Welcome to Year RS! 

We are the Super Sloths! 

Hello everybody! Welcome to our class page

Our page will be filled with all of the exciting things that we are learning in Reception. The children in RS have a real input into what we share on this page, and they love sharing our class adventures with you at home. 

As we continue through the year, keep an eye on our page for lots of photos of what we've been up to. 

Enjoy!

Mrs Schofield and Mrs Watson and Miss Woods :)

Chicks!

This half term we have been lucky enough to have some very special visitors. On Monday 17th April, we had some eggs delivered. RS waited very patiently to see what would happen. We even predicted what we thought would come out of the egg. We have explored different lifecycles including butterflies, humans and hens.

Summer 1

^{Our concepts this half term are 'life' and 'nature'. Over the next few weeks we will be exploring the question 'What will our world look like if...?'.}

^{We look forward to sharing our findings.}

Red Nose Day 2023

On Friday 17th March, children at Ellison celebrated 'Red Nose Day' with a host of activities. We raised lots of money for comic relief by dressing up in red and donating. Our Ellison student council decided to run a competition, where each child would create their own red nose in the style of our wonderful school, Ellison. Each class then decided on a winner.

RS had a great day thinking about the importance of fundraising and feeling thankful for all of the lovely things we have.

Well done Reception!

Chinese New Year - 19.01.23

Today the children explored what it's like to celebrate Chinese New Year. We looked at similarities and differences (using our 'Thinking Moves' 'connect' and 'divide') to our own New Year celebrations. We made Chinese lanterns, practised writing messages or our name using the Chinese alphabet, and explored Chinese numbers in our Finger Gym. In the afternoon we tried Chinese foods, tasting noodles, rice, prawn crackers and sauces. Yummy! The children looked fabulous in red and a great celebration day was had by all!

Stoke City Community Trust - Healthy Choices

This half term, Reception children will take part in 'Healthy Choices' sessions run by Stoke City Community Trust. The children had their first session this week and learnt all about the bones in our body, how to keep them healthy and why they are important. We danced the Skeleton dance and explored a model skeleton to help us put together our own skeleton, making sure all of the bones were in the right place. 

The children did themselves proud, and we look forward to continuing our sessions in the coming weeks.

Spring 1

^{Our concept this half term is 'choice'. Over the next few weeks we will be exploring the question 'What is choice?'.}

^{We look forward to sharing our findings.}

We are so excited to be back and ready to start a new term.

Keep your eye on our class page to see all of the interesting things that we get up to.

Autumn term

The children in RS have had such a fantastic start to their Reception adventure and Autumn term has so far been lots of fun. So far we have explored the story 'The Colour Monster' and 'The Rainbow Fish' along with some traditional tales, and we are really enjoying being creative with our ideas in our learning areas both inside and outside of our classroom. 

We are so proud of how well the children have started their Ellison journey and we are having such a great time getting to know each other.

Autumn 2

^{Our concept this half term is 'difference'. Over the next few weeks we will be exploring the question 'Can we be the same and also have differences?'.}

^{We look forward to sharing our findings.}

Alice in Wonderland Tale Trail

Today RS visited the New Vic theatre to take part in the Alice in Wonderland Tale Trail. The children had a fantastic time exploring the magic of Wonderland, meeting the White Rabbit, the Queen, the Madhatter and Alice herself.

What a super morning! 

Children in Need

Today the children at Ellison took part in 'BBC Children in Need' by dressing up in spotty clothes or wearing Pudsey accessories. We have had such a lovely day sharing our outfits and thinking about the wonderful charity. Take a look at our pictures below.

Well done RS! :) 

Thinking Moves (A-Z)

'Thinking Moves A - Z is a vocabulary of 26 types of thinking. The moves are understandable, comprehensive and memorable. They make megacognition (thinking about thinking) simple for teachers and learners, bringing big benefits into school and everyday life.'

- Dialogue Works 

We were lucky enough to have Mr Sutcliffe (President of Dialogue Works) join us to support us in exploring these moves in our foundation stage. We had lots of fun learning the first few moves and we are already using these on a daily basis within our learning.

See the website below for further information.

Thinking Moves A – Z | DialogueWorks

Our magnetic investigation area

This week we are exploring magnets, and finding out answers to our question 'What materials are magnetic?' The children in RS have always shown an interest in magnets so we are really looking forward to experimenting and testing different things.

We have already tested:

- a radiator (it was magnetic)

- the wooden door (it was not magnetic)

- the window (it was not magnetic)

We are really excited to keep testing different materials.

Be Bright, Be Seen!

This week was 'Be Bright, Be Seen' week, which was rounded off with a bright dress up day on Friday. We are so proud of the effort that has been put into the different outfits. We tested how bright our clothes were by turning the lights off and shining a torch. Some of us were almost glowing! Well done RS :) 

Monster Ball!

The children had such a fantastic time at the PTFA monster ball. Just look at their fabulous costumes. I'm not sure we've ever seen such good dance moves!

Thank you to the PTFA and our very own Mrs Watson for working so hard to make it such a great event!

Diwali celebrations

This week we are exploring the festival of Diwali. We have enjoyed listening to the story of Rama and Sita, making mehndi patterns on handprints and using play-doh and making a class Rangoli pattern. The children are very excited to start making their own Rangoli patterns over the next few days.

Diva lamps

This week, along with the rest of our Diwali celebrations, we used coloured clay to create our own Diva lamps. The children used different skills such as rolling, pressing and squeezing the clay, before putting their finishing touches on to decorate.

We are really impressed with how independent the children were and we're really proud of their creativity. 

Autumn 1

^{Our concept this half term is 'identity'. Over the next few weeks we will be exploring the question 'Is everyone unique?'.}

^{We look forward to sharing our findings.}

Under the sea - The Rainbow Fish

In Literacy we are learning all about 'The Rainbow Fish'. Over the next few weeks we will be exploring the story, sequencing the story, understanding the story through drama and creating our own 'under the sea' tales.

Take a look at our small world. The children worked really hard to create such a super tuff tray. They shared what they wanted it to look like, making sure we chose the right colours and they even created seaweed and bubbles.

Keep your eye out for pictures of the children exploring their new small world over the coming days.

Outdoor learning - the trim trail

The children have been using the trim trail to work on their gross motor and balancing skills. The children worked as a wonderful team, supporting each other with the tricky parts of the trail. It was lots of fun!

Question of the day

Each morning during our morning routines, the children are asked a 'question of the day'. At the moment we are using lots of 'would you rather...?' questions, encouraging the children to use the stem sentence 'I would rather...', and explain their answer using the word 'because'.

Some of our example questions are...

Would you rather watch a bird in a tree or a frog in a pond?

Would you rather look after a friendly tiger or a grumpy cat?

Would you rather have a pet dinosaur or a pet dragon?

We've had some super answers...

"I would rather have a pet dragon because I like dragons and they breathe fire."

"I would rather look after a friendly tiger because I could cuddle it."

"I would rather watch a frog in a pond because frogs can jump."

Characteristics of effective learning in the EYFS

Characteristics of effective learning define how children learn, rather than what they learn. The three characteristics of effective learning identified by the EYFS are: 

• playing and exploring - children investigate and experience things, and ‘have a go’;
• active learning - children concentrate and keep on trying if they encounter difficulties, and enjoy achievements
• creating and thinking critically - children have and develop their own ideas, make links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things.

At Ellison we explore these through the use of different animals, helping the children to remember and demonstrate the different characteristics in their learning and play.

Our classroom is full of...

Proud peacocks.

Concentrating crocodiles.

Choosing chimps.

Clever chameleons.

Persevering parrots.

Experimenting eagles.

I know rhinos.

Exploring elephants.

Linky snakes.

Keep an eye on the section below to see how we explore these in our setting.

Identity (creating portraits)

As one of our first activities of our 'Identity' concept, the children used their Art and Design sketchbooks for the first time and created their very own portrait. We all had to think really carefully about the finer details of what we could see in the mirror...hair colour, eye colour, skin colour. The children worked really hard and we are so proud of their finished portraits.

See below for pictures of the children completing their work.

Additional documents

Autumn 1 Homework Menu

Autumn 2 Homework Menu

Spring 1 Homework Menu

Spring 2 Homework Menu

Summer 1 Homework Menu

Useful websites:

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Please find the previous Reception class website pages below.

 Welcome to Year RH! 

We are the Happy Hummingbirds! 

Our page will be filled with all of the exciting things that we are learning in Reception. As we continue through the year, keep an eye on our page for lots of photos of what we've been up to.

Summer 2

Our main concept this half term is exploration. 

Our continuous concepts are: location, place and chronology.

We will explore the following question: What similarities and differences do you notice between...?

Summer 1

Our concepts this half term:  Life and Nature

We will explore the following key questions:

What will our world look like if..? What does life look like?

Autumn 1 2021

The children have had such a fantastic start to their Reception adventure and Autumn 1 has so far been lots of fun. So far we have explored the story 'The Colour Monster' and we are really enjoying being creative with our ideas in our learning areas both inside and outside of our classroom. We are looking forward to beginning our new text 'The Rainbow Fish' in the next few weeks.

Miss Hargreaves and Mrs Hitchen are so proud of how well the children have started their Ellison journey and we are having such a great time getting to know each other. We are definitely a class of happy hummingbirds! :)

Keep an eye out for all of the fun we'll be having throughout Autumn term!

Additional documents

Parents Curriculum Information

Autumn 1 Homework Menu

Please find the previous Reception website pages below.

Christmas wishes to our friends and family. 

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our parents and carers who have supported us throughout this Autumn term. We have been so impressed with how amazingly the children have settled, made lots of new friends and thrived within their first term at Ellison Primary Academy. 

We would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. 

Mrs Cartlidge and I will look forward to seeing you all in the new year of 2021!

Stay safe everyone. 

Best of wishes 

Mrs Adams and Mrs Cartlidge x

As part of our celebration of curriculum golden time, reception enjoyed creating their own 'Picasso portrait'. They used a range of three self portrait photographs having explored different angles of their features, to then create a portrait in the style of Pablo Picasso. We talked about and explored his use of warm, vibrant colours as well his cooler, hues of colours within his artwork.

Well done reception- remember that we are all artists.

Mrs Cartlidge and I are very proud of all the children in RA, they have settled extremely well into the Ellison family already and we are very impressed.

This half term we will be learning about the children through our key concept, "Identity". Please keep visiting our class page to see our pictures and see what exciting things we have been learning about. 

Thank you  

  Mrs Adams and Mrs Cartlidge