Half of RBD enjoyed a rather wet trip to Knaresborough on Thursday! The children seemed to still have a fun time with their favourite parts being the train journey and ice lollies! Thank you so much to the parent volunteers who came with us!

The highly anticipated release of our butterflies has happened! The children were very excited to see them flutter away!

This week the children have been inspired by nature. The children loved having the caterpillars to observe and we have thought about how we can encourage mini beasts to visit our outdoor area. We have looked at some real life ‘bug hotels’ and what materials they are made from. Lots of the children have had fun creating their own bug hotels in our classroom.

This week we have been thinking about this half terms ‘big question’ which is ‘How have we changed since we were babies?’ During our collective worship we loved having some of our children’s younger siblings as visitors! Thank you! The children had lots of questions to ask and we found out lots of things about babies, such as ‘Where do they poo?’, ‘Why do babies cry?’ and ‘What do babies eat?’

On Thursday Mrs Tatam-Hall brought her daughter, who is 16 months old, into school and the children enjoyed finding out about her and making comparisons between what she can do compared to younger babies. We found out that she has new teeth starting to come through and can pull herself up using furniture.

Next week our focus in our talk and writing activities will be linked to babies.

The children have been noticing how the seeds that we planted and the caterpillars have grown. By the end of the week there was great excitement as each of the caterpillars are beginning to form a chrysalis. For our Story Squiggle session this week we listened to ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ and the children enjoyed innovating this story in different ways to create their own versions.

It has been lovely to welcome everyone back after the Easter break. The children have got stuck in exploring our new areas of provision linked to our learning this half term. They have loved pretending to go on missions to the moon in our ‘space’ area which is linked to our talk for writing story ‘How to catch a star’. We have some real caterpillars to help us learn about lifecycles alongside lots of information books on the topic too! We enjoyed planting our own sunflower seeds and have been learning how to take care of plants. The children also have the opportunity to build a small world farm area and find out more about the animals that might live on a farm.

The children were very excited when the chicks that Nursery had hatched came to visit us. They enjoyed observing them and creating pictures of them! We have also learnt how important instructions are. We followed them to make Easter nests and then enjoyed eating them!

The children have enjoyed finding out about why some animals migrate. Some of the reasons for migration included temperature, food and water availability, We found out about Bella the butterfly, Zara the zebra, Gary the goose and Holly the humpback whale! We have played lots of games and acted events out to help our understanding. When we were talking about geese migration they loved acting out the ‘v’ formation and moving together like a flock of geese. I wonder if they can tell you about it at home?

This week in Reception we have loved learning about our five senses through a range of activities.

To find out more about our sense of touch we put our hand into a freely box and told our group about what we could feel. We used words such as soft, rough and squishy.

We learnt that the taste buds on our tongue help us to taste. We tried some different foods to help us understand that tastes can be sour, salty, sweet and bitter.

For our sense of sight we enjoyed going for a walk around the school grounds to look for signs of spring.

We took time use our sense of hearing, using our ears to listen carefully to the sounds around us when we were inside and outside.

The children’s reactions to different smells, when we were learning about how our nose helps us to smell, was rather interesting. The garlic was not very popular!

This week the children have enjoyed spending time in the art area painting the ‘Big Bad Wolf’. We learnt how to mix different shades of grey and talked about the shapes needed to create him.