Our Learning 2026-27
Autumn 1: (September) 2025
We have started school!
All the teachers would like to thank the new boys and girls of Reception 2025 for settling into Reception life so well. They have embraced new routines, friendships and classrooms with enthusiasm and a determination to achieve.
🍂 Autumn 1: September 2026
🌟 We Have Started School!
A huge welcome to our wonderful Reception children of 2026!
We are so proud of how brilliantly the children have settled into life at school. From exploring their new classrooms to making new friends and learning exciting new routines, they have embraced Reception with enthusiasm, confidence and big smiles!
🧥 Becoming Independent
We have already been busy learning how to recognise our own names on our:
- 🧥 Coat pegs
- 📁 Box files
- 📚 Reading folders
We are becoming more independent every day and learning to look after our own belongings.
❤️ Happy, Safe and Ready to Learn
Our children have worked together to create their very own class rules. We thought carefully about how we can help everyone to feel happy, safe and ready to learn.
We try hard to make good choices, be kind to our friends and always try our best. When we do, we love seeing ourselves move across the zone board! ⭐
📖 Our Reading Adventure
Our reading journey has begun!
Sharing books and Little Wandle books are now going home, and we are working towards collecting 5 reading signatures each week. Reading charts are checked every Monday, and children who have completed their reading can earn a stamp! ⭐
A little reminder for our grown-ups:
Please have a careful look at the RED Reading Challenge letter and help us to keep our Vaynor Reading Promise.
📕 Little Wandle books:
Returned on Monday → New book sent home on Thursday
Happy reading, everyone! 📚✨
✋ Funky Fingers at Work!
Our fingers and thumbs have been working incredibly hard!
We have been strengthening the little muscles in our hands through lots of exciting Funky Fingers activities, including:
- 🟡 Playdough
- 🧵 Threading
- ✏️ Pencil control activities
- 🔤 Name writing
- 🤲 Lots of squeezing, pinching and manipulating!
We are working towards developing a confident dynamic tripod grip by using our special “pinchy fingers!”
🔢 Marvellous Maths
In Maths, we have been exploring numbers in lots of practical and exciting ways.
We are learning to:
✨ Subitise – recognising how many objects there are without counting
🔢 Recognise and order numerals
☝️ Develop one-to-one correspondence
🔄 Create and continue repeating patterns
🎵 Sing number songs and rhymes
We love learning through games, songs, practical activities and lots of exploration!
🧸 Meet Walt!
There is one very special member of our Reception class who helps us with our learning..
Walt the puppet helps us to think about what we are learning each day. He can be a little cheeky sometimes, but we all enjoy finding out what he has to say!
🌈 Our Topic: Marvellous Me!
This half-term, our exciting topic is:
🌟 MARVELLOUS ME! 🌟
We will be learning all about ourselves, our families, our friends and the wonderful things that make each of us unique.
Through stories, discussions, creative activities, songs, play and exploration, we will be discovering just how special we all are.
💭 We will be asking questions such as:
Who am I?
What makes me special?
Who is in my family?
What do I like to do?
How can I be a good friend?
We cannot wait to share all of our adventures with you throughout the half-term! 💛
Characteristics of Effective Learning in Reception
The characteristics of effective learning describe the behaviours we use in order to learn.
At The Vaynor First School we use our 3 dinosaur puppets to support our learning.
We have the:
Exploraptor
The Exploraptor helps us to play and explore
Tryceratops
The Tryceratops helps us to try very hard and concentrate on our learning.
Thinkosaurus
The Thinkosaurus helps us to think about our learning, have ideas and make connections.