Welcome to Reception!

“Children are a gift from the Lord; they are a reward from him.”

(Psalm 127:3)

Welcome to the Reception class page. We are delighted to have you as part of our class, school and community family.

Meet the staff

Class Teacher - Miss Laidler
Teaching Assistants - Miss Carroll, Miss Cattermole & Mrs Hallam
Cover Teachers - Mrs Jobbins & Mrs Pickering

Meet the Children

Life in Reception

We have busy days filled with play, singing, laughter and discovery.

During your child's time in reception, they will take part in a variety of activities and play-based experiences which aim to challenge, foster a love of learning and inspire their natural curiosity. We play outdoors in all weathers and we will regularly come home messy after a busy day in the mud kitchen, creation station and play dough area!

To find out about the Reception curriculum, please visit our Early Years page. 

If you need to speak to me or have any queries, please email: reception@stjosephscatholicprimary.org or speak to the office and book an appointment. 

I am really looking forward to working with you all this year. 

Miss Laidler 

Key Information:

• P.E. days are on a Friday. P.E. kits must be worn to school. 
   
• Reading books will be changed on a Friday.
   
• 'Fabulous Phonics' homework books will be sent home on a Friday and need to be returned on Fridays. 
   
• Your child receives free milk until their 5th birthday.
  If your child wants milk, please register at this link: Cool Milk - the UK's leading school and nursery milk supplier
   
• School dinners are free for all children until they are in Year 3. Please speak to us about having a free school meal!

Autumn Term

Here are a few photos of the learning taking place during the autumn term in Reception Class 2023-24. Please log onto Tapestry for more photos and some observations!

As part of ‘Understanding the World’ and ‘Expressive Arts and Design’, we have been making our own autumnal wreath. We went outside and explored school. We collected leaves, twigs and other materials to create our wreath. 

We acted out the story of the Annunciation. We took it in turns to be the Angel Gabriel and Mary. We thought about how Mary felt and practised using our own faces to show this. We talked about why Mary was chosen by God and how this made her feel inside.

In mathematics, we have been learning about the numbers 1 2 and 3. We have been practising subitising, making, writing and representing 1 2 and 3. We celebrated Baby Bear’s third birthday and made sure the bears all had enough things for their party. 

We learned about the different ways we could look after God’s world. We talked about looking after the world by making positive choices, such as putting rubbish in the bin, turning the tap off etc. We then put this learning into action by exploring and planting cress seeds and watching them grow. 

We have been learning about Diwali. We read ‘The Best Diwali Ever’ and then the children shared their own Diwali stories and experiences. 
 

We looked at real Diya Lamps and then used clay to create our own. 

Reception class took part in their first Remembrance Day activities. They carefully decorated their own poppy using paint and glitter, to help us remember all of the soldiers that have died. We then gathered around the flag pole at 11am with the rest of school and took part in a 2 minute silence. We took part brilliantly and respectfully. 

We went outside to explore our school grounds. In R.E. we have been learning about God’s World and all of the wonderful things He made. We found lots of natural objects outside: leaves, sticks and flowers. We talked about what we liked about them.
We gathered them and practised our counting skills. In Maths, we have been practising subitising to 3…so we put our skills in action!

In R.E. we have been learning about God’s World. We looked at a globe and found the seas and the land. We looked at where we live now, but also where each of our families has come from too. We have many families from all over our wonderful world! 
 

We then looked at photos of animals from all over the world too. We discovered there are more animals than we knew! We learned about koalas, flamingoes, turtles and tortoise (and the differences between them), penguins…and many more. To finish our learning, some of us wrote prayers to thank God for the different animals in the world. We then shared them with each other as we prayed reverently together at the end of the lesson.

This half term, we have been learning about Elmer and how special he is. We then thought about how this makes us special too because we are all different. To celebrate this, we had our own Elmer Day in Reception class. We wore our own clothes from home, played with our friends, invited our parents in to play during the afternoon and even decorated some Elmer style biscuits (multi coloured!).

We have enjoyed using the different areas in Reception class to share stories with our friends. We have looked at stories together and pointed to and talked about the different pictures within stories.

As part of our play, we have been taking part in a range of sensory experiences. We used shaving foam to join foam pieces together - we pretended it was glue or cement! We also explored the ‘potions’ area outside. We mixed the coloured water together with sand and mud to create new textures.

We made our very own listening ears and went on a listening walk around our school. We practised being quiet so we could hear all of the sounds inside and outside. We heard laughter, pencils being used for writing, typing and even the telephone. During our walk, we got to know our school grounds and found out where everything belonged.

During our mathematics sessions, we have been learning how to create patterns, sort objects and group objects in different ways. We have explored colour, shape, texture and have been identifying “sets” of objects.

We enjoyed meeting our Year 6 buddies and playing with them in the Reception area.
Miss Laidler and Mrs Hegarty spoke to the children about the importance of being a role-model as well as a friend to the younger children. The Year 6 children were kind, caring and looked after the Reception children very well. We are really looking forward to working together this year! ⭐️

We have officially welcomed our thirty new wonderful Reception children into our school family. We have been spending the last few weeks getting to know each other, exploring our classroom and making new friends.