Summer Term – Trapped

Dear Parents and Carers,

It has been lovely to see our amazing Reception learners return to school after the break happily. We have loved hearing all their news and what they have been up to!
The arrival of a letter sent by ‘R’ saying she was trapped somewhere in the school grounds launched our exciting new Quest!  After talking about the photographic clues, the children went outdoors and found her stuck in a hanging basket! The children came up with lots of creative ideas as to how to rescue her and worked together as a team to bring her down safely. 

The children have enjoyed the performance of Rapunzel and is this steering our learning into sharing different stories and letting our imaginations take us to fun and magical places.
This term we will also be inspired by the artist Matisse, learning about colour and shape to create our own masterpieces for Norbury Fest. 

We are learning to:

• We continue to recall number facts within 10, exploring ways to make 10.  E.g. 7 and 3 make 10.
• Simple addition and subtraction practically – How many more/less?  And then written calculations within 10.
• Sharing and grouping amounts practically.
• Selecting, rotating and manipulating shapes to develop spatial reasoning skills.
• Writing a simple sentence using their knowledge of phonics and tricky words taught so far.  Starting to learn that a sentence starts with a capital letter and ends with a full stop.
• Exploring in outdoor learning and looking for signs of summer, including finding out about minibeasts and their habitats.
• Learning to care and understand about our earth, in particular the creatures in our environment.

 
Bug Club and Weekly Reading

Please can we encourage you to use Bug Club as it is such a valuable resource ensuring the bug’s eyes get closed.  We would like you to aim at reading with your child three times a week in line with the school policy.  As the books become longer, a few pages or for 10 minutes would be ideal!  Many thanks for supporting us with your child’s reading development.
 
As ever, it is a busy term with lots of learning and activities planned for our children.  If you feel you need any support or have any concerns about your child, please contact us. 
 
Many thanks as always for your continued support
 
The Reception Team

Spring Term – Are You Ready to Travel the World?
 
Dear Parents and Carers,
 
The children really enjoyed ‘Book Fortnight’ and were especially excited to dress up and celebrate world book day together with their friends!  The ‘story stones’ that have arrived into school are just great and so creative!  Thank you for taking part in creating
them with your child and they will be varnished and enjoyed as part of our Opal Play! 
The children have also been immersed in the many stories they have brought in and enjoyed sharing their favourite books.
 
Alongside, our ‘Book Fortnight’, the children are continuing to learn: -

• Numbers within 10 by practically exploring ways to make 10.  E.g. 7 and 3 make 10
• Finding 1 more and 1 less within 10.
• Exploring 3D shape.  Shape names and some properties e.g. flat and curved surfaces
• Building models with 3D shapes
• Writing a simple sentence using their knowledge of phonics and tricky words taught so far.  Starting to learn that a sentence starts with a capital letter and ends with a full stop.
• Exploring in outdoor learning and looking for signs of spring.
• Creating a moving under the sea picture using a range of materials and media.
• Learning to care and understand about our earth, in particular the creatures in our seas.

Spring Term – Are You Ready to Travel the World?
Week Beginning: 9th February 2026

Dear Parents and Carers,

As we come to the end of this half term, we’d like to thank you for all your continued support with your child’s regular reading at home, Bug Club and Phonics Home Learning.  It’s really making a difference as the children learn during phonic sessions and now in their independent play!

Some parents asked that our PowerPoint can be shared from the Curriculum Event in January; this is now on the website for you.
After the half term we will be celebrating … books! 

You will have already received information, which is on our website, from Mrs Adnett regarding Book Fortnight.

We will be: -
· Celebrating our love of stories and books.
· Sharing a book from home with the rest of our class.
· Finding out more about how we can look after our earth and specifically marine life.
· Visiting our Rainforest Reading Den in the library.
· Dressing up for Book Character Day – Wednesday 4th March
· Reading both fiction and non-fiction texts linked to our theme and enjoying lots of activities around this.
· Using our imaginations in our role-play.
· Drawing and creating our favourite book characters.
 
Home learning
Book Fortnight Activity – story stone or pebble (a label will be in your child’s bookbag for this).  To be brought into school on Monday 2nd March so they can be displayed.
 
Cool Milk
Some of the children are preferring to drink water instead of milk at morning snack.  If your child does not want milk any longer, please can you go on to Cool Milk and cancel it. 
Many thanks.
 
The Reception Team

Spring Term – Are You Ready to Travel the World?
 
Dear Parents and Carers,

We hope you’ve all had a lovely Christmas and would like to wish you a Happy New Year.
Firstly, thank you once again to all the parents who gave the most thoughtful gifts and vouchers to our Early Years Team.  We really felt so valued and appreciated by your generosity!

Our snowy and icy start to our spring term links in perfectly with our first part of our theme to weather and travelling around the world, both here and in the Arctic. We are learning to wrap up warmly and consider our clothing choices and even our class bear Norbury has been fully kitted out too, as he prepares for his travels!

We are beginning to learn about:
· Finding out about different types of houses; where we live and around the world
· Finding out more about different countries in colder and warmer climates
· Exploring animal habitats and ways of life in colder and warmer climates
· Creating our own junk models
· Practically adding and subtracting two sets of objects
· Practising to put the bigger number in our head and count on from this
number when adding
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Our PE this half term is gymnastics, we are exploring:
· The different ways our body moves
· How to travel in different ways
· Different apparatus and how to use them safely, such as the mats and benches
· Different types of jumping.
 
Reading books
Please aim to read with your child at least three times a week.  Books can be changed on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.  Please sign your child’s reading book at home to let us know that you have heard them read, even if they haven’t yet completed the book. Comments are always welcome and useful for us too, but we appreciate that there may not always be time for this.

Play – Opal Project
Just a reminder that we are collecting donated toys for our new Opal Project (see above bingo board) and we welcome any contributions you may have on Wednesday 28th January.

Thank you so much for your ongoing support,
The Reception Team

Autumn Term — What Makes Our World Work?
Week Beginning: 1st December 2025

Dear Parents and Carers,
 
This week we will be…
· Reading and retelling the story of the Gingerbread Man
· Acting out the story of the Gingerbread Man
· Creating our own Gingerbread Man out of playdough
· Recognising numerals to ten, including zero and numerals beyond  
· Practising our cutting skills
 
Festive Quest
Over the next fortnight as we lead up to Christmas, we will sharing the beautiful story, ‘Christmas Lights on Mistletoe Street’ and talking about the magic of kindness and community at this time of year. 
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We will be busy practising our singing ready for our ‘Singalong’’, making Christmas lanterns and baking our gingerbread, as well as lots of other Christmas activities.

Library books
Library books will be collected in on Wednesday 17th December. The children will choose a new library book when they return to school in the Spring Term.
 
Thank you so much,
The Reception Team

Autumn Term—What Makes Our World Work?
Week Beginning: 6th October 2025

Dear Parents and Carers,
 
I can’t quite believe I am writing this newsletter in October already!
Last week, after reading the story of the Three Little Pigs, the children received a letter from Mummy Pig.  She said that her three little pigs have become too big for her house and set the children a challenge to build them a new house using different materials in the woods!  They were very excited and just loved building all kinds of structures with straw, sticks and bricks!
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This week we will be…

• Continuing to explore different materials and building houses together as a team.
• Retelling the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears
• Introduce the five senses using narrative immersion and participation in the story 
• Exploring colour mixing with the paints.
• Looking at the sounds (phonemes):  g  o  c  k
• Talking about measure and patterns
• Practising our careful counting
•  Counting out sets of objects to match a numeral with 10

 
Dough Disco
Last week we started the fun of Dough Disco. This is something that we do most days and love! We have our own pot of playdough in the classroom and we choose a song to dance to and practise flattening, rolling and squeezing our playdough. Dough Disco helps us to strength the muscles in our hands, which in turn helps us with our pencil control and handwriting.

Home Learning and Handwriting
At school we use the handwriting policy of Penpals. This a great resource that supports our children right through school. Your child is practising letter formation in school through explicit teaching and in phonics.  Each week your child will be sent home some reinforcing practice of handwriting linked to the sounds they are learning.  Please return the plastic folder and the completed activity in their reading bags each week by Wednesday please.
 
Star of the day
We now have ‘Star of the day’ each day in class. Children will each take it in turns to be praised on something we have seen that day and receive a certificate. For the next day, the Star of the Day will get to be at the front of the line and sit on a chair at carpet times. 
 
World Mental Health Day
To support and acknowledge World Mental Health Day this Friday (10th October) we ask that the children come to school in their school uniform, but wearing a splash of yellow.
 
Packed lunches and nut-based products
As we have some children in school with nut allergies, please can we mindful of not including nuts or nut-based products in packed lunches or in snacks.
 
Please do not hesitate to speak/email a member of staff if you have any questions.
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Thank you so much,
The Reception Team

Autumn Term—What Makes Our World Work?
Week Beginning: 8th September 2025
 
Dear Parents and Carers,
 
We are so proud of all of our Reception learners for settling in so well during their first days in Reception. We’ve had a great start getting to know your children and lots of fun exploring the classroom, outdoors and all the resources. The children are learning the routines of the day, expectations and the adults and children in their class. Please make sure all items of clothing, water bottles and wellies are labelled.

Over the next few weeks we will be…
· Talking about who is in our family and lives in our house.
· Starting phonics sessions and playing phonics games together.
· Practising counting sets of objects with 1:1 correspondence and careful counting.
· Subitising numbers to 5 (looking at a small set of objects and knowing how many are there without counting them).
· Continuing to explore the resources and areas of the classroom.

Reading books
Reading books will be changed, where necessary, on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We do ask that you either write a comment or simply sign the reading record to let us know when a book is completed and therefore ready to be changed. You’ll also notice a login for your child for BugClub at the very front of your child’s reading record.  Phonic books will be allocated each week for your child to read on an ipad/computer.  This book will link with the phonics taught in class.
 
Tapestry                                                                                      
You should now all (hopefully) be set up on Tapestry. This is a great resource that we use regularly to share photos and communicate information on.
We also encourage you to share any photos or news on there that we can then share with the class. The children always love sharing and talking about their Tapestry photos.
 
Phonics
Phonics is taught daily and is a key part of our curriculum. These sessions are fun and interactive. Phonics supports us to teach your child to read and write. Over this half term we will mix children from both classes into groups.
At school we follow the Letters and Sounds phonics scheme.
Please follow the link for a useful watch of the correct pronunciation of the phonemes (sounds): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ksblMiliA8 
 
Packed Lunches and Nut-based Products
As we have some children in school with nut allergies, please can we be mindful of not including nut-based products in packed lunches.
 
Please do not hesitate to speak/email a member of staff if you have any questions.
Thank you so much,
​
The Reception Team

Dear Parents and Carers,
It has been lovely to see our amazing Reception learners return to school after the term happily. We have loved hearing all their news and what they have been up to.
This term so far we have continued our exciting Quest of ‘Who do I aspire to be?’. We have been following this Quest of enchantment and allowed it to lead us to explore our interests and dreams even more.

We had an exciting delivery of caterpillars when we returned to school. This has led to some exciting learning about life cycles and minibeasts.
We have also been having lots of fun in the sun; learning and playing in our outdoor area and enjoying our school grounds.
 
Cool Milk;
Just to let you know that our subscription with Cool Milk stops when children enter into Year 1. Also you will be aware from Cool Milk, that when your child turns 5 you have to then pay for your child to have milk at school. We do have to stick to the list and consent given from parents to ensure we are meeting the needs with allergies and intolerances.

A few children have recently been asking for milk but are currently not on the list since their birthday. We appreciate that there are only a few more weeks of Cool Milk, but we also wanted to make you aware so that you can have a chat with your child and set up Cool Milk with your child if this is something your child wants for the remainder of Reception.
https://coolmilk.com/
 
Keyrings
Whilst we value our children’s individuality and feel it’s important that children can identify their belongings easily, we are finding that book bags are getting an increasing number of keyrings on them. Some of these keyrings are quite large and struggling to fit in our book bag boxes. Also, we’ve dealt with a number of instances recently where children are playing with their keyrings and they are getting broken or they are swapping keyrings with other children. We would really appreciate your support and ask for there to be just one keyring per bag.  
 
Parents evening RN
Thank you so much to our parents of RN with your understanding regarding the rescheduling of parents evening. We invite those parents that would like to make an appointment with Mrs Matthews to do so once the end of year reports have been sent out. This will then give you chance to read this and discuss anything further with Mrs Matthews. We will be sending further information out about this closer to the time.
 
Warm weather

We are loving this warm weather and are excited for more of it to come. We do ask that all children can be sent into school with a sun hat. We also ask that sun cream is applied before school. If you feel your child will need to reapply suncream at some point in the day, then please send a named bottle in their book bag.
 
Thank for your continued support and have a lovely half term break,
The Reception Team

This term we will also be talking about our own dreams and letting our imaginations take our learning to fun and magical places.

We have also really enjoyed practising and learning our songs for Norbury Fest and cannot wait for you to come and watch us perform.

Dream Jars

We are a little short on glass jars for our dream jar creations. If you use any glass jars over the half term, please do save them and send them in – thank you!
 
Imagine That!

Well, what a brilliant trip we had at Imagine That! We hope you have enjoyed looking at all the fun we had on Tapestry. We had such a brilliant time making snow and slime, watching a science show and exploring in the science and role-play areas (the adults had just as much fun as the children!). Thank you for all your contributions that allowed our trip to take place and also to our parent helpers who were invaluable in helping us on the day.
 
Play-club bags

This is a great resource that we have in Reception. We have been using them in school, but we wanted all the children in Reception to have the opportunity to explore them at home too.
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The bags are aimed at developing children's phonics and language skills further. We will rotate the bags and who gets to take them home over the term. If your child receives a bag on the Tuesday, please send this back into school by the Monday the following week. We hope you enjoy exploring the Play Club bags together!
 
All Stars Cricket Rec-Year 2

All Stars Cricket is a fantastic entry-level cricket programme for 5-8 year
(Reception-Year2) old boys and girls and is back for another year! Join children nationwide for a summer of family fun at your local cricket club. Every child receives a free participant pack, including personalised t-shirt, bat and ball, as part of the programme. Visit www.allstarscricket.co.uk to find your nearest centre.
 
Thank for your continued support and have a lovely half term break,
The Reception Team

Dear Parents and Carers,
We have been really enjoying our learning all about our current Quest over the last few weeks. Last week and this week we have looked further into the ‘When do I?’ aspect of our Quest. We have taken our learning to look at the history of transport.
In Reception we are:

• Looking at different types of vehicles and transport
• Looking at similarities and differences between types of transport
• Finding out more about how transport has changed throughout history
• Exploring the vocabulary of past, present and future
• Creating our own modes of transports using different resources e.g. junk modelling, natural resources and using playdough
• Applying our phonic knowledge to our writing and focussing on using finger spaces between each new word
• Recognising and ordering numbers to 20
• Practically solving subtraction questions