Reception

This half term, our learning has centred around three wonderful texts: The Gingerbread Man, Each Peach Pear Plum and Mr Wolf’s Pancakes. We explored each story by drawing the characters and settings before heading off to “Adventure Time”, where we created a Gingerbread Man lift, a pancake-making machine and many other marvellous creations! We also used our ICT skills to recreate The Gingerbread Man and used voice recorders to retell the story in our own words. We made chef hats and pancakes (which were delicious!) and enjoyed exploring rhyming activities linked to Each Peach Pear Plum. Our handwriting is developing well, and we are making great progress with learning and retaining our Phase 3 phonics sounds. 

In our Understanding the World sessions, we explored a range of materials and grouped objects according to what they were made from. We compared old and new toys, discussing how materials have changed over time. The children talked about their favourite toys, shared photos with the class and compared toys from today with toys their teachers played with when they were younger. We have also been learning about our local area. Although our local walk was cancelled due to the weather, we are hoping to go on a walk around Queensbury next half term. We looked at maps of Bradford and Queensbury and used Google Earth to identify places we recognise. We then drew our own maps of Queensbury and used resources to create familiar landmarks such as Tesco and our school. 

During our creative sessions, we studied the work of a local photographer, Mr Batty. We looked closely at his beautiful photographs of our local area and school, and discussed the different colours we could see. We then used watercolour paints to recreate his photographs, learning how to mix colours to create new shades. The results were amazing! We also took part in Arts Week, where we studied the Indian artist S. H. Raza. He loved colour and shape and often painted circles, believing they represented balance and togetherness. We recreated his artwork by experimenting with colour mixing and painting circles to show different emotions, before working together to create a collaborative piece of artwork. 

Despite the cold weather, we have continued to enjoy playing outside. We played in the snow and explored ice, which sparked some fantastic discussions. Some children suggested bringing snow inside overnight so we could play with it the next day, leading to thoughtful conversations about what might happen to it and why. 

In Maths, we have been learning about capacity, height and length. We have also explored different representations of the numbers 6, 7 and 8 and had a go at creating our own representations.