This week the children have been learning about the farm. The children have discussed what animals they would see at a farm, what animals young are called and what food grows or comes from a farm.

We had the fantastic opportunity to take all of our learn to Atwell Park Farm. The children had an AMAZING time, feeding the animals, learning all the different facts about the farm and even getting the chance to stroke and hold some of the animals.

The Swans have been very busy once again this week! We have continued to explore the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. We acted it out in small groups and discussed it in our family groups thinking about  how the different characters in the story may be feeling and what they may be saying.

The children have made the most of the warm sunny weather by keeping cool in the water tray. Thank you for sending the children into school with sun hats and making sure they have sun cream applied. We have made sure the children drink plenty of fluids and keep in the shade during the hottest part of the day.

Our Discovery Time activities have continued to have a ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ theme.

On the maths table the children have ordered the beans from 1-20 and found the correct numicon pieces to make numbers from 10-20.

They children have sequenced the story pictures and made puppet characters working on those cutting skills! The swans are becoming fantastic writers and have written some fantastic captions using their amazing phonics skills!

The children enjoyed mixing paints to make orange, pink and purple . If you ask them l’m sure they will be able to tell you which colours they used!

Finally an update on our strawberry patch! We are starting to see our green strawberries turn red! The children are continuing to help with the watering and will soon be enjoying juicy strawberries for snack time!

Our new topic for this term is Fairy Tales. Our first story is Jack and the Beanstalk. In Talk for Writing the Swans enjoyed retelling the story using actions and in Language for Thinking they sequenced the story.

Our Discovery Time activities included playing a game with a partner, using a dice to take it in turns, to reach number 20 on the beanstalk. We also used the small world figures, castle and house to act out the story on the tuff tray.

We made a play dough beanstalk using beans, gems and pipe cleaners to decorate it. On the Work shop table we drew a beanstalk decorating it with wool and leaves. We coloured pictures of the characters from the story and used our cutting skills. We also used different beans to make a picture.

On the writing table we wrote captions for Jack and the Beanstalk using our super phonic skills!

In maths Swans have been learning how to subtract using numbers within ten using the double-sided counters. They have even managed to record number sentences!

In Phonics the Swans have been practicing how to sit at their tables to complete their writing task getting them ready for Year One. Well done Swans!

It has been’ Empathy Week’ this week and Miss Coghlan explained this difficult concept using a fantastic video and Power Point presentation. Swans have tried to show empathy to all our friends all week.

Finally our strawberry patch in the outdoor classroom is bearing fruit! The strawberries are big and green but with some watering and sunshine we are hoping they will turn red soon and the children can pick them and eat them at snack time.

As you can see we have had a busy start to our final term in Reception. Keep up the hard work Swans!