Remembrance Day

In Reception we remembered the events of the past by making poppies and watching a rabbit animation.
“Every child deserves the best possible start in life and support to fulfil their potential…experiences between birth and five has a major impact on their future life chances. A secure, safe and happy childhood is important in its own right. Good parenting and high quality learning together provide the foundation children need to make the most of their abilities and talents as they grow up”
Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage”, Department for Children, Schools and Families, (2017)
Our Curriculum Intent
Our EYFS curriculum is language led and inclusive driven. Every area of learning is designed to reduce disadvantage and meet the needs of all children. We aim for ambitious outcomes, enabling all children to access a rich, engaging and sequential curriculum.
Our Curriculum Implementation
Universal Provision: We provide a language rich environment through daily stories, talk activities, role play. Adults model and scaffold language, extending children’s vocabulary and understanding. High quality interactions during focused tasks and continuous provision supports development in prime and specific areas.
Targeted provision: To support children’s development, we provide small group interventions such as WellComm and bucket therapy. We teach phonics in small groups. Visuals, Makaton and sensory aids further support children to access our rich curriculum.
Specialist Provision: We tailor individual support plans for children with high needs, collaborating with specialist where requires. Strategies are tailored to ensure participation and progress.
Family and community: Parent workshops, Stay and Learn sessions and home learning support provides opportunities for parents/carers to learn alongside their children and support learning at home. Cultural and linguistic diversity is integrated throughout.
Our Curriculum Impact
Measuring success: We measure progress from initial baseline assessment in all areas. We use a combination of observation and formal assessment (e.g. RWI phonics and WellComm) to support judgements. We understand the importance of supporting all aspects of child development, recording progress in social and emotional growth, participation and engagement alongside cognitive progress.
Please click on the links below for further details of our EYFS curriculum.
SUPPORTING YOUR CHILD
Please attend all our parent/carer session or speak to staff members for advice helping your child. Below are some websites you might find useful.
EYFS Curriculum – EYFS Development Matters
A guide to your child’s learning and development in the EYFS – What to Expect When?
Videos and resources to support Phonics – RWI Phonics Guidance
Fun, educational games for children to play – Cbeebies
Free eBooks for children to read online – Oxford Owl
Simple, fun maths activities – Maths Activities





In Reception we remembered the events of the past by making poppies and watching a rabbit animation.
We had a great time making Diwa lamps, making Diwali cards, sharing the story of Rama and Sita, creating Diwali celebration food, tasting some of the foods that may be eaten during Diwali and watching the lighting of the Diwa lamps.
To end our autumn and Gruffalo learning, we made Gruffalo Crumble in class!
In maths this week we have enjoyed counting up to 5 Gruffalo characters and saying the number names in the correct order.

This week in our literacy, we have enjoyed sharing the story of The Gruffalo.

We had to listen to instructions and be a stomping gruffalo, a slithering snake, a tip toeing mouse , a flapping owl and a running fox.
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Today the children have enjoyed making fire work pictures using magic glue and glitter 😊
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Huge thanks to all parents, carers and families for joining us for our first Stay and Learn of the year which was based on autumn and Room on the Broom.

we explored a pumpkin and made magical wands by dipping breadsticks into melted chocolate.
We had a fun time sharing the story of Room on the Broom in class.
We re-enacted the story, ordered broomsticks by length, and created magical spells.

We went on a trip to Speak Hall today and had the best day ever! We went in search of a friendly Giant at the outdoor nature trail. We found lots of giant objects and musical instruments .
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A great big thank you to everybody that came to our Stay and Play this afternoon. We had so much fun making magic wands, playdough hedgehogs and decorating room on the broom characters.
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We made some special Diwali sweets, Diwali cards and shared some Diwali foods . Happy Diwali to everyone!
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This week we have enjoyed celebrating Diwali by making our very own Diya lamps using salt dough.
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We had a fantastic time at our campfire. We toasted marshmallows, ate s’mores, sang songs and drank hot chocolate. A big thank you to all the parents and carers for attending.
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We have been leaning all about the celebration Diwali. We made Diwali lamps out of salt dough and decorated them with bright coloured paint and glitter. Don’t they look amazing!
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We have had a great time sharing the story of Funnybones this week. We have talked about where our heads, shoulders, knees, toes, hands and legs are and have had fun sharing a skeleton dance. We have also talked about clothing names when dressing a skeleton.
Thank you to all parents for joining us at the campfire yesterday. We had a great time toasting marshmallows, making s’mores and singing and dancing!
We have been shaking different parts of our bodies fast and slow just like shaking skeletons.
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We had a great time celebrating Billy Bear and Lucky Labubu’s birthdays! We had a party with delicious party food, played party games and sang happy birthday!
In reception this week the children have been working out who has “MORE” toys. We shared the toys with Teddy and Jigsaw Jennie, we counted how many each one had and then we worked out who had more and talked about who has less.
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We have been using straws to make skeletons in our playdough area. We used our creative skills to think about where bones need to go.
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This weeks story is called Funny bones. We decided to dress our skeleton and sing and dance with her. We talked about different parts of the body and what clothes we wear.
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The children have been reading “Happy Birthday Maisy” this week. We had lots of celebrating this week as it was Lucky Labubu’s birthday as well as Billy Bears, Jesse, Ayah and Elias [RSMc].
We made special decorations, decorated birthday cards and made party hats for the birthday celebration.
This afternoon we played super fun party games and shared some party food together to celebrate – what a wonderful way to end the week!
Happy Birthday Lucky Labubu & Billy Bear 🎂🌈🍀
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This week we are using equipment to help us retell Jack and the Beanstalk!
#lsspcoachtom
This week we have been looking at arrangements and deciding how many there are. We then matched arrangements to numbers.
Huge thanks to so many parents who joined us for session 3 of our literacy workshop which focused on phonics.

This afternoon we have enjoyed dancing to music using scarves , we have learnt various new moves and had lots of fun.
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This week we have enjoyed sharing the story of Five Minutes’ Peace. We have sequenced the key events in the story and created a bubble bath for Mrs Large!
Huge thanks to all parents for coming on Tuesday for session 2 of our literacy workshop which focused on nursery rhymes. We made Humpty Dumpty play dough and jigsaws! Please join us if you can this coming Tuesday 7th October at 2.15pm- focus will be phonics. Many thanks!

The children have been exploring how numbers are made of 1s 🧮
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We had a great time at our very own tiger tea party after sharing The Tiger Who Came to Tea.

Huge thanks to parents for coming along to our first workshop on Tuesday. We shared Shark in the
Park and made telescopes with our families. Please join us this Tuesday 30th September at 2.15pm for more fun and ideas for home.

Using lots of equipment with our sports coach to practice key skills and having great great fun!
We had a great time practicing matching numbers to quantity up to 5.
Our book this week was You Choose. The children had lots of fun making different choices. We talked about how we make lots of choices every single day.
They choose what job they would like to have when they are older and we made special crowns to show this. They choose what what type of house they would like to live in and we painted some beautiful pictures for our home area. 🏡
They even got to choose what type of chocolate chips they would have their biscuit 🍪
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We have been practicing how to sit in a space and how to follow instructions. We played a game called traffic lights and had lots of fun.
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Today we have learnt two new songs, Im a little tea pot and Tiny Tim. We have made spotty teapots this morning using the paint sticks and also explored making tea outside. This afternoon we have learnt Tiny Tim and had lots of fun exploring with the soap and flannels.
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We used magnifying glasses to look at all the different thing that had fallen down off the trees.
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Today in PE we learnt how to get into a space and how to follow instructions. We played the beans game and had to be walking beans, jumping beans and runner beans.
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Sharing Songs in Reception. We’ve had fun singing number songs and a Gruffalo song!
This week we looking at counting and making arrangements of numbers to 3.

This week we have learnt two new songs, I’m a little tea pot and tiny Tim. We have had fun exploring with the soap and water. We have also been making cups of tea using the tea bags.
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We listened to the story ‘The tiger who came to tea’ today. Later we painted pictures of the tiger. What a busy Monday we have had!
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It’s been great to have seen the children settle into school life in Reception.

We had so much fun celebrating our schools birthday celebrations. We had a visit from the ice cream van, played party games and enjoyed birthday cake.
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We had so much fun taking part in our schools birthday celebrations. We had a visit from the ice cream van , played party games and enjoyed birthday cake.
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What an absolutely fantastic celebration for our schools 150th birthday celebration! 🎊
The children enjoyed playing on the inflatables with their friends , they had a visit to the ice cream truck for some lovely I whipped ice cream and they also played party games with lots of prizes in their classes!
The children finished off the day with some birthday cake and sang happy birthday to Smithdown Primary School. What a lovely day from start to finish. 🎂
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This week we have enjoyed sharing the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Below is a link if you’d
like to share the story at home. Many thanks.
https://fliphtml5.com/zfycw/hxzl/basic

We had a great time learning all about the o’clock time and days of the week in maths.

We have had a great day celebrating Smithdown’s 150th birthday party! We played on a bouncy castle, had ice cream and had such great fun playing party games! Thank you very much for all of our lovely treats.

Thank you to all of the families who attended Receptions Hands assembly this afternoon. The children have been working so hard for the last 10 weeks and they were absolutely fantastic!
We are so proud of all the effort they have been putting into their signing, singing and dancing.
We hope you all enjoyed it!!
And a big well done to Deny from Miss McNally’s class who worked so hard throughout these sessions with her fantastic signing. She won a love hands jacket – how amazing!!
🙌 🙌
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Today we read “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” – the children worked together in pairs to recall what the caterpillar had eaten on each day of the week.
They also used some of the fruits that the very hungry caterpillar had eaten to make their very own fruit salad that they enjoyed during snack time. 🍎🍐🍊🍓🍉🫐
In the creative area the children were making their own very hungry caterpillars using green and red circles. They made these completely independently- how fantastic! 🐛
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Reception enjoyed some freezing cold ice pops in the sun. What a perfect cool down on a Friday afternoon!! ☀️
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Oh the children could have never guessed what their Teddy’s got up to once the lights went out… what mischievous Teddy’s🐻
The children got to see the Teddy’s journey throughout our school & then enjoyed a lovely breakfast in the garden!
Lots of giggles and full bellies in Reception today! 🌟
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What a fantastic afternoon we have all had! We have set the teddy’s off to sleep with a lovely lullaby… let’s see what they get up to tomorrow! 🐻
Thank you to all of the families who attended & got creative with the children – I hope you all enjoyed it as much as we did.
Roll on the Teddy Bear Breakfast 🥞 🐻
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The children had a busy afternoon and had worked up an appetite for some shark-infested biscuits, after a busy morning for sports day! 🦈🌟
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Thank you to all of the families who came out to cheer the children on – they had a blast! 🏆
The children worked so hard as part of a team to complete all of the races and we are so proud of all of them for showing great sportsmanship!
Well done to everyone 🌟
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The children have been exploring different ways to make 🔟
They used numicon, cubes and counters to show different ways to make the number 10!
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The children were using their adding skills today to add the numbers from the dice to work out how many jumping jacks they needed to do. ⭐️
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The children had lots of fun choosing what to send the Lighthouse Keeper for lunch. They choose what food and sent it down in a basket – all while trying to avoid the seagulls. We talked about what healthy choices we could make and choose his lunch very carefully. Oooooh! 🧺 🏝
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We loved taking part in BeatleMania today!
”We all lived in a yellow submarine!” 🎶
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We are having a great time developing our imaginative role play skills outside at the ice cream shop! We also dressed Billy Bear for the summer and thought about what kinds of clothes and items he might need.
We have had a lovely time in Forest School club with some of our Reception children and parents and families. We have used natural materials to make journey sticks, played listening games and created dens. Tomorrow-Thursday 26th June is our last session where we will be having a campfire. All welcome and hope to see lots of you tomorrow from 3.30-4pm. Many thanks.

On Wednesday 9th July at 2.15pm we are inviting all parents and families to our Big Teddy Sleepover! We invite all of our children to bring in a bear 🐻 and they will make a bed using a selection of boxes and materials. We be sharing songs and putting our teddies into their beds ready to spend the night at school! We hope to see as many of you as possible there. Many thanks.
We are practicing songs for our big teddy bear sleepover coming up on Wednesday 9th July at 2.15pm! All parents and families welcome.
373Reception have been super crafty over the last few weeks reading all about Pirates – they have been making paintings of pirate ships, telescopes, pirate flags and even treasure maps! 🏴☠️
This afternoon we had a fantastic time celebrating and eating delicious food with all of our families at school.
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What a lovely picnic this afternoon! A big, huge thank you to all children, parents and staff for all the work and effort everyone has put in for our 150 year celebration. Thank you everyone for coming to celebrate this afternoon.
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Thank you all for coming to our Father’s / Special Person assembly 🌟 the children worked so hard practicing both songs and making their lovely art work. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!
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In Reception we have been learning all about our school and it’s 150th birthday 🥳
We looked at old pictures of the children from our school – they were all in black and white.
We made a picture of Smithdown P.S to celebrate and printed with sponges using the school colours 🎨
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Reception had a fantastic day at the museum on Tuesday. We had a wonderful time seeing all of the amazing things – our favourite was the aquarium. The children even spotted Nemo and Dory!
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The children have been working hard during their morning work to recall double facts. They wrote the number sentence to match – using the adding and equal sign. Great job Reception 👍🏻
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Reception families everybody is welcome to our Forest School club today from 3.30-4pm.
Many thanks!
Today the children have enjoyed coming to school in their own clothes to celebrate Eid.
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In Reception the have been working extremely hard every week with a new weekly challenge – which they must complete independently!
The children were given a challenge this week to help out The Jolly-Roger’s family to see what items of treasure would float and which would sink. They experimented with different objects – coins, rocks, kids and rubber bands.
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Today we enjoyed measuring the ingredients together and making school cake to celebrate our schools 150th birthday.🎁 🎈 🎉
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In Reception we have talked about how our school building is 150 years old. We’ve looked at old photographs of the building and have drawn pictures of our school using photographs.

We have been looking at the features of our school building and creating a collage using various shapes.
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We have been hunting for key features of our school building that is now 150 years old.
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This week we are having a great time making Eid cards and learning about Eid celebrations.
This week we have really enjoyed learning all about pirates! We have made hats, eye patches, designed ships and created our own treasure maps.
















































Huge thanks to all parents who were able to come along to the park.
Today we looked at different features of a pirate and labelled them.
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This week in reception the boys and Girls have been very hard at work making a map for Little Red Riding Hood. They made their very own map to help Little Red to stay away from the Big Bad Wolf 🐺 They have made these maps all by themselves… well done boys and girls for working independently!
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Huge thanks to all parents who were able to come along with their child to the park.

Huge thanks to all parents who were able to come along with their child to the park.
Huge thanks to all parents who could make coming along to the park this week with their child.

Here is a link to The Little Red Hen story if you would like to share it at home.
https://pubhtml5.com/hmeo/tnap/Little_Red_Hen_%28Ladybird_Read_It_Yourself%29/
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Here is a game to play at home to help your child understand odd and even numbers.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zvwq2v4
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Over the last few weeks, we have been practicing our skipping skills, trying to throw and catch and even having a go at tennis! We have also been practicing our listening skills and following instructions in PE when playing games.

This week we have been sharing the story of The Little Red Hen. We have made bread just like the hen and have written instructions for making bread.

This week we have been practicing odd and even numbers up to 10 in maths.

For last weeks challenge the children had to make a house out of straw, sticks or bricks. The children had to do this independently.
Look at their wonderful work. 😃 🌟
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Yesterday we made bread just like The little red hen. Today we ate it with butter and jam. It was so tasty!
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We are practicing signs for food names this week in Reception during our Hands time.

This week we have been practicing learning subtraction facts of number bonds to 5.
In PE today we looked at using our senses to move around. We used our ears to hear the birds ,our noses to smell the dinner, our eyes to see our friends and feeling mud in our toes
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This week we are sharing the story of The Three Little Pigs and we have had lots of fun making houses for the pigs using a selection of materials.

We ha
We had lots of fun sharing the story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff. We created a bridge, made billy goat collages, practiced our number bonds to 5 using goat counters and made cheese and cress crackers.
Our current topic is Traditional Tales and we shared the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. We wrote sorry letters
We had the best day ever visiting Croxteth farm. In the morning we saw lots of farm animals and in the afternoon we had a play in the play area.
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Today we celebrated Earth Day in Reception by using sun paper to make natural pictures. We also talked about ways to save and conserve
energy and used a parachute to use the power of the wind to have lots of fun outdoors.
We have started to learn sign language in Reception. Today we have been learning signs for colours.

The children had a wonderful time celebrating Eid at school. We had a dance party to celebrate!


Today we continued with the Eid celebrations. The children looked amazing in their special Eid clothes and had some fun doing some lovely Eid activities! We finished off the day with a dance party to celebrate Eid 🎉
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Reception families and parents if you are joining us at Central Library this week, please meet us at 9.45 at the main entrance of Central Library on William Brown Street.
Miss McFarlane’s class will go to the library tomorrow Tuesday 1st April and Miss McNally’s class will visit on Thursday 3rd April. Below is a map link for our school to the library.
The postcode for the library is L3 8EW.
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Smithdown+Primary+School,+Chatsworth+Drive,+Liverpool+L7+6LJ/Central+Library,+William+Brown+St,+Liverpool+L3+8EW/@53.4053523,-2.9861237,14z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x487b21022e52ea2d:0x4c6d8550a6cc4176!2m2!1d-2.9511929!2d53.3992227!1m5!1m1!1s0x487b213b05a3aa69:0x5f4ca882f45b6b5d!2m2!1d-2.9802884!2d53.4098392!3e0?hl=en-gb&entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDMyNS4xIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
We have had fun making carrot footprints today as part of spring and Easter.
Thank you very much to all parents who cam along to our Mother’s Day story time on Friday.

Our star of the week certificates go to two fantastic hard workers. Well done! ⭐️ 🌟 💫
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This week we have been looking at rhyming strings in literacy and subtraction in maths.
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Wishing you all a very happy Mother’s Day! A big thank you to everyone that attended our special Mother’s Day story time this morning. We hope you enjoyed it. 🌸 🌺 💗
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We enjoyed painting sunflowers as we watched our own sunflower seeds begin to grow. We shared a story called Camille and the Sunflowers and looked at a famous sunflower painting by Vincent Van Gogh to help us with our painting.
In Reception literacy this week we are practicing continuing a rhyming string and enjoying lots of rhymes. We are sharing a story called Oi Frog and below is a link if you’d like to share the story at home.
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This week in Reception maths we are practicing subtracting and writing numbers and subtraction number sentences.
Below are some links to some subtraction number songs to share at home.
https://ictgames.com/mobilePage/bottleTakeAway/index.html
https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/school-radio/articles/zjjbnrd
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We are busy in Reception making Eid cards and Mother’s Day cards.
We listened to the lovely sounds of the violin and sang along to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.
This morning we voted as to whether we would climb the beanstalk or not! The children standing said they would climb and the children sitting down said that they would not!
We have had a great time playing the claves in music. We had to keep to a beat and then stop!
This week we are learning about Jack and the Beanstalk. Below is a link to the story if you would like to share it at home.
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This week we are learning about Jack and the Beanstalk as part of our topic of Growth. We have painted a beanstalk and have planted beans and peas. We will be watering them to watch them grow.
This week we are practicing adding 1 using the part whole model.
We created a beanstalk using green ribbon and paper. We imagined it was leading up to the giant’s castle.
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We had fun decorating sunflower biscuits this afternoon.
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To celebrate science week, reception read The Gingerbread Man and talked about what might happen if the gingerbread man fell into the water. We decided to see what would happen if we dunked biscuits into milk, oil and water.
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This week we have planted sunflower seeds, made scented play dough using lavender, rosemary and mint and planted vegetables, daffodils and herbs. We will be watching the changes to the seeds as they grow.

As part of Science Week we did an experiment about which biscuit is the best for dipping! We have used a variety of biscuits to dip into milk, water and oil. We looked to see which liquid was the best to use. Thank you Mrs Kelly for giving us great ideas for a fun afternoon!
This week we are celebrating Science Week at school. Reception are learning about a scientist called Sarah Boone who helped to create the modern day ironing board.
Today we have made our very own Gingerbread Man ……. Run run as fast as you can 🏃
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We will water our seeds everyday and watch them grow into beautiful sunflowers.
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After carefully listening to the instructions, we planted our sunflower seeds.
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This week our focused story in literacy is Errol’s Garden. If you would like to share it at home, here is a link to the book.
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We have had a great time beginning our topic of Growth by planting sunflower seeds. We will observe the changes to the seeds over the next few weeks. We are also celebrating Science Week at school this week.
We enjoyed World Book Day! We found lots of Dalmatian dogs and hid from Cruella de Vil!
What a fantastic day we had dressed up as our favourite book characters.
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We had lots of being superheroes and creating dens outdoors for the superheroes to live in.
We made some fantastic Supertato pictures using real potatoes to print with.
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Today we have had lots of fun making our very own porridge after reading our new book Goldilocks and the Three Bears. 🐻
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In Reception we have celebrated International Mother Language Day by counting in other languages and learning the names of our snacks in different languages.
This week we are counting up to 7 objects and making 6 and 7 using other numbers including 5.

This week we are learning all about Supertato the supermarket hero! Thanks to all parents who have helped their child to make their own Supertato at home. We have also had fun making them at school and below is a link to this week’s story if you’d like to share it at home.
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Our new topic is Superheroes! How many superheroes can you spot in Reception?!

Huge thanks to all parents for joining their children in celebrating Valentine’s Day. The children had a lovely week creating cards, hats and hearts in cookery.

Today we have been making teddy bear bread using chocolate spread, bananas and raisins after reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
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A big thank you to everybody who attended our Valentine’s Day story time. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. ♥️😍
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