Welcome to Reception
Autumn 2024
We have had a great first term in our new Reception class. We have spent our first term getting to know our classrooms, teachers and routines. We had our first school trips of the year when we went to Barrow Library for a Julia Donaldson themed story time and then to Brockhole on Windermere to learn more about woodland habitats. We have done lots of outdoor learning this half term and have really enjoyed learning through our outdoor play, whatever the weather! We finished our first term in Reception with our school Nativity Play which we performed for all of our family and friends.
We have had a great first term and are looking forward to continuing our learning after Christmas.
Autumn 2
Autumn 2 is a very busy half term. We've had a nativity, the pantomime, party day, mass and so much more!
We spent a lot of time this half term rehearsing for our big performance of 'Away in a Manger'. The children blew the audience away with their fantastic singing and acting. All the children were amazing! They got up on stage and said their lines with confidence. I was very proud of them all.
We loved our trip to the Pantomime to see Jack and the Beanstalk, oh yes we did! We booed, cheered and laughed all the way through.
In the last week of term we joined the rest of the school for an end of term Mass. We were excited to show the rest of the school how peacefully we say our prayers and how good we're getting at making the sign of the cross. We've been practising a lot since starting Reception learning our school prayers four times a day.
The children have made great progress in the Autumn term and we're excited to see what we will get up to in the Spring!
Autumn 1
Our first half term in Reception! How exciting! The first half term is always filled with lots of emotions; excitement, nerves, anticipation. Starting school is a huge step for children (and parents!). This half term the children have settled into school life and have taken it all in their stride. The children enjoyed a game of 'find the staff' where they had to explore school to find teachers, teaching assistants and other members of staff who help us everyday. This was a great opportunity for the children to get to know their new school family.
We started learning to read, how exciting! We've already learned so many new sounds and have mastered all our new routines. We are beginning to write CVC words and are learning how to hold a pencil correctly.
Its been a busy first term but the children have done remarkable. They have all settled in extremely well and they have all made lots of new friends.
Well done Reception!
Summer 2
Our last half term in Reception! We have ended our year in Reception with a wonderful trip to Milnthorpe Wildlife Oasis. One of our favourite animals we saw on the day were the lemurs. We loved how friendly they were and how they stood up tall to see us. In the afternoon some of us were really brave and held a real snake! Some of our teachers were not quite as brave as us.
Summer 1
What a busy half term we have had in Reception! We had a lovely trip to the Forum to see ‘The Ugly Duckling’ by The Northern Ballet School which retold the story through dance. The children really enjoyed the performance and listened excellently throughout. We also enjoyed our Art topic this term which was focused around the artist Georgia O’Keefe. I think we have a few little artists in the making!
Spring 2
We have had a very busy half term in school with lots going on. As we are in March, you can imagine how shocked we were when we woke up to snow one morning! As soon as we got into school, we got our wellies on and went outside to explore. While we spent the day exploring in the snow Miss Milligan set us some challenges. We had to make a certain number of snowballs, describe how the snow felt and talk about if we would get snow in Summer. We had such a fun day but were ready for a warm classroom and story time by the end of the day.
Spring 1
What a fun and exciting half term we have had. We have been learning about lots of interesting topics but one of our favourites was learning all about Theo in our story ‘Theo and the Velvet Onsies”. Theo was a little boy who was living during World War Two. Theo was sleeping underground one night when he met a very important man, Winston Churchill. We have looked at lots of different pictures from the War including bomb shelters, people sleeping in underground train stations and schools that were set up in shelters. We discussed the pictures and talked about how the people would have felt and the reason why it was safer to sleep below ground. We then got hard to work building and designing our own bomb shelters!
It was also Valentine’s Day during his half term. We worked hard to make our own valentines cards using our printing skills. The people we loved were very grateful to receive them.
Autumn 2
Wow! What a busy half term we have had in Reception. This half term we have been getting more confident with our Writing and Number skills, along with enjoying a History topic all about change. We learnt that not only do we change over time but other things can too! We compared toys from now to those in the past. We had lots of fun playing with both old and new toys. We have been on four school trips this half term including a trip to Ostley House, How Tun Woods and two to the Forum in Barrow. We finished our very busy half term by performing our Nativity, ‘Whoops A Daisy Angel’ – We were amazing!
Autumn 1
Welcome to Reception! This half term was our first half term in Reception, some of us had been to Little Lambs Nursery and for others, it was our first ever time in St Pius X. We spent our first half term learning new routines, meeting new friends and meeting our new teacher - "I like my new school, I have lots of friends. We play in the house". We did lots of our activities outside and what did we do when we had lots of rainy afternoons? We went muddy puddle hunting of course!
Summer 2
Our last half term in Reception!
We can’t believe that our time in Reception is coming to an end. This half term we have been learning about wild animals. Thanks to one of our wonderful families, we were lucky enough to be joined in class by a gecko, bearded dragons, a hedgehog and some tortoises! We were all very brave and some of us even got over our fears to interact with the animals.
In Understanding the World, we have enjoyed learning about the different types of weather. We learnt that the movement of air is called wind. We worked hard making some kites in anticipation for a windy afternoon. After 2 weeks of waiting, it finally came!
Summer 1
This half term Reception have had lots of fun and interactive learning opportunities including a STEM Day. We spent our day learning how to program Beebots and then we moved onto getting creative with Lego. We had a great day, filled with lots of fun and problem solving!
Reception have also been working hard in Geography, learning all about the contrasting environments in India. After reading our text, Desert Girl and Monsoon Boy, we had a look at some pictures of India. We looked at how different the weather can be across the country and also made comparisons between a Desert and a city in India. We had lots of fun in our desert tuff tray, talking about all the different animals you would find in the desert.
Spring 2
What an exciting half term of learning we have had!
This half term in Literacy our Topic was traditional tales and you will never believe what happened! We arrived to school to find a crime scene. The clues of sticks, straw, fur and footprints led us to believe the Big Bad Wolf had come to visit our Reception classroom over night! We rang the police straight away and they came in to help us solve the case. When the police were in school they showed us their police car van, and even let use try some of the equipment they use. They left us with the challenge of making a WANTED poster to help find the Big Bad Wolf which we did and posted all around school. With Receptions help, we are happy to say, the Big Bad Wolf has since been caught!
As well as being detectives for much of this half term, we have also been learning how to look after ourselves. We learnt about healthy foods and how important fruit and vegetables were. We wrote our very own fruit kebab recipe and made one to eat during snack time. It was yummy! We went to Barrow Leisure Centre on a school trip to take part in a healthy mover’s session which we had lots of fun doing. In addition to our physical health we learnt how important it is to look after our mental health. We had lots of Circle Times this half term, giving us time to talk about how we were feeling that day.
After such an exciting half term, we are now ready for our Easter Break. Have a lovely Easter everyone!
Spring 1
After a lovely Christmas Break Reception were very excited to get back to learning in school.
We began our half term with a focus week learning all about Islam. The children enjoyed using our construction materials to build mosques and learnt that before you went into a mosque you had to take off your shoes and wash your feet, so that is what we did! This half term we have also celebrated Chinese New Year in class. We turned our role play area into a Chinese restaurants and started taking orders. At the end of the week we did some Chinese food tasting which was very tasty!
In our outdoor area were busy making love potions for valentine’s day following some recipes. We handed out our love potions around the school and the staff were very grateful. In our Understanding the World topic, we have been learning all about Polar regions. We were shocked to come into school one day to find our polar animals had been frozen! We explored the ice before talking about the process of melting. We soon discovered that we could help melt the ice by pouring warm water over them.
We have had a lovely half term, with lots of fun and interactive learning. Have a lovely midterm break everyone!
Autumn 2 2021
We have had lots of fun in the run up to Christmas. We have taken part in many festive activities and also put on a Nativity performance for our families. It was some of our first times performing in front of an audience and we took it in our stride. Some of our other festive activities included salt dough decorations and split pin snowmen. We are looking forward to lots more learning next half term.
Autumn 1 2021
Welcome to Reception!
We have had an excellent start to our time in St Pius X. We have all settled in really well and used the first half term to get to know each other, our classroom and our new teachers. We have explored the different areas of classrooms, settling into routines well. We are looking forward to our next half term.
Summer 2 2021
We can't believe we have finished our Year in Reception! This half term our topic was Fantasy Land. We did lots of work around different magical stories and one of our favourite parts of the topic was Pirates. We created treasure maps, made our own Pirate characters for a story and did lots of creative writing.
Summer 1 2021
This half term our topic was Wild About Animals. We learnt all about wild animals and the countries they are from and live in. We changed our role play area into a Zoo Vet surgery and were able to look after lots of poorly wild animals. To finish our topic we went on a trip to the local zoo to feed the giraffes and see a real life wild vet surgery.
