Michael Rosen explains on his website that, “Poetry is valuable for all of us for many reasons: it was invented as a good way to remember important things and interesting things. It still does this, through its musical sounds, rhythms and rhymes. It’s also a good way to play with the language around us and playing pleases us.”

Learning through playful language certainly pleases us in Reception. In celebrating this year’s National Poetry Day theme of Counting, we have enjoyed rhymes such as Five Little Ducks Went Swimming One Day, Five Little Men in a Flying Saucer, Five Little Buns in a Baker’s Shop, Five Little Monkeys Swinging from a Tree and many more. Having puppets/toys helps the children visualise the maths in the nursery rhymes.

However, the children’s favourite has been Two Little Dickie Birds: poetry and magic proving to be a winning combination.

Luke the crocodile snatches monkeys right out of the tree.

Five little children in a flying saucer flew round the earth one day (before lunch).

‘Mr Tumble and friends’ can be found easily online, singing many rhymes, if you want to expand your repertoire at home.

“Me and Toby make a rock finder every day!” Isaac told Mrs Shipley as the boys made their way outside to test their latest innovation. How wonderful!

Brimming with limitless imagination, Reception children are drawn to the DT workshop, where they are encouraged to bring their wonderful ideas to life. We explore different materials and consider how to use them on a small or grand scale. As we grow through the year and develop our fine motor skills, the children will be taught how to use materials and tools most effectively. They are invited to plan their models and are supported in considering how they can adapt and improve their creations.

In this first term, we focus on joining different materials and exploring different textures: glue, masking tape, paper clips, hole punch and treasury tags. We discover that we need to share! This week, the children have been shown how to create texture by folding paper into zigzags and curling paper strips around a pencil. Look at the monsters we made.

You can set up a simple workshop at home by saving boxes, tubes, lids and adding glue sticks and masking tape. Ask the children to show you how they have been taught to look after resources in school: for example, only twisting up the glue stick a little bit at a time and replacing the lid so the glue does not dry out.

If you make anything at home, we would love for you to upload a photo to Tapestry so the children can inspire us with their creations, explaining the materials and processes that they have used.

Over the last couple of weeks, we have made a couple of visits to our adopted class tree: a Ribston Pippin apple tree. By observing our tree throughout the school year, the children will learn about the effects of the changing seasons on the natural world around them.

The children made lots of interesting observations. Leon commented, “I think it’s covered in big juicy apples” and noticed the marks on the top of one of the apples. Mrs Wake explained that, just as boys and girls bruise when they bump into one another, the wind might blow branches into the apples and cause bruising. Edie described the leaf as “green and the edges are a bit spiky”. Coby wondered if “a worm might have bited” one of the apples when he spotted a hole. Toby noticed that the markings on his apple “look like a leaf shape”. When we sliced one apple in half, Darius was quite repulsed; “Ugggh, that’s disgusting!”. Alma enjoyed her apple: “Juicy”. We made leaf rubbings with crayon and apple prints with paint. We all agreed that our tree is beautiful on a sunny day at the end of Summer. We can’t wait to see what happens next.

….and into the school library. “Wow!” We were very excited to meet Aslan and join Miss Whiteley for our first library story – ‘Spinderella’ by Julia Donaldson.

Sharing books is one of the most important and enjoyable aspects of our Reception year. In addition to weekly library visits, we have story time every day, when class favourites are soon adopted. The children enjoy spending time in our classroom book corners, where they can choose from a range of fiction and non-fiction texts.

We encourage you to read with your children at home each day and to encourage them to consider: what they notice; what they wonder; what they think; what might happen next; how might the character be feeling; whether they would like to be in the story?

Family Library Sessions for Reception children and their families are offered on Tuesdays 3.00-4.00pm (younger/older siblings welcome). Meet in main reception. You can also visit Moor Allerton library if another weekday or Saturday is better for you.

The children, who have started Reception this week, are settling in brilliantly. There was excitement at meeting our ACE bears and taking them home to be welcomed into our families. We have explored the different areas of indoor and outdoor provision: painting; crafting; changing nappies in the home corner; creating cakes with playdough; collecting eggs from the chickens; putting out fires in the small world area…..and much more. By sharing our ‘all about me’ boxes, we have started to learn more about our friends and their lives outside of school. Manners have been practised at lunchtime and we have talked about sharing during snack time. Thank you to our Year 6 buddies, who are helping us to settle in. We can’t wait until everyone is here at the end of next week!

On Wednesday, we harvested our potatoes. It was an impressive yield of 53 potatoes. Today, we enjoyed them either plain, with butter or with butter and freshly plucked mint. Some of us tried all three options! “Mmmmmm” said Eliza (who ate five!). “Delicious!” declared George. Mia enjoyed “the butter off my finger because it tastes good because of the mint”. Rio explained that he “liked the big ones as well as the babies”. “Me too,” agreed Peter. Well done, RS, for looking after the plants so diligently.

Well done certificate winners

Please keep up with the Reading Eggs and Mathseeds after you have recharged your batteries.

Moving up

RS 2023/24 – you are a wonderful class. Stay wonderful for each other! Thank you for all of the fun, learning and laughter we have shared.

Thank you to everyone, who was able to join us for our Art Celebration today.

The children were excited to welcome you into school and share their learning; we are so proud of how well they performed.

Here is the presentation (without the music), which the children might want to share with their friends and relatives.

Masks, paintings, postcards, drawings, mushrooms, printing, instruments, sketching will be coming home as the final instalment for their learning journals.

The castles that you made at home were brilliant – thank you!

Celebrating certificate winners

Whilst the weather wasn’t quite as spectacular as last week, the predicted rain stayed away and we enjoyed our day out together! The town crier was so impressed by our sketching of the castle last week that, today, he returned from the market square just to see what we had drawn. He also let us all ring his bell after George asked so politely.

Thank you again to the parent helpers – we couldn’t have gone without you. We cannot wait to see everyone on Thursday 11th July for our Arts Celebration, where we will share more photos and all of our learning.

Twelve of RS took an outing to Knaresborough today. Thank you, Mr Carter, for taking us – in the school minibus – to the station, where we hopped aboard the train. We had magic tickets to “take us anywhere” but most seemed happy to stick with Knaresborough. When we arrived in Knaresborough, we wandered down the cobbles, noticing the chequer-board paint and a thatched cottage. At the bottom of the hill, we marvelled at the echoes produced when our voices bounced off the stones. A biscuit break was essential before we climbed the 117 steep steps up to the castle remains. The children wondered if the people in the rowing boats on the River Nidd were or knew Mr and Mrs Gumpy. Thank you to the lunchtime team for our delicious picnic, which we enjoyed on the grass before listening to the town crier talk about the history of Knaresborough castle. We sketched the castle ruins before playing ring games in the shade. Then, we ambled back down the steps for the moment we had all been waiting for: our ice lollies! Thank you very much to the adult helpers, who were able to join us. Children – you behaved impeccably and were wonderful ambassadors for our school. There will be more photos at the art celebration on Thursday 11th of July.

Our innovation of ‘The Bear and the Piano’ involved us considering which other woodland animal could be our main character and which other instrument he or she may come across in the forest. What noise would the instrument make? Where might the new character go? Would he be as famous as the bear? Some lovely writing and illustrations, RS! I hope you are proud of yourselves.

Refugee week

We have explored the idea of what it means to be a refugee through the story of ‘Lubna and Pebble’ by Wendy Maddour. We learned that a refugee is somebody, who has no choice but to leave their home and move to a new country to live – perhaps because of war, an earthquake or a flood. Mia showed lots of empathy when she explained that “people go to other countries, where they will be safe”.

We also shared ‘Counting Kindness’ by Hollis Kurman and discussed the maths that we noticed in the story. Then we created our own kindness posters.

Thank you to the Year 5 activists, who read us ‘My Name is not Refugee’ and provoked us to consider some brilliant questions.

Well done to our certificate earners this week!