Welcome to Reception Class
Caring Respect Empathy Courage Resilience
Our Reception Team
Teachers - Mrs McKenna
Teaching Assistants - Miss Arnold and Miss Morris
Our Early Years Reception classroom is a warm and welcoming learning space which promotes curiosity and an excitement to explore and discover, often through new experiences. We quickly get to know each child’s unique personality and interests and design learning challenges matched to their developing skills.
We encourage and support children to be independent, take risks and develop confidence and resilience. We give our children lots of responsibilities and they challenge themselves to achieve their full potential! With support from teachers and family at home, the children work hard on their goals.
Stories, books and reading are at the heart of what we do every day and children are supported to grow a love of reading, becoming confident and independent early readers by the end of Reception. Mental health and well-being are high priority in Reception and we teach children how to identify and talk about their feelings, consider the feelings of others and resolve problems together. We work hard to support the children to be happy and free from worry and anxieties. We promote positive self-talk and resilience and guide children through any difficulties they face. In summer term we support children in preparing for their transition to Key Stage 1.
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| In Merton Bank Early Years, we are on the journey to achieve our Curiosity Approach Accreditation. This means that the Nursery and Reception teams are making changes to the environment, our resources and our way of learning to reflect all things curious and magical! |
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We began our Curiosity Approach Accreditation journey in January 2023. We have made some wonderful changes with our Nursery environment which Authentic resources, learning through play, loose parts and real life experiences are vital for our curiosity journey. |
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Children leave our early years with knowledge, skills and memories to draw upon in their next stage of their learning. Our children have the curiosity, resilience, self-control, independence and creativity necessary to succeed. They have developed respect for themselves and others, built strong positive relationships and know they are a valued member of our school community.
What do we learn?
Over the Reception year, children spend a lot of learning time outside, experiencing the changing seasons and learning how to respect and take care of our precious natural world. They learn about similarities and differences between people in our community and the wider world and begin to understand about things that happen in the past, present and future. They develop a solid understanding of the numbers 1-10, learn
how to read simple sentences and learn how to form letters correctly to write simple words in a sentence. They learn how to ride balance bikes, climb, run and jump confidently and safely and all about healthy eating, good sleep routines and how to look after their teeth. They make lots of new friendships and learn how to share, take turns and show respect and kindness to others.
We recap on learning by using ‘retrieval and rewind techniques to support children in ‘knowing more and remembering more.’ We ensure learning builds on what has gone on before and have opportunities to apply new learn. This supports learning going into the long-term memory, so that new facts are retained.
Routine
Doors open 8:45am, registration closes at 8.55am. Your child must be in school by 8.55am. The school day ends at 3:15pm.
Your Reception child will enter and leave school via the gate to the left of the main office. Safeguarding is high priority at Merton Bank so please understand we may need to check if someone else is picking your child up. Please always inform the office if someone new is collecting. Thank you for your understanding with this.
PE
We have PE themed sessions every Tuesday and Thursday. Children in Reception Class do not need to wear PE kit in the first part of the Autumn Term however once children are settled, our PE kit is:
Black shorts / leggings / tracksuit bottoms,
White teeshirt,
School jumper or cardigan
Black pumps.
Parents
We are now using Class Dojo to share snippets of your child's learning, important messages for the class and communication directly with the Reception team. Please ask a member of the team at hometime if you have any questions.
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Parental Engagement In Reception we regularly update children's Class Dojo accounts with snippets of their learning at school. We ask all families to engage with these posts and to send their own photographs of learning and experiences from home. Please speak to a member of the Reception team if you have any difficulties accessing your child's Class Dojo account. 'Stay and play' workshops will be held once a term, these will be offered currently to one family member per child due to the space in the Reception class and the sessions will have a new focus each time with activities and ideas to take away and try at home. |
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Look at some of the wonderful learning experiences we have had in Autumn Term in Reception 2024.
Our New Class
Our children from Merton Bank Nursery and many other settings came to visit during Summer 2024, they all enjoyed exploring their new classroom! This ensured a smooth transition so we had excited and confident children who looked very smart and happy on their first day in Reception!
Maths
In Maths Mastery meetings Reception have been focussing on number, we have been looking at different ways to represent numbers, subitise and counting carefully. In White Rose Maths meetings Reception have enjoyed lots of matching activities using loose parts.
Talk For Writing
Reception children have enjoyed the exciting new Talk For Writing sessions, we have been orally re-telling 'The Squeaky Story' with actions and sounds and then developing our class and individual story maps.
Parents and carers please see our Spring overview below for our current learning in class this term.
Look at some of the wonderful learning experiences we have had in SpringTerm in Reception 2025.
In Maths we have been learning all about doubles, we made them with loose parts and then showed the doubles using our fingers. We know that doubles are parts of a whole number, doubles have 2 parts.
On Valentine's day, Reception children loved exploring 'hug printing'! We each painted on paper, attached it to our shoulders with paint and then gave a friend a hug to see what would happen when the paintings were pressed together! We had so much fun!
Our learning about doubles continued in continuous provision! We are super at making doubles patterns and subitising the amounts we can see!
In Talk For Writing we have started reading 'Chicken Licken', we have made a story map and put the pictures of the story in order.
