Reception

Welcome to Reception!

Welcome to the Reception page, here you will find helpful information and a little insight into all the wonderful things we are learning.

A little bit about us

We love to sing and dance!

Dates for your Diary:

5th September start of school 

5th-8th September half day 

11th September start of full days 8.30am-3.30pm

26th September 3.45-4.15pm Reception reading/communication workshop

29th September St Michaels Day

5th October School Health Check

16th October 3:45pm Recepetion Maths workshop 

18th October Reception walk around the local area

Yearly Overview

Termly Overview

RWI

At St. Michael's, we teach our phonics through the Read. Write. Inc. programme. 

PE

As well as completing physical activities in our EYFS environment, we also take part in PE once a week. This term PE will be on Friday's. On their PE day (Fridays), the children should come in to school dressed in their PE kit. They do not need to bring their school uniform as they will stay in their PE kit all day. 

Please ensure all earrings are removed or covered.

Forest School

Small groups of children will be taken each week to explore our Forest School in term 5. This will be every Tuesday and the children will need to bring in a pair of old shoes or wellies.

Reading at Home

Please ensure you are reading with your child everyday. Reading books will be changed once a week.

We have provided each child with their own set of sound cards to help practice their phonics skills at home. Please begin by practicing the recognition of each sound as instructed by the Jotter videos. Once your child is confident of the sounds, you can begin to arrange them to make simple words for your child to practice their blending e.g. c - a - t = cat. 

Please ensure you sign your learning journal when you practice sounds at home each day.

Please make sure your child brings their Learning Journal to school everyday as a point of contact.

Reading books will be changed once a week:

Red Group: Monday

Blue Group: Tuesday

Green group: Wednesday

Yellow Group: Thursday

Jotter Learning Platform

At St Michael’s we subscribe to Jotter; the learning platform designed with primary schools in mind. Children are growing up in a fast-changing online world and we strive to ensure that they gain the essential skills both within and beyond school. Teachers will keep you up-to-date with your child’s learning. Your child will be able to download and upload work and complete tasks. There will be pages where much of what you see has been created by the children themselves. This is their chance to shine as they write content and collaborate on research.

Jotter gives children the opportunity to explore concepts such as wikis and blogs in a safe environment. We hope you enjoy using Jotter as much as we do. To log in please type in your child’s username and password. To obtain this information please speak to your class teacher.

Term 1 Reading workshop 

Collective Worship 2023-2024

Advent- Week 1 Hope

Today we spoke about what Advent means and the first candle that represents HOPE. 

We spoke about our hopes and how we are preparing for Gods birth. The children discussed how we are hoping for Jesus to come back again one day, but until then we have to be ready. We added a candle to our class advent wreath. To end the collective worship the children said their own prays to God for their intentions. We then sang 'Oh little town of Bethlehem' as we continue to wait for his birth.

St Andrew's day

The children explored who St Andrew was and why he became a saint. They enjoyed dancing to bagpipe music and copying some highland dance moves. They understood that he was the special saint for Scotland which some children then chose to draw the Scotland flag. They had a great discussion about his work and why God was so proud of him. They thought of ways in which they could be like St Andrew. 

"I can spread the good things Jesus did" Esme

"I can talk to people about God" Amina

Sid the Sheep: Everyone should have a say

We explored the Catholic social teaching of Sid the Sheep. We discussed what it means for everyone to have say and how everyone needs to make their own choices. The children explored what choices they make and how it makes them feel. We thanked God that we have our own voices and minds to make though choices.

Dear God,

You gave me a mind and voice to make my own choices,

You gave me friends so that I could learn to share. 

Please continue to encourage me to let people have their own say and make their own choices. I want the world to be a happy and fair place.

Amen

We visited Church!

Reception had a great time visiting Church and learning about what to do there. They met Father Peter and had a walk around looking at the cross whilst genuflecting to it. They also practiced their singing for their nativity. It sounded so beautiful!

Remembrance Sunday 

We Remembered the brave men and women from the wars around the world. 

We made poppies to show our love and respect.

We reflected on the CST, we will try to be peacemakers and show the world kindness and love.

Dear God 

We remember the soldiers that have died, we remember all of the families effected by war. 

We will try to help everyone who needs our help. 

We will try to be peacemakers, please guide us in sharing your love to all that we meet.

Amen 

St Michaels Day

This week we looked at our Patron Saint, Saint Michael.  We created our own art work to represent him as well as learning our special school song.

Oh Saint Michael, Great Saint Michael 

Teach us how to keep our spirts true,

Oh Saint Michael, Great Saint Michael 

Hear the prayers we send to you. 

Catholic Social Teachings EYFS Posters

This week we learnt how to show that we care, we look at the Catholic Social Teachings and reflected on the Sun Bear.  We thought of ways that we can show we care. 

Dear God 

Please help me to live my life in the image of you.

Help me to be kind and to care for others. 

Amen

This week in Collective worship we learnt how to set up a prayer table.  We all enjoyed learning how to come together to pray to God.  

In our first week of collective worship we learnt how to make the sign of the cross and talk to God.  We have been learning how to say our daily prayers.

Collective Worship 2022-23

We have been learning about our class Saints! We know they were special friends of Jesus and we must be so thankful for them. We know St Jude looked after all the sick people, we role played how we can look after our friends and wrote thank you cards. St Andrew was a fisherman who helped to make sure all the people had food, we did lots of fishing like Saint Andrew and decorated fish to help us remember how special he was.

We learnt our class prayers and talked about how special our prayer area is. We know that we light the candle to remind us to let Jesus' light in. The children had a chance to explore the prayer basket and set up their own worship areas. We spoke about how God is always there for us and sang the lord is my rock, we decorated rocks and thought about everything God made for us. 

Being Wise - Matthew 7: 24-29

We thought about what it means to be wise and how we are wise but we can also follow words of others who know more than we do. We listened to the parable Matthew 7:24-29 and thought about what it meant to be wise or foolish and how the man on the sand could have listened and followed the advice. We thought about materials and built houses using sand and rocks. 

Luke 14: 12-24 The Parable of the Great Banquet

We discussed what a banquet is and talked about any special meals we may have had. We know that Jesus brought food for all the people and that God provides enough for all but some still do not have enough. We talked about how to help others in our community as well as at home and in school. We role played banquets and made invitations to be kind to others and invite them to our meals. We know it is the more important to share and be kind to people who have nothing as they will appreciate it the most. We thought about how we can do this in school and play with people who have no one as it will mean a lot to them and make our school community a better place. 

St Michael's Day 2022!

Today we celebrated St Michael. We know Michael was a good angel who helped us to know how important it is to follow God. We thought about how there is no one more special than God and how we can protect each other like the angel Michael protected us. We know we celebrate the angel Michael and call him a Saint because he protected us all and served God so highly. We wrote a prayer to thank St Michael, made him cards and threw a party in his honour. We made shields to protect ourselves and role played the story of St Michael defeating Lucifer the bad angel.

Being Kind - Mark 12:31

We talked about the importance of being kind to our friends and family. We learned that God wants us to treat our neighbour as ourselves. The children drew pictures for their friends and said kind words to each other. They also cared for the animals and made them nice homes to enjoy.

Celebrating Harvest - Luke 6:38 
We learnt about Harvest and how it is important to gather food and share with those who need it most. We drew pictures of different types of food to share and role played sharing. 

Saying Thank You - Luke 17:11-19

We listened to the story of the 10 lepers and thought about how important it is to say thank you. We talked about different times when we say thank you and wrote a prayer to God to ask for help. 

All Saints Day

We learnt all about our school team Saints. We role played as St Bernadette seeing Mary at the river. We made crowns like St Lucy to help see the way. We made flower necklaces like the little flower St Thérèse and made shields to role play St Joan of Arc. 

Remembrance Day - 11th November

We know that we remember all the soldiers who fought in the wars on Remembrance Day. We made and wore poppies to remember. 
 

Anti-Bullying - Timothy 1:7 

We talked about bullying. We know it is unkind and God wants us to always be kind and loving to our friends. We played games together and drew pictures for our friends. We discussed what we would do if someone was sitting alone and decided the most important and kind things to do to help them. 
 

Peace-Making - Matthew 5:9 

We talked about how we can bring Peace to our class and school. We sang a song about being proud and talked about how we can be proud of ourselves for being kind. 
 

We thank God for our Special Gifts
 

Advent - Isaiah 9: 2-7

Epiphany - Matthew 2:11

Making Mistakes - John 4:13-14

I am the bread of life - John 6:35

Love One Another - John 13:34

Collective Worship 2021 - 2022

St. Michael's Day 2021

Today we learned about St. Michael.

We had fun celebrating on the bouncy castles and enjoyed an ice cream whilst remembering his bravery. We know he is an angel and our protector who stands up for what is right.

We are proud to be St. Michaels!

God's World

We have been learning about the Creation Story and the wonderful things God gifted to us. We have been looking at how we can help look after God's world and knowing the difference between what God gave us and what man created.

Term 2: This term we will be learning about the Nativity story and developing our connection with Jesus. We will be exploring different religions and celebrating God's gifts to us. 

All Saints Day

We know we are part of a team. to help us better understand our team we explored the stories of the saints.

St. Bernadette

St. Lucy

St. Therese

St. Joan of Arc

We role played the story of St. Bernadette seeing Mary by the river and knowing how special she is. 

We created our own candle crowns to represent the light St. Lucy brought to the soldiers.

We created our own flower garlands to help us understand that St. Therese was one of God's 'little flowers.'

We made shields to role play the bravery of St. Joan of Arc in battle. 

We now have a much deeper understanding of the importance of the Saints we represent in our teams.

Diwali

We had an amazing time learning about different celebrations around the world including Diwali. We explored all things light! We looked at rangoli patterns, listened to the story of Rama and Sita, created Diya lamps and explored fireworks.

Remembrance Day

We have been learning about Remembrance Day and the meaning behind poppies for this day. We created our own poppies and put them together to create a wonderful collage. We thought of a prayer to give thanks for the sacrifices made in history.

Dance! Dance! Dance!

We have had great fun retelling the story of God's creation through dance. The children enjoyed creating their own movements to represent each day of creation. We then used our gifts of kindness to share what we like about each others dance.

Promises

This week we had a fantastic time celebrating St. Andrew’s day. We learnt all about his life and how he was one of Jesus’ trusted disciples and fished for all people. We also thought about our advent promises, came up with some of our own ones to help people this advent and made an advent wreath together. This week we had a special experience being lucky enough to visit church where Father Baker taught us how to Genuflect. 

Christingle

We worked in our house teams to make our own Christingles to help us understand their meaning. We learnt that the orange is the world, the red is God's love for the world and the sweets are God's creations. The cocktails sticks are the four seasons and the candle is Jesus' being the light of the world bringing hope to those in darkness. 

Term 3: This term we will be learning more about the parables of Jesus and how we can follow in Jesus' footsteps. 

Epiphany

We have been discussing what Epiphany means and the gifts the Kings brought to Jesus. We thought of all the gifts we received over Christmas. We made thank you cards and drew pictures to hang on our thankful branch. We thought about our own gifts and talents and said a prayer to God thanking Him for all the gifts we have been given. We thank God for His greatest gift of all, Jesus!

Growing up
We have been talking about how we change as we grow. We noticed changes from how we were when we were babies to how we are now. When we last spoke about Jesus, he was a baby, now we are learning the Bible stories of Jesus when he grew up. We drew pictures of how we have changed and we wrote down words that remind us of this. We know that while Jesus grew up and we all change, Jesus, his love and teachings stay the same and he is always there for us. 

Jesus is the Water of Life! 
We know that God gave us water and we need this to live and to grow, we talked about the importance of this water. We read a new Bible story (John 4:13-14) that taught us that Jesus is called the Water of Life. We know that this means we will not be thirsty if we follow Jesus. We retold the story by building wells and role playing. We watered our garden and talked about how important water is for life and how special Jesus is. 

Jesus is the Bread of Life!

We discussed what it could mean for Jesus to be the 'Bread of Life', we listened to scripture (John 6:35) learnt that Jesus will fill us with his teachings so we will not be hungry. We thanked Jesus for showing us the right path and came up with words and pictures that reminded us of Jesus' teachings. 

The Light of the World

We remembered why we light our candle and that Jesus is the light, he shows us the right path. We explored light in the dark tent with shadow puppets and drew pictures of light as we thought of what we know about Jesus. 

Jesus the Good Shepherd

We read the parable John 10꞉1-17 and found out that Jesus was also called the Shepherd. We know from the Nativity story that Shepherds look after sheep and now we know that Jesus looks after us like we are his sheep. To remind us how difficult a job this is, we made our own sheep to look after all day and we discussed what happened. We said thank you to Jesus for looking after us all. 

Term 4: This term we are learning how to use Jesus' teachings to be kind to others and support charities. We will make our Lenten promises and visit Church to explore our connection with God.

Good Neighbours

We know that God wants us all to be kind to each other and be 'good neighbours'. First we talked about how we can be kind to the people around us and then we thought about what we can do to help people far away too. We learnt about the importance of Fairtrade and how all people need to be paid fairly for their work. To spread the message we made pictures and posters of the logo and we will tell every one to buy Fairtrade food if they can!

Shrove Tuesday!

To mark the beginning of Lent we made pancakes and thought about our connection with God. We made Lenten promises of things we could try to give up over Lent and things we could try to do better. We know it will be very tricky to give things up but we can talk to God for help and this will bring us closer together. 

The Kingdom of Heaven

Matthew 13:44

We thought about treasure, the things and people that are special to us. We know that The Kingdom of Heaven is the greatest treasure of all. 

St. Patricks Day 
11 Corinthians 13:14

We celebrated St. Patrick's Day and learnt more about the Holy trinity. We made shamrocks to celebrate and help us to understand The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit. 

God Treasures Us

Matthew 13 45-46
We know our greatest treasures from God are Jesus and The Kingdom of Heaven. We thought of what God treasures and understand that everything God treasures is free. We know he will always treasure us and we thought about what makes us a treasure. 

Term 5: This term we will continue our learning of the Easter story and develop our understanding of Jesus' ascension. We will celebrate and spread the word that Jesus rose again and then learn about the ascension. 

Good News

At Easter we celebrated the good news that Jesus is alive! We thought about how we get and spread news and created a Good News board to share the news with everyone. 

St. George's Day

We learnt about St. George and the story of George and the Dragon. We celebrated him and made England flags to celebrate this special day in England's history. 

Peace

John 20: 19-31

We thought about what peace is. We know it is to be calm and quiet but we also know it means no fighting and no wars. We wrote a class prayer to God to ask for peace. 

Dear God, 
Please give us peace, so all the world is happy. 
Amen