What have we been doing in reception this week?

Yet another busy week in reception and only a week to go until half term. This week saw an exciting two day visit by an artist, Chinese New Year, an introduction to ‘old toys’, an introduction to using money and assessment tasks against which we can assess academic progress.

As you will have already seen the artist was a great success. The children loved learning about the life and work of Lowry. Riley was very sad for him as nobody gave him a hug or a kiss when he was a child. The work produced was great and you can see your child’s sketches on parents evening next week.

Learning about the life and work of Picasso on Tuesday provoked a lot of discussion. Elijah found it very amusing that Picasso had so many girlfriends during his life. We looked at Picasso’s painting of the three musicians and the children who had been absent on Monday or who had completed their Lowry work tried to make a collage musician with cut shapes and sticky paper.

We learnt about Chinese New Year and made lucky red envelopes with chocolate coins in and a snake sock puppet as it is the year of the snake. The theme continued into music where we learnt a new song.

In maths the children have been counting 1p and 2p coins to find a total. Put some out on the table and see how well they do!

Only one sound in phonics this week, the diagraphs that say ou and ow.

Check out the remote control cars adding to the experiences this week. Not everyone has had a turn but beware there are some maniac drivers!

Thank you to the parents that sent in their old toys for our toy museum. The children will be looking at them in more detail next week and trying to draw them before we visit the museum in Stevenage on Wednesday .

Finally, good luck to children and parents with your homework this weekend. We appreciate that many parents do not keep their old toys so we have given you the opportunity to record your favourite toy when you help your child to fill in their part of the sheet. We will make this into a book for you all to look at on parents evening!