Holy Family Catholic Primary School

Reception

Meet the Staff

Please take a look at our Reception Curriculum Map. This highlights the main topics and RE themes that we will be learning about as well our core reading spine books. Topics will change throughout the year to reflect the children’s learning and interests. For this reason we are flexible with our planning and timings. High-quality storybooks and age appropriate non – fiction texts form the basis of our teaching and learning.

On World Book Day, we launched the 100 Book Challenge. We absolutely love reading in Reception and story time is one of our absolute favourite times. Every day, we get to vote on the books that we would like to read.  Our challenge is to see how quickly we can get to our target of sharing 100 books in class. The children are welcome to bring in their favourite books from home to share too. Once we reach 100 books, the children will get to decide on their whole class treat.

We have been learning about Sikhism as part of World Religions Week. We looked at the Sikh special place of worship, the Gurdwara (Sikh temple) and learned how people take off their shoes and cover their heads in the Gurdwara as a sign of respect. We looked at pictures of the inside of a Gurdwara and looked at the famous Golden Temple in India.

We made a collage of the Khanda, the Sikh symbol. Mrs Kailey brought in some karas (steel bracelet) and a Sikh prayer book to show us and talked to us about what it means to be a Sikh. She shared pictures of her Sikh wedding and we talked about the similarities and differences between a Christian wedding.

Some of our children shared their experiences of Sikhism and taught us some Punjabi words too!

We read the wonderful book "Here We Are"  by Oliver Jeffers.  We thought about how we have changed since we were babies. We played detectives and had a fun game of Guess Who? using our baby pictures. 

As part of Children’s Mental Health Week, we have been learning the importance of keeping our minds healthy. We started off with an assembly from Mrs Coleman on the theme of Let’s Connect.

We were introduced to our class Worry Monsters and have been posting our worries for them to eat. We also did some feather breathing exercises, where we practised controlling our breathing and did some mindfulness colouring too. We finished the week with Feel Good Friday by wearing anything that makes us feel good! What an amazing week full of reflection, enjoyment and calming activities.

We had fun celebrating Chinese New Year - the year of the Rabbit. We listened to the story of the Chinese zodiac and how the animals had a race so that different years could be named after them. We then did some writing about the story.
We learnt how to say ‘ Hello’ (Ni Hao) in Chinese Mandarin and 'Happy New Year' in Chinese Cantonese ; Kung Hei Fat Choy!
We learned how Chinese people prepare for their celebrations. We turned our home corner into a Chinese restaurant with special Chinese clothes, bowls and chopsticks.
In the creative areas, we created our own Chinese blossom pictures and paper lanterns. We also had a go at writing numbers in Chinese Mandarin.
We finished the week by tasting noodles, prawn crackers, sweet and sour sauce and we also got to take home a fortune cookie! What a fun week of learning!

We were so excited to visit Holy Family Church. We looked at the altar, the special Holy Family stained glass window and the statues.
We had a lovely welcome from Father Pat who said a beautiful prayer for us.
For our learning about Baptism, we baptised our class baby. We decided to call her Baby Rosie. We looked at the baptismal font, the holy water and learned about the baptismal candle. We then acted out the baptism ceremony with our priest, parents and godparents. It was such a special time and our teachers are so proud of us as we were so reverent and respectful.

We had lots of fun on our autumn welly walk and spent a long time discovering our natural environment. We looked at all the signs of autumn and collected lots of different coloured leaves. We had a competition to see who could catch a falling leaf! One of the best parts was toasting marshmallows on our 'campfire.' They were delicious!
We said a prayer to God to thank Him for creating our beautiful world.
Below are some of the children’s comments.
“I loved eating marshmallows.”
“I liked picking the leaves.”
“We saw some red mushrooms.”
“We caught the leaves. I caught 10!”
"The leaves were blowing."

Take a look at Tapestry for lots more photos. 

We have had a busy and fun week learning about Diwali, the Festival of Lights. We learned about the story of Rama and Sita and how good overcame evil. Using salt dough and sequins, we created our own diva lamps and we also made rangoli patterns using coloured rice. We did some Diwali themed counting and practised our Bollywood dancing too! We learned how to say ‘hello’ (namaste) some numbers and ‘my name is’ (mera naam....hai) in Hindi.
Mrs Kailey showed us her Indian outfits and jewellery and told us about her Diwali celebrations. Kavan and Aahana also shared with us how they celebrate Diwali with their families. We tasted samosas, pakoras, onion bhajis and poppadoms with mango chutney. The poppadoms were very popular indeed! It was great fun learning about all the different customs and celebrations as part of our British and Gospel Values of Mutual Respect and Tolerance.

Following on from our learning about Creation, we planted some spring bulbs in our Reception garden. We talked about what plants need to grow.  We planted some tulips and also some daffodils in aid of #Hello Yellow -  World Mental Health Day. We can’t wait to watch them grow in Spring.

We have been learning about Remembrance Day for our whole school Peace and Reconciliation Week. We learned a poem about why we wear poppies and painted our own beautiful poppies. We watched a short clip on CBeebies called ‘Poppies’ which is a BBC Children’s remembrance film, it is a beautiful animation that sees war as experienced by a little rabbit and ends with the rabbit watching the poppies grow. The children learnt about how the poppies grew in the fields once the war had ended. We took part in a one minute silence and said a special prayer at the end. The children were so respectful and reverent. Well done!

We have been celebrating Black History month in Reception. We looked at some African tribal necklaces and made our own using the outer rim of a large paper plate. We were inspired by the beaded necklaces of the Samburu Tribe. We used lots of brightly coloured patterns.

Reception have been thinking of different ways to protect our planet, our common home.  We discussed our ideas with our families and thought of actions that we can take to help our planet. We wrote down these promises and added them to our Protect our Planet Promise Tree. No action is too small. Together we can make a difference.

We have been reading the story of 'Handa's Surprise' by Eileen Browne. We explored and tasted some of the seven delicious fruits including bananas, tangerines, pineapple, avocado, passion fruit and mango. We decided which one was our favourite. Using four of our senses we  used words to describe the taste and texture, thought about the texture and how it feels in our mouth, discussed what the fruit looked like and talked about the smell of the fruit.

We had a great time! Our teachers were very proud when we tried fruits that we haven't had before.

We have had so much fun this week celebrating European Day of Languages with a French theme. We learned how to say Bonjour and Je m'appelle (my name is..) when doing the register.  We looked at the main landmarks of France and created our own Eiffel Tower. After looking at the artwork 'The Snail' by the French artist Henri Matisse, we made a giant snail collage.  We learned the colours of the French flag and made our own flags using blue, white and red tissue paper.
We even learned how to sing 'Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes' in French and practised the song Frere Jacques. The best part was our yummy French breakfast of brioche, croissant, pain au chocolat and baguette.  Ooh la la! Such a busy week : )

We took part in CAFOD's Go Green Day and raised money for the poorer communities affected by climate change. We thought about how we can all take action to protect our planet, We also created a collage of our eyes in aid of CAFOD's "Eyes of the World" campaign to save our planet and build a better future.