Welcome to Reception
September 2024
Teacher – Mrs. G Kirkpatrick (when Mrs. Cooke returns from maternity leave, she and Mrs. Kirkpatrick will job-share the teaching of our Reception class each week).
Teaching Assistants – Mrs. C Green, Mrs. S Broadbent (Mon-Tues), Miss. R Hunter (Weds-Fri)
In Reception, your children will spend their days exploring the various areas of provision our classroom and Percy’s Park outdoors, making new friends and building upon existing friendships. We work together through the Early Years Curriculum to learn new skills, share new experiences and have lots of fun!
Here are some reminders about our routines and expectations:
Water Bottles- Your child will need to bring a labelled water bottle to school every day which they will have constant access to in the classroom. Water bottles will be refilled as necessary and returned home each evening.
Reading– Children will be issued with their first reading book when Phonics teaching has commenced following our initial settling and assessment period. We hear the children read at least once a week and then they take the book home. Please share this book at least 4/5 times each week and leave us a comment to let us know how your child has done or what you have discussed. Books are changed throughout the week; we ask that you send your child’s book into school every day as their reading day in school may be subject to change.
Spelling– As your child becomes more confident with their literacy skills, we will send home some harder to read or spell (tricky) Words. These words are tricky because they cannot use their phonic knowledge to sound out. They just need to learn to read and write them independently. We will check them regularly to see if they are ready for the next set of tricky words.
PE– PE day is a Monday. We begin the year with practicing listening skills and working on fine and gross motor skills. Please note, children will NOT be expected to change into their PE kits until at least after Christmas. We build up to getting changed for PE gradually, beginning with pumps, therefore we may not need to send kits home for washing at the end of a half term if it has not been worn much. Please support your child in becoming independent at getting dressed and undressed to support these skills in school.
Homework– Your child will be given a small challenge to take home each week – this might be linked to English, phonics, maths, RE or another area we have been working on in class. It will be sent home in their books on a Friday to be returned on a Monday. It would be a great help if you could make a comment on the homework to let us know how your child found the challenge and how much support they needed.
Tapestry– We will be using Tapestry to document ‘wow’ moments throughout the week. Please let us kow if you are not able to access your child’s profile on Tapestry. Tapestry is a fantastic tool that allows us to capture and assess children’s learning moments, and for you to share in their time at school. We would ask that you do not send us any messages via Tapestry and to email the school office, call or visit us with any queries. This is because we might not see your message as promptly on Tapestry as we would like.
We welcome you to come to us with any questions or queries you might have about your child or school.
Our door is open each morning; we would ask that you visit us before 8.30 so that we can ensure we are ready for the children.
You may also email non-urgent queries to: admin@st-peters.tameside.sch.uk or call the school and leave a message.
We are so excited to spend this year supporting your children to learn, play, explore and develop new skills.
Thank you for your support,
Mrs. Kirkpatrick and Mrs. Green :-)
We love learning through play – take a look below at some of things we have been busy doing recently:
Oliver’s Fruit Salad
We have been reading Oliver’s Fruit Salad and sharing our opinions about our favourite fruits. We ended the week by making our own fruit salad – we sequenced the instructions for how to make them, then we carefully chopped the fruits before tasking the fruit salad as our snack – yummy! We voted for whether we liked or did not like the fruit salad, thankfully most children loved it!
Owl Babies and Hello Autumn!
We have been thinking about the season of Autumn – we have looked at the text Owl Babies and Hello Autumn over the past few weeks, both are lovely tales that feature the season of Autumn and remind us about families and special friendships. We have looked at the different signs of Autumn and have been busy doing lots of activities that support our fine motor skills such as paint mixing using pipettes, using computing software to create Autumn pictures, painting using cotton buds, cutting shapes out of leaves, making leaf crowns and going on a walk to spot signs of Autumn! Phew – learning about Autumn is busy work indeed! Well done everyone.
Time with Jesus – our faith journey
The children have commenced their faith journey wonderfully and show active participation in our Time with Jesus class liturgical prayer. This half term we are learning all about God’s World – we know that God created the beautiful world and we are learning to share our thoughts and feelings about God’s creations. We will also be learning how to look after God’s world in the coming weeks.
All About Me – The Colour Monster
We use The Colour Monster throughout our learning in Autumn – The Colour Monster helps us to understand our feelings. Our class monsters live in the Calm Corner, but do like to come and help us with our learning – like this super number learning! We also looked at the artist Jackson Pollock and created our own giant colour monsters in his style. We also used computing software to create computer paintings in Pollock’s style, with every child choosing the right tools for their digital artwork!
