Reception
Miss Simpkin-Teacher/Keyworker
Miss Oxley-LSA
Start time – 8:40am Pick-up time - 3:15pm
Welcome to Reception!
Autumn 2, 2025
We are so excited to learn lots of new things this year and work together to support each child’s learning journey. If we can do anything to help or answer any queries, please contact us at foundationstage@cpa.dsat.education
Click the link below to find out what we will be learning through the year:
Reception Long Term Plan 25-26
Our theme this half term is ' Down In The Woods'
This half term we will be using our core stories to develop our use and understanding of new vocabulary words.
Core Texts:
Our 2 stories to focus for this half term are 'Gruffalo' and 'Stick Man. We will be learning new vocabulary within both of these stories.
Literacy & Phonics
The children will take part in daily RWI lessons to identify set 1 sounds and learn to orally blend and segment. Children will be given a phonics key ring including the sounds they have been taught and weekly speed sound formation sheets.
Please send your child to school with a book bag every day so that they can keep their phonics book, library book and key ring safe.
Children have now been assessed and grouped based on their recent assessments- copies of assessment details were sent home.
Book changing day is every Thursday
Thank you for coming to our Reception and Early Reading meeting- the presentation is attached below. Any questions, please ask!
Maths
At Canon Popham, we follow maths mastery approach. This half term, we will be learning about numbers to 5 and shapes with 4 sides.
These are the key facts taught throughout Autumn 2 to practise with your child at home:
Reception Key Instant Recall Facts-Autumn 2
Reception Key Instant Recall Facts- Autumn 1
Understanding the World
The Foundations Of:
RE – Understanding Christianity- Incarnation: Why do Christians perform nativity plays at Christmas? This Christmas material starts by connecting the baby Jesus with the adult Jesus and explores the idea that for Christians, Jesus is not just a baby, but God. We will be using the Bible to show that the nativity stories comes from stories within the Bible so children begin to make connections.
History– What are out favourite celebrations? This half term we will be learning all about celebrations and their origins including Bonfire Night, Remembrance Day, Diwali and Christmas. We will learn to describe events in some detail and to understand the past through settings, characters and events encountered in books read in class and storytelling.
Geography- What festivals do we celebrate? To recognise some similarities and differences between contrasting environments in our country and others who celebrate popular festivals drawing on knowledge from stories, non-fiction texts and maps. We will be learning to show the location of United Kingdom on the map and use maps/photographs to discuss and compare Doncaster with focus countries.
Science- What melts? Children will learn to name some materials that melt and describe what they observe during the melting process. We will observe first hand materials that melt in everyday situations and compare these to materials that do not melt. They will learn about the role of heat in the melting process.
Computing- We will be using our Purple Mash scheme to explore programming robots. We will be learning to describe a route that is in progress, be able to follow a route taken by another person, plan routes for a toy robot and input a program of 2 or 3 steps into a floor robot and then run the programme.
Personal, Social and Emotional Development
The Foundations Of:
PSHE– Relationships- Friends & Family
We will be learning to explore and compare the similarities and differences between families and to think about what makes a good friend. We will be exploring this idea further during Anti-Bullying Week 2025 which explores the theme 'power for good'.
We are a myHappy mind school- we will be introducing to the myHappy mind characters who will help us learn throughout the year. At the end of every myHappy mind session, we finish with our Let Your Light Shine prayer which you can find below.
Expressive Arts and Design-
The Foundations Of:
Music- Charanga- Chant to the animals! The children will be learning to understand that there are different ways to use our voice in music and that chants use the spoken voice rhythmically and musically. We will also be learning our new songs for our Nativity performance ready to show our grown ups.
Design & Technology- Cooking & Nutrition- Soup. Children explore the differences between fruits and vegetables using their senses (taste, texture, smell etc.). They listen to the story ‘The best pumpkin soup’ and discuss the key ingredients the characters used before developing a class-based vegetable soup recipe.
Physical Development
PE- Get Set 4 PE- Fundamentals Unit 2. Children will develop their fundamental movement skills through the topic of 'places and spaces'. Children will develop skills of balancing, running, hopping, jumping, travelling and changing direction. Children will develop fine and gross motor skills, through handling equipment. They will learn how to stay safe using space and understand and follow rules and instructions. They work independently and with a partner to complete tasks.
Our PE lesson will take place every Wednesday, children should come to school every Wednesday wearing their PE kit.
We will also be using our outdoor area to develop our gross motor skills. The children love to practice their running, moving, climbing and throwing skills and have access to our outdoor area every day to practice these.
Tapestry
We love see the things our children have been learning at home from your observations! A Tapestry challenge will be sent out each week on a Friday and you will have the rest of the week to complete this. If you need any support using your Tapestry account to get the most out of this wonderful platform, please ask a member of staff or use the tutorials below to help.
Information from parents meetings- feel free to drop us an email if you have any questions!
Tapestry parents information presentation
If you have any questions, please feel free to email us or give us a call!
Thank you for your support,
Miss Simpkin & Miss Oxley