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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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.
Arlo reading

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.
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Volcanoes!

Reception have continued to learn about the world and this week we have been looking at volcanoes. We learnt about where we could find volcanoes and how they are formed. We made some class volcanoes using junk modelling and papier-Mache and then did an experiment of a chemical reaction to make the volcano explode!
Freya portrait

Self-portraits

Nursery have been using mirrors to see what colour eyes and hair they have before completing their amazing self-portraits.
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Twinkly Nativity

This week Reception did an amazing job for their performance of 'Twinkly Nativity'. We have also been getting in the festive mood with lots of Christmas themed crafts and activities.
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Getting ready for Christmas

Nursery have been busy getting the classroom ready for Christmas.
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Stick Man is missing!

This week in Reception we received a letter from Stick Lady. She said that Stick Man had gone missing and asked if could we help her! Children thought about what we could do to help and made wanted posters for him- we even put some up around school! Children have been painting using watercolours, creating their own stick men and searching for Stick Man outside.