Shirley Community Primary & Preschool

Reception: Ladybirds & Dragonflies

Welcome to Reception!

Classes and Teachers

Mrs Perez and Mrs Taylor

We are so excited to have you and your child join us as we begin this wonderful learning journey together. Reception is a magical year full of fun, discovery, and big milestones as your child takes their first steps into school life.

At Shirley, we pride ourselves on being a welcoming and friendly school where children are at the heart of everything we do. Our Early Years Foundation Stage is designed to offer every child a caring, safe, and inspiring environment, where learning is exciting, meaningful, and challenging. We are dedicated to nurturing each child's unique potential, helping them develop the confidence and skills they need to flourish.

Our dedicated support staff and PPA cover:

Mrs Chambers

Miss Dennis

Mrs Saha

Ms Bougatef

Ms Hancock

Ms Hancy

Reminders

Book bags: Children will choose a new book to take home every Thursday. Please ensure the books are returned, and the reading record is completed, so they can bring a new book home again on Friday.

Labels: Please label everything, yes we mean everything – socks, shoes, jumpers, trousers, bags, wellies etc.

Please see our Curriculum letter and newsletter below to find additional information about our Autumn 1 term.

Our Reception Blog

W/C 17-3-2025

This week we have started a new story called The Gigantic Turnip. Grandpa (a puppet) came to tell us about his story and introduced us to all the characters in the book. What a struggle they had to pull the turnip out of the ground! The little old man, the little old woman, the cow, pigs, cats, hens, geese and the canaries all tried to pull it up. We enjoyed the story so much that we wrote about our favourite parts. Using our phonics and sound talking the words, we wrote about how everyone fell over when the turnip finally popped out of the ground. We also wrote about the mouse who was the final animal to help the others, tugging, pulling, yanking and heaving the turnip out of the ground. The mouse ate the most delicious turnip stew at the end of the story!

This story has continued our interest in growing and we have been enjoying the gardening tuff spot in the classroom and the beans that are growing on our window. Take a look to see how well they have been growing.

W/C 3-3-2025

We had the most delicious lesson this Tuesday when we made pancakes. It was a great opportunity to use maths language and to talk about and measure quantities, to think about all those commanding words that you use when following a recipe such as stir, mix and bake. It was also good for science, to name the ingredients we were using and to observe how the ingredients changed. But most importantly it was lots of fun and very tasty! 

W/C 24-2-2025   

Well, what a strange thing that happened on Monday! We found a letter had mysteriously appeared in the classroom adressed to the children. 

We were instantly on the alert looking for signs of a giant, and we found some! Large, black footprints just outside our classroom door leading down the corridor. We gathered our courage and followed them! They led through the double doors to the library. Peeking inside we got the surpise of our lives, A GIANT! Happily he seemed to be peaceful and we approached carefully. After our initial meeting we realised we must tell Jack and hurried back to the classroom to write him some notes. If you should see him please let us know, he is sneaky!

We have been super busy over the last week. We have had a visit to the Life Education Bus, a wonderful hi-tech classroom, to learn about ourselves. Our lesson was titled "All About Me" and we learnt how to look after our bodies, and that we need food, water, exercise and sleep. We named the major body parts such as heart, bones and lungs. We learnt about the personal responsabilities of keeping ourselves clean and about hygiene. We also identified our feelings and the important adults that we could go to if we needed help or felt worried about anything. The children had lots of fun meeting a giraffe puppet who helped with their learning.

We are ending our Superhero topic thinking about who the real superheroes are in our world, peopel that look after others. We have thought about who these people are and how they help us. We chose a real superhero and wrote about what they did. Some of the heroes were doctors, firemen, crossing patrol people, vets, teaching assistants, mail people, paramedics, life boat crews and lifeguards, nurses and doctors. We have talked about all sorts of interesting jobs that people do and had a wonderful visit from one of our parents who talked about her job as a chartered building surveyor and her work with listed buildings. The children were facinated and it was a unusual and interesting job to hear about. We loved seeing the amazing photographs. A big thank you to Sophie for coming to visit.

Finally we have been thinking about internet safety and the children identified safe adults to talk to if anything ever came onto their screens that they felt worried about or didn't like. We shared a simple story about what to and then worked together in partners to think about what things that are safe and what is unsafe. The children sorted pictures together talking with their partner about how to stay safe. You will be pleased to know they were really good at identifying risky situations such as busy roads. 

This week we celebrated Chinese New Year, the year of the snake. We listened to the story that told why Chinese years are named after animals and then we crafted, cut and painted snakes, lanterns and dragons. Take a look below to see us in action!

We came into our classrooms last week and found a surprise. Blocks of icy, frozen peas! Of course we had to rescue them and chip them out of their frozen prison, those poor peas!

Little did we know that these were evil peas we were releasing. Fortunately Supertato clued us into this fact and we have been trying to trap them ever since! We have made many Supertato potatoes to help us and have worked hard to release the captured vegetables. We have been doing some great writing in speech bubbles and are enjoying this topic no end! We look forward to sharing some more of our work in the next update of our adventures.

It has been an exciting and very busy Autumn term. We have been doing activities inside and outside, and enjoy freeflowing from room to room. We are happy to share some of our photos with you. They include RE, literacy, creative activities and many more. We just don't stop having fun and working together! We hope you enjoy having a little glimpse into our school day and enjoy seeing what we have been doing.

We love sharing snapshots of our day-to-day adventures! Scroll through our photos to see the fun activities we've been up to in class – from building tall towers with blocks to buildinga water chanel in our playground. Our classroom is always buzzing with creativity, laughter, and lots of smiles!

Stay Connected:

We encourage parents and carers to stay involved in the learning journey. Be sure to check back here for updates, photos, and important notices.

Thank you for visiting our Reception Class page