St James' Catholic Primary School'Where we belong, believe and achieve'.

Understanding the World

Reception 2023-24

Summer 2024

Spring 2024

We are investigating how much water plants need. We have planted runner bean seeds and will be giving the plants no water, two sprays of water, four sprays of water and six sprays of water to see which one grows best.

We explored fruits and vegetables, cutting and slicing them. We looked at the seeds inside comparing how big they were and also how many were inside.

We learnt about what seeds need and planted our own grass seed heads. We’re looking forward to giving them a hair cut!

We explored our topic of arctic animals and learnt they had a layer of blubber to keep them warm. We created a blubber glove using lard and we held ice to see if it offered us any protection. We discovered that we could hold the ice for longer when wearing the blubber glove.

Autumn term 2023

This term we have been learning about mapping skills. We followed a map of our outdoor provision to find our missing bear. We later applied our map reading skills on our walk to the local post box.

Reception 2022-23

Autumn term 2022

We went on a walk to explore the changes in our local environment during Autumn.

We have been learning about the Hindu celebration of Diwali.

We have been learning how to use simple maps. We used maps to locate hidden shapes in our outdoor area.

Reception 2021-22

Spring Term 2022

We have had lots of fun learning about, ‘Growth’ for Science week.

We loved being detectives! Following clues and making wanted posters to find Harry the Hedgehog who was missing.

We worked extremely hard to draw observational drawings of different animals.

We were discussing important people from the past. To link with our current discussion on Superheroes we learnt about Florence Nightingale. The children loved how she helped others and could remember lots of key facts taught.

We love exploring the natural world around us. This time we were looking for and discussing signs of Winter.

Autumn Term 2021

We acted out the story of Jesus’ birth.

We learnt the nursery rhyme ‘Down in the Jungle’ then used an interactive computer based program to drag their chosen jungle animal onto the background. They talked about the animals, the sounds that they make and they chose actions.

We made Diya lamps and Rangoli patterns to celebrate Diwali, the festival of light.

We went on an Autumn walk, collecting signs of autumn and marking off what we could see on our chart. We then used what we collected to make beautiful Autumn pictures.

We had lots of fun learning about our body. We drew around our friends then labelled different parts of the body,

We had lots of fun learning about road safety. We acted out a scene with the small world people and our road mat, showing how to cross the road safely.

As part of our Animals topic, we have had lots of special visitors in school...

We went for a walk around our school grounds to explore our senses. We then recorded what we could see, hear, smell, taste and touch.

Summer 2021

Autumn 2020

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