St. Philip's Catholic Primary & Nursery School

We marked Earth Day this year by planting seeds. We chose from radish, lettuce, peas or spinach. We learnt all about what our seeds need to grow.

We had to work really hard digging out all the weeds to make room to plant our seeds. We even found some wiggly worms!

Reception
In reception we always try to make our learning fun. We don’t like work sheets or endless pieces of boring white paper. We love to learn through play and be outdoors whenever possible.

Take this unexpected time with your child to play board games, read books together, have a picnic in your garden. Paint pictures, make junk models, bake a cake etc etc.

The most important thing is to not stress yourself or your children by trying to home school them.

If you want to ensure you are doing enough to keep your child occupied, developing and learning these are our ideals for every child every day in reception.

• Read at least 1 book. You can listen to audio books and encourage your children look at books independently as well.
• Have lots of conversations. Ask open questions who, what, why, where, when, how? Listen to your children’s ideas like they are the most wonderful thing you have ever heard. Sometimes they are!
• Play! You can be a princess, a flower, a spider, an astronaut or whatever your child wants you to be.
• Practical hands on maths. At home this could be when tidying up eg; how many cups go there? Playing a game, hopscotch, board games, noughts and crosses etc etc
• Art! Paint, draw, make, dance, sing. It doesn’t have to be a ‘thing’ you can make just to enjoy making. Outdoors too! A birds nest of grass or a castle of sticks and stones. Collect some Autumn Treasures to make a picture or display. Make up a song or dance be SILLY!
• Discover. What happens if you leave an ice cube outside? Look for signs of Autumn. Make toast, why has the bread changed colour/why does it feel different? Plant a bulb, what does it need to grow?
• Challenge! You know your child better than anyone. Let them do what they enjoy and still stretch them. If they want to write give them ideas. Can they write their name? Or make marks to represnt numbers. If they love to draw can they draw something different today? Can they count all the tins in the cupboard? How many left if we use 2 tins of beans today?
• Stay active. We do golden mile most days at school. Could you try Cosmic Kids Yoga at home www.youtube.com/user/CosmicKidsYoga     Or dance, skip, throw and catch a ball or balloon. 

Thank-you to everyone for their very generous sponsorship. Reception walked 10 time around our school field. rnWe stopped at points on the way to learn about children who had to walk such a long way to collect dirty water to drink. We discussed and reflected upon how lucky we were that our water came out of a tap.

As part of our Chinese New Year celebrations we tried some Chinese food. It was really tricky to eat the noodles with chop sticks! We all enjoyed the noodles and prawn crackers but the sweet chilli sauce made some of us pull funny faces. We had lots of fun meauring and weighing rice. We developed our mathematical language comparing how much rice fitted in each container. Was it full, empty, or half full?

After listening to the Bible story of Jesus and the Paralysed Man, the children built a house and re-enacted the story.

Reception re-enacted the story so well. They even made their own props and built a set.

Look at all the fun we've had in the snow. Can you think of a name for our snow man?

Reception hope you enjoy looking for a very special baby as much as we did.

Reception received a letter from a very sad witch who had lost her broom. She asked us if we would help her. We all wrote letters to try to cheer her up and let her know we would do our best to help her find it. After searching all around our classroon and school grounds we could not find her broom. What could we do? Then suddenly someone had a wonderful idea! Maybe we could make her another broom. We quickly set to work collecting sticks and fixing them together with string and tape. Some children even made magic wands. Look at all our amazing creations.

We left the brooms outside, with a note to let the witch know she could take whichever broom or wand she liked. Then to our amazement something magical happened. When we checked on our security cameras we could see that if you looked very carefully a broom suddenly wiggled and twitched then ... whoosh it was gone.

Storyline Online

Reading games and stories with Roy the zebra

Reading Games • Free Online Games at PrimaryGames

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/subjects/zgkw2hv

Zoo school with Whipsnade Zoo

Enjoying using the climbing equipment on the field, in the sunshine. Learning to climb carefully, balance and land safely. How would you cross the beam to the other side?