 make 5 altogether’ Sophia 

At Forest School we made Santa sticks and used the saw to cut slices of wood to turn into tree decorations.

29 November 2024

This week we started our preparations for our Nativity show. We have read the story of the first Christmas and retold it in our own words using the soft toy characters. We have also been practising singing, dancing and acting in preparation for our show.

We are very proud of the Christmas tree we have made and decorated by cutting, glueing, sticking and glittering! The tree is on display in Chatteris church as part of the Chatteris lights and tree festival.

The loose parts have been popular this week. We have been created our own pictures using a variety of loose parts  including Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus, a donkey, houses and a cat. 

15 November 2024

This week we found out about Remembrance Day which is a special day in November that gives people the chance to remember those who fought and lost their lives during the war and to honour their memory. We made our own poppies, painted poppy scenes and made poppies with the loose parts.

We also helped support Children in Need by donating money which will support children all over the UK. We had a lot of fun making Pudsey masks, measuring the height of Pudsey’s friends, painting and cutting out Pudsey bears and practising our counting skills by adding the correct amount of spots to Pudsey.

25 October 2024

We have been learning about Diwali. It is a festival celebrated by Hindus in India and all around the world. This year Diwali starts on 31^st October. It is known as the festival of lights.

We created Rangoli patterns by painting, chalking and using the loose parts.

We made Diva lamps by moulding clay into a pot shape. We left them to dry hard and then painted and decorated them with glitter. Once they were finished, we lit candles and sang a Diwali song.

We listened to the story of Rama and Sita and decorated hands with mehndi patterns.

We also made pumpkin soup. We cut the pumpkin up, peeled and chopped the onions. Then we put all the ingredients into a big pan and boiled them until they were soft.

We then warmed up the soup on the fire at Forest School, it was delicious!

18 October 2024

We have been learning about autumn this week. We enjoyed reading Leaf Man. It follows the journey of leaf man as he is blown across the land. A Leaf Man's got to go where the wind blows.

We have been learning about autumn this week. We enjoyed reading Leaf Man. It follows the journey of leaf man as he is blown across the land. A Leaf Man's got to go where the wind blows.

We then had a lot of fun creating our own leaf people using the collected leaves.

We also created artwork to represent autumn including leaf printing and rubbing, painting autumn trees, finger printing autumn trees and sewing leaves.

Forest school was a lot of fun, we climbed trees, drilled holes in conkers and used our muscles to go across the rope bridge which was very wobbly!

11 October 2024

We have been learning all about apples this week. We found out that apples grow on trees and the seeds can be planted to grow new trees. We saved some apple seeds from our snack apples and planted them. We look forward to watching them grow.

We talked about things we can make with apples and then made an apple and blackberry crumble. We prepared the apples by peeling off the skin and chopping them up. We then put the apples and blackberries in a dish, added the crumble and cooked it. Then we ate it, it was delicious!

We also enjoyed printing with apples and colour mixing green to paint apples.

At forest school we used apples to make bird feeders. We removed the core and pushed pumpkin seeds into the skin. Then we pushed a stick through the apple and tied them up in the trees.

4 October 2024

This week we have been learning about people who help us, at home, in school and the wider community.

‘My Mummy helps me learn my phonemes at home’ George F

‘My Mummy helps my Grandad. She drives him to the doctors’- Erin

‘Police Officers get bad guys’- Jaxon

‘Firefighters put fires out and have long ladders to go up’’- Caleb

We used the junk modelling boxes to make emergency vehicles. We talked about our ideas, used our imagination, practised our scissor skills and developed our skills to attach things together.

We had a lot of fun building emergency vehicles with the large loose parts and roleplaying people who help us outside. 

We started drawing club this week to help us develop our language and writing. Mrs Riches was very impressed with our phonic knowledge and imagination.

27 September 2024

We were very excited to go to Forest School for the first time. We met the Grandmother Tree, learnt about keeping ourselves safe in the forest and the important rule of ‘No pick, no lick, be careful with a stick’. We explored the forest area and can’t wait for next week!

Jumping and splashing in the muddy puddle was so much fun!

We also found a lot of worms and measured them to find out which was the longest and which was the shortest.

We noticed some of the leaves had fallen from the trees and were all different colours, sizes and shapes.

Snack time with hot chocolate was a lovely treat to warm us up.

20 September 2024

This week we have been thinking about our families. We have shared the books The Great Big Book of Families and Families, Families, Families. We found out that there are many kinds of families, but they are all special to us.

We enjoyed drawing and talking about our families in a variety of ways.

We also talked about our class being our school family and painted our portraits to display. We looked at our different features and talked about how we have many similarities and differences but are all special.

13 September 2024

We have welcomed all our new Reception children into school and have been so proud of how they have settled in.

We have been learning school routines such as sitting on the carpet for registration, lining up for lunch and what we need to do at tidy up time. All the children are settling well into school life, making new friends and having so much fun!