Link to Reception Home Learning Page

 

In the Early Years, children relish learning. They have a wealth of interesting experiences that provide well for their social, emotional and learning needs. Ofsted January 2020

 

If you are considering your child joining us in September 2022 please book an online meeting and virtual tour with Mrs Demarchi, our Early Years leader, via the school office. Mrs Demarchi will be very happy to tell you all about our school and to answer any questions you may have.

A warm welcome to the Reception class at St. Edmund’s School; especially those families who are joining us for the first time. We hope you all had a great summer and are looking forward to the school year ahead. The children have certainly been very excited and enthusiastic about coming to their new Reception class.

There is always a lot of information to pass on to parents at the start of a new term so please read this page carefully. If there is anything we have missed or that you are still unsure about please do ask.

The school day:

8:45 Gate is opened
8.50 School starts
11:30 Lunch time
2:55 School ends
2:55-3:00 Pick up children

 

Staff:

Reception Teachers Miss Hurley (Monday, Thursday and Friday)

Mrs Demarchi (Tuesday and Wednesday)
Teaching Assistants Miss Stokes

Mrs Devlin

Mrs Skeels

Mrs Painton

Mrs Astone

Miss Prior
Nursery Teacher Mrs Semple

 

Clothes

Children in Reception wear full school uniform. It is essential to send your child with a complete set of spare clothes to school as they do sometimes get wet or muddy when playing outside or have toilet accidents (This does not need to be uniform). The easiest way to manage this is to send a named bag of spare clothes to school which the children can keep on their cloakroom peg rather than carry them backwards and forwards each day. Although we keep spare clothes in school most children would prefer to wear their own clothes if they do need to get changed.

The children will play outside in all weathers and inevitably will sometimes get wet and muddy. Please ensure they have appropriate clothing for outdoor play (a warm winter coat, hat, and gloves for cold days; wellington boots and a waterproof jacket for wet days; sun hat and sun cream for hot summer days). It is vital that all clothing is labelled with your child’s name. It is not possible to keep track of un-named jumpers, coats, hats, and gloves.

In Reception, we encourage children to be independent with getting changed and putting on their own coat and shoes. Therefore, please consider buying shoes with Velcro fastenings and trousers and skirts with elasticated waists, as they are much easier for young children to manage.

 

Reading

All children will need a school book bag which can be purchased from the school office. They will need to bring their book bag to school every day as they will not always read on the same day. We aim to change reading books once a week but children may read to an adult in school more often than this. We hope that some parents or grandparents will be able to volunteer to come into school once or twice a week to listen to children read and to help them with their phonics and speaking and listening activities. If you have a spare afternoon and would be interested in volunteering please speak to Mrs Demarchi or Miss Hurley. The more help we have the more often the children will be able to practise their reading with an adult. You do not need any previous experience of working in a school in order to volunteer.

 

Curriculum

Do take a look at our Class Topic Plans Web page to find details of the exciting topic based curriculum we will be teaching over the academic year.

 

Food

Children are provided with a piece of fruit each morning and then may opt for a free hot dinner at lunch time. Many parents worry about whether their child will eat or drink enough during the day. It can take a while for children to get used to eating at school. We will always do our best to encourage them to eat and drink plenty during the school day. If you have any concerns about how much your child is eating or drinking at school, please do not hesitate to speak to the class teacher or any of the teaching assistants.

All children must bring a named water bottle to school with them each day.

 

Partnership with Parents

Working together with parents is an important part of early education. Children like to talk about their day at school and it is so much easier to respond to them if you have an idea of what they have been doing. We want all parents to be fully involved in their children’s learning.  Therefore, we try to offer as many opportunities as possible for parents to be involved with the Reception class. Due to the Covid- 19 restrictions, many of these opportunities are not available at the moment. We hope that as the year goes on, more opportunities will become available.

  • We keep a ‘Learning Journey’ for each child with samples of their work, photographs, and observations. This is published online using Tapestry. If your child is not already on Tapestry, we will ask you to sign up shortly. It is possible to add more than one relative. If you have other relatives that you would like to add, the class teachers can do this for you. We just need their email address. We encourage you to read your child’s Tapestry journal regularly and respond to the observations or to add observations of your own. A large part of every child’s learning journey at this age happens at home, so please share new experiences and achievements with us.
  • We ask that if you have any questions, worries or concerns or you are unhappy in any way about something that has happened at school that you inform the class teachers straight away. It is also important that you let us know anything that has happened at home that may have upset or unsettled your child or any changes to their usual routine such as being picked up or dropped off at school by someone different that day. Because we can’t meet face to face at the school door, we would ask that you contact us via our class email address reception@st-edmunds-rc.oxon.sch.uk
  • You will be invited to a parent/teacher meeting twice a year to discuss your child’s progress across the Foundation Stage curriculum. Due to current Covid-19 restrictions, it is likely that meetings will be held by video link or telephone rather than face to face for the time being.
  • We hope that some of our other parent partnership events will be able to be reinstated soon, such as Stay and Play sessions for parents, grandparents, and younger siblings, inviting parents in to listen to the children read and allowing parents to come in with their child at morning drop off to see the work they have been doing in class.

 

Donations
We ask for a donation of £5.00 per term for each child which will go into a fund to pay for cooking ingredients, art and craft materials, playdough ingredients and other classroom equipment. We also ask for regular donations of empty boxes and packaging for our junk modelling table and old pieces of wrapping paper, birthday and Christmas cards, ribbons, gift bows, shiny paper, sweet wrappers, and empty yoghurt pots for our cutting and sticking table.

We look forward to working with you and your child this school year.

Mrs S Demarchi and Miss C Hurley, Reception teachers