Hello!

This week we have welcomed a very exciting addition to our reception classroom: an incubator complete with eight eggs! The children began the week by writing predictions about what might be inside the eggs. There were some very interesting ideas! On Wednesday afternoon the first of the eggs hatched! The children were very excited to meet the first chick. By today we have 3 chicks that have hatched out of 8 eggs. Unfortunately, the rest of the eggs will not hatch now but we look forward to taking care of the chicks we have hatched! The children have enjoyed writing about, drawing and painting pictures of the chicks.

We have been learning all about life cycles this week. We have learnt about the different stages of a human life then we also looked at a frog’s life cycle and a chicken’s life cycle. The children have seen the eggs hatching which has been really exciting but they were also able to see the mummies and daddies of the eggs when we had a zoom call with Debs from Eggucation on Thursday morning. She showed us around the farm where the eggs came from, we watched her feeding the chickens and we saw some more eggs in the coops. She then opened up the floor for questions and the children thought of some really interesting questions. They listened beautifully and watched with interest.

In maths we have been exploring the numbers 9 and 10, looking at how these numbers are represented in different ways. We have been looking at how the numbers 9 and 10 are made up. You might like to get two plates and 9 pieces of food (strawberries, apple pieces…) – how many different ways can you make 9? 1 and 8, 2 and 7 etc. Your child might like to take photos of all the different combinations. To find combinations of 10, you could string macaroni or penne pasta to some string or wool. If you string 10 pieces, then your child can move these along the string (some at one end and some at the other) to make different combinations. We have also been ordering numerals. The cheeky kangaroo played some mischievous games, mixing up numbers and taking numbers away and it was our job to find out what he’d done and how we could fix it. You might like to play this game at home. Make 1-10 number cards and put them into order. Then close your eyes while the cheeky kangaroo does something to the cards. Open your eyes. Can you fix it?

Next week we will be learning the story of Jasper’s Beanstalk for our new Talk 4 Writing unit. The children will be learning the story, using actions and then creating story maps to help retell the story.

In maths we will be comparing numbers within 10 and we will be continuing to make 10 in different ways, exploring number bonds.

Don’t forget to check our class page on the website for photographs of what we’ve been up to!

We hope you have a lovely weekend,

The Reception team