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.

Download the Reception Long Term Plan

Download the Reception Learning Resources

Useful Websites

Here are some of the websites that can be accessed at home to support children’s learning and development specifically for the early years. Please find a list of suggested websites below. We hope you find this information useful and enjoy using these sites to enhance your child’s learning experiences at home!

Please do remember to review the sites ahead of time so that you are able to help your children find the best resources available within the sites. Some offer a great number of games, songs, stories, videos etc. so it is important to know the site well in order to support and develop your child’s learning.

www.busythings.co.uk
Excellent site built around the 7 areas of learning in the Early Years Foundation Stage. You can access a free 7 day trial but you need to subscribe after this period to access the content – various subscription packages available.

http://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/freeIndex.htm
Great site with some free phonics games

http://www.phonicsplaycomics.co.uk/comics.html
Practise your phonics whilst reading simple comics

www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies
Many games often recognised by children from their favourite programmes.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/websites/eyfs/
Links to particular cbeebies games from areas of learning.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/stories
Cbeebies stories and rhymes.

http://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/for-home/
Interactive books and reading activities to share with your child at home.

http://www.funwithspot.com/
New and improved! Try creating your own Spot story.

www.sebastianswan.org.uk
Books for reading together with links to understanding of the world (good for natural science).

http://www.ictgames.com/
Some excellent numeracy and literacy resources

http://www.ictgames.com/looCoverWriteCheck/LCWC_demo/index.html
Good for spelling high frequency and tricky words!

http://www.crickweb.co.uk/Early-Years.html
Lots of maths and literacy games

www.boowakwala.com
Many games and songs including those relating to festivals.

www.poissonrouge.com
Many delightful games. Spend some time exploring!

http://www.topmarks.co.uk/Search.aspx?Subject=37
Games of varying quality to support different areas of learning.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/laac/
The Little animals’ activity centre - plenty of good quality activities to support learning

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/laac/story/sbi.shtml
The Little animals’ activity centre – stories

www.abc.net.au/children/play
Various educational games, videos and craft ideas

Reception Blog Posts

Big Toddle

20th June 2025

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!

Sunflowers

23rd May 2025

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!

Gressenhall

21st May 2025

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.

Dentist visit

4th April 2025

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!

Chicks

31st March 2025

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.

Reception Police Visit

14th March 2025

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

Year 3 and Reception Buddies

15th February 2025

Year 3 had a great afternoon with their reception buddies on Thursday. They were able to ask about their learning this half term and then share their own fantastic Egyptian non-chronological reports. They have worked so hard on them and it was great to celebrate success!

Deserts and Valentine’s day

14th February 2025

This week we have been learning about the Desert and the celebration of Valentine's day. We learnt about what animals live in the desert and why it is so difficult to live there. We also learnt about how people celebrate Valentine's day and we made cards for our loved ones.

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The Polar Regions

7th February 2025

This week in Reception we explored the Polar Regions. We learnt about which animals live in the North or South pole and what it is like there. We spent the week playing with polar region toys, creating artwork and we watched our teachers do an experiment with string, ice and salt!

Lunar New Year

31st January 2025

This week in Reception we have been learning about the celebration of 'Lunar New Year'. We learnt about what foods people eat to celebrate and how they decorate using colourful decorations- we even made our own Chinese Lantern. Children explored different resources and really enjoyed learning about this celebration!