Welcome to Reception Class S at Allerton CE Primary School in Leeds. Here, under the careful guidance of Mrs Shipley, we will blog to the Big Wide World.
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This week we have been learning about Lunar New Year. We started by looking at the places in the world where many people celebrate Lunar New Year. We discovered that Lunar New Year is a celebration of a new moon every Spring. Families prepare by cleaning the house before putting up decorations: lots of red for luck and flowers as a reminder of Spring. On the morning of Lunar New Year, new clothes are worn to recognise the fresh start and children are given red envelopes containing money. Lanterns are made to symbolise the brightness of Spring and people offer good luck messages. Feasts with eight or nine (lucky numbers!) dishes are eaten. Families then go outside to watch the dragon parade and dancing. After the parade, there are firecrackers to deter bad spirits. Each year is named after an animal. I wonder if the children can recall why this is?
2025 is year of the snake so we have been learning lots of interesting facts about snakes.
Our beautiful lanterns required lots of precise cutting and stapler-support from Amy. Some children decided to make a snake too: joining the parts with treasury tags was challenging but great for developing our fine motor skills.
We enjoyed our own animal races in the outdoor area.
Thank you to Mr Chan for coming in to tell us how he has celebrated Lunar New Year with Ian and his family in Hong Kong.
Motivated by the RSPB big garden birdwatch, we have been learning all about our feathered friends.
We discovered, from an information video, that all birds: have feathers; lay eggs; have a beak instead of teeth and have wings (but not all birds fly). After enjoying the book, ‘A Busy Day for Birds’ by Lucy Cousins, we went on our own birdwatch around the school grounds. Can the children recall which birds they spotted in the sky or on the field and which birds they heard in the hedgerows?
To try and attract more birds to our class apple tree, we made bird cake. Here are the instructions if you want to make some at home.
The children were also invited to draw a bird.
Our class story invention this week featured Muffin, the Puffin, being rescued by his lifelong mate, Huffin.
How exciting to walk into assembly and discover that police officers, Sarah and Paul, had come to visit us in school. We thought about the questions we would like to ask them when it was our turn to go outside so that we could learn more about what the police do to help us.
During the visit, Sarah asked us which vehicles the police might use other than a van. Their favourite answer was from Emma, who thought that they might drive “Lamborghinis”. Sarah and Paul also loved the idea that there may be police camels, giraffes and cows when they asked which animals help the police with their work. We learnt that dogs and horses are used by the police but that Paul thought that “Giraffes is a great idea for looking in high places”.
We all had the opportunity to be ‘locked up’ in the back of the police van and were excited when the lights and sirens were switched on by Zoe and Lucas.
When we returned inside, we reflected on what we had learned about how the police help us.
Lucas recalled that, “the baddies go in the back and are locked in so they cannot escape”. “The uniform is bright yellow so we know they are there at night.” (Isaac). “If people hurt you, you use a shield to stop them.” (Ian) “The sirens are really loud.” (Reggie) “The sirens were so loud I had to put my fingers in my ears.” (Hector) “You ring 999.” (Coby) “Being an officer is good because you can catch baddies.” (Toby)
Thank you to Sarah and Paul for coming and for inspiring so many of us to say, “I want to be in the police when I grow up!”.
….is our topic this half term. The children have been talking about all of the people, who help them. Parents will be pleased to hear that you came up quite a lot – especially in relation to feeding them! We have also identified doctors, the police, builders, firemen, teachers, refuse collectors, nurses, dentists and delivery drivers.
There has been some wonderful role play in our medical centre. Coby used the thermometer: “Put it in your armpit or your mouth to make sure you’re feeling alright”. Ian told Miss Hague, “It’s a bandage for a leg cut or bone break.”
While sharing our story about Dr Miranda, Isaac revealed that he is on course for a medical career if he wants one. He offered a super explanation for the term swollen: “It’s where you injure something like your ankle and it becomes fat.”
He also told us, “If you are hot, you might have a temperature”.
Most of the children were able to recall their own medical experiences. We heard about rashes, earaches and sore throats.
Thank you very much to Amy for coming in on Friday to explain what she does in her role as an intensive care nurse. Please ask the children what they recall from her visit.
Later in the half term, we will welcome a visit from some police officers.
….whose head appeared in our classroom. After hunting around the classroom to find all his body parts, we put him back together. Fred, the bear, wrote to thank us for our help and he explained that it wasn’t the first time that something bad had happened to him. We sent Fred letters to ask what happened in the past.
Fred sent us a book, which explained that he had not, in fact, been squished by a lorry or hit by a lion or thrown out of a window (or any of the other suggestions from children in RS). He had been pushed into a bin by a dog and ended up on a truck to the dump. Oh no!
We practised our cutting, pinning and sticking skills by making our own bears and dogs.
Next week, we will start to imitate the story, learning the words with actions.
In our final week of Autumn term, we have enjoyed several Christmas celebrations with singing, dancing and edible treats.
Ahead of our Christingle service this afternoon, we learned that Christingles are used in some Christian churches during the Advent period. We discovered that each part of a Christingle represents something special for this time of year. Can the children remember what?
Thank you for all of your support this term and for your kind and generous festive messages. Wishing you all a wonderful Christmas break.
Nativity week! We have been building up to this all half term, the children were performance ready and have loved dressing up, saying their lines and wiggling to the songs. Here is our filmed performance for anyone who wants to watch it again! We are so proud of the children as standing on the stage is daunting at any age. Thank you for all of your support with costumes, line learning and song singing!
We are embracing all things Christmas in Reception at the moment: noticing the properties of 2D shapes as we make our Christmas cards; practising our subitising (on a dice) and ‘counting on’ as we play the Santa track game; marvelling at Sam the elf’s ability to create baubles for our tree and to inspire us to cook vegetable pasta; making toys in our workshop; creating pebble nativity scenes; writing to Father Christmas and rehearsing for our Nativity performances. We can’t wait to wriggle for you next Wednesday and Thursday! Look out for your tickets in book bags.
We are reflecting on the value of thankfulness this week. Parents and siblings will be delighted to hear that the children expressed much appreciation for you, when sharing what they feel grateful for…in particular (but not exclusively) for the food you make! We would all like some of Zoe’s mum’s spaghetti after hearing about it. Jay told us about the hugs he enjoys with mummy. Alma is particularly grateful for the safe arrival of her brand new baby sister. Edie expressed appreciation for the Year 6 buddies and many of the children talked about how much they love their friends. Darius spoke for us all, when he said, “I am grateful that Coby is back at school. I missed him”. Coby himself said, “I am happy I can come to school again and thank you for the nurses that got me better.”
The first snowfall of the year always has such a captivating impact on young children and it has been wonderful to witness their enthusiasm for the seasonal changes. We noticed that there was snow on our class apple tree as we made our way down from Nursery Lane and discussed why there was no snow on the underside of the branches.
We were delighted to find that there was ice and snow to explore in the outdoor area and Zoe was overheard explaining to her friends that the “mud” in the outdoor kitchen had “frozen”.
At snack time on Monday, we chose some objects to place in water outside overnight as an experiment. When we arrived in school on Tuesday, there was fascination that solid ice had formed on the inner sides of the cup and on the top but there was still liquid water on the inside. The ice-crystals made it hard for us to see through the top but the ice was transparent further down and we could see the toy.
Alma started her own experiment at home and brought it into school on Thursday to share the learning with her friends. We particularly enjoyed watching the pockets of air moving around. It took all morning for the ice to melt.
When we wanted a break from the chilly weather, we came inside and created wintry scene pictures, choosing different materials in cold colours
We have also been practising zipping up coats and putting on mittens. Gloves are particularly tricky so please only send them in when the children have mastered putting them on independently! Thank you.