Highbury Infant School and Nursery

Purple Class 

An insight into a year's learning in Reception

Autumn 1

We visited Hitchin Museum to have a look at their Paddington Bear exhibition. Mrs Newbery also brought in her Paddington teddy from when she was a little girl. 

Here are some pictures of other activities we have done this half term. 

We had some caterpillars delivered. We watched them as they created their chrysalis and emerged. When they emerge, their wings are wet and we had to give them time to dry off. When they were ready, we watched them fly away. 

To start off our topic of Minibeasts, we had a visit from Safari Stu.  He had lots of different animals to show us. We had the opportunity to hold all of the animals apart from the skunk but if we didn't want to hold we could touch and look at the animals.

We saw Pebbles the tortoise, Bob the Lesser Tenrec, Diego the Cameleon, Jack the Chuckawalla Lizard, Kevin the Kenyan Sand Boa snake (small), Keith Lemon the Royal Python , Arnold the Albino Skunk and Twiggy the Mexican Redknee Tarantula.

It was an amazing experience and enjoyed by everybody.

Autumn 2

We read the story The Three Billy Goats Gruff and took part in lots of activities to help us remember the story. We cut out bridges, acted out the story and practised writing key words in gloop. 

In maths, we practised our number bonds using flowers and their pots and shaving foam to practise writing numbers. 

When reading books about pirates, we went on a treasure hunt around the school. A pirate had left some treasure somewhere in the school grounds and we had to find it! We went on an adventure to the woods, following the clues. The treasure was delicious! 

Spring 1

Our topic for this half term is 'The world around us'. 

We learned about our own homes and locality and each drew a map of our journey to school.  We had to look carefully on the way to school and see what we could notice to put on our map.  It was fun comparing how different our friends' journeys are. Then we talked about and compared our houses, looking at similarities and differences, and talked about what is important in our home. We all enjoyed making houses out of boxes and used them to create our very own 'Highbury Avenue'.   

We used our ICT skills to build houses on the computer too.  

We widened our horizons to learn about houses all around the world and how and why they are different from our own homes.  We looked at himba huts, rainbow houses, floating houses and gers amongst others.  We all painted a house that is different from our own. 

We all contributed something that we have learned about houses and homes to make our very own class book. 

In maths we have been learning about subitising and now we are enjoying learning about money and playing in our class shop. 

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Spring 2

To celebrate World Book Day, we created a display to show our favourite book characters. 

We talked about the different seasons and what happens in each season. We created a spring display and used our phonics to label our pictures. 

During our topic of knights, kings, queens and princesses, we created a whole class story. We also created our own shields and split pin knights. 

Summer 

Our topic this half term is The World Around Us. We will be looking at a wide range of fiction and non-fiction books. Some of these will include; Kipper’s Toy Box, A place to call home, There’s a boy like me, Time to play and Clothes around the world. 

In foundation stage, we had a PJ day. As part of PJ day we had stories in the hall read by torch light. In class we had a bedtime drink and snack (hot chocolate and a biscuit) and designed pyjamas. It was a really fun day!