Reception blog

Wednesday 7 January 2026 WonderVille Creations As part of a whole school literacy project each class is looking at It Fell From The Sky by The Fan Brothers.
Wednesday 17 December 2025 Reception's First School Trip Reception have had a wonderful first school trip today to St Alban's Cathedral today. We learnt so much about advent and Christmas and how both are marked in the cathedral. We made our own paper plate advent wreaths, dressed up as wise men and looked at the story of the nativity and how it is retold in the stained glass windows.
Wednesday 10 December 2025 Feeling Festive Reception have been busy preparing for Christmas. We have decorated our class Christmas tree, collaged our Christmas cards and decorated our home corner with tinsel and decorations so it looks ready for the festive period. We really enjoyed using wool, pompoms and googly eyes to make reindeer tree decorations.
Wednesday 3 December 2025 A Very Special Baby Reception made us all so proud today with their wonderful Nativity performances. Children spoke their lines so beautifully, sang with such joy and acted out the Nativity story with confidence. Well done, Reception!
Thursday 27 November 2025 Looking For Numbers We are developing our skills of subitising (automatically recognising amounts) in Reception. We have been busy spotting quantities up to 5 in our environment. Today we spotted: 4 balls in a basket, 3 trains on the train track, 2 windows in a row and 5 paintbrushes in a pot!
Wednesday 19 November 2025 Leaf Mobiles After a busy morning of Nativity practice and Family Learning Week, it was great to get outside to make leaf mobiles. As you can see it was a bit windy, we thought perhaps we should call them leaf kites instead.
Tuesday 11 November 2025 Remembrance Day Reception have thought about Remembrance Day by making poppies. They joined in respectfully with the whole school collective worship and one everyone stood beautifully for the one minute silence.
Thursday 23 October 2025 Art From Around the World Reception have thoroughly enjoyed celebrating our cultures. Parents kindly visited our class to share their own cultures with us: We sang, listened to music, learnt new languages, looked at maps, explored artefacts and heard stories from around the world. Inspired by the art we looked at throughout the week, children used a range of different media to create their own art work in the Atelier.
Thursday 9 October 2025 We are scientists! Reception had lots of fun investigating their fingerprints. We used the graphite from our pencils and some sticky tape to create an impression of our fingerprints. Using magnifying glasses, we used our careful skills of observation to see if we could determine whether our fingerprints were an arch shape, whorl shape or loop shape. We learnt how our fingerprints are all unique.
Wednesday 1 October 2025 Reception went on an autumn walk Today we went on an autumn walk. We found lots of exciting things including a huge spider, ladybird, beautiful leaves and a squirrel.
Wednesday 1 October 2025 Harvest Gifts Thank you for all the wonderful Harvest gifts.
Thursday 25 September 2025 Mapping in Reception Lots of children in Reception have been enjoying playing with the trains and vehicles in our Construction Corner. Last week, we covered our floor with big pieces of sugar paper and children got busy with marker pens creating their own road and railway maps. The children showed a great knowledge of the world around them. Their maps included: helipads, junction boxes, traffic lights, bus stops and even fish and chip shops!
Thursday 25 September 2025 Exploring Line and Colour Reception looked at some abstract art work by Paul Klee. We noticed how he had used thick black lines and bright colours.
Thursday 3 July 2025 Floating and Sinking We have been exploring sinking and floating this week (which has also given us a lovely opportunity to cool down in the hot weather!)
Sunday 22 June 2025 We are Poets! After listening to the sounds of the ocean and acting out activities we like to do on the beach, Reception wrote a collective poem. We used our 5 senses to help us gather our ideas: What might we see, hear, taste, feel, and smell at the beach&quest;
Friday 13 June 2025 Bubbles Bubbles Everywhere Reception have enjoyed a science workshop run by StemPoint this week. We were set several fun and practical challenges to help us explore the wonderful science of bubbles. We blew bubbles using different shape wands, created bubble mountains, made bubble prints and explored which household objects we could blow through to create bubbles! We were amazed that we could use strange objects like keys, hosepipe and funnels to blow bubbles. Whatever we used to blow our bubbles with and however we blew them, we found that they were always sphere-shaped.
Monday 19 May 2025 Wimpole Hall Farm Trip The Reception children had a lovely trip to Wimpole Hall Farm, we saw piglets, ducklings and shire horses.
Friday 9 May 2025 What's crash landed in the EYFS playground? On Tuesday Reception children found something strange in the EYFS playground.
Thursday 1 May 2025 How Do Craters Form on the Moon? Reception had a really fun and messy time investigating how craters formed on the moon today. We used cornflour and baby oil to make our moon surface and then used pebbles to act as our meteorites crashing into the moons surface.
Friday 25 April 2025 Mission Impossible Reception have begun a new topic this half term and are learning all about Space!
Thursday 3 April 2025 Learning About Easter Reception have been busy learning about Easter this week. We have read the story from the bible and spent time acting parts out, creating our own Easter gardens and beautiful art work to show important parts of the story.
Friday 28 March 2025 Happy Mothering Sunday Look at some of our spectacular portraits of our mummies! We really enjoyed showing them to the congregation in our church service on Wednesday and talking about why we love our mums. We hope you enjoyed the service.
Thursday 20 March 2025 We are scientists! During science week we learnt all about worms. We then made our own wormery by layering gravel, sand, soil, dead leaves and, of course, worms from our outside area. We covered it in black paper to keep it dark and put it in a cool place.
Friday 14 March 2025 Spring has Sprung! Reception have been busy outside looking for signs of spring. We have noticed buds appearing on plants, birds singing in trees and lots of minibeasts in the soil! We have learnt the names of some spring flowers: snowdrops, crocuses, daffodils and primroses.
Thursday 30 January 2025 A Trip to the Greengrocers Reception children went on a walk to JS Webb Greengrocers in town today. We walked past Walsworth Road Baptist Church, the Queen Mother Theatre, Windmill Hill and the River Hiz. We spotted the first signs of spring: squirrels, daffodils and birds’ nests. We spent time looking for shapes in the grounds of St Mary’s Church and visited the lovely greengrocer nearby to buy all the fruit and vegetables on our shopping list. What a wonderful morning out! Back at school we got busy making turnip soup and are really looking forward to using pastels to sketch the fruit and vegetables (and to giving them a taste too!)
Wednesday 22 January 2025 Comparing Height Reception have had lots of fun learning about height. We researched the different heights of penguins living in the Antarctic using the Internet. We found that the tallest penguin was the Emperor, and the shortest was the Adelie penguin.
Wednesday 22 January 2025 Comparing Height Reception have had lots of fun learning about height. We researched the different heights of penguins living in the Antarctic using the Internet. We found that the tallest penguin was the Emperor, and the shortest was the Adelie penguin.
Thursday 16 January 2025 Blue Penguin Poetry Reception have really enjoyed listening to and discussing the text, 'Blue Penguin by Petr Horacek. We have developed our vocabulary through listening to and discussing the story and have explored the story setting by thinking about our five senses. We have written our own poem inspired by the illustrations.
Friday 10 January 2025 Penguins Reception have had a wonderful week learning all about penguins. We have been comparing our height to the height of penguins, learning about different types of penguin and collaging our own penguins to create a classroom display. We even froze some toy penguins and used our scientific skills to melt the ice and free the penguins!
Thursday 19 December 2024 Advent in Reception Having learnt all about Advent at St Albans Cathedral last week, children in Reception have continued their learning about how Christians around the world prepare for Christmas. We learnt that in Ireland, candles are placed on windowsills, in Australia people have barbecues on the beach(!) and in India colourful paper stars are hung.
Thursday 12 December 2024 Reception's First School Trip Today was a very special day as we went on our very first school trip. We travelled on a coach to visit St Alban's Cathedral. We visited different parts of the cathedral learning all about Advent and Christmas and how it is celebrated in the cathedral. We made advent wreaths, smelt myrrh and frankincense and listened to the story of Christmas. We behaved beautifully and represented St Andrew's exceptionally. What a super first visit!
Friday 15 November 2024 Reception Remember Reception talked about the significance of Remembrance Day. We worked together to collage, paint and colour poppies to create our own wreath and class display.
Friday 8 November 2024 All About 5! Reception have been busy learning all about the number 5 this week! We have made handprints, collected groups of 5 loose parts and looked for groups of 5 in our environment. We have become very good at subitising 5 and learning the different numbers that can make 5.
Thursday 24 October 2024 Culture Week in Reception Reception have had a wonderful week learning about cultures from all around the world. We have been so lucky to have visits from lots of our parents who have taught us more about the world around us. We learnt to count in French, tried our hand at origami, sung songs in Ghanaian, tasted croissants and hot chocolate and learnt some words in Belgian. We also listened to stories and rhymes from many different cultures and explored making our own flags and art work which was inspired by artists from around the world.
Friday 18 October 2024 Abstract Art in Reception In Maths this week we have been shape detectives! We have learnt to describe the properties of triangles and circles.
Thursday 10 October 2024 Let's Investigate! In Reception, we have been busy developing the scientific skill of observation this week.
Thursday 3 October 2024 Mark Making in Reception After reading, 'The Dot' by Peter Reynolds, Reception explored creating our own collaborative art in our classroom Atelier using dots and lines. We noticed the similarities between our artwork and the work of some famous abstract artists!
Thursday 19 September 2024 Busy Fingers Reception children have been enjoying lots of activities which will make our fingers nice and strong and ready for writing! We have been popping bubble wrap, writing in shaving foam, feeding 'tennis ball monsters' with pom-poms and sorting gems with tweezers. We have been so good at all these activities that we have even started learning how to hold our pencils correctly by 'nipping, flipping and gripping'! What a wonderful week.
Friday 13 September 2024 What a super start for Reception! Reception have made a brilliant start to the school term! Children have been busy exploring the classroom and our outside area. They have particularly enjoyed creating ramps and tracks for cars, building with the unifix cubes and getting messy with the paint and water.
Thursday 13 June 2024 Look What We Grew! As part of our Reception Enrichment, we have chitted, planted grown and harvested potatoes. We had great fun digging them up- it was like discovering buried treasure! We also planted and grew some sweet peas. They are beautiful and smell lovely.
Friday 17 May 2024 Rockets to the Moon Look at our fabulous rockets! We learnt how to make a cylinder with card and attach it to a cone or tube to create a rocket shape. We used materials from the atelier to give them windows, flames and decoration. They are now proudly displayed in our classroom.
Friday 26 April 2024 Is the moon made of cheese? When looking at the moon, we noticed that it is covered in darker patches. We learnt these are actually craters (and not holes in cheese!)We wondered how these were formed so we carried out a vey messy, but fun, investigation using cornflour and baby oil to see how rocks and comets have formed craters on the moon's surface.
Thursday 18 April 2024 Fairytales and Fables Workshop Reception had a magical time with Fizzy the Fairy today who visited us all the way from 'Perform Drama School'. We all enjoyed joining in with her dancing, acting and games during our 30 minute workshop. We thoroughly enjoyed our trip into the Fairy tale Forest where we met Rapunzel, Cinderella and even Rumpelstiltskin!
Friday 22 March 2024 Easter Artwork To create our Easter cards, we used pipettes and paints to create a colour wash with yellow and red. We loved watching the colours mix to create different shades of orange. It was very exciting to peel the masking tape cross off our artwork to reveal a cross shape. We are looking forward to bringing these home next week to share with our families.
Friday 8 March 2024 Mothering Sunday We have been very busy creating fantastic portraits of our mothers. We very confidently stood up to show them to the school community in today's church service and talked about why we loved our mummies.
Friday 1 March 2024 A Spring Walk Reception excitedly explored the school grounds to investigate seasonal changes this week. We spotted buds on trees, daffodils, primroses and crocuses. We also noticed that although it was chilly, it was bright and sunny. We look forward to repeating the walk soon and seeing what other wonderful changes have happened around us. We predict there will be more leaves on the trees, more flowers and it will be warmer.
Monday 5 February 2024 Chinese New Year A Reception parent came into class this afternoon to teach the children all about Chinese New Year! We learnt about pandas, Chinese horoscopes and the children made lanterns and cut out paper shapes. We also tried watermelon and we thought it was delicious! Thank you very much!
Friday 2 February 2024 What a Wonderful World! Reception enjoyed reading the book, 'Here We Are' by Oliver Jeffers. We listened to the Louis Armstrong song, 'What a wonderful World' and created our own lyrics to the song to reflect the things we think are wonderful in the world. We are also enjoying creating our own paintings of the world's wonderful animals.
Friday 19 January 2024 A Trip to the Greengrocers On a very cold Thursday morning, Reception walked to the greengrocers in Hitchin town. We had our shopping list and money ready and bought all sorts of wonderful fruit and vegetables. We learnt how the greengrocer weighs the fruit and vegetables and where some of them grow. We particularly enjoyed tasting them when we got back to school!
Thursday 11 January 2024 The Gigantic Turnip Reception have had a super week of fun and learning. We have started reading our new focus text, ‘The Gigantic Turnip,’ which we have really enjoyed creating story maps for and retelling ourselves using lots of actions.
Friday 17 November 2023 Family Learning Week in Reception We have been very lucky to have lots of parents visiting our classroom this week. Together we have further explored our Literacy text, 'Julian is a Mermaid', through a lovely range of artistic activities! We have marbled paper to look like the sea, sculpted clay sea creatures and used watercolours to paint beautiful mermaid tails and fish. The buzz of learning and use of language across the week by children has been a delight!
Friday 6 October 2023 Music in Reception We love our music lessons in the hall with Mrs Lawrence. We especially love playing the percussion instruments. We are getting very good at keeping the pulse and creating rhythms as a class.
Monday 25 September 2023 Autumn walk This afternoon the Reception learnt about Autumn and we went for a lovely sunny walk in our school grounds to collect autumn leaves, conkers, pine cones and sticks. We learnt about deciduous and evergreen trees and looked for examples of them in our environment.
Friday 22 September 2023 Reception Enrichment Reception Class loved their first Enrichment sessions this week. Children discussed birds and made bird feeders with Mrs Knappert, chopped and tasted fruit with Miss Thompson or had a go at mixing paint colours with their fingers! Lots of fun was had by everyone.
Friday 15 September 2023 Bugs in a Blanket We read a story called, 'Bugs in a Blanket'. We discussed how we are all different in our class- just like the bugs in the story. Despite this, we are all part of our class family. We made our own bugs by winding wool around wooden pegs. Don't they look super!
Thursday 22 June 2023 Happy harvesting! Today, we harvested all of our beautiful radishes and counted a grand total of 47! We tasted them and thought that they were peppery and spicy, and quite crunchy too! We also started to dig up our potatoes which look delicious!
Wednesday 21 June 2023 Time to cool down with an ice lolly!
Tuesday 20 June 2023 Time to Harvest It is time to harvest our crops from our wonderful raised beds. We have been busy watering all the plants to make sure that they grow and are well nourished. We are also really excited about digging up our potatoes this week! We have seen some potatoes ready to dig up and are looking forward to tasting them!
Tuesday 16 May 2023 Budding Gardeners This week, as part of Outdoor Learning Week, we have been busy planting lots of seeds in our new raised beds. So far, we have planted sweetcorn, sunflowers and carrots. We have been learning how to space the seeds out, prepare the soil and have been diligently watering the ground. We can't wait to see what happens! We have also been writing labels during our exploration to help us to remember what we have planted in the raised beds. Thank you to all the families who have donated seeds for our garden area!
Friday 12 May 2023 Mysterious Happenings in Reception This week, we have been exploring some mysterious happenings in Reception. We found what looked like a spaceship in the playground as well as some suspicious footprints leading to the Mud Kitchen. Even stranger, we found some writing in a different language on the ground. We wondered whether who might have left such an unusual message for us! We wrote letters to Ms Fenn to explain what we had found out and we wonder what will happen next....
Tuesday 25 April 2023 Counting to twenty This week, we have been exploring our numbers to twenty as part of our maths learning and also our continuous provision. We have been playing different games to explore these numbers and had great fun!
Wednesday 29 March 2023 Planting Potatoes Yesterday, we planted the potatoes which we have been chitting in our classroom. The potatoes had grown sprouts which were about 2cm long and were ready to be planted. We filled our wheelbarrows with soil, digging it carefully, and then half-filled our planting bags. We then gently placed in some potatoes, nicely spaced out to give them room to grow, and then covered them with a layer of soil. We will keep watering our potatoes and adding more soil to make sure they remain covered and fed. We are looking forward to a potato party once they have grown!
Friday 24 March 2023 Standalone Farm Today, we visited Standalone Farm to continue our learning for our unit, 'Farm to Fork'. We saw many different animals, recalled what their young are called and even saw some animals being fed! We especially enjoyed seeing the Shire horse and Shetland Pony, and seeing the piglets being fed. After lunch, we enjoyed some time playing together on the climbing equipment. Thank you to all our adult volunteers for joining us today - it was a wonderful visit and lovely to see the farm animals so close up!
Friday 3 March 2023 World Book Day in Reception This year, our World Book Day focus was on non-fiction texts and we dressed up as different people or objects from information books which we particularly enjoy! Our costumes show our wonderful range of interests in Reception class and we hope you enjoy seeing them!
Monday 20 February 2023 Looking for a Bog Baby.... As we launch our new learning all about mini-beasts, we ventured to the pond to look for signs of wildlife and to see whether any mini-beasts live there! We were very lucky and spotted some dragonfly larvae, some freshwater snails and even a newt! We explored the pond life hiding beneath the duckweed, just like the characters in our new book, The Bog Baby by Jeanne Willis. We also foraged in the woodlands to collect some materials to make some small bug hotels during our outdoor exploration. We look forward to creating some habitats to encourage different mini-beasts into our playground. Watch this space!
Tuesday 24 January 2023 Fee fi fo fum! This week, we are learning the traditional tale, Jack and the Beanstalk. As we learn to retell the story using the repeated refrains and story language during our adult-directed learning, we are also developing lots of other skills in our child-initiated learning. We have been practising our super cutting skills to make a huge beanstalk for the classroom, building the giant's castle in the construction area complete with turrets and bridges, and counting the beans for the beanstalk. We even made a beanstalk and castle using the Numicon!
Tuesday 20 December 2022 Christmas is Coming! Our letters are ready for Father Christmas, our biscuits have been baked and our wrapping paper made! We have even decorated the trees counting the baubles! We have been practising lots of different skills during our adult-directed and child-initiated learning, and we have enjoyed getting ready for Christmas!
Tuesday 13 December 2022 A Winter Wonderland We loved exploring the snow outside yesterday! There was lots of awe and wonder as we enjoying seeing where Jack Frost had been. We discussed the seasonal changes and most importantly, had a lot of fun!
Tuesday 29 November 2022 We are writers We are really enjoying using our writing in our child-initiated learning. We are exploring the letters and sounds in our environment, and taking lots of opportunities to write as part of our play. We have been writing our names on our learning, writing signs for our construction area and writing CVC words in our writing station! We especially love to spot digraphs in our environment!
Tuesday 15 November 2022 Is it waterproof? For our first Family Learning Week session, Reception worked in groups to test different materials to find out which ones would be waterproof. We have been reading the story of Julian is a Mermaid and wanted to find some materials which would be waterproof to be by the seaside! We used pipettes to test different materials by dropping water onto them and made predictions about whether different materials would be waterproof. We enjoyed worked collaboratively and had some very interesting discussions. We enjoyed having our families with us and we are looking forward to our next session.
Friday 11 November 2022 The Creation Story We have been learning the creation story from the Bible in our RE lessons. We learnt the story and as a group, we created images to represent the different parts of the story. We hope you enjoy the images from our creation story.
Friday 4 November 2022 Phonics in Reception Reception have made a super start to their phonics learning using Little Wandle and are practising blending CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words both in class and at home with their reading books. To support at home, please see the video link for Autumn 1 Reception for a demonstration of the sounds learnt so far and how to pronounce them to support blending.
Tuesday 18 October 2022 Learning all about Hungary During Culture Week, some Reception parent visitors came to teach us all about Hungary. We learnt all about the beautiful Lake Balaton and we enjoyed seeing how the landscape changes during the different seasons. It was exciting to see people skating on the ice! We also listened to a Hungarian story called 'Bogyó és Babóca' about friendship which we particularly enjoyed! Later, we wore traditional Hungarian dress and learnt some folk dances - it was fun to try the different movements! At the end of the afternoon, we tasted some delicious Hungarian twisted bread. Huge thanks to our parent volunteers for visiting us and teaching us all about Hungary. We had a wonderful afternoon and learnt so much.
Monday 10 October 2022 Culture Week This morning, to launch our Culture Week, we learnt all about Mandarin characters from one of our parent visitors. We used the clues to guess what the characters might represent and then enjoyed exploring them during our child-initiated learning. What do you think these characters might mean
Friday 30 September 2022 Pompoms! This week, we have been busy making pompoms in the atelier using different brightly coloured wool. We practised our weaving techniques and have enjoyed seeing the pompoms become soft and fluffy once they were carefully cut! They are hanging in our classroom for us all to enjoy and we will be continuing with some more woolly weaving next week as we have enjoyed it so much!

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