Welcome to Reception! Our teacher is Nicola Duggan. We follow an emergent curriculum that is based upon the needs and interests of the wonderful children in Reception.
Most of the children in our Reception class came to our Nursery and so we are lucky enough to have already formed relationships with them by the time they come to us in Reception. We also welcome some children into Reception from other Nurseries and it is always lovely to make new friends.
Early Years can be the child’s first experience of the wider world, outside of the family home. It is therefore essential that this experience is varied, rich and of the highest quality to ensure that strong foundations are built to enable our children to progress through life successfully. We support our children in becoming capable, confident individuals who have high self-esteem and social competence. We have highly skilled, enthusiastic educators who work hand in hand with parents and the community to provide the best start for all of the children in our care.
During the Reception year, children progress rapidly and develop the skills that are essential for lifelong learning. They work on both adult directed tasks and have lots of opportunities for child initiated learning. Reception children begin their day at 8.50am (they can come in from 8.35am) and stay with us until 3.15pm. We have a breakfast and after school club available daily to both Nursery and Reception children. For more information about this service please click here.
If you have any questions or want to find out any further information about our unit, then please do not hesitate to contact us. We will be happy to help you!
Useful Information for Parents and Carers:
Reception Long Term Plan
Reception Long Term Overview 2025-2026
What we are learning in Reception this half term…
Our topic is: The Natural World
This half term we will be basing our learning around noticing changes, particularly in growth and life cycles. We will be exploring the life cycles of things such as plants and animals. As we love to read in Reception, we will be reading and exploring a range of fiction and non-fiction books to gain information about life cycles. We will be sequencing life cycles and learning the key vocabulary linked to each cycle.
We will be learning about ‘being my best’ as part of our SCARF programme and thinking about ways to keep our body healthy,looking particularly about different foods, exercise, sleep and healthy routines. We will also look at developing our confidence and resilience when faced with challenges and having a growth mindset (the belief that our abilities can be developed through effort and strategies rather than being a fixed trait).
In Literacy, we will continue to read a wide range of books linked to our learning as well as choosing books simply for pleasure. We will continue to learn though non-fiction texts and discuss and use new vocabulary that we discover in them.
During Read, Write Inc, we will use blending skills to read a wide range of words including sounds from set 1 and 2. We will continue to learn to read a growing range of ‘red words’ and begin to recognise them around us as well as begin to write them. We will begin/continue reading captions and sentences with a combination of green words (that we can sound out) and ‘red words.’ We will re-read our books (3 times) to build up confidence, fluency, understanding and enjoyment when reading.
We will be working hard on our letter formation to make sure that we form our letters correctly and the right way around including some lower-case and some capital letters. Along with this, we will be applying our RWI knowledge when writing, continuing to represent sounds correctly and in sequence. We will begin to re-read what we have written to check that it makes sense.
In Maths, we will continue to develop our subitising and counting skills by counting larger sets as well as counting actions and sounds. We will explore a range of representations of numbers, including the 10-frame, and see how doubles can be arranged in a 10-frame. We will compare quantities and numbers, including sets of objects which have different attributes and continue to develop a sense of magnitude, e.g. knowing that 8 is quite a lot more than 2, but 4 is only a little bit more than 2. We will begin to generalise about ‘one more than’ and ‘one less than’ numbers within 10 and continue to identify when sets can be subitised and when counting is necessary.
Physical development: We will continue to work on gross and fine motor skills every day through our squiggle and dough disco program. There will be an Increased emphasis on letter formation. We are continuing to encourage the children to be independent when putting on their shoes, coats, waterproofs and wellies, with a focus on learning to zip up their own coat.
Other useful information/things to remember and ways to support at home:
- Hear your child read 3 times a week to support fluency and confidence
- Write a short comment about your child’s reading in their reading record
- Practise and encourage self-help and independence skills with you child-with a focus on learning how to zip up their own coat
- Encourage reading, reading and reading…. “The more you read the more places you will go!” We want children to love to read and really engage in books. In class, we read a story at every opportunity
- Practise reading- green Fred words and red words, you can make this fun by doing a sound/word hunt, building words
- Support mark making and letter formation by using the rhymes/phrases provided
- Foster a love of writing by encouraging your child to write in: glitter, mud, flour, corn flour, paint, using pencils, pens, chalks and by writing for a purpose. This could be writing a shopping list to go shopping, designing and labelling models, writing a card to give to a family member or drawing a picture and labelling it, taking orders in a café during role play activities etc.
- Use hand strengthening activities such as threading, dough and cutting activities, using spray bottles, stretching hair bobbles or elastic bands, using pegs, using cutlery (see picture resources shared via Tapestry) to support your child to hold a writing tool with strength and control
- Bring book bags to school every day
- An adult will hear your child read and books will be changed every week. Please send their reading books/sounds in every day
- Library books will be changed every Tuesday.
- We have our P.E. lessons every Friday. Please come to school dressed in your P.E. kit
- Remember to bring your water bottle each day – filled with fresh water, no juice
- Send non-urgent messages/queries to us on Tapestry
- to regularly check your child’s Tapestry account to keep up to date with information. Tapestry should also be checked to see what they have been up to, make a comment on the observation and send observations in from home
- Ask us for any support if you need it
Things you could do to help at home:
- We encourage reading, reading and reading…. “The more you read the more places you will go!” We want the children to love to read and really engage in books. In class, we read a story at every opportunity.
- Sing rhymes, number rhymes, nursery rhymes or even a song they love from the charts.
- Practise the green Fred words and the sound keyrings, you can make this fun by doing a sound/word hunt, building words.
- Encourage independence when dressing, undressing, coats, and zips.
A Parents guide to EYFS
CBeebies – Alpha Blocks
CBeebies Get Squiggling
Crick Web Early Years Games and Activities
Dough disco
ICT Games
Number Formation Rhymes that we use in school
Teach your monster to read
Top Marks Maths Games
Phoneme pop! A fun interactive game to support letter recognition
Phonics Games
We have been having lots of fun learning in Reception!
