Welcome to Reception

from

Miss Foster and Miss Fawcett

Our email address is: reception@kingsleyschool.org.uk

This is checked regularly however, if you need to speak to a member of staff as a matter of urgency, please either speak to a member of the leadership team on the gate on a morning or ring the school office.

In Reception, we have planned a progressive curriculum which is built around stories to engage and excite the children. Our chosen books are a mixture of traditional and diverse texts which enhance British values and cultural capital. Our inclusive curriculum ensures all children are given the time, space and opportunity to participate and engage at their own level. We are committed in supporting all children to reach their full potential. Below you will find comprehensive documents which outline our current curriculum and progression documents. Please enjoy spending time browsing these before looking through the page to see our amazing pupils and their work. 

If you require any additional information regarding our curriculum, please do not hesitate to contact your child's class teacher or a member of the Leadership Team.

For more information on how we teach phonics in Reception, please click on the link below.

Autumn Term 2024

We are very excited to have a new layout to our environment this year and become a Reception unit where all children's needs can be met and individual progress paramount. It has been a very busy, fun-filled start to the school year. This term is all about starting school, our feelings, how we grow, celebrations, houses and homes and Christmas!

Below you will find our curriculum and some photographs of what we have been up to this term. 

Settling in weeks

We have spent the first few weeks of Reception settling in and exploring our new environment and resources. Here are a few photos to show you what we have been getting up to!

Baking in Reception

Each week, we enjoy opportunities to develop our social skills during baking. We have used a range of techniques to make some delicious treats. 

Rockin' in our school shoes

To help with the transition to school, we have been reading the story of Pete the Cat. We loved hearing all about Pete's day as he 'rocked' through different areas of 'big' school in his new shoes. We learned a song and added our own actions, practised writing by creating some new shoes for Pete and used our good listening and drawing skills to draw our very own cat. Amazing work everyone!

What does a baby need?

We have been thinking about how we have grown from a baby until now and celebrated all of the things we have learned to do so far! We loved looking at baby photos and thinking about how we needed help with everything and all of the new things we have achieved. We then read the stories 'When I was Little' and 'Once there were Giants'. We enjoyed cutting and sticking objects into what a baby needs to help them grow. 

When I Grow Up ...

To continue our learning on growing and changing, we read the story 'When I Grow Up' by Tim Minchin and listened to the well known song. We loved listening to all of the things the child said they could do as a grown up and began to think about our own dreams for when were are older. Take a look at what we want to be when we grow up!

Initial Sounds with Ziggy

Today we explored initial sounds in the tulip room. Our resident monster Ziggy was only allowed to eat objects starting with s and then a. We were very proud of engagement levels and how the children were able to listen to the sounds. 

My Family

We have moved on from looking at ourselves to thinking about those around us. We used the story of Titch to help us think about our own families. We enjoyed using drawing and colouring to firstly help us think and talk about our family members at home. After this, we loved using pebbles and loose parts to create our own unique artwork of those in our house. 

Multi-skills

Our first PE topic of the year is multi-skills. We really enjoy this as we get to move in many different ways, use different speeds, pretend to be animals, hop onto islands to escape sharks as well as showing how good we are at listening and following instructions. Here are some photos of our first PE lessons this year!

Exploring the Rainbow

We have enjoyed exploring different colours of the rainbow in a range of ways using sensory play, messy play, fine motor activities and singing. 

Jasper's Beanstalk

We enjoyed seeing how Titch's plant grew to being taller than his siblings, so we moved onto the story of Jasper's Beanstalk. We thought it was very funny how Jasper tried to make his bean grow by mowing it and digging it over and over again. This led us to learning about what plants need to grow before planting our very own beans. We stuck them to the window and look forward to seeing how much they grow over the next few weeks. 

It's Harvest Time

To celebrate Harvest we enjoy learning where our food comes from. For this, we have used the story of 'Oliver's Vegetables'. We enjoyed talking about the different vegetables Oliver had eaten and the ones we like to eat the most. It was fun to guess what Oliver would find next in Grandad's garden. We then used potatoes and carrots to create our own repeating patterns. 

Making chips

In the end of Oliver's Vegetables, Oliver is very excited to finally discover the potatoes for the chips he loves! We thought it would be a great opportunity to show children how to make chips from scratch. We washed, peeled, chopped and cooked our very own chips - they were delicious! We then practised our writing skills by writing instructions. All of the grown ups were blown away by how much we have learned this half term!

Occupational therapy in Reception

We have loved exploring the balancing stones during O.T. time. It was lots of fun balancing over the range of levels and moving around them in different directions. 

Halloween Stay and Play

A big thank you to all parents, grandparents and carers who attended our first stay and play session of the year! The children absolutely loved getting dressed up and engaging in lots of fun, spooky activities. We made ghosts, spider webs, decorated cookies, messy play, playdough models and decorated pumpkins. It was lovely to see so many of you there!

Bonfire Night

We listened to the story 'Sparks in the Sky' and thought about the things associated with bonfire night - fireworks, bonfires, sparklers and spending time with family. We then heard the story of Guy Fawkes and learned why we celebrate on November 5th. We then used tubes, sticks and paint to create our own lovely bonfire night artwork. 

Breadstick sparklers

In baking, we continued to celebrate bonfire night by making breadstick sparklers. The children enjoyed dipping their breadsticks in chocolate and then sprinkles before letting them set for snack time. 

Happy Diwali

We have enjoyed looking at Diwali, the Hindu festival of light. We enjoyed exploring how Diwali was celebrated and listened to the stories of Dipal's Diwali and Rama and Sita to learn the origin of Diwali. We spent time working on rangoli patterns and mendhi hand art. We also made Diwali cards for our friends. 

Remembrance Day

Remembrance Day is an important event in school and we always spend time with the children explaining how the armed forces play a significant part in keeping our country safe. We watched the BBC animation, 'Poppies' and used apples and paintbrushes to make some commemorative artwork. 

Micheal Rosen Day

Micheal Rosen is one of our favourite authors so we loved taking part in the first Micheal Rosen day! We listened to his webinar, explored his youtube channel filled with lovely stories and poems, joined in with the sound effects of We're Going on a Bear Hunt and then used one of his poems, Oh Dear! to complete some performance poetry. Here is the video of us practising our actions to 'Oh Dear!' 

Anti-Bullying Week

As part of anti-bullying week we have explored how to show kindness to others through out words and actions. We looked at a range of different scenarios and discussed whether the children were demonstrating kind or unkind behaviour. We then made a badge we could take home to keep to remind us to always be kind to others. 

Children in Need

Each year we always enjoy getting dressed up and raising money for Children in Need. This year we took part in lots of Pudsey activities, learned about how to help others and had our own Pudsey dance party. Here are some photos from our day!

Working hard in the tulip room

Everyone has been really busy in the tulip room completing adult guided activities such as counting, mark making, matching and crafting. Here are some photos of what we have been up to!

Where do I live?

We have been looking at our homes and the local area. We enjoyed using google maps to 'walk' around our local area and using our postcodes to find our houses. Everyone was very excited to see their own house on the big screen. 

Making shapes

This half term, one of our maths focus areas was shape. We really impressed the grown ups with our knowledge of shapes and how we were able to describe them using vocabulary such as sides and corners. We then loved using lollysticks to create shapes and extended our play by combining shapes to make images. 

The Gruffalo

In our tulip room, we love Julia Donaldson so chose to focus on the Gruffalo and the Gruffalo's Child. We completed lots of activities such as dance, OT, footprints, adding the features to the Gruffalo and sensory play with our own Gruffalo cafe. 

The Jolly Postman

To continue our learning on houses and homes, we read the story of The Jolly Postman. We enjoyed recognising characters from other stories and matching the letters to the correct envelopes. We worked in small groups to look through each letter and enjoyed making links to familiar stories. 

Elf Super Smoothies

Our Elf was feeling very sleepy after all of his tricks, so we thought about making him a healthy drink to boost his energy. We decided on a super smoothie and thought of the different ingredients we could add. 

Making a Christmas Wreath

Our tulip room have been very busy making lots of Christmas crafts! One of these was a Christmas wreath. We think they will make wonderful decorations!

IT'S CHRISTMAS!

We had a fabulous time at our Christmas party!

Welcome to Spring Term!

Local History Week

 ‘How did children get to school in the olden days?’ We have enjoyed looking at lots of different kinds of transport for the sky, water and land. We used construction materials to build them, created pictures as well as chose our favourite way to travel. We then looked at transport in the past and how it has changed over time. We watched videos and sorted them into ‘old’ and ‘new’ vehicles.

A Visit from the Fire Brigade

We were very lucky to be visited by fire fighters from Hartlepool fire station. We listened carefully during an assembly and learned how to stay safe, what to do if there was a fire and how to check our smoke alarms. We then looked around the fire engine before being able to try out the hose! 

P.E. 

In P.E. we have been using the apparatus to move in different ways. We have climbed, jumped, balanced, slithered. crawled and ran. By using the different levels, we have been able to manage our own risks and explored how our body can move around different obstacles.

Chinese New Year

To celebrate Chinese New Year we completed a variety of activities relating to the year of the snake. We read the story of the Great Race, completed snake crafts and learned all about traditions that people do to celebrate. We ended our week with some Chinese food tasting.

Supertato!

We loved reading the story of Supertato and hearing about how he stopped the Evil Pea. We decided to create our own super vegetables which we then used to complete some writing during Literacy.

Mark Making in the Tulip Room

Over the last few weeks, the children have been encouraged to explore making marks through different media and materials. We have used paint, sand, chalks, pens, paintbrushes, sponges, our fingers and even cars! We have explored emotions, letters, numbers, shapes and patterns during this time and have often been led by the children to see where our mark making takes us. Here are some examples of their work.

Matching different representations of numbers

We have been exploring how numbers are represented on tens frames. We have looked at how each number can be represented in different ways, but still show the same amount. We played a matching game to explore this concept further. 

Girls Football

In order to mark the 'Her Game too' initiative to promote girls football, we were lucky enough to be joined by three visitors from Hartlepool Women's football club. They completed a fantastic session with all of the girls where they got to practise their football skills and play games. It was a brilliant morning!

Measuring

We have explored measuring using both standard and non-standard units. This meant measuring the height and length of different objects using cubes, hands and blocks (non-standard) and rulers (standard). We learned how to line up the object we are measuring and count or read the number to find out how long or tall it is. Everyone tried very hard and showed a good understanding.

Animal prints

In the tulip room, we have loved looking at the different patterns on jungle animals and using paints to create our own! We names the colours and used sponges to create our art.

Space Art!

Some of the children were inspired by our learning about Space and planets and chose to create their own artwork during discovery time. They used black card and oil pastels to create their own planet pictures. What fantastic pieces of work!

Keep checking our page for more updates!