So far this term, we have been very busy in Reception. So busy that, once again, I must apologise for not keeping you updated with the photos!
Our learning has focused on bears and old and new toys. We enjoyed exploring the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears and had lots of fun acting out the story. Lots of the children were even brave enough to act it out in front of the class.
As you may know, the Ash class dinosaurs always love hearing new stories so we decided to change the characters in the Goldilocks story to create new stories of our own for the dinosaurs. The children created a story map with their chosen characters and used this to tell the story to a friend. We even had a go at writing the new story so the dinosaurs could read them at bedtime. The new stories included ‘Goldilocks and the Three Ghosts’, ‘Goldilocks and the Three Lions’ and ‘Goldilocks and the Three Wolves’.
To kick off our learning about toys, the children brought in their own teddy bears. We measured the bears’ heights using cubes and strips of paper. We then used the strips of paper to make a bar graph to see whose teddy was the tallest and whose was the shortest. The children also took part in ‘Show and Tell’ with their bears where they had the opportunity to tell their friends about their bears and ask each other questions.
In literacy, we read the story ‘Dogger’ by Shirley Hughes and decided to write our own version of the story where we lost our own teddy or toy. We made sure all stories had a happy ending where the teddy was found again though!
The children also made a clay version of their own teddy bears. They used a template to cut a teddy shape and then used the clay tools to create different effects and decorate their teddies. When the clay was dry, the children painted them to look like their own teddies. A lot of you saw the result when you came to visit for parents evening and I’m sure you will agree that they made some absolutely gorgeous teddies! We will send those home just after half term.
The children were also very excited to bring some of their favourite toys to school. We realised that a lot of our toys moved or made noises and needed batteries to work. A lot of our toys were also made from plastic. The children enjoyed telling each other all about their toys and even did some very informative writing for our class dinosaurs who were a bit confused by some of these new toys.
After reading ‘Harry and the Robots’ by Ian Whybrow where Harry’s favourite toy robot breaks and needs to be sent off to be repaired, the children created a simple 3 picture plan which they used to tell and write their own story in which their own toy got broken. We also did some junk modelling and made some robots, just like Harry did when he was waiting for his to be fixed.
Thank you so much for hunting around at home or visiting grandparents so that the children could bring in some old toys. The children really enjoyed thinking about what their parents and grandparents may have played with. We were also very lucky to be visited by Kate from Stevenage Museum who brought a selection of old (and not so old) toys for us to explore. We learned that the very old toys were mostly made from wood or metal as plastic didn’t exist. There were some toys the children had never seen before and some that were similar to toys we still play with today.
In our final week of learning about old toys, the adults in Ash class brought in some of their old toys. Mrs Stephenson shared her Sindy dolls with the children and taught them how to play Jacks while Mrs Kitchen taught the children how to play marbles. One of the firm favourites among the old toys was the Viewmaster which was used to view 3D pictures from stories and originally belonged to my grandma. They also enjoyed using the Disney Movie Viewers which belonged to my siblings in the 80s and said it was like TV but complained it was a bit blurry!
As we were not going to be at school for Pancake Day this year, we decided to make pancakes on the last day of term. I hope you all got to enjoy some yesterday and that you are having a great half term. We look forward to seeing the children back on Monday and are excited to see what we can pack in before Easter. Something tells me it’s going to be another busy half term… 🙂