Our talk for writing text for this half-term is ‘How to Catch a Star’ by Oliver Jeffers. This week, we have been very busy getting to know the story in many different ways. By doing this, we have really developed our understanding of what happens in the story, as well as introducing ourselves to the key characters, events and phrases within it.

We started by looking at the book together as a class and listening to the story during carpet time. It was familiar to some of us and a new story for others, but we all enjoyed sharing it together. We then began to learn how to tell the story ourselves…

We then retold the story using our class story map as a prompt. As we talked through the sequence of events, we worked together to think creatively about how we could use body actions to represent the words within each sentence. In each talk for writing session, we added more to our story and came up with actions to represent what was happening. Our story map is displayed on our class washing line to remind us of our story and inspire us to retell it again. You could follow the map to remember our actions and retell the story to your family over the bank holiday weekend!

Which words in the story are we acting out here?

This week, we recalled events from the story as a writing activity. We used the illustrations from the book to help us recall and sequence the events correctly. We formed our sentences using colourful semantics, applied our phonic knowledge to write down each word and tried hard to remember finger spaces between words and full stops at the end of sentences. Some of us had a go at using capital letters at the start of our sentences too! We used our drawing skills to add an illustration to our writing and practised reading our own work once we had finished.

When exploring provision, we were invited to create our own detailed star and rocket drawings. We used our fine-motor skills to form careful lines and shapes when drawing. We were incredibly proud of our artwork and decided to put them on display in our classroom. Many of us continued to create more fantastic star, rocket and space themed drawings throughout the week!

We have really enjoyed getting to know the ‘How to Catch a Star’ story this week in RDT! Next week, we will apply what we have learned as we begin to make changes and innovate the story. You could start to imagine how the story could be changed over the weekend and retell it to your family with a new character, setting or event. This week we have learned how the boy caught a star – how would you catch one?

This half-term, our learning theme in Reception is ‘Growing’! This week, we started our exploration of this through a variety of exciting learning experiences! We will continue to discover much more about our new theme throughout the half-term. By looking at how ourselves and our friends have grown and changed, in addition to discovering how plants and other animals grow over time, we will develop our understanding of the world. We will develop a sense of time as we reflect on our own past and present experiences, as well as learning more about the natural world around us as we look at how different plants and animals grow.

At the start of the week, we each planted our own bean, which we will closely observe as it grows. We put our beans into plastic wallets to help us see how the entire plant changes over time and learned that our plants will need water from a wet paper towel to help them grow. We stuck our plants on our classroom window as we also learned that they need sunlight to grow. Here are our bean plants on day 1! We are really looking forward to noticing how they change over time.

We extended our interest in how plants grow by spending lots of time in our new ACE Garden Centre this week! Whilst exploring our new role-play area, we had lots of fun taking on the role of shopkeepers and customers; counting coins, writing receipts, making price labels and reading signs as we played co-operatively. We also had plenty of opportunity to engage in sensory experiences and fine-motor activities through exploratory play with a variety of different seeds, beans and tools.

Over the holidays, we asked for our RDT families to send in baby photos to help us reflect on how we have changed. Sharing these wonderful photos has certainly been a highlight of our week! We enjoyed playing a ‘guess who’ game as a circle time activity, where we guessed who the babies were. We were quick to spot some of our friends and others were trickier to recognise! Our big question for this half term is, ‘How have I changed?’, so during the game we began to share our thoughts and ideas about how we have all changed since we were babies. We also thought about how much we have grown and all of the things that we have learned to do over time. If you have not yet sent in a baby photo of your child and would like to, please upload one to Tapestry, email one to the school office or speak to a member of the Reception Team if you require any help with this.

RDT have had a very busy week! We can’t wait to see how our bean plants will change over time as they grow. We are also looking forward to thinking more about how we have changed over time, as we reflect on our own past and present experiences. We will continue to have lots of fun in our ACE Garden Centre, applying what we learn in our play as we discover more about how plants grow. What an exciting start to our half-term and new learning focus!

We have been very busy exploring ‘journeys’ as our learning focus this half-term in Reception! In week 1, we were introduced to our RDT explorer bears: Scott Bear, Oates Bear and Cook Bear. We then had a very important job to do! We spent our half-term taking our explorer bears on exciting journeys around the local area and beyond. The bears have had a fantastic time going on adventures with RDT each weekend!

Where has Cook Bear been?

Cook Bear had a fantastic time going on car journeys and a trip to the local cinema, as well as having a delicious picnic lunch! He also visited Roundhay Park, joined one of our friends on their swimming lesson and rode a horse at the National Coal Mining Museum! One weekend, Cook Bear helped to do the supermarket shopping followed by a relaxing trip to a coffee shop for hot chocolate and muffin! He also visited Almscliffe Cragg and had dinner at a chinese restaurant on the way home! One night he enjoyed the warmth of a bonfire. What a busy time he has had!

Some of us drew maps to show Cook Bear’s travels with RDT. Follow the map to work out where he went on this journey with one of our friends!

Where has Scott Bear been?

Scott Bear had a very busy time with some of our friends in RDT! He visited some a local shop and a dentist to learn more about places within our community. He also had a fantastic time joining in with some new activities which included a football training session, a swimming lesson and a ballet class. Cook Bear also travelled further afield to Harewood House, Valley Gardens in Harrogate and Almscliffe Cragg! He shared stories with Cook Bear about the breath-taking views from the top! He must be feeling very tired now after going on so many exciting journeys over the half-term!

Where has Oates Bear been?

Oates Bear enjoyed a walk in the woods, a dip in a swimming pool and a visit to see some exotic animals at Tropical World! He also had a very special job in preparing one of our RDT friend’s home for Ramadan! When Oates Bear returned to our classroom, he did a fantastic job at helping our friend to explain what Ramadan is and how many families prepare for this important event. Oates Bear has one more journey to make over the Easter Holidays and we can’t wait to hear all about it when we return to school!

Thank-you to our RDT friends and their families for taking our explorer bears on so many exciting journeys this half-term! They have had a fantastic time and we have all loved sharing their adventures in class together. The explorer bears are now very tired and in need of a rest, but they are looking forward to hearing all about the journeys and adventures that RDT will go on during the Easter Holidays!

This week in RDT we have been very busy thinking about new life and Easter now that Spring has sprung! We have enjoyed spending lots of time outside in the sunshine as we notice the signs of Springtime around us. We started our week by learning about the Easter story and reflecting on why many people associate this time with new life. We learnt that the chocolate eggs that are given for Easter symbolise new life and linked this to what we already know about nests, eggs and chicks. We thought about all of these different things and then decided to make some chocolate crispy nest buns as an exciting learning experience!

When it was time to make them, we waited patiently and took turns to help make the bun mixture. We were amazed by how the consistency of the melted chocolate changed as we stirred in the cereal! We talked through each instruction together, listening carefully so that we would remember the method for a writing activity.

We then remembered the instructions and used our writing skills to write them down on paper. We used our phonic knowledge to write each word and read it back afterwards to check that we hadn’t skipped any steps!

Here are the instructions for making chocolate nest buns. Ask your child to talk through each step to share their experience of making them at school. If you follow the instructions to create your own chocolate nest buns at home, we would love to see some photographs on Tapestry!

We then sat together and ate our chocolate crispy nest buns together! Many of us asked if we could make them again as we enjoyed them so much! Do you enjoy making food at home? It would be fantastic to hear about what you make at home and we would love some suggestions for what we could make next in RDT!

RDT enjoying their chocolate crispy nest buns at snack time!

This week we participated in Science Week by learning all about our senses! Throughout the week, we had a go at lots of exciting learning experiences that involved us using our sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing to develop our understanding of how our senses work.

We began our exploration of senses with a smell activity. We had to pick up the jars and guess what was inside, using our sense of smell. We then shared which smells we liked and didn’t like by talking to the rest of the group and writing down what we said. The jars included things like coffee, washing powder and garlic! We all thought that the mint jar had toothpaste inside as we made links to what is familiar to us. Other predictions included trees from a forest and a Christmas dinner!

Our next learning experience involved using our sense of taste to try different foods. This was the favourite activity of the week for most of us! We ate raisins, crisps, chocolate and slices of lemon to try a variety of different tastes.

We all sat and waited our turn to try the different foods. We enjoyed talking about the tastes of the different foods and used describing words such as, ‘sweet’, ‘salty’ and ‘sour’ to explain what they were like. We shared our opinions on each of the foods and then created a table to record our likes and dislikes afterwards.

Here are some of our reactions to the sour lemon taste!

On Wednesday, we went on a lovely visit to St John’s Church. On our journey, we used our sight to notice the world around us. We spotted many signs of Spring along the way and spent quiet time inside the Church looking at the beautiful things around us. When we were back at school, we looked at a map of our journey and used our mark-making skills to add the things that we noticed on our way to and from the Church.

We enjoyed an outdoor library session this week. As well as listening to the story, we sat quietly and patiently on the benches to find out what we could hear. We heard lots of different bird songs as we enjoyed the sunshine and fresh air.

At the end of the week, we used a feely bag to play a game that explored our sense of touch. We had to pass around the bag and feel what was inside. We used talk to describe what the objects felt like and then made our predictions. Once the bag had been passed around the entire circle, we pulled out the object to find out. It took us a few attempts of us practising not peeking inside the bag!

We had lots of fun exploring our senses this week for Science Week! What an exciting learning experience it was!

This week in RDT we have explored time and the days of the week for our maths learning! We have been very busy doing lots of exciting activities to develop our understanding of this mathematical concept. Throughout the week, we shared some time-themed stories, which included Jasper’s Beanstalk, Five Minutes Peace and The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

We also spent our week practising a song to help us remember the names of the days of the week and the order in which they come in. By the end of the week, the children were really confident in singing the entire song! If you would like to sing the song together at home this weekend, these are the lyrics:

Days of the week (clap, clap), days of the week (clap, clap), days of the week, days of the week, days of the week (clap, clap), There’s Monday and there’s Tuesday, there’s Wednesday and there’s Thursday, there’s Friday and there’s Saturday, and then there’s Sunday.

We worked as a team to create our own timetable of our week! We were really confident at recognising some of the key events and routines within each day. Many of us knew that we stay at home on Saturday and Sunday, and talked confidently about some of the things we do at the weekend.

Take a look at our week in RDT! You could ask your child if they can think of any other events that take place and when they happen. You could also make your own timetable of the week with the things you do as a family at home!

Some of us then created our own fantastic timetables whilst exploring in provision. We shared them with our friends and talked about the different events and when they take place.

When exploring in our outdoor provision, we set ourselves some exciting timed physical challenges! These included counting how long it took to cycle around the path on a bike and how many jumps we could do in 30 seconds. We experimented with different ways to record the timings on a whiteboard, using both numerals and marks to create a tally. This then inspired some of us to try again and attempt to get a better result!

This experience then inspired some of us to extend and develop our learning further, whilst incorporating our own interests. We worked together to use resources to create a ‘Deadly 60’ obstacle course, complete with dangerous animals underneath! We then took turns to travel across the course and counted together to time one another. We were really eager to become quicker and quicker!

For our storytelling experience this week, we used ‘Sam the Snake’ from our talk for writing story innovation as our main character. We worked together to share our own ideas and create a story squiggle entitled, ‘Sam’s Week’. We had some fantastic ideas for what Sam did on each day of the week and we applied what we had learned in maths this week to name the days of the week in the correct order! We laid down on our fronts and pretended to be Sam the snake writing his diary of the week as we created our own story squiggles, which is a fantastic way to develop both our gross-motor and fine-motor skills at the same time!

We have all really enjoyed exploring time this week for our maths learning! What will you do on Saturday and Sunday? We look forward to hearing all about it when we are back at school on Monday!

This week, RDT participated in World Book Day! We had a fantastic day filled with exciting stories and story-themed activities. The theme for this year was traditional tales, which fit into our learning for this half-term perfectly! We enjoyed sharing some traditional tales that we hadn’t heard before, exploring in our story village and writing our own stories throughout the day. We had some fantastic costumes in RDT with lots of effort put into them! Which characters can you spot?

We really enjoyed using our mark-making skills to create detailed drawings of our own characters and our favourite traditional tale characters. We then shared them as a class and talked about what we know about our characters. Here are some of our fantastic drawings!

How do you think Goldilocks might be feeling? Using what you know about the story, why might she be feeling this way?

The beautiful sun was shining on World Book Day and we all enjoyed being outdoors. We decided to have our Library session outside instead and really enjoyed sharing the Aladdin story together on the grassed seating. It was lots of fun to do our story session outside this week!

We all went home with a World Book Day token that we can use to buy one of the special World Book Day books. If you use your token, it would be wonderful to see a photo on Tapestry of you reading your new story. We had a super World Book Day in RDT!

This week in RDT we have been celebrating when we have tried something new and had a go at play experiences that are less familiar to us! We talked together about how when we try something new we develop new skills and apply what we have learnt elsewhere to make our learning deeper. We looked at our class learning line as a group and discussed that when we try something different it can feel sometimes tricky, but if we persevere and show resilience, we can achieve something amazing! We have all demonstrated these important skills this week with wonderful results!

Some of us set ourselves the challenge to create some Little Red Riding Hood themed artwork! We showed perseverance and resilience throughout, which helped us to create some beautifully-detailed pieces. We learnt that it’s really fun to choose something different when we are exploring our provision. We beamed with pride at our achievements once we had finished!

The sun shone down on our outdoor area this week which encouraged lots of us to venture outside! For some of us who enjoy lots of fine-motor mark-making, cutting and sticking activities, it was lovely to get outside and develop our gross-motor skills. We had a great time racing around the outdoor space as we played an imaginative role-play game about monsters! We also enjoyed having a go at some writing challenges in the outdoor area.

We were all spotted trying something different this week during provision time! These choices led to some incredible ideas coming to life, which included a Lego ‘Jamaica House’ and a carefully-cut bear mask to retell the Goldilocks story. We showed real resilience as we concentrated carefully and persevered to achieve our desired end result. We recognised where we had been on our learning line throughout our learning experiences and celebrated as we reached our own goals! We enjoyed having a go at using our imaginations to take on the role of different traditional tale characters this week, which meant we had a Gingerbread Man in RDT this week!

This half-term in EYFS we are focusing on resourcefulness as one of our learning behaviours. Having a go at something new has really helped us to think about what we want to achieve and use our imaginations to plan out how we will do it. This has in turn encouraged us to be really resourceful in using everything on offer to us within our learning environment and applying what we know to create something amazing! This entire small-world town, with rail network included, was certainly a wow moment during the week!

We will continue to encourage the children to do something new when exploring provision and celebrate the wonderful end goals together. You could have a go at doing something different at home this weekend and upload it to Tapestry for us to share together next week!

This week has been an exciting and fun-filled week of reading in RDT! We all enjoyed going on two different library visits and sharing stories in our indoor and outdoor reading areas. We have shared lots of lovely stories together throughout our week at school!

We loved going on an exciting local visit to Moor Allerton Library this week! When we arrived, our Librarian showed us to the children’s section and we all sat together to share a story. It was then time to explore the Library! We remembered to use quiet voices and handle the books carefully when reading. We put our books back neatly in the right boxes when we were finished. We really enjoyed sharing stories with our friends, our parent/carer volunteers and our Librarian!

Thank-you to our parent/carer volunteers who joined us on our local library visit! The children loved having you with us and your help was very much appreciated!

Our Librarian explained that we could have our own RDT library card! We worked as a team to decide which design to choose and the dinosaur card was most popular. We then selected some books to borrow from the Library to take back to school. Luca and Sammy enjoyed taking them to the machine to scan them!

Lots of us told our Librarian that we would like to have our own library card, so she explained to us how we could get one. She told us that if we visit Moor Allerton Library with our grown-up, we can ask for our own library card and then choose some books to borrow.

Next week, there are some exciting events taking place at Moor Allerton Library for the half-term holiday. Their ‘Ready Steady Readers!’ story and rhyme session is a free session that takes place on Tuesdays at 10:30-11:30am. They are also having a special treasure hunt for the Leeds Storytelling Festival that you can take part in throughout the week!

When we went to visit our ACE Library, we talked about our experience of going to Moor Allerton Library. We enjoyed sharing another story as a class and then got busy choosing our own stories to look at together!

We have had a very exciting week full of stories and books in RDT this week!

This week in RDT we have been learning all about Lunar New Year and the story of ‘The Great Race’, following last week’s celebrations. We began our learning by listening to the story of the ‘Great Race’ to help us learn why Lunar New Year is celebrated and about the 12 animals of the zodiac. We learnt that 2025 is a year of the snake and had a special parent/carer visitor who taught us all about how Lunar New Year is celebrated.

Our talk for writing learning this week involved sharing part of the story through our talking and writing skills. We recalled the different animals within the story and what happened. We then used colourful semantics to build our sentences when talking and writing.

When playing outside, we re-enacted the story by taking on the roles of the different animals and setting up our own races! We used stepping stones to build river banks for the race and ran as fast as we could through the water!

We really enjoyed making our own paper lanterns this week for Lunar New Year. We all concentrated carefully as we folded and cut lines in our paper to create the lantern. We then hung them around the classroom as decorations for our celebrations!

For our storytelling session this week, we created our own ‘Great Race’ story. We decided together to have six animals in our race, as we have been learning all about the number 6 in maths this week. We had lots of fantastic ideas, which we shared through speaking and listening as a group. We then created our own story maps to tell our ‘Great Race’ stories, using our mark-making and writing skills.

What a busy and exciting week of Lunar New Year celebrations in RDT!