Welcome to Reception

Overview

Reception at Queen’s Hill Primary School offers an engaging and nurturing environment for each child to learn and flourish.  Our goal is to instill a ‘Passion for Learning’ that will continue throughout pupils' lives by providing stimulating lessons, enquiry-based learning opportunities and a child-centred approach to help children develop their own love of learning.

We believe that each and every child has the right to achieve and in the Early Years we seek to develop this at every stage.  Our purpose built Reception classrooms and outdoor area provide a rich environment in which the children can learn through their play and children are able to access our large outdoor area on a free-flow basis every day.  A balance of adult-directed and child-initiated learning ensures that children make progress across all areas of their learning and development. We follow the phonics scheme Read, Write, Inc. which teaches children to use letter sounds to support their reading and writing. We use a maths mastery approach when teaching early number skills.

Useful Links

Read and write alphabet and letters

Number Rhymes

Phonics made easy

How we teach phonics at Queen's Hill

Home communication

At Queen’s Hill Primary School we see education as a partnership between the home and school. We use Tapestry,  an ‘online learning journal’ which enables you to see photographs, videos and written observations of the activities your child does at school. Good relationships between parents and staff are valued and there are frequent opportunities for parents to come in and share what their child has been doing.

Reception Blog Posts

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Reception Pumpkin Party

Reception have had a very messy and spooky week! We have been looking at the story "Room on the Broom" and have been doing lots of magical activities such as potion mixing, pumpkin printing and bubbling cauldron painting.
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Autumn in Reception

We have been learning all about the seasonal changes which come with Autumn. The children have been reading the story "The Leaf Thief" and have learnt about what happens to the leaves in Autumn and why. We have learnt about the vegetables and plants which grow, the animals who hibernate and created pictures inspired by Autumnal colours. The children even got to visit our on-site outdoor classroom for an Autumn hunt!
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Dinosaurs!

Last week Reception, we had a mystery visitor in our classrooms. They left some clues; footprints and a tray of fossils. We discovered from reading "The Girl and the Dinosaur" that just like the dinosaur in the story, we had been visited by night dinosaurs too! We have had lots of fun exploring dinosaurs in the classroom and like in the story the children made their own wishes that they hope to come true!
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All about me

Reception have been settling in to starting school and looking at the topic "All about me". We have been sharing facts about ourselves and drawing self-portraits- noticing lots of our facial features. This week we have been learning about the story "And Tango Makes 3". In the story, Tango lives in the zoo with two daddies. We have been talking about all of our families and who we live in a house with. We have discussed that every family is special and unique, but the thing that they all have in common is that there is lots of love! Children made marks as to who lives in their house and if they have any pets.
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Big Toddle

We had so much fun during our Big Toddle! We completed different Physical Development activities such as 'Balance Along the Tree Branches' and 'Don't Fall in the River'. Parents and carers helped us raise £150 for Bernardo's- well done Nursery and Reception!
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Sunflowers

We have been learning about the life cycles of plants. As part of this topic, we have planted a Sunflower seed. We have been looking after them and look forward to taking them home to plant!
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Gressenhall

Reception had a wonderful time on our trip to Gressenhall. We met Fairy tale characters, such as Cinderella and Jack. We helped them find their magical objects the Wicked Witch had stolen. We particularly enjoyed the tractor ride on the farm, helping the Ugly-Stepsister with her chores and sliding down the beanstalk slides.
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Dentist visit

To continue our topic of "People who help us" we had a dentist come in this week to talk with Reception about the importance of looking after our teeth. We learnt about why we brush our teeth, how many times to brush our teeth a day, how long to brush our teeth each time and the techniques to use. Nikki even brought Barry the dinosaur to help and we got to dress up as a dentist!
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Chicks

Reception have been spending the last two weeks looking after chicks. We received eggs and watched them in the incubator until they hatched. The children learnt about a chickens life cycle, names for other baby animals and that the yellow chicks were boys and the brown chicks were girls. We were so inspired by this that we used the chicks to learn about tally charts to vote on names for our chicks, in our literacy lessons we learnt about the story "Dora's eggs" and used wrote describing words using our phonics and we also made chick pictures and explored nest making.
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Reception Police Visit

Reception pupils had an exciting visit from PC Andy last week, where they learned all about what it's like to be a real police officer. The children had the chance to sit in a police car and even turn on the flashing blue lights, which was a highlight of the day!The visit sparked so much interest that the pupils couldn’t wait to head back to class and create some fantastic pictures to remember the special experience! oplus_34 oplus_34