Welcome to Reception

Overview

Reception at Queen’s Hill Primary School offers an engaging and nurturing environment for each child to learn and flourish.  Our goal is to instill a ‘Passion for Learning’ that will continue throughout pupils' lives by providing stimulating lessons, enquiry-based learning opportunities and a child-centred approach to help children develop their own love of learning.

We believe that each and every child has the right to achieve and in the Early Years we seek to develop this at every stage.  Our purpose built Reception classrooms and outdoor area provide a rich environment in which the children can learn through their play and children are able to access our large outdoor area on a free-flow basis every day.  A balance of adult-directed and child-initiated learning ensures that children make progress across all areas of their learning and development. We follow the phonics scheme Read, Write, Inc. which teaches children to use letter sounds to support their reading and writing. We use a maths mastery approach when teaching early number skills.

Useful Links

Read and write alphabet and letters

Number Rhymes

Phonics made easy

How we teach phonics at Queen's Hill

Home communication

At Queen’s Hill Primary School we see education as a partnership between the home and school. We use Tapestry,  an ‘online learning journal’ which enables you to see photographs, videos and written observations of the activities your child does at school. Good relationships between parents and staff are valued and there are frequent opportunities for parents to come in and share what their child has been doing.

Reception Blog Posts

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School Council Christmas Bauble Project

This year the school council decided to run the Christmas bauble project again. The plastic baubles were very kindly bought by the Friends and each year group chose their own designs and have been busy over the last few weeks creating them. In Reception they decorated wooden baubles with paint, glitter and sequins. In Year 1 they used tissue paper to collage the inside of their baubles. In Year 2 the children measured their height and filled their bauble with ribbon that is the same height as them in 2024. In Year 3 they filled their baubles with cotton wool 'snow' and decorated the outside with Christmas patterns. In Year 4 the children decorated their baubles with glitter. In Year 5 they used tissue paper to create bright and colourful baubles that have been hanging on their class Christmas trees. In Year 6 they chose glitter for the insides and drew Christmas patterns and messages on the outside. We think they all look amazing! A great big thank you to the School Council for organising this for everyone and an even bigger thank you to the Friends for supplying us with the baubles.
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Reception Science

In Reception we have been looking at floating and sinking. The children learnt about what it means for objects to float or sink, made predictions and then did an experiment using the water trays to see which objects floated or sank.
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Remembrance

In Reception we have been learning about what Remembrance day is and about the poppies that represent it. We made some art inspired by poppies and the children chose to create poppy pictures and sculptures during their busy learning time.
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Diwali

Reception have been learning about the festival 'Diwali'. We learnt about how people celebrate Diwali with fireworks and food. We made Diva lamps using salt dough and created firework pictures too!
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Pumpkin Party

A big thank you to Mrs Singleton for kindly arranged with Longwater Aldi for EYFS to have some pumpkins. We have been exploring the pumpkins all week, scraping out the middles for the seeds, making potions and carving some too!
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“Coming to England”

This week we have been looking at the book "Coming to England" by Floella Benjamin for Black History Month. In the story Floella tells the reader about coming from Trinidad to England. We tried food which is spoken about in the book and designed a headdress for our very own carnival!
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Autumn walk

In Reception we visited the outdoor classroom on site this week. We searched for signs of Autumn that we have learnt about this week with partners. We then talked about what we found and what we missed off our checklist and why this might be.
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First Assembly

This week Reception joined together in the Library for our first assembly. We listened to a story about 'concentration' and talked about our celebration crowns. Next week we will be begin celebrating a child from each class each week, where they will wear a crown and have a certificate to bring home to share with their grown-ups.
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Dinosaur Week

In Reception we have been using the text "The Girl and the Dinosaur" written by Hollie Hughes and Sarah Massini as our inspiration. We have been doing lots of dinosaur themed activities and learnt lots about when and how dinosaurs lived.
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Phonics in Reception

Children have been working hard and enjoying learning new sounds everyday. We also welcomed parents in this week for an 'Introduction to Phonics' meeting to help understand how we teach phonics using the Read, Write, Inc scheme.