Mrs Perry and Mrs Alexander are the teachers in this busy but friendly Reception class. Mrs Perry teaches all day Monday and Tuesday morning and on a Friday and Mrs Alexander teaches all day on a Wednesday and Thursday. We meet together for our planning time on Tuesday afternoons and Mrs Chapman and Miss Hawkins teach the class during this time.
Our topic this term is 'Celebrations'. This is a great topic for this term as there are so many exciting events in the lead up to Christmas. We explore Fireworks night, Diwali, St Martin's Day and Remembrance Day. We also celebrate Gilbert the Goose turning 5 and this is linked to our RE unit, which is all about the birth of Jesus. Then of course, there is Christmas itself. It is a term full of colour, glitter and fun!
For number this term, we will still have a strong focus on subitising and will be teaching the children how to recognise numbers up to 10 and what they look like as parts and whole. Our main story focus will be the Gingerbread Man and lots of our learning will be based around this book. Our Phonics is going well, and we have nearly taught all of the level 2 sounds. From here, we will move on to introducing digraphs and trigraphs. Their writing and reading will move from initial sounds to focussing on sounding out CVC words.
For PE we will be teaching gymnastics, with a focus on balance and using different parts of our body.
We explore our topic themes during our Discovery Time with loads of great learning opportunities as well as more focused, teacher led activities. However, in Reception nothing is set in stone and we like to follow our children's interests, which can lead us into a lot of exciting learning opportunities as they take us in various directions that we haven't planned for.
We like to make the most of our lovely setting here at St Martin's. We take regular Welly Walks up the lane opposite the school and find many things of interest to develop our understanding of the world there. This term we will focus on Autumn turning to Winter and we will make leaf art pictures in the Nature Area and later have a chance to explore the properties of ice and frost. We look forward to seeing the lovely Snowdrops, which adorn the lane outside of school. We are very lucky to have great facilities at our school and we love to cook in Acorn room and make lots of delicious treats during the year. This term we will make some yummy fireworks treats and when we learn about the story of the Gingerbread Man, we will bake and decorate some of our own. Let's hope they don't try and run away!
We bring our topics to life by going on lots of regular trips with the class. The children really enjoy these opportunities and learn a great deal from them. The farm and castle trip are particular favourites of theirs! This term we will be going on a whole school trip to the Watermill Pantomime.
Parents are always encouraged and welcome to help us in our many class activities. We always value the support that is given to our children.
You can access an overview of what we are learning this term by clicking on the link underneath the pictures.