It's been a busy week in Reception. We returned from the Bank Holiday weekend to find that our caterpillars had started to make cocoons. Four were already all wrapped up but one was still spinning, which was amazing to watch. They are now in their butterfly net as we wait for the cocoons to split and butterflies to emerge.

 

It was great timing as we have just started our new literacy book, The Woolly Bear Caterpillar by Julia Donaldson. We have been writing captions about moths and caterpillars this week, noticing their features. Our handwriting and spelling is really improving and we are loving writing.

 

We have also used butterflies to help us with maths, where we are learning doubles. Ask us what 4 and 4  or 2 and 2 makes. We've painted symmetrical butterflies by folding pages and have checked that we have doubled them correctly.

 

We have learned about animals from different habitats and talked about what is near our homes, ready to plan a dog walk for Rex. We have been reading Rex's training plan for a chance to play with him this week.

 

We have loved play out now it is warmer and improving our maths and science skills by exploring the sand and water, building and playing ball and dice games. Our beans are growing well and we keep checking our potatoes to see if we are getting any leaves coming above the soil.

Reception have enjoyed four seasons in one week. From gales blowing away our tough spots through showers to beautiful sunshine. We loved making the most of the sunshine with a picnic lunch on polling day.

 

Rex the puppy is doing well, we've been reading messages from Mum and Dad about how to look after him and matching pictures of dog training jobs with the right labels. In Literacy, we've been writing about all the cats in The Storm Whale in Winter. They have been hiding in all sorts of places and we've been writing lists and captions to show where.

 

We've even made cat headbands and cat faces from paper plates. We loved crafting - it really helped us to improve our cutting and sticking skills.

 

In maths, we've been learning about the number 8, ordering numbers upto 8 and exploring which were more and less than each other.

 

Our beans are growing well and we've planted some potatoes too. We've learned about animal habitats this week and have been busy sorting animals into the right habitats.