We’ve headed east this week in Reception as our ‘Around The World’ topic has taken us to Asia. We have enjoyed looking a some different countries on the world map, on Google Earth street view and via Mr Verdi’s travel snaps. We did our morning and afternoon registers in some Asian languages and took a look at some of the different alphabets of these languages across Asia and how they are written in contrast to ours. A lot of children chose to have a go at writing some of their own Chinese characters by copying the symbols for the nunbers 1-10. We learned that the Khmer alphabet used in Cambodia is the largest in the world with 74 different characters used to represent different sounds! We discussed some different foods from Asia that we might have tried (or not tried!) and the children loved getting to grips with using chopsticks to pick up noodles instead of a fork. Over in our creative area some children chose to try their hands at using geometric shapes to compose some tiled patterns inspired by Islamic art found in many Asian countries. We also took a look at some contemporary art by famous Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama who is known for her colourful polka-dot paintings and inflatable installations and then the children had the opportunity to paint or draw some polka dot art inspired by what we saw.
As part of our learning about Asia we spent some time looking at Chinese New Year which this week finished ushering in 2026’s Year of the Horse. The children greatly enjoyed a telling of the famous origins of the animals of the Chinese zodiac at story time and all were given opportunity to create their own Year of the Horse suncatchers in the lucky colour of red. We also discussed how people in China and across the world celebrate this festival by cleaning their homes, having special foods and exchanging money and gifts in special red envelopes.
Phonics this week has introduced the phonemes ‘oi’ (as in coin) ‘ow’ (as in clown) and ‘ear’ (as in ear!). The children have enjoyed practising how to recognise, read and write these sounds in words and sentences. Most fun was using our ears to hear in a game of guess the animal. The children listened carefully to some animal sounds and wrote down what they thought they heard ( e.g. “I can hear a goat.”). The children are doing great at starting to write their own sentences, remembering to use finger spaces between words to make tbier writing easier to read.
Our maths sessions have been all about exploring the concept of doubling and what this means. The children have heard that to double a number you must times the same number by two and have investigated finding doubles by finding two of the same numicon tiles and finding the total, finding two pieces that match to complete simple doubles jigsaws and by filling in the spots on the wings of a ladybird to make both sides the same and therefore reveal the double.
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
