Springfield Academy
A place to grow...your time to shine!
Reception Rainbows
Welcome to Team Rainbows, Reception!
Meet our lovely Rainbows team who will be helping your children to grow this year:
Mrs McConnell Mrs Doyle Miss Street Mrs Bonser
PE
Children in Reception will be taking part in PE on Fridays. Please send them to school in appropriate PE kit on this day instead of uniform. Children should wear a plain white t-shirt, black shorts/leggings/joggers and trainers. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask one of our team.
Curriculum
In Reception, our curriculum stems from your children’s interests and fascinations as they explore and learn about the world around them. In addition to our child-initiated learning experiences, we will also be learning about:
Autumn 1- Ourselves
Autumn 2- Celebrations
Spring 1- Seasons
Spring 2- Transport
Summer 1- People Who Help Us
Summer 2- Animals
Within these topics and child initiated learning projects, you child will develop knowledge and skills in their; Personal, Social and Emotional Development, Communication and Language, Physical Development, Literacy, Maths, Understanding the World and Expressive Arts and Design.
Volunteering Opportunities
If you can support us in enhancing the learning opportunities for the children in these topics, please speak to a member of our team! For example, you may work in the emergency services and would be happy to come and spend some time with children in uniform and explain your role. Or, you may share a particular celebration within your religion or family at home and could share photos/food or traditions with us in school- we would be very grateful if you could help!
Phonics
Your child will begin learning phonics each morning to help them to learn to read. Look out for a phonics newsletter that you can share with your child to see what they have been learning about. Please continue to share stories with your child at home to support them with this learning. We will be inviting you into school to share more information about Phonics. We would love yo see you all there- more details will follow!
Class Dojo
Please download the Class Dojo app and log onto your child's account. Although we won't be using Class Dojo as a behaviour reward this year, we will still be using it to communicate with you either on the class story or by private message.
Keep your eye on our class page for photo updates of what your children have been up to whilst at school!
If you have any questions, please don't hestitate to ask.
Thanks,
Team Rainbows
Lakeside Arts Storytelling Workshop- What a hilarious and magical morning we have had retelling the Traditional Tale, Little Red Riding Hood. We have laughed and enjoyed getting into character with props and costumes too!
Tasty Treats! What better way to learn about melting than by melting some chocolate and making rice crispy cakes! A delicious Science and Maths activity today where we learnt about solids and liquids and counted out objects (paper cases).
We have been minibeast spotters today in forest school! Ask your child to tell you which minibeasts they found on their nature adventure- some children were even writing bug names and drawing them! We have introduced a new forest school rule to keep ourselves and friends safe (it also provides us with a learning opportunity in Maths!) The rule is: if the stick is shorter than the length of your forearm, you can use it in your Forest School play..
We have loved making nature bracelets as part of our forest school morning. We looked around for natural items that would make a beautiful piece of jewellery. We found blossom petals that had fallen off our blossom tree, green and red leaves, alder tree catkins and sticks.
Cocoa Pod! Thank you to one of our friends who brought in a cocoa pod for us to investigate. We looked at it carefully and thought about what it felt like before making a prediction about what plant this fruit came from. We had some brilliant guesses such as: a pumpkin, a watermelon and a mango. We were very excited to find out that this was actually a cocoa pod and its beans are used to make the tasty chocolate we eat!
Egg Rolling!
How exciting to find the Easter bunny had left us a treat for after lunch!
Well done to our musical statues winners!
What an exciting day we have had today! The Easter bunny came to visit and left us a letter to tell us about an Easter egg hunt they had left for us!
Easter Fun Morning! Thank you for joining us for our Easter Fun Morning in Team Rainbows. We loved taking part in different craft activities, a scavenger hunt, enjoying hot chocolate and stories and our Easter egg raffle. We appreciate you giving up part of your morning to be with us in school. Have a lovely Easter!
World Book Day 2024! From enjoying Book Club, to meeting authors, to being authors ourselves and creating a whole-school story, we have had a fantastic World Book Day!
Police Visit! What fun we have had trying on police uniform, sitting in the van and listening to the sirens! We asked the lovely Police Officers questions to find out about how they help in our community and keep us safe.
Forest School! We have LOVED our new Forest School sessions in school. We have listened carefully to the sounds of the birds and trees rustling in the wind. We have been looking for bugs, different plants and have spotted some signs of Spring!
An Olympic Athlete visits school!! We were lucky enough to meet, Rebekah Green, and complete a fitness circuit with her. She taught us about her sport, Canoeing, and what it takes to become a GB athlete!
As one final celebration of our story, What the Ladybird Heard, we made some tasty ladybird biscuits. We used red icing and raisins to make spots. We have enjoyed re-telling this story and singing with our own musical instruments.
Chinese New Year. We have been learning about how families prepare for and celebrate Chinese New Year. We tasted some noodles and even tried using chopsticks to eat them!
Potato planting! Thank you Mrs Straw for teaching us all about how to plant seed potatoes. We look forward to trying them later in the year once we have looked after the seeds to help them to grow.
What fun we have had with Darcey from Rattle & Roll! We first warmed up our bodies and then learnt a Lion King dance, which we performed fantastically!
Santa Visits Springfield!! It has been a magical morning meeting Santa and finding out we were on the good list. Thank you Santa for our yummy chocolate coins!
We have had so much fun at our Christmas party today! We played party games and ate delicious party food! The teachers were very impressed with the dance moves!
Imagine Avenue. What a wonderful time we had with Imagine Avenue today! Thank you to Mrs Shelley and Mrs Bonser for organising us a special end of term treat! The children have pampered Mrs Doyle in the salon, served many customers in the local shop, painted the garden fences, washed the clothes, watched TV and flown the aeroplane!
Christmas Science! We have enjoyed exploring how water freezes to make ice, and ice melts to water. We rescued polar animals that had been frozen into blocks of ice and spotted lots of winter and Christmassy plants in a frozen wreath. The children used lots of scientific vocabulary when investigating the ice together.
Singing at Springfield Care Home
What a wonderful morning we have had singing Christmas songs at Springfield Care Home. The children filled the home with Christmas magic and we are so proud of them! Thank you to Springfield Care Home for having us and for our tasty biscuits! We hope you have a Merry Christmas!
Elf Day! We had a lovely breakfast with our friends followed by lots of decoration making to decorate our Christmas tree and the hall. The children were very busy elves! We also had a special delivery from the North Pole... our very own class elf who we have named Bell. Santa sent us a special message too, explaining he had received our letters! How exciting!
The Gruffalo Story Walk... The children have loved retelling the Gruffalo in "the woods" on the KS2 playground. Miss Guest was very impressed with their sequencing and comprehension of the story. Ask your child to retell you the story at home. Can they add expression and voices for the different characters?
Winter Walk. We took the opportunity to take the children out this morning so we could hear the flurry of snow crunching under our feet. The children felt the snow and could be heard using lots of different vocabulary such as freezing, icy, crunchy, snow angels, frozen, cold, slippery, skidding and shiny.
What an exciting morning we have had in Reception! We walked to our local post box to post our letters to Santa after writing these in class. We made sure our envelopes had Santa's address, our address and a stamp in the top right corner before posting them. Thank you to our helpers who we couldn't have managed our local walk without. We were all very impressed with the children's road safety and sensible walking in the community. Let's hope Santa receives our letters!
A huge thank you to everyone who made our first stay and read a delightful success! The children LOVED welcoming you into school to share stories and a biscuit. We hope to see you again this week!
It's great to be back playing and learning with our friends! From making stick men, to fixing broken roads, we have had a blast!
The children have been learning about patterns in Maths. They can create an AB (red, green, red, green, for example) colour or shape pattern and have even been challenging themselves by creating an ABC pattern (square, circle, triangle, square, circle, triangle, for example). Can you spot any patterns around your house or in the environment when you are out?
Welcome back! We kick started our first week back discussing the fireworks we had seen and learning about Diwali- the Hindu Festival of Light. We made firework pictures and diva lamps to celebrate this in school.
Please read the attached letter to find out about our Stay and Read sessions that will be starting after half-term.
Thank you to Mrs Straw who helped the children harvest their pumpkin that they had planted whilst in nursery earlier in the year. They have loved watching their pumpkin grow every day and have spent a lot of time studying it in the classroom.
It has been lovely to see how enthusiastic the children are about phonics recently. We have had many children pretending to be the teacher and leading phonics lessons within the continuous provision- there are some budding teachers in team Rainbows for sure!
The children have worked carefully on their constructions this week. We've had some Goose Fair inspired creations and even a zoo!
Ahoy there matey! This week, we have found ourselves emerged in a pirate project! The children have loved all things pirates, making telescopes, pirate ships, treasure maps and engaging in lots of role play with their props!
Brilliant Brain Day! On Monday, we learnt about where our brain is located in our body, what protects it and why it is important. The children should be able to tell you that it is the "boss" of your body because it controls everything!
Another fun filled week with our friends in Team Rainbow!
We finished off the week with a planning meeting to think about what we would like to have in our learning environment over the next few weeks. A pet dog for the home corner and some pizza boxes and playdough were suggested- what great ideas!
We decorated some tasty gingerbread men before being like the fox and gobbling him up! Yum!
We have explored sorting objects in different ways. We sorted pasta into twirly pasta and not twirly pasta, for example. We have also worked on our fine motor skills by sorting pom poms and elephants.
We have loved our role play McDonalds this week in our outdoor area. The children have been for a drive thru and had picnics with their friends and happy meals!
We have started 'Book Club' where we share stories with our friends, talking about our favourite characters and retelling stories our teachers have read to us during the week.
In Maths we have been learning about matching objects, sets of objects and exploring ways we can sort objects. We have used stories to introduce new maths concepts and learnt how to play snap! The children have been using vocabulary such as; match, pair, same, set and sort.
Your child's voice is very important in shaping our Curriculum so, weekly, a group of them will meet with one of the adults to hold a planning meeting. They are responsible for taking the minutes of the meeting and loved sharing their ideas for what they wanted to learn about.
We have been working on our cutting skills with scissors.
What fun we are having at school!
Our traditional tale is The Gingerbread Man and we have had great fun baking him in the mud kitchen! We have also been building the Gingerbread Man a bridge to cross the river so he doesn't have to jump on the fox's back and get gobbled up!
Inspired by local buildings such as St. Mary's church and Nottingham Castle, the children have enjoyed exploring block play, small world and construction. They worked as a team and communicated their ideas with each other to create their masterpieces!
What a busy first week we have had exploring our new classroom! We have made new friends and impressed our teachers with our creative playing.
Zones of Regulation. We have been learning about different emotions we might feel throughout the day and how we can regulate these emotions to manage them effectively. We have shown our; 'Red Zone' face, 'Yellow Zone' face, 'Green Zone' face and 'Blue Zone' face and discussed words we use to describe these emotions. Can you guess which are our angry and made faces? Can you guess which are our tired or hot faces? Can you guess which are our dizzy, silly, excited faces? Can you guess which are our happy and calm faces?
