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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Music in Reception

This half-term we have been learning about pitch. We have explored high and low pitch and used a game of "Do, Re, Mi" with actions to represent higher and lower sounds. The children then explored using musical notes and they have been learning how to play a song "Frere Jacques" on the xylophones.
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Nursery baking

We have been baking in Nursery. Inspired by reading The Gingerbread Man and The Little Red Hen, we have baked our own loaf of bread and baked and decorated our Gingerbread Men. The children enjoyed weighing and measuring the ingredients, mixing them together and waiting for the finished products. The children took their Gingerbread men home with them and enjoyed a slice of bread with butter and jam for their snack.
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Cinderella visits Reception!

Last week we had a mysterious glittery shoe turn up in Reception with the name Cinderella written inside! The children made lost and found posters around the school to search for the owner of the shoe, asked grown ups in school for their shoe size and did lots of princess themed activities. At the end of the week Cinderella surprised the children and they were very excited to return her shoe!
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Nursery Planting Beans

The children in Nursery planted their own bean seeds. They watered them carefully and are looking forward to watching them grow over the coming weeks.
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Nursery Making Porridge

In Nursery we have been reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears and decided to make some porridge. The children weighed the oats and measured the milk before mixing them together and waiting for it to heat up. The children enjoyed tasting their porridge, with some of them coming back for seconds!
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EYFS chicks

We have had a very exciting 2 weeks in Early Years with the arrival of some eggs. Children guessed what animal would be inside the eggs- some who were hoping for a dragon or dinosaur were a little disappointed when chicks started to hatch. Children then observed the changes from egg to chick and recorded these in their own egg to chick diary. We learnt about how baby animals grow and the things needed to help keep animals happy and healthy. Children helped feed the chicks and even got to hold one with very gentle hands, we also did other chick themed activities and made our own chick biscuits.
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EYFS Fire Service Visit

We have been learning about people who help us. Today, Reception had a very special visit from the fire service! We learnt about fire safety, got to go in the fire engine and have a look around it!
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Police Week

In Reception we had our very own crime scene! Someone had come into the classroom and made a huge mess in our home kitchen. PC Ringwood, PC Cross and PC Hann were to hand though and helped the children lead an investigation based on the clues left by the culprit. Children went around the school and asked all adults if they knew anything about the crime. We had lots of fun with the police themed activities of taking fingerprints, making police cars from the junk modelling and measuring footprints.
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A busy week in Nursery

Nursery had another busy week last week. We are enjoying our new outdoor area and have had lots to look at and explore in the classroom.
Nursery Music

Nursery Music

Nursery have been enjoying playing some instruments this week and listening to their friends' music.