Reception 

Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all. 

- Aristotle

Please visit our ’Welcome to Penwortham' website for our transition meeting slides and more information.

Welcome to Reception at Penwortham! Our vision is for children to have the best possible start to school life and to ignite the love of learning that will be so important throughout their lives. Wellbeing is at the heart of what we do at Penwortham. We help children to form positive friendships with their peers and strong, nurturing relationships with their teachers. We encourage them to understand their own feelings and those of others. Children learn to listen to others, express themselves well and have resilience in the face of a challenge. We support children to be independent and engaged learners. We want every child to make good or better progress from their starting points and carefully plan our curriculum to ensure this happens. Our outcomes at the end of Reception are consistently above National and Local Authority averages. 

Our learning environments are stimulating and challenging for children with lots of exciting opportunities and experiences. In Reception, play is a very important part of your child’s development and most learning will be introduced through a mixture of carefully planned play, some adult-led focused activities and carpet sessions. Our staff are knowledgeable and experienced and know how to develop children's learning, and we are fortunate to have a qualified Early Years Practitioner in every Reception classroom alongside the class teacher. 

The overarching principles of the early years (Early Years Statutory Framework, 2025):

• Every child is a unique child, who is constantly learning and can be resilient, capable, confident, and self-assured.
• Children learn to be strong and independent through positive relationships.
• Children learn and develop well in enabling environments with teaching and support from adults, who respond to their individual interests and needs and help them to build their learning over time. Children benefit from a strong partnership between practitioners and parents and/or carers.
• Importance of learning and development. Children develop and learn at different rates.

We look forward to working in partnership with you throughout the year and value the important role you play in your child’s learning. 

Meet the team

Mrs Redgrove is the Early Years Lead at Penwortham.  Miss Dennis and Mr Mahamed support across the year group.

What we do and when

Autumn 1 learning overview

Autumn 2 learning overview

Spring 1 learning overview

Spring 2 learning overview

Summer 1 learning overview

Summer 2 learning overview

Our learning

Autumn

We have had a fantastic start to the term with our 'Marvellous Me' topic. We are enjoying getting to know each other and settling into our new classes. We read 'I like bees, I don't like honey' by Sam Bishop and shared our own likes and dislikes. We have been learning about the Zones of Regulation and did an experiment to show how it feels to be in the Blue, Green, Yellow and Red zones.

We have been so excited to see our new outdoor area which was completed over the summer holidays! 

There are lots of new routines to get used to, such as having school dinners in the dinner centre. We are taking on so much new information every day and our teachers and parents are so proud of us! Well done Reception. 

Last year...

Summer

Our Topic for Summer 1 was 'Blast off into Space.' We loved having a Planetarium visit us at school and learnt so much about the solar system, planets, stars and moons. We read lots of great books about space, including 'Goodnight Spaceman' which was the first book to be read for a bedtime story in space, by Tim Peake at the International Space Station. We learnt about life on the International Space Station, including how the astronauts wash their hair and sleep! 

Spring

During the Spring term we loved our 'Our World' topic, where we travelled all around the world. A highlight was meeting our school French teacher during our week learning about France. She taught us some French songs and how to greet each other in French. We made cheese straws inspired by French pastry.

We also learnt about Brazil, including the Amazon rainforest and the football team! We spent a week focusing on Norway and learnt about the arctic circle, and a week learning about Australia.

Autumn

This half term our topic is 'Let's Celebrate.' We have learnt about lots of different festivals and celebrations including Diwali, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah and Christmas. 

The children made safety posters to tell others how to keep safe on Bonfire Night and made beautiful firework pictures. They enjoyed making lanterns and designing Mehndi patterns during our Diwali week. When learning about Kwanzaa, we made traditional Mkeka mats by weaving paper together. 

We've had the chance to do lots of baking, including making mango lassi and decorating rice cakes for a party. 

The children have settled in so well in their first couple of weeks. We have been reading the whole school book, 'The Spaces in Between' and enjoyed a visit from the author, Jaspreet Kaur. 

We are getting to know each other, our classrooms and outdoor area. Our topic this half term is 'Marvellous Me' so we are talking about our likes, dislikes, interests, hobbies and families.

The weather has given us lots of opportunities for learning and we enjoyed making kites to fly outside! Ms Maggs has started doing pottery with group of children and we are creating our own owls to represent our class names.

How can you help at home?

You can encourage your child to be independent in things like putting on their coat, eating with a knife and fork or organising themselves before leaving the house. 

Please read with your child; this can be done using the phonics book and the story book your child brings home weekly from school. Please record any reading at home in your child’s reading record. 

Please keep us updated on Tapestry about your learning at home. We love to see photos of what you have been up to and hear about fantastic experiences. We really enjoy seeing you comment on what your child has been learning at school. We will also post phonics videos to show you how you can support with phonics at home.

We encourage you to practise writing in purposeful ways, such as writing diaries over the holidays and writing shopping lists or letters. We have put together the key words covered in Reception on a one page sheet and as a printable resource. Please get your child to practise reading and writing these.

Useful Websites

• There are some great activities on ICTgames.
• CBBC's Numberblocks is a fantastic programme for showing a range of number skills

• If you have access to an iPad, the Sounds-Write app is great to download

• Oxford Owl has some books to read on the iPad - login details are on Tapestry

• Epic Reading has a great online reading library
• Earth Cubs is a fantastic resource to teach children about sustainability.

Join our community

Do you have skills, knowledge and have lived experiences that could be beneficial to our pupils at Penwortham?  For example, you may be a practising Buddhist or be of the Windrush generation. Your line of work may involve promoting sustainable living (for example) or you may have links to people who would be happy to run professional development sessions for members of Penwortham Primary School.

 If so, please sign up to the Penwortham community!

 Thank you