Click here to see what the reception children will be learning about this term:

Personal, social and emotional development: 

Last term, the children explored some of the different strategies that can be used to help with strong feelings such as frustration and anger. This term, the children have explored the term resilience and its meaning. The term was explored through activities such as chasing games where the children would try and take each others velcro tails off of each other. Here, the children would have to sit out should they lose all of their tails and deal with feelings of frustration.

The children have also explored ways of looking after our bodies. For example, they have engaged with hand washing activities and learning about the importance of keeping our bodies and environments clean. 

To add on top to learning different strategies, the children engaged with a form of meditation this term but using toy bears on their stomachs. They were told to focus on their breathing as it would help the bears to fall asleep!

Physical development:

To help continue developing the muscles in the children's fingers, they have all continued to engage with their busy bees activities which all focus on this. For example, the children have been using clothes pegs to pretend to hang pictures of clothes up onto a wire drying rack. They have been searching in the mud for worms and picking them out using tweezers. Wrapping elastic bands around small and large tins. Also, sticking stickers onto different shaped drawn lines. These activities also help aid with concerntration skills as well as hand and eye co-ordination. 

Communication and language: 

The children have been learning about a variety of insect names. In paticular, looking at the different parts of a butterfly life cycle and learning the terminology for these. The children have really enjoyed engaging with the story 'The Hungry Caterpillar' and learning some of the terminology from this. 

Literacy: 

The children's topic book this term is 'The Tiny Seed'. The children have explored different types of seeds and also had a go at writing some of the names of these seeds. We are not expecting the children to spell these sort of words at this stage, rather, we are looking to see if the children can identify any  sounds in the words they have learned so far to then write the sound using the correct letter. 

Maths: 

The children have been exploring odd and even numbers this term and exploring the concept of doubling. Length has also been explored by rolling different lengths of playdough and getting the children to say which one is longer or shorter using this terminology. 

Understanding of the World: 

The children have explored how plants grow and even had a go at planting their own. They also had their own garden centre and florist role play area and pretended to sell plants to each other. Building on from their learning about insects, they also looked at how plants help insects to survive. 

We feel it is important for the children to learn about respecting their environments. Here, we got the children to do some litter picking on the school field as well as design their own litter posters. They loved putting them up around the school field. 

Different environments for animals were also explored. For example, even through the children's topic was 'into the woods', the children learned about the sea life environment and how it differs to a woodland one.  

Expressive Arts and Design:

As always the children's role play area links with whatever it is the children are currently focusing on. Please see the pictures above for how the role play area has been designed this term and why. 

The children will be learning about an artist called Arcimboldo who painted humans out of natural materials. The children next term will be using a mirror to draw their own faces onto a template. They will then use this to help them make their own pictures of their faces using natural materials.