'The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.'

This week in Reception we have continued to embed our classroom routines, and the children have really enjoyed this time to settle into class and develop those important rapports with all of their teachers and new friends. We have also been reflecting on our school values and what it means to shine like a star. This is something that we follow across school and reflects the positive attitudes and behaviours that we encourage within all aspects of school life. Star stands for:

S - Strive
T - Thrive
A - Aspire
R - Respectfully Responsible

Reception have already been sharing goals that they are striving towards and have thought about what they aspire to achieve during their Reception journey. We have reflected on how our learning characters can help us to thrive and why it is important that we are respectfully responsible towards each other and our environment.


What have we been learning this week:

Phonics: This week we have begun our reading and writing journey, following the phonics scheme Read Write Inc. This journey begins by introducing a letter at a time; exploring words with the initial sound, how the letter looks so we can identify it and how it is formed so we can write it. This week, we introduced the letter ‘m’.
We focused on how the letter makes a soft ‘mmm’ sound rather than the ‘muh’ sound, then the children thought of as many different words as they could beginning with this sound. They also enjoyed exploring the environment to find the letter.
Reception, can you find the letter ‘m’ at home this weekend?

Understanding the World:
This half term our topic is ‘All About Me’. As a class we have spoken about how we have come together as a Reception family and over the next few weeks we will celebrate the things that make us all unique. This week, we began by creating our self portraits which will be displayed in our classroom.

Our School Learning Characters: Across school, we have a number of learning characters that help us to encourage and support a positive growth mindset in the children as they enjoy their journey through school. This week in Reception we met Brave Tommy Turtle,


KIDSAFE

Across school, we use KIDSAFE which is a series of age appropriate lessons that aim help children keep themselves safe. In our first lesson, we met KS who is the KIDSAFE puppet. Through various games, he helped us to think about what we already do to keep ourselves safe and why these things are important. We spoke about wearing a seatbelt in the car, wearing a helmet when riding a bike and holding a grown ups hand when crossing the road safely. KS also introduced the word ‘trust’. We talked about trust making us feel safe for example, the children can trust that their teachers will keep them safe in school and that they can come and tell us if they have hurt themselves so that we can help them. Then we played a game to help us think about what it means to trust someone and how we can show other people that they can trust us.

We have a series of KIDSAFE lessons that we will explore over the next few weeks. Following each lesson we will share some information and a letter here on our blog. Please click the link below to read more information regarding our first KIDSAFE lesson.


Little Beatz Fylde



Important Reminders:


  • Photographs for Pick up
    Photo’s for pick up can be emailed to Mrs Hartley. We kindly ask that these are emailed as soon as possible to:
    s.hartley@ourladystarofthesea.lancs.sch.uk

  • Full Days in Reception
    Next week we look forward to welcoming all of the children into school to start their first week of full days in Reception. Drop off is at 8:45 from either the gate on Kenilworth Road or St Patricks’ Road where some of our older children will be on hand to help walk Reception round to their classroom. Pick up is at 15:25, as other year groups are also picked up from this area, grown ups are kindly asked to wait towards the grass area outside the classroom (not outside the classroom door) to allow plenty of space for the children as they leave their classrooms.



  • PE
    PE will begin when the children are in school full time (from week beginning Monday 16th September). Our PE days are Tuesday (outside) and Wednesday (inside). On these days, children can come to school in their PE uniform and will remain in this for the day. We kindly ask that velcro trainers (white, black or navy) are worn as this allows the children to be indepoendent when taking their shoes off and putting them back on. Polite reminder that for healthy and safety reasons, no jewelry is to be worn on PE days. We kindly ask that this is removed at home before coming into school.



  • Art T-shirt
    We are very excited to share that Reception will be engaging in weekly art lessons with Mrs Mathers. During these lessons they will have the opportunity to learn about various artists and to explore a variety of different media and materials. In order to keep uniforms as clean as possible, please send in a oversized art t-shirt that your child can wear over the top of their uniform. These need to be in school by Friday 13th September and will remain in school. Please ensure they are clearly labelled. Art lessons will be beginning week beginning Monday 16th September.



  • Important Contact Information:
    Mrs Hartley: s.hartley@ourladystarofthesea.lancs.sch.uk
    Miss Drummond: d.drummond@ourladystarofthesea.lancs.sch.uk


Have a wonderful weekend
God Bless,
The Reception Team