Reception - Butterfly Class 
Teacher - Mrs V Wills
Learning Support Assistants - Mrs M Mulley, Mrs A Woods and Mrs L Martin
Key Information
Welcome to Butterfly class
Tuesday- Indoor PE (black shorts and white t-shirt to stay in school)
Friday - Outdoor PE and Wild area (children to come in wearing PE kit)
Our Weekly News
Autumn 2 Week 3
In class this week Butterflies have enjoyed listening to a musical retell of the traditional tale 'Rapunzel'. We used this tale to learn some exciting new vocabulary and as inspiration for drawing a character (the witch) a setting (the tower) and for designing a new potion that would stop the witch! The children's drawing skills are coming on in leaps and bounds in both Drawing Club and their own independent Discovery Time, with taking part in this creative approach.
We linked our art to maths this week, as we took inspiration from Kandinsky's artistic approach to shape, by creating our own works of art using circles and triangles. We needed to really focus on our scissor skills for completing this activity and we see the children becoming more confident with an effective scissor hold. We also moved on to the number '4', completing a class challenge to represent '4' in our own ways and found lots of different routes to demonstrating this.
As ever, Butterflies continue to show collaboration and imaginative invention through construction and block play. We had 'rides on a bus', building a 'dog house' to test out our positional language and building various obstacle courses across the week.
We are making progress learning the words and actions for our Christmas story sing-a-long 'We're going on a baby hunt!' We also went on our own journey in groups around the school, finding the classrooms and animals names of all the different year groups. We especially enjoyed our final destination as we ended up at Lion Class and had lots of waves and smiles with our Year 6 buddies.
Autumn 2 Week 2
This week Butterflies have had lots of enhancements and opportunities to continue to develop their fine motor skills. Using pipe cleaners and tissue paper to carefully construct individual poppies for our Remembrance Service held at the end of the week - it was lovely to have so many people join us for marking this special time and the children did so well taking part.
We used the idea of 'fireworks' as a lead in to a task for the children to copy given shapes using colourful chalks on a black backing. This is a great way to develop hand-eye co-ordination and help children see the way different marks and lines can be created. We have also been creating different opportunities for the children to mark-make in different ways. Using horizontal and vertical surfaces is a super way to work different gross motor skills.
In maths this week we have started to introduce shapes looking at circles (1 curved side all the way around) and triangles (3 straight sides and 3 corners). The children worked in pairs to sort a mixed group into circles and triangles.
Autumn 2 Week 1
Butterfly Class had a busy first week back after half term with some new learning activities that we have begun. Reading Groups are small groups sharing the same text where we work together to explore different aspects of shared reading such as looking closely and talking about what we notice on the pages, looking at features of books (such as the title, page numbers and labels) and story telling. At the moment these are lilac banded wordless books, but as the children build their confidence and capability blending, these will move on to texts that are read by the children within the group. We have also started 'Drawing Club'. This is a new approach to developing vocabulary & early writing skills through expressive drawing and encouraging imagination and creativity. As children begin to explore and develop early writing, they will increasingly add labels, annotations and eventually phrases and sentences to their drawings through special 'codes' that will be relevant to what they have drawn and that will encourage language to explain their creations. As part of our Drawing Club sessions, we learn a number of new and interesting words (along with an action to support recall). Drawing club will have a focus story, animation or traditional tale as the focus each week. This week we watched an episode of 'Banana Man' that you might enjoy watching together at home!
'Banana Man' was a useful introduction to our whole school theme of 'Heroes of History' this week. Whilst the rest of the school investigated some important historical figures, in Reception we explored the difference between 'super heroes' that we may watch on TV or hear about in stories, to real heroes, with some lovely examples shared by the children through Show & Tell.
In maths we have been thinking about '1,2&3' exploring different representations, matching quantities to numerals for 1,2 &3 and counting out the right amount. The children have also enjoyed all the usual opportunities to learn independently by playing and working together building, constructing, mark making and having fun together indoors and out. Well done Butterflies for a great start to the new term.
Autumn 1 Week 7
To finish our theme of 'Colours' this term, and following on from thinking about the changes we have noticed in the environment around us, we listened to the story 'Leaf Man' this week. We went around our school grounds collecting interesting leaves and natural objects that we found on the ground to look more closely at. We talked about how it was important not to pick and eat berries that we find while we are out (unless a trusted grown up tells us they are safe) and how we have to think carefully about the plants we touch as some can sting or prickle us! Helping the children learn to be more risk aware, and responsible for making sensible choices, is something we will come back to in lots of ways during the Reception Year. While we were up by the trees, we stopped and were quiet in order to think about what we could see, feel and hear. We noticed the rustle of the leaves with the wind in the trees and the sound of a lawnmower nearby.
We had lots of fun building mini cities with the blocks this week as the children begin to be more creative and inventive in what they are making and how they describe and explain their ideas and models. We also had to look ahead in time as we made our Christmas Card designs! The children were given a simple tree background print on which to imprint their own colourful design on top.
Well done for a fantastic first term at school Butterflies - now time for a well earned break over Half Term holiday.
Autumn 1 Week 6
This week we had a lovely story called 'The Dot' to inspire children not only with their own individual creativity, but to introduce the idea of 'perseverance', one of our school values. We experimented with watercolour as we created our own 'dot' themed artwork and started to draw and design our pumpkins as part of our harvest celebrations. Using small brushes for painting and pencils for drawing are great for fine motor development. We also had lots of tweezer activities and threading opportunities out in the environment for the children to continue to use and improve their fine motor skills. We met our partner class, 'Lions', who are our Year 6's for a 'Buddies' session in the Year R playground, and generally had lots of fun building and creating together, continuing our exploration of what it means to collaborate.
Autumn 1 Week 5
We have had lots of fun drawing and exploring mark making this week as we begin to see a change in the colours around us. As we start to make links with colours and seasons, the children have enjoyed exploring different ways of making marks - from horizontal to vertical surfaces, small to large pieces of paper, pencils to paint. We have looked at matching outlines of shapes by drawing around not just shapes, but numicon - number shapes.
We continue to make the most of enjoying being outside while the weather is still good. With bubbles at lunch time, making and 'baking' with sand but most exciting was our time with the balance bikes!
What a busy week we had Butterflies.
Autumn 1 Week 4
It was a colourful week in Butterfly Class! Using our focus story 'The Colour Monster' as inspiration, we looked at emotions photos and thought about the names of different emotions and gave our own examples of when we had felt these. We had colourful sensory experiences with paint and painting with no colour - using water. We are still enjoying the sand pit and there have been so many fantastic examples of collaboration in action through game and block play, using both large and small blocks to imaginatively and purposefully construct.
We had fun with lunchtime parachute games and had our first taste of short spells out on the main playground with the rest of the school. We have seen lots of drawing from Butterflies this week - families are a common theme as the children explore representing people and meaningful drawing.
Autumn 1 Week 3
This has been a lovely week watching increased self-confidence, independence and friendships grow. As our lovely Butterflies feel increasingly settled into class, we have seen them begin to create their own games and activities, often playing cooperatively and imaginatively with those around them. We even created some collaborative art together (inspired by the paper collages of Pablo Picasso) by cutting small pieces of paper and using glue spreaders to stick our individual paper cut outs into a larger colourful class collage.
We enjoyed lots of 'Elmer' stories this week. Elmer is special because he is not the usual 'elephant grey', but a brilliant patchwork of many colours. Butterflies had a go painting the design of their own patchwork elephant and we named the colours as went. We have learned new sounds in phonics ('i' for iguana, 'n' for net, 'm' for mouse & 'd' for duck) and have started to playing blending games together. In our mini maths sessions, we have been thinking about measure; matching big to big and small to small, and exploring tall and short, long and short. We built towers to compare and drew around our feet to see if our feet were longer or shorter that others in class.
Outside, we have enjoyed a focus on gross motor skills, with lots of active play to help us develop our balance and co-ordination, some of the children even created their own yoga session by collecting a mat and completing a variety of stretches!
This week we have also introduced 'Classroom Dojo' to the children. Each child has their own Dojo character that hatched this week (when they got to 5 points). Dojo monsters collect points for positive behaviours. This week we have been working on 'Good listening' and 'Kind hearts'. Well done for a great week Butterflies!
Autumn 1 Week 2
You have all been brilliant during such a busy week Butterflies! We have learned our first sounds (phonemes) of 's' 'a' 't' and 'p' and played blending games to help you hear how putting sounds together can make words we recognise. We have had mini maths sessions together starting with our maths story 'The Button Box' and then worked as groups to complete some different activities that have helped us understand the concepts of 'same' and 'different' (such as sorting buttons and finding two objects the same) and you could find or show your own examples of a matching pair.
In your Discovery Time, you have also shown us lots of independence in choosing your resources, including starting to dress yourselves with the role play costumes and accessories we have had out this week. We learned a new song 'When the animals went in two by two' (linked to our maths) and we heard the bible story of 'Noah's Ark.'
Our mark making table has been super busy - we have seen some great drawing and lots of independent scissor use. Using tools like scissors can be really tricky and this is something that we will work on together. For our PE engaged in lots of active play on the 'Big' Adventure Playground. Well done everyone for also being super stars having your lunches in the hall this week. You have all done such a great job with settling into school life!
Autumn 1 Week 1
Wow, Butterflies, what a great week we have had. The sun has been shining and we have had lots of play outside and in the classroom. You all did such an amazing job coming in, showing just how ready you all are for starting school. It was lovely to see you all looking so smart, playing kindly and respectfully in our new class together.
We've had lots of different resources for the children to access in their morning sessions with us. Lots of different toys and activities that will develop our fine motor skills, such as peg boards and drawing. You have all had a go at climbing on (and jumping off!) our very own 'Mini Adventure' - some of you have even already scaled the climbing wall! We also love sand play and big build construction as these are also great for developing our core strength, co-ordination and even our communication skills - as these are often activities that encourage group play, collaboration and team work!
Our 'Home Corner' roleplay and small world resources such as Happy Land, Dolls houses and animal figures have all been out this week, as these are great for stimulating imaginative play and talk time between peers - it was so hot at the end of the week that the animals joined in with some of our water play!
We have had such a lovely time welcoming you all to joining our school and class Butterflies, all of your grown ups are so proud of you! Well done for super settling-in, next week we get to have you full time!
