Christ the King RC Primary School, A Voluntary Academy

reception class 2023/24

Summer Term 1

Welcome back! We hope you all had a lovely Easter break.

Our new topic this term is "Vets and Pets" and our vet's role play area is already up and running with caring vets and nurses. They are answering phones, booking appointments and treating animals like professionals. Here are some photos.

Wednesday 17th April

Today we had a visit from Emma, from the Life Education Bus- she brought Harold the girrafe with her.

Emma told us all about taking care of our bodies. We talked about exercise, healthy food and drinks amd how important is is to take care of our bodies by keeping them clean. Harold the giraffe made us all laugh and before he and Emma left we all got to stroke him and we got a sticker.

World Book Day

Friday 9th February.

Another successful half term completed and we went out on a hight by celebrating our amazing Learning Challenges. This term's  Castle and Knight theme had clearly caught the children's imagination as the work they brought in from home was spectacular. We had 24 children taking part this time, that's almost the whole class! The children certainly earned their sparkly, silver star badges and we look forward to seeing them being worn with pride, on their school tie next half term.

We have celebrated Chinese New Year in Reception Class this week, 2024 is the year of the dragon! We had a go at writing some Chinese numbers in maths and we created an amazing Chinese Dragon to do a dragon dance with. We also ate Chinese noodles with chopsticks!

Friday 2nd February

A new month has arrived and hopefully some dryer weather so that we can spend more time outdoors. We have had a lot of poorly children this week with bad coughs and sore throats, try to rest at the weekend.

We had a lovely afternoon on Wednesday as we held our own jousting competition to enrich out Castles and Knights Topic. We watched some videos of knights acting out real jousting and we made up our own version. Competition was FIERCE and the children entered into the spirit of things cheering on their friends.

Super Writers!

Our daily phonics sessions are certainly paying off with almost the whole class having a reading book and beginning to to have the confidence to write their own "mini" books.

We have added the mini books to our writing area in class and are encouraging the children to use their phonic fingers to segment and spell their words to write short sentences - can you read what has been written?

Friday 26th January

Another exciting week...done. We were lucky enough to have a real life knight visit class on Monday and teach us so much about castles, weapons and life in medieval times.

Dantastic brought some real weapons in for us to see (and touch!) We saw a mace and a flail, a long sword, a crossbow and we also saw trebuchets and battering rams and a real bow and arrow. Dan explained how all these weapons would have been used to attack castles and try to get in.

Dantastic also told us all about armour. Did you know that the first armour was made out of leather? Then chain mail and finally plated armour. We tried on some chainmail, it was so HEAVY. It made us realise that kight's must have been so fit and strong to wear armour and fight in it too. We tried on the huge metal glove called a gauntlet and even a knight's helmet.

And the ladies were not forgotten, we smelt herbs that princesses would have worn as perfume including: rose, lavender and cinnamon mmmmmm. We also tried on the large hooped skilrts that kept their fancy dresses sticking out and a neck ruffle - how fancy are we?

Dantastic brought some old item called artefacts for us to look at too. We even had a go at sketching them. We sketched the mace and the flail, the golden dagger and the crossbow. We had a go at trying to juggle just like a jester would've done long ago, when they entertained the King and Queen.

We had such a lovely day with Dantastic and it was lovely that he enjoyed his day at Christ the King and  complimented the children on their excellent behaviour and lovely manners. Well done Reception.

We have also been learning about the coldest places on earth, the Arctic and the Antarctic and why it is so cold there. We looked at the animals you would find in these places and surprisingly lots of them are white...I wonder why? We also found out that penguin wee is green (thank you Alexander) and that penguins like to slide on their tummies and waddle, don't walk.

We had a lovely afternoon, painting arctic animals and we set up a small world area for some imaginative play. Some children wrote little books and others were interested in the sea and land on the planet earth with ice at the north and south poles.

Friday 19th January

Our Castle topic continues and the children have had a great time painting and completing their model castles with a friend. During the week, we painted the castles and moats and we added lots of special details and decorations to make the castles really come to life!

We have enjoyed trying some new techniques in our Art lessons this week. We are finding ways to change paper and make our artwork more exciting. We tries curling paper around our fingers and glueing it to the paper. We made our dragon picture look like the dragons were breathing real fire!

We also had some snow this week, that was really exciting. We enjoyed playing out in it although there was not enough to build a snowman.

In other unexpected and exciting news, we found a giant poo in our playground! It was huge, much too big for a dog or a cat. We were all shocked and confused. Mrs Crosbie bravely took a sample of it and sent it to some poo experts where it could be studied to find out what type of animal it was from and you won't believe it! See below for details.

Spring Term 1

Friday 12th January

Welcome back. How lovely it has been to hear the tales of Christmas fun from the children. They have clearly been well fed as I'm sure they have all grown!

Our Topic this term is Knights and Castles and we couldn't wait to get started. After finding out about castles, we have sketched a castle design that we are going to make with a friend.

To enrich our topic further we have changed our role play area into a castle too. We have seen princesses, knights, cooks and jesters getting busy in the CTK castle. There have been feasts and festivities so far.

........we have met our new teachers and our classmates, explored our classroom and playground, said our prayers, had our lunch in the hall, played games, chatted, laughed, sung nursery rhymes, listenend to stories, played with play-doh, crafted, used the construction toys, looked at books in the book nook, played in the water, built dens, picked apples, washed apples, planted herbs, found a very interesting caterpillar, dressed dolls, pushed prams, used our mud kitchens, painted pictures, drunk plenty of water and sweated....a lot!

It's fair to say it's been a busy and successful first week. Let's do it all again next week!

What pleasure it has been to welcome our new children to school this week. It has been remarkably warm but it hasn't dimmed the children's enthusiasm and they have soldiered on. The new Reception Cl;ass at Christ the King are looking smart and ready to go. I try to update our webpage often to keep up to date with what we have been up to so please keep checking.

Here are  some photos of our first week.

Friday 22nd September

Another busy week! We have made worry dolls, celebrated Jaxon and Olivia's birthdays, made model houses and furnished them, started learning our sounds (phonemes) enjoyed our school dinners, had fun singing singing counting songs, built a den outdoors and so much more.

Friday 29th September

We have had another great week in class. We spent a lot of time talking about how we can be healthy, from what we eat and drink to how much we move about and exercise. We made a healthy food plate, and exercised in our outdoor gym, where we came up with different exercises to do including push ups, star jumps, boxing, toe touches and of course some meditation and hydration to round it all off. 

We have been starting to learn how to write numbers and letters.

We have used some of the apples from our trees to make a delicious apple crumble. Some children were choppers and some children were crumblers!

We rounded off our week by meeting our gardeners and spending some time getting to know them.

Friday 6th October

This week we have been learning to ride balance bikes in the hall with  "Tots on Tyres" and we all brought home a certificate for our efforts. We have begun to join the rest of the school in assemblies on Monday and Tuesday mornings, Mrs Crosbie says we are sitting really nicely.

We've been playing Bingo to help us learn our numbers and writing messages in cards by copying letters carefully, We have played games during phonics to help us learn our letters and we have been listening for initial sounds in words. We've also been practising writing our letters all by ourselves. 

On Friday we even had a visit from the police who told us all about their jobs and let us try on some of their uniform too.....a good week!

Friday 13th October

This week in Reception...........we have been learning about joining God's family when we were baptised. We baptised a doll to see what it was really like and we shared a lot of photos of our own baptisms. We used the dressing up clothes on a sunny afternoon and made up stories about who we were. We played phonics skittles outside with Mr Ashworth. We enjoyed a beautiful afternoon walk around the school grounds looking for signs of Autumn and change. We painted beautiful Autumn trees with red, orange and yellow paint. We had a big job on in the building department, played in the sand and collected cereal for the food bank in Burnley. Only one more week and we will have completed our first half term at Christ the King!

Friday 20th October

This week in Reception.............. it's hard to believe we have completed our first half term but  we have! We have carried out class worship together reminding ourselves that we are all beautiful to God and He love us all. We have enjoyed showing some of our homemade crafts to our classmates, we made hedgehog pictures from autumn leaves and formed a rock n roll band on the stage area. We made a model zoo outside a filled it with exotic animals. We  celebrated Black Histroy Month when a visitor came to do some Africa dancing with us, we also made some eyecatching African tribal necklaces. 

Thank you to the children who have worked so hard on thier half term challenges, such a variety of creative ideas we really loved sharing them in class and the children will show the whole school in our final assembly of the half term.

Have a lovely half term break and we will see you back in school on Tuesday 31st October.

Friday 3rd November

We have enjoyed a Health and Wellbeing day this week, talking about different parts of our brain and how they help us during each day, We played games to build our resilience and used relaxation strategies to help us keep calm.

We also talked about November being the month of Remembrance and  we created some beautiful "Poppy Paintings".

We have also been looking at the Hindu festival of Diwali ( the festival of light) we listened to the story of Rama and Sita and how they overcame the demon king. To celebrate Diwali ladies often haver mendhi tattoos on their hands (beautiful intricate patterns) we copied some and designed our own. Rangoli patterns are made with coloured sand outside hindu's homes to welcome people. We made our own Rangolie patterns - they were beautiful!

Finally, we welcomed parents to have lunch with us on Friday - the children were so excited and a lovely way to finish off our first week back in school.

Friday 10th November

We tavelled back in time on Mrs Crosbie's magic carpet to find out about the Gunpowder Plot. We rowed across the River Thames and hid in the cellars of the Houses of Parliament to watch Guy Fawkes and his friends leave the gunpowder to try and blow up King James. We Used our puppet theatre to retell the story and made some bonfire pictures with a Guy on the top.

We have a Superhero theme this half term and we have been measuring how tall the superheros are with bricks and matched the correct number.

And keeping with the superhero theme we made real flying superheroes with magnet power!!

We also had a great idea of inviting our Gardeners to a tea party as part of our RE work. We prepared special cups and plates for them, made a banner and sent invitations - our plan is to make them feel "welcome."

Friday 17th November

Any kind of dressing up always goes down well in Reception Class. We dressed in our PJs today to help support Children in Need - well done everyone.

Friday 24th November

We've been especially busy with maths this week, looking at the part, part, whole method and counting the total in two groups.

Some of us have been challenging ourselves to make tricky words.... out of lego!

And with our Nativity Play gwtting closer and closer we have been practising the songs and actions.... A LOT!  Maybe you've heard them at home?

Friday 8th December

There have been some strange sounds coming from Reception Class this week. A lot of hammering and whistling of merry christmas tunes can be heard as you pass our classroom. The reason? Well, the elves workshop has opened and there has been no shortage of willing workers. Santa will be pleased when he says the toys the busy little elves  have made, painted  and wrapped. You may even recognise some of these cheeky little faces!

Christmas can be an expensive time of year so we sent Reception Class off to the toy shop with some pennies to choose and pay for their own toys. The shopkeeper was friendly and patient, so that helped a great deal. Great work Reception!

Friday 15th December

We had a very special visitor in school this afternoon, the children were so excited!

We are so proud of all the children for their wonderful performance of It's A Baby! this week. The rehearsals and practises all paid off as the children sang their hearts out performing for their very proud families.

School Communication

Communication with our parents

We use a variety of different ways to keep parents up to date with events and information about the school:

• School website You can find lots of information on our school website; please check it out.  You can visit your child’s class page and find out what’s coming up in school via our School Calendar.
• Our School App (School Jotter 3) can be downloaded to your phone Apple or Android. A registration code is necessary to access any content within our new app. Those with parental responsibility receive this. If you require additional family members, please email the school office (admin@king-pri.lancs.sch.uk) with their name, email address, and relationship to the child. The app is our preferred method of communication, and it is essential that you register so you don’t miss any information.  You will receive notices and newsletters via the app. You can easily access the school calendar, view previous newsletters, and find quick links to the school website.
• Studybugs – This is our platform for class registration and absences. You can register without a code or password, but you must wait until your child is added to our SIMS system. We will notify you once this has been completed. If your child cannot attend school due to illness, you can record the absence on Studybugs. This will directly record to the class register. Please provide as much information as possible about your absence. For example, ‘Billy has a headache and feels nauseous’ rather than ‘Billy is ill’. Studybugs is linked to NHS Child Health information and will provide you with real-time health information on any symptoms your child is experiencing. We ask that you report the absence before 8.45 am.
• School Newsletters Our newsletters are distributed at the end of every month. They usually contain information about what has happened in school over the last month as well as information about what is coming up in the next month. We ask that you read this carefully because it contains a lot of information.
• We also communicate via email and text messages.  Please can you ensure that your contact details are all up to date.      

 Download Links & information

School Jotter App – Download now – Registration codes will be sent to parents during the first week.

SCOPAY (Online Order/Payment) – Log-in details will be sent over Summer – once received, please register, and select School Meals up to the October Half Term.

Pupil Premium Form (in starter pack)

Studybugs – We will notify you when you can register over Summer.

Register with Cool Milk – Milk is given to children at morning break times.

SIMS Parent Lite App – This app allows you to check if the details we hold on our records are up to date. You can amend any changes via the app. You will receive an invitation email in September. (Apple store) (PlayStore)