Reception Weekly Blog (31.1.25)

Date: 31st Jan 2025 @ 12:15pm

Happy Lunar New Year!

This week in Reception, the children arrived on Monday full of excitement and ready to embrace all that was ahead of them. We kicked off our celebrations for the Lunar New Year, and it was a week full of learning and fun!

We started by exploring the story of the Great Race and discovering how the zodiac calendar works. The children were especially intrigued by the animal of the year they were born in. It was wonderful to see them connect with their zodiac animals, many finding that theirs represented cleverness and bravery—qualities that are perfectly fitting for our fantastic Reception children!

On Wednesday, we learned about snakes and their place in the Great Race. The children were fascinated by the story and loved discussing where the snake finished in the race.

Thursday was another highlight of the week as we introduced a ‘Taste of Asia’ experience. The children bravely tried noodles and prawn crackers for the first time! It was a joy to watch them dive into food tasting, and the conversations they had about the flavours were absolutely priceless.

As part of our Lunar New Year celebrations, each child also had the chance to create their own lantern. We used red paper and yellow markers—colours believed to bring good luck. The children were so creative, and their lanterns were the perfect way to mark this special festival. It’s been a week of cultural exploration, hands-on activities, and plenty of smiles. We are so proud of how the children embraced everything with enthusiasm and curiosity!

A big thank you to our experts this week, we loved learning with Ezekiel and Zexin. In Pinewoods classroom we had Zexin teaching us all about her love of caravan holidays and how fun they can be. Over in Sand Dunes classroom the focus moved to Ezekiel; the children have learnt so much about Star Wars. The children love exploring different interests each week and we cannot wait to learn about more fascinating things next week.

We will be focusing on ‘National Story Telling week’ in Reception, this fantastic annual event is a joyful celebration of the power of sharing stories. Stories teach us about the world; they allow us to step into someone else’s shoes and feel empathy; they help us to relax and escape and they can help develop essential literacy skills. As well as Children's Mental Health Week, this year's theme is 'Know Yourself, Grow Yourself.'

https://literacytrust.org.uk/resources/national-storytelling-week/

We were delighted to meet our next Secret Storytellers on Friday, a fantastic choice of books too. We can’t wait to meet our next ‘Secret Storytellers’ on Friday. If this is something you/ your family members would be interested in please email us at [email protected]  We met Mrs. Edger this week in the school library with our wonderful year 4 reading ambassadors. 

Don't forget, NSPCC's Number Day is on Friday 7th February! We can't wait to see what the children come to school wearing for this important day.

In our reading and writing sessions, we continue to focus on reading speed sounds at speed, in the spring term we start to see children ‘Fred in their head’, where the child whispers or says the sounds in their heads before blending them together to say a word.  

We are continuing to use ‘Fred talk, read the word’ when reading new green words: https://schools.ruthmiskin.com/training/view/J86texEe/3E4DXQ4b

have a go at this new virtual classroom video, Joshua is reading words using ‘Fred Talk’.

Please keep practising your Red Words, take a look at the following video where Rosie helps the children spot the tricky part of the word, using the phrase tricky letter!

https://schools.ruthmiskin.com/training/view/yctZzWlt/PyZPxUiT  

Please continue to send us your good news (no matter how big, or small) we love to share it as a class and it is so pleasing to see your children stand at the front and talk about their news [email protected]

Looking forward to more adventures next week!

The Reception Team