What a fabulous first week we have all had in Reception this week. It has been lovely meeting everyone again and beginning to get to know each other. The children have been amazing with so many new faces to meet and new routines and rules to learn and are settling beautifully. Well done everyone!

Both Reception and Nursery had the chance to use a microscope this week as we took a close look at bugs, beetles, spiders and other invertebrates. We thought they looked very strange and very hairy when zoomed in – some had some rather scary fangs!

Reception enjoyed completing a maths trail round our outdoor area.  Challenges included creating a repeating pattern caterpillar, a symmetrical minibeast from twigs and finding objects longer and shorter than our 1m Superworm ropes.

You’ve got an enormous turnip that needs pulling up? No problem! We’ve been finding out about pulleys and how they can be used to make lifting heavy weights easier.

This week we have been having such a lot of fun in the castle comparing Jack’s water bottle and breakfast bowl with the giant’s one.  Yes, we have been learning about capacity, how much a container holds.

We’ve got some visitors down in Early Years as some tadpoles have come to stay. We’re going to watch them carefully over the next few weeks to see what happens to them…

Reception have been busy getting fit and raising money for sports relief. They have enjoyed taking part in the daily mile challenge, house team races and they especially loved Miss Troths dance-a-thon! 

This year we zoomed off to outer space and took a wet and wild walk amongst the planets of the solar system.  It made us realise why some planets are hot and some are extremely cold and we found out that on our favourite planet, Neptune, it might rain diamonds!

In our story this week the dinosaurs visited the moon to play a game of football and laid some eggs in the rocket on the way home.  Our challenge was to find the best way to package these eggs so that they survived the voyage back to Earth.  We tested a number of packaging materials (bubble wrap, flour, popcorn, water, tissue paper and cotton wool balls).  The eggs were packed up and dropped.  The best packaging materials were popcorn, flour and bubble wrap.  However, whether the egg always survived the drop in these materials depended on how well the children had wrapped up the egg!  Did your egg smash?

The children really loved treating their moms, nans and aunties to a special morning in reception. They have been busy making scones throughout the week so were very keen for their special adults to have a taste. They enjoyed making flowers, badges and special ice-cream cones too! We hope the adults enjoyed the morning as much as the children did!

Reception had fun investigating some runaway eggs this week. We looked at how the eggs rolled down a slope and made predictions about what would happen if we changed the surface of the slope. The children tested lots of materials including plastic, rubber, carpet and wood before we finally held an egg race.