Jambo! Reception this week have travelled to the continent of Africa as we continue our tour Around The World. The children have enjoyed exploring a variety of countries across Africa, starting with joining the Go-Jetters characters at the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt. We learned about how and why the pyramids were built before taking a close-up look via Google Earth street view. On Tuesday we travelled to Madagascar on our world map to look at the amazing Baobab trees that stand tall on the island and watched a video telling us about these magnificent trees. We zoomed in to take a closer look at Nigeria and the city of Lagos to see how the city compares to ones we recognise in the UK on Wednesday. And on Thursday we all followed a trail of African flags to trek across the map from place to place using our knowledge of the points on a compass, with the children helping to navigate from country to country by giving directions of north, south, east or west.
The children have loved testing their maps reading skills again this week and many have hunted for hidden letters in the reception playground by looking on a map to find where to look. We’ve also had lots of interest in studying our giant inflatable globe – the children love hunting for the flags that they recognise and learning where the countries sit in relation to one another. After last week’s learning about Asia, we had some children take it upon themselves to build a model of the Burj Khalifa from wooden blocks. And we are still working our way through showcasing everybody’s photos from around the world. The children are loving sharing where they have been and getting to take questions from the audience which means we all get to learn so much more about these different countries all over the world – this week alone we’ve vicariously visited Canada, Spain, Scotland and Mauritius!
Over in our creative areas we have taken inspiration from contemporary African artists to create some fabulous artworks. Taking a look at the rich textile collages of Malian artist Abdoulaye Konaté the children have had a go at gluing down strips of colourful fabrics to make their own vibrant artworks. We also took a look at the beautiful paintings of Ghanian painter Amoako Boafo who produces portraits painted using his fingers and hands instead of brushes and took this as inspiration to try finger-painting our own portraits which came our delightfully well. We were also inspired by African animals to create 3D shapes from paper nets with animal designs on and to neatly colour-in savannah scenery by following the numbers on the sheet.
This week the Scholastic Book Fair has been in school and we took down all of Reception to take a look at what was on offer. From the children’s wish lists we have had plenty of orders, so thank you for supporting this as the school stands to make some funds to help pay for books for our own school library.
Phonics this week has seen us introduce the final sounds of Phase 3, which are ‘air’ (as in chair) ‘ure’ (as in pure) and ‘er’ (as in pepper). The children are doing brilliantly at applying these sounds into their reading and writing and are getting much more confident as the weeks go by at working independently towards writing their own sentences. From now on in our Phonics work we shall not be learning any new sounds but revising and embedding all the previously learned sounds to enable the children to be come fluent in using them in their reading and writing.
Our Maths sessions have found us exploring 3D shapes. We have learned the names of common solid shapes and discussed their properties using the vocabulary of faces, edges and vertices. The children have had a go at sorting familiar objects by what shape they are and practised describing shapes accurately by playing a guessing game with their friends using the shape vocabulary we have learned.
On Monday this week we introduced the children to some new movement play resources which we are going to using regularly in school. This fun and stimulating equipment allows us to help develop the children’s strength and coordination, especially core strength and in the legs, arms and hands which all have a beneficial effect on other learning and how the children can use their bodies in lots of ways.
Have a lovely weekend!
The Reception Team
DATES FOR THE DIARY:
Thursday 2nd April: Foods of the World Parent Event (2:00pm) – Parents and carers are invited to join us in Reception to share in our learning and enjoy some delicious foods!
Thursday 2nd April: Last day of Spring 2 Term
Tinshill Drive
Cookridge
Leeds
West Yorkshire
LS16 7DH
0113 386 2500
