Adel St John The Baptist

  1. Classes
  2. Reception Class

Reception Class


Curriculum Overview 2022-23

Welcome to Reception 

Morning Drop-off

Thank you for your support and patience in dropping your children off at school. We understand that the children entering the cloakroom independently may be quite different to what they were used to at nursery, however all children are already completely competent in the morning routine of hanging up their things, changing in to their pumps, putting their water bottle and book bags in trays, and entering the classroom.

3.15pm Pick-up

At 3.15pm, the children have been leaving the classroom via the ‘Garden’ door in to the Reception play area, one at a time. They are asked to sit patiently until we call their name when we can see their adult. We are getting quicker as we go! If someone new to us is picking up your child, or there is a change to the usual routine, please let us know at morning drop-off, via the office or email.

At home-time and after school, please do not allow your children to play on the climbing frame or other equipment in the ‘Garden’ area or on the school field. This is for health and safety and insurance reasons. Thank you

Outdoor Learning

In Reception we love to be outside in our garden, exploring on the field or visiting our Conservation Area. We try to go outside in all weathers (and particularly enjoy the rain!) so, if you haven’t already, please provide your child with an all-in-one waterproof suit or a waterproof coat and trousers, along with wellies to avoid lovely new uniforms from becoming not-so-lovely. These would be best left in school if possible please. For indoors, we ask that each child keeps a pair of pumps in school. Please name everything that comes in to school.  

PE

We will begin our PE sessions on Wednesday 28th September, where your children will be taking part in ‘Movement Play’ focusing on sensory opportunities linked to brain development in children up to age seven as well as more structured physical education. All the children will come to school in their PE kit on their designated PE day. Reception’s PE days will be Wednesday & Thursday. Information of what to wear is in your Adel St John Handbook.

Milk and Water Bottles

The children have a snack (fruit or vegetable) each day and are always encouraged to try all new foods. They will also receive milk each day until they turn 5, if you would prefer your child not to have milk, please let me know. Once children are 5, their milk will need to be paid for as outlined in previous information received. Please be aware that there is a delay between your payment happening and your child being added to our school milk order. Children have access to their water bottles throughout the day and are encouraged to drink regularly. Please ensure children have their names on their water bottle and bring them to school each day.

Menus

After receiving a menu, please choose with your child and return to school the following Monday in order for us to process their lunches. Please ensure your child’s menu is named before returning them to school.

Book Bags

It is helpful if children can bring a book bag (or alternative) to school each day so they can bring home drawings and books etc. We would also appreciate a spare set of underwear and socks being kept in your child’s bag.

Staff

Monday – Miss Riches & Miss Kane

Tuesday- Miss Riches & Miss Kane

Wednesday- Miss Riches, Miss Kane, Mrs Quinn & Miss Smith

Thursday- Mrs Quinn & Miss Kane

Friday- Mrs Quinn & Miss Kane

Communication

You should have received your invitation to log on to Tapestry. This will be where you can see your child’s learning and progress recorded. Further information will be on our class page on the school website and we will also be posting updates about our whole class on our class blog.

Our email addresses are given below. Please be aware that we may not be able to check these when we are teaching the children.

sarah.riches@adel-st-john.leeds.sch.uk

grace.quinn@adel-st-john.leeds.sch.uk

Thank you for your continued support. We look forward to working with you and your children over the coming year.

 

Reception Class Blog 2022-23

Week beginning 20.3.23

Reception (gquinn) on: Reception Class Blog 2022-23

We finally found the Evil Pea! All of our hard work paid off. After eating all of our snack for the past four weeks, the Evil Pea has had a change of heart. He has written a letter of apology to our class, stating that he is no longer the Evil Pea, but the Happy Pea – or Hapea? Ask your child what the letter contained and where we finally found him! (A copy of his letter is on Tapestry). The children were ecstatic, to say the least!

Thank you for all of your support during our wonderful charity bake sale this week. The children worked so hard on baking their Easter buns, creating placemats and writing labels. We know that many donations were made to our chosen charity of Shelter. Thank you. Here is the link to donate if you missed it. https://england.shelter.org.uk/donate

Have a lovely weekend,

Mrs Quinn, Miss Riches, Miss Kane and Miss Ingram

 

0 comment


Week beginning 13.3.23

Reception (gquinn) on: Reception Class Blog 2022-23

We have had a great time for Red Nose Day today! The children took part in a whole school dance in the hall, whilst wearing something that made them smile.

This week, the children had great fun making a trap for the Evil Pea using jelly! They used lots of adjectives to describe the jelly, before eating it! We have not yet found the Evil Pea, but are working on it!

The children have worked very hard to create beautiful and personalised cards for Mother’s Day, with a hidden surprise in the form of an aroma! The children chose everything with their Mummy in mind, including the card colour, how they decorated their flower and the way in which they finished the sentence, ‘I love my Mummy because…’ We hope you have a lovely Mother’s Day.

Next week, we will be inviting families in to school for our end of term celebration. This term’s will be in the form of a bake sale! To link with our Superheroes topic, we have been discussing ways in which we can help our world as well as thinking about ways in which we ourselves can help, in the form of recycling or energy saving. We have learned about ‘charity’ and thought about many causes that could be helped with our donations. The class consensus was to help families who are in need. The money from our bake sale will therefore be donated to Shelter.

You are invited to our class celebration bake sale during the usual reading morning time of Thursday 23rd March, 8.50-9.15am. Our class-made cakes will cost 50p and will be payable via the parent pay app. Come and share a bun and a story with us. We hope to see you there!

Congratulations to Ivannah and Lola who received certificates this week. 

Have a lovely weekend,

Mrs Quinn, Miss Riches, Miss Kane and Miss Ingram

0 comment


Week beginning 20.2.23

Reception (gquinn) on: Reception Class Blog 2022-23

What a dilemma we have had this week! During Reading Morning, we found vegetables stuck to the walls around Reception looking very sorry for themselves and when we got to snack time, our snack had vanished! We received a very green and very rude letter from the Evil Pea, stating that he is fed up of peas being forgotten about and left in the freezer, so has taken revenge in stealing our snack! Reception were appalled! We have spent time thinking of ways that we could find the Evil Pea, as well as our snack, and the children started by attempting to ask every person in school whether they had spotted him! I’m sure they may have mentioned this to everyone at home too! We created wanted posters where we wrote a short, snappy sentence, drew a picture of the Evil Pea using our Supertato books as a reference and then stuck them all over school! We will keep you posted...

We have received our school Lent Calendar, which we will complete each day. The children added on some ideas of their own, including acts of kindness. You can find the calendar on the whole school newsletter and join in at home if you wish.

Congratulations to Clara and Oliver for receiving certificates this week.

Have a lovely weekend,

Mrs Quinn, Miss Riches, Miss Kane and Miss Ingram

0 comment


Week beginning 6.2.23

Reception (gquinn) on: Reception Class Blog 2022-23

This week we planted an amaryllis. The children knew about planting seeds and Daniel shared that this was called a bulb, not a seed. We talked about the roots and the shoot on the bulb and which way up we needed to plant them. Leo talked about needing soil and everyone had a turn at adding soil to our pot. Then children discussed what it would need to grow, so we added water and Elaya helped choose a place in the classroom where there might be some sun to help our plant grow. The children discussed how tall the plant might grow, Jake thinks it will be shorter than Miss Riches, but taller than a mouse! We will keep watering our bulb and measure its height as it grows. Watch this space!

The children have been exploring length and height in maths, using great mathematical language. We had fun measuring our own height against others in our class! We have also begun to talk about time, learning the term ‘o’clock’ and recognising these times on a clock. We discussed the many ‘times’ we have throughout the day, including ‘time to get up’, ‘time to go to school’, ‘lunch time’ and many, many, many more! We had fun ordering all of the times of the day we could think of. ‘Bed time’ was the most unpopular!

We had a very special occasion in our class this week, where Miss Kane shared her baby news with us. We each made a prediction of whether her baby will be a boy or a girl and then went on the field to finally find out! Miss Kane let off a colourful cannon, revealing that her baby is a boy! Half of the class (the boys) were very happy, the other half put on a brave face, but now we are all very excited for her. Congratulations, Miss Kane! We look forward to many name suggestions from the children.

A collection of photographs have been added to Tapestry showing some of the activities your child has chosen to complete during their child initiated ‘choosing time’ throughout the month of January.

Congratulations to Azlan and Sophia who received certificates this week.

Have a great half term holiday!

Mrs Quinn, Miss Riches, Miss Kane and Miss Ingram

0 comment


Week beginning 30.1.23

Reception (gquinn) on: Reception Class Blog 2022-23

We have had another super week during our Calling all Superheroes topic. This week we have been thinking about some of the things we would like to stop or change in our world (very loosely linked to ‘villains’!) Our focus for this week, led by the children, has been ‘recycling’. We used a computer programme to tidy up litter, ensuring each item went in to the correct place to be recycled into something new. We particularly liked crushing an old car! We have had some great discussions surrounding this and have made a note of all of our ideas, ready for us to further explore next week.

We are doing brilliantly with our phonics. We are so proud of our reading and writing and we as teachers are very proud too! Thank you for your support with this at home.                                                               

In maths we have been combining two groups, using dots on ladybirds and the dots on dominoes! We have used lots of mathematical language such as ‘add, plus, equals, altogether and total’. The children have shown some great independent learning within their maths this week.

Well done to Alexa and Luke for receiving certificates in our Celebration Assembly.

Have a lovely weekend,

Mrs Quinn, Miss Riches and Miss Kane

0 comment


Week beginning 23.1.23

Reception (gquinn) on: Reception Class Blog 2022-23

We have had a great time celebrating Chinese New Year this week. We started by reading the story of how the zodiac was created, with the animals competing in a race across a river. We ordered the animals and worked out which animal’s turn it is for 2023, as well as for when we were born! We watched a video of a family celebrating Chinese New Year and learned that the colour red is used in lots of the celebrations as it represents ‘good luck’. Following this, the children enjoyed ‘dragon dancing’ to Chinese inspired music, working as a team to make their dragon dance. Please see the attached video on Tapestry! We found China on our class world map, made a label for it and made notes of our observations. We talked about the size of China compared to the United Kingdom, researched the best way to get there and how long it would take and looked at some photographs of China’s features and landmarks. Many children shared the country names that they have heard of, as well as talked about some that they have visited. If you have any photographs of your child in a different country, or family who live abroad and would like to share them, the children can share them with the class and add them to our display. These can be emailed to us or added on to Tapestry by adding an observation. Thank you! We ended our week by tasting some Chinese inspired foods and had a go at using chop sticks! It was a bit tricky!

We have worked on our computing skills this week through exploring the camera and keyboard on the iPads. We were tasked with taking a selfie and adding our faces to a template of the role we might like to do when we grow up. These turned out to be quite funny! You will be able to see these on display in the corridor at our next parents evening. 

Next week we have Miss Ingram, our student teacher from Leeds Trinity University joining our class for a placement of ten weeks. We look forward to welcoming her in to our class!

Well done to Isaac and Jake on receiving certificates this week.

Have a lovely weekend,

Mrs Quinn, Miss Riches and Miss Kane

0 comment


Week beginning 16.1.23

Reception (gquinn) on: Reception Class Blog 2022-23

The children have been enjoying exploring capacity and weight in maths this week. They used water, rice and various containers to investigate, using mathematical vocabulary such as full, empty, half full, half empty, nearly full and nearly empty. They used balancing scales and objects around our classroom and outdoor area to explore weight, using comparative language and making predictions before testing out their theories.

We found ice in our outdoor area and had a great time exploring it. We talked about the word ‘frozen’ and what it meant. We brought some ice in to our classroom and watched what happened. This created a great opportunity for discussion between children, where they used scientific language such as melting, freezing, solid and liquid.

To link with our superhero topic and the superheroes that we have in our community, the children have been thinking about themselves and whether they have any ideas of what they might like to do when they are older. We had some lovely ideas, including a cow girl, and have spent time creating a picture of our ideas using paint. These will be added to Tapestry for you to see, along with a video of your child explaining their reasoning.

Well done to Holly and Hussain on their certificates this week.

Next week, we will be celebrating Chinese New Year!

Have a lovely weekend,

Mrs Quinn, Miss Riches and Miss Kane

0 comment


Week beginning 9.1.23

Reception (gquinn) on: Reception Class Blog 2022-23

We have had a super week. The children have enjoyed discussing their superhero knowledge and using this in their learning. As a class, we talked about the similarities between them all. We found that all of the superheroes helped people, wore special costumes, had super powers and were very brave. Following this, we thought about whether there were any ‘real life’ people in our world that have these qualities. This was a tricky task at first, but once we thought about it, there were so many! We have made a long list of people who help us and our communities and have looked at photographs and books of our world to see if we could find any more!

Miss Kane has taught the children the ‘superman dance’ in Movement Play this week. The children had a great time. See if your child can show you some of it! To further our scissor skills, we made superhero masks using felt tips, hole punches and wool. It took us all afternoon but it was worth it!

We had a go at creating our own superhero drawings using our imagination on Friday. We thought about the superhero we would like to include in our picture, their powers, what they were wearing and what was happening. We thought about where the superhero was in their drawing and what they could see around them. We used pictures of different landscapes to help us with our ideas. These have come out brilliantly and there were some very interesting scenes being drawn!

Thank you to those who have brought in books to help us build our superhero library.

Congratulations to Sophia and Ted who received certificates this week.

Have a lovely weekend,

Mrs Quinn, Miss Riches and Miss Kane

0 comment


Week beginning 4.1.23

Reception (gquinn) on: Reception Class Blog 2022-23

Happy New Year!

Welcome back. We hope you all had a wonderful time over the Christmas break. The children have been sharing their experiences with us, which have been lovely to hear. Thank you once again for our Christmas cards and gifts. They are very much appreciated by us all.

Our new topic for this term is ‘Calling All Superheroes!’ We have started our learning by talking about the superheroes we know and discussing what makes them super. We have spent our short week turning ourselves in to superheroes where we chose our own powers, mastered our superhero facial expressions and decided upon our own superhero name! Please ask us about these. Throughout this term we will be using Superheroes as a starting point to many challenges and learning opportunities. We will cover: people who help us, jobs and roles, our world, cultures, communities, conservation, charity and many more areas of opportunity. If you have any books at home surrounding superheroes or any of these areas, if you would like to bring them in to school to support our ‘superhero library’ for this term, that would be wonderful. Please ensure anything that comes in to school is named. Thank you.

We look forward to another busy term!

Thank you for your on-going support.

Mrs Quinn, Miss Riches and Miss Kane

0 comment


Week beginning 12.12.22

Reception (gquinn) on: Reception Class Blog 2022-23

Merry Christmas all!

Thank you for a wonderful first term. Your support means a lot to us and has a direct impact on the progress of your child at school.

This week has been full of celebrations. We have enjoyed our disco, Christmas party, Christmas Service and Sing-a-long Christmas assembly! We have had so much fun.

We sadly said goodbye to Rosie and Jim today. Mrs Dean came to tell us that their Mummy and Daddy had arrived to collect them. She passed us a letter from their parents, thanking us for all that we have done to ensure they have been happy, healthy and safe in our care. Well done, all!

Today we spent some time choosing in our classroom with our Year 6 buddies. What a treat!

Congratulations to Annie, Aurora and Daniel who received certificates this week.

Thank you once again for our lovely cards and gifts. It means a lot.

Have a wonderful Christmas.

Mrs Quinn, Miss Riches and Miss Kane

0 comment