Welcome to Reception!

September 2024

Welcome to the first term of your learning journey at St Christopher’s. We are excited to get to know you and your children in the coming weeks and look forward to an exciting year of learning with lots of fun things planned.

The children will take part in a wide variety of activities in both our indoor and outdoor settings, covering the 7 areas of learning:

Prime Areas

Communication and Language

Personal, Social and Emotional Development

Physical Development

Specific Areas

Literacy (including Comprehension, Word Reading & Writing)

Mathematics (including Number & Numerical Patterns)

Understanding the World

Expressive Arts and Design

During the first half term we place a big emphasis on the Prime Areas to ensure that children are happy and settled at school and have a strong foundation on which to build further learning.

For more information about the Early Years curriculum at St Christopher’s, please visit the Curriculum section of the website and take a look at the Early Years page.

The Reception Team

We are fortunate to have a number of experienced staff who will all play a part in your child’s learning during their year in Reception:

Class Teacher: Mrs Poole

Class Teaching Assistant: Miss Thorp (Mon – Thurs)

Additional TAs: Mrs Onions, Mrs Burns, Mrs Grabic (known to the children as Mrs A)

Our topic for the first half term is:

‘All About Me’

Over the next few weeks we will be exploring:

Things I like
How I feel
Me & my family
My body & senses
Keeping healthy
My birthday

…and much more!

Our focus stories for this half term are:

The story of Creation
Goldilocks & the 3 Bears
Handa’s Surprise

The children will explore these stories in detail, in order to learn and retell them. Other books we will be reading include:

Dogger
Brave Little Owl
Grumpy Cat
Hey I Love You
Funny Bones
Oliver’s Fruit Salad
Children Just Like Me (non-fiction)
Non-fiction texts about body and senses

Please look at the Topic Briefing posted at the bottom of this page for more detailed information about what we will be covering in each Area of Learning.

Religion

As a Catholic school, Religion is an important part of our curriculum. We will begin by learning about Creation. We will name, sequence and describe the things God created and learn to retell the Creation story from the Bible. We will learn that God loves each person individually and has given us gifts and talents that we can use to help others. We will then focus on ‘People Who Care For Us’ including our families and people in the community such as at school and church. We will explore ways in which Jesus showed love and care for people and become familiar with some of the main events, characters and places in the life of Jesus. Our Religion lessons will be taught in a simple and sensitive way that the children will understand, including drama, creative activities, singing and stories.

Phonics

Phonics is taught daily in Reception and is vitally important as it provides the early building blocks used to teach children to read and write. At St Christopher’s we follow the Twinkl Phonics Scheme. There will be a Phonics Workshop held in school at the beginning of October to explain what phonics is, the way we teach it and how you can support your child at home. More details will be sent out in the first few weeks of term.

Our PE days are Wednesday and Thursday. Children do not need to bring a PE kit to school but come to school dressed in their PE clothes: blue shorts or plain dark blue jogging trousers (depending on the weather), a white T-shirt, school jumper/cardigan, trainers (without laces please). Please adhere to the school uniform guidelines for PE – no other T-shirts/sweatshirts are allowed. It is also important that no jewellery is worn and that hair below shoulder length is tied back. We will let you know when our first PE session will be.

Outdoors

Please remember to send your child with a waterproof coat if necessary as we will be using our outdoor area every day. On hot days, please also send a named sun hat (a school one if possible) and apply sun cream before school. Don’t forget to send in a named water bottle every day.

Please make sure all clothes, including PE kit and especially jumpers/cardigans and coats are clearly labelled. As said above, long hair must be tied back at school and no jewellery should be worn.

Weekly Topic Focus

At the start of each week, a Topic Focus will be posted at the bottom of our class page giving details of what we are learning at school and suggestions of things you can do at home. It will also contain any dates, information or reminders that you need to be aware of. In addition to this, don’t forget to check your child’s book bag every day for letters, pictures and information.

We will update this webpage with news, dates and other information so please check it out regularly. If you have any questions feel free to email on:

[email protected]

We look forward to the first part of our learning journey together.

Mrs Poole & the YR team