Diamond Class

Welcome to Diamond Class, our Reception year group.

I am Mrs Fearby, your child's Reception teacher and I am also the Early Years Lead, your children will also be supported by Mrs Wharton and Mrs Sutherland throughout the week.

We are a happy Hetton family!

PE day is Wednesday

Library day is every other Wednesday

Take a look at our plan for learning in Autumn One 2025.

Week beginning 10th November 2025

Autumn Two Week Two

Anti-Bullying, Remembrance Day, A Visit from the Dentist, Michael Rosen Day and Children in Need…what a week!

Week beginning 3rd November 2025

Autumn Two Week One

Fireworks, Firepits, Four, and Half Term News.

Week beginning 20th October

Autumn One Week Seven

Pumpkin exploring, broom painting, spooky dancing, story sequencing…Hallowe’en is Coming!

Week beginning October 13th 2025

Autumn One Week Six

Let’s go the Dough Disco…then have a bedtime story!

As we are racing towards the half term holiday break, Reception have showed no signs of slowing down…

In Maths this week we continued with our new Number Sense lessons, we have learned about the ‘oneness of one and the ‘twoness of two’, expanding our vocabulary and making tables of one and two objects, we have also learned how to do a two handed snap when we see two - I wonder if we can do that at home…

For our Literacy this week we created a story map and learned actions for the story of Where the Wild Things Are, and we started sequencing the story using pictures, we know it really well, we could probably tell the story with no book by now! In phonics we are progressing well, and we will all have a short assessment job next week to see how well we are doing, and if we need to change which sound we are learning. 
 

We are on a mission to become experts with our fine motor skills, so we combined fun with fine motor this week and went to the Dough Disco! We used playdough and dance together to exercise our fingers and wrists, of course the children absolutely loved this, I have included some links to some playdough disco videos below if you’d like to try at home.

https://youtu.be/BOLR3pQt8zg?si=N7HzEX3Ct-7iK6fU

In PE we had our last Balance Bikes session, wow we were amazing! We even rode on a seesaw with our bikes! We were sad to say goodbye to Patrick from Wheel Education and made him a card with all of our faces in - he has said he will miss us, and definitely not forget us.

For Understanding the World we are still immersed in Autumn, learning about different fruits and vegetables you would find in the season, we ate Blackberries, and we have been making all things pumpkin, nature pumpkin faces and decorating white pumpkins. We have also experimented with different ways of making marks, and we have covered the walls and floor with materials and sheets, using paint in different ways to cover the white parts (and having loads of fun making a mess!) lots of new vocabulary was used while we played and painted, vertically on the wall, on the floor, on tyres and on giant Cardboard Autumn animals, what a lovely process.

We ended the week with a very Itchy Bear! We had our Bedtime Stories event in the Hall, drinks, biscuits, snuggles with our blankets and bears, looked through stories and then listened to stories from our grownups in school as well as parents. Mrs Fearby read a story about a very itchy bear and some of the adults and children joined in to make an itchy sound. This was to launch our Bedtime Stories bags. In Reception these will be coming home on a Tuesday, to be returned every Tuesday from next week, and will be a quality picture book to share at bedtime together. Happy Reading!

As always we enjoyed our own time to play lots, indoor and outdoor and really practise our skills. It is our last week in next week before half term and we will be going spooky for the week, learning all about Halloween traditions and creating crafts and reading spooky books, dancing spooky dances and eating spooky treats. 
 

Thank you as always for your continuing support.

Mrs Fearby, Mrs Wharton and Mrs Sutherland.

Week Beginning 6th October 2025

Autumn One Week Five

Let the Wild Rumpus Begin!

This week has gone by really fast for us all in Reception, we have packed so much in! 
 

In Maths this week, we completed lots of activities around capacity, then we moved on to pattern, we measured water in different containers, using language such as full, nearly full, empty, and half empty. We then looked at different types of pattern, we learned the word repeat, we looked at stripey patterns, spotty, and then patterns in movement and sound, such as stamping and clapping. We also enjoyed listening to ‘We Will Rock You!’ and stamping and clapping in time. In the provision, we made our own repeating patterns using different objects to stamp with in paint.

In Literacy this week, we focused again on our focus story of Where the Wild Things Are.
We found Max’s Bag again, he told us he liked things that started with the ‘p’ sound, and we sorted picture cards of things that began with the sound ‘p’and things that did not begin with the sound ‘p’, and we visited the library for a look around and listened to a story.

We have been looking again at Autumn this week, exploring natural resources, learning about storms and the impact of Storm Amy, and enjoying reading The Leaf Thief story.
We decided to open an Autumn cafe outdoors, making muddy lattes and pumpkin pies, and scooping out the guts of pumpkins to use the seeds. We placed orders, took money in the till, and made lovely drinks and food for the customers. We have had a lot of outdoor time, playing in the new areas, using the chalks, and also learning how to play playground games, such as 

‘What’s the Time Mr Wolf, and Duck, Duck, Goose.’

In PSCHE this week we talked about and role played what it means to have kind hands and how our actions can make people feel, and we sang the ‘feelings’ song, the link is below if you’d like to watch at home. 

Next week is our last week of Balance Bike training, we have done amazingly well in such a short space of time, every single one of us went over the ramp on our bike this week, even some of us that haven’t had much confidence before, Patrick from Wheel Education was so impressed!
 

Each week we focus on a different area of development for our fine motor skills, this week we were spreading, cracking and stirring! We spread buttery spread on our crackers for snack time, and then we made Monster Cookies for Max in our story, so he didn’t go hungry after being sent to bed with no supper…we cracked eggs, and we stirred a stiff cookie mixture,  they were a monster green colour with creepy monster eyes, we ate them then we finished off our week with a ‘Wild Rumpus’!

Thank you for your continued support, remember to check out your Class Dojo chat for your child’s Read, Write Inc. videos and that next week is our Bedtime Stories event on Friday at 2:30pm, we look forward to seeing you all there.

Mrs Fearby, Mrs Wharton and Mrs Sutherland.

Week Beginning 29th September 2025

Autumn One Week Four

More Wild Things, Wet Weather, Superhero Lunch, Dinosaur PE and Autumn Walks.

Welcome to Week Four in Reception, and while we’ve seen a change in the weather this week, it hasn’t stopped play in Reception!

We have been learning in small groups all about how to put on our school waterproof suits, this supports our physical development as well as our personal development, as we start to become more independent. It meant we could still enjoy the outdoor environment even when the weather is cold and rainy - as Billy Connolly says, there’s no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothing! 
All parents should have received their phonics videos on Class Dojo this week, to practise at home.

In PE we started our Dinosaur Dance unit. We flew like Pterodactyls, we stomped like Stegosaurs, and we tiptoed like Velociraptors. We also remembered what a warm up was, and we cooled down to a guided meditation. We had so much fun and learned lots about movement and exercise.

In Understanding the World this week, we immersed ourselves in the season of Autumn! We went for a walk around the school woodlands on the most beautiful morning, we painted using Autumn colours, and created leaf collage pictures of Hedgehogs and Squirrels by snipping and cutting leaves and the other natural material we found on our walk, after learning about these animals in Autumn. We had an amazing time, and we are starting to develop our knowledge and vocabulary all about the seasons of the year.

At lunchtime this week we had our school Superhero theme, which the children were really excited about, the lunchtime staff and Mrs Hill even dressed up to serve them, they were so impressed, one of our children found a golden ticket which meant he won a huge novelty cupcake, he was so proud and had a smile to match the size of the cupcake!

In Maths this week, we have been looking at grouping objects into sets, and comparing sets to see which has fewer than, more than and less. We have been using Autumn natural materials to sort and group, as well as practising our counting skills and comparing the mass of objects.

An important part of our curriculum is embedding the skills of Oracy, to enable our children to develop and speak fluently and confidently. This week, Lara brought in a Sunflower, and she stood up in front of the class and told us about it, and she also answered some questions her friends had for her, we then looked up sunflowers on the web, and learned some facts about how they grow, and about how Bees help them to grow. Thank you for sharing, Lara.

In Reception this year we are supporting our children with their fine motor skills by planning a progressive curriculum each week, practising different skills. This week it was pulling and tearing, we all had a go at pulling balls from sticky lines, and helping the teachers in school recycle paper by tearing all the scrap paper from the printer room up for them. All of these activities strengthen our fingers and wrists, and get us ready for writing.

Next week we are moving on to Cracking, Stirring and Mixing, baking Monster Cookies, get ready for some messy uniforms!

As always, thank you for your continuing support to help your children achieve and be the best they can be.

Mrs Fearby, Mrs Wharton and Mrs Sutherland.

Week beginning 22nd September 2025

Wild Things!

Well Week Three started with a bang this week, as we began with our first formal sessions of phonics, after Wake Up Shake Up every morning, we met Fred the Frog, learned how to ‘say the sounds and then the words’, then we learned the sounds m/a/s and d, how to say them, how to recognise them and how to write them, and because that wasn’t enough, lots of us had a go using the sounds in our play and in our Literacy group time…great job everyone!

In Literacy this week we were amazed to find that someone had been into the Hall before us, and left a trail behind…we found footprints, green fur and a bag labelled ‘Max’s Things.’ Inside the bag was a book called ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ and lots of things in the bag started with the sound /m/, which we knew from phonics so we were really good at spotting them. We worked out that the bag was from Max, and we read his story. We rolled our eyes, we roared our terrible roars and we gnashed our terrible teeth, and we showed our terrible claws! We promised Max that we would work on some job he will leave us every week that relate to our new focus story. Thanks Max! 

We started our RE group times this week, focusing on how special we are, and how people believe that we are special to God. We each chose a picture of a new friend, and talked about why they were wonderful. ‘Bonnie is wonderful, because she is good friends and plays with me.’ Zack. ‘Tahlia is wonderful because I love to sing with her!’ Scarlet. ‘I like playing with Olivia, she is wonderful because she is lovely’. Bonnie.

During our play this week as usual this week, we have had our fine motor skills workshops in the environment, to get our fingers and wrists ready for writing. This week we have been pulling and squeezing, and we used clay to support this, pulling, squeezing, rolling, and we have created snails, slugs and faces, happy and sad. We learned all about how to use the clay tools, and used our wrists to roll and our fingers to pinch and squeeze….its a dirty job but someone’s got to do it! We also created a snipping and cutting station together, we cut and snipped along lines, and chopped up pages of flower petals and magazines.

For PE this week, as well as having the Balance Bike training again with Patrick, we focused on rules of the Hall, warm ups, cool downs and following the rules of games. We played Duck, Duck, Goose and chased and caught each other  according to the rules of the game, we had lots of fun and we were all hot and bothered and out of breath by the time we were finished!

In Maths this week, we continued to use the White Rose Maths scheme of work, we looked at matching pictures and objects identifying sets, in this small step, children are introduced to the concept of matching. They will start by matching physical objects with other physical objects, then move on to pictures, we are also introduced to the concept of identifying sets of different objects that go together such as things to make a lunch. Mrs Hill came to work with us and we told her what she needed to make a good lunch, and what would not make a good lunch, we had lots of fun and learned new vocabulary such as match, same, different, set, group, and sort. 

We loved working with Jigsaw Jennie this week as part of our personal and social learning. We learned all about feelings and how to identify them, we sorted different ones using photographs and discussed them together, we also learned a new song T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R as one.

As always, Reception's most important work is playing, inside and outside, using our senses, being curious and developing our physical skills, and the children are becoming adept at this already!

Next week is another busy one, thank you for your continued support which is always appreciated, and please please remember to put names on clothes!

Mrs Fearby, Mrs Wharton and Mrs Sutherland.

Week Beginning 15th September 2025

Balance Bikes, Parachutes and Jigsaw Jennie.

Welcome back to everyone for the second week of our Autumn term, and we have packed a lot in this week…as we will every week! We have enjoyed taking part in more group times this week, talking amd sitting together as a whole class and on smaller groups, as well as enjoying plenty of time to play and enjoy our school environments.

Understanding the World this week took the form of exploring Autumn and seasonal change. We discussed the seasons, drew our own seasons wheel and talked about signs of Autumn such as Conkers, Pine cones, Acorns and the changing colours of the leaves before they fall from the trees. We learned some new words and phrases and explored Conkers using our senses of sight, touch and smell. Some of them were still in their prickly cases! We also learned a new seasons song. As well as this we learned about houses and homes, and drew a map with some of our own houses on, to drive the trucks and cars to.

We also found a common lizard in our outdoor area, it was a bit cold so we gave it to Mrs Hamilton to look after in the office and when it was warm, she released it into the wild!

For our Physical Development this week we spent a lot of time outside, and we also took part in PE games in the Hall. We learned about why a warm up is important, and we learned how to use the parachute to play games, we played cat and mouse, and followed instructions, we had so much fun!
This week saw the start of our Balance Bike sessions with Wheel Education this week, Patrick was really impressed with us all, he said we were amazing cyclists! We learned about the bikes, how to stop and go, use our brakes, and we ‘crossed the river’ lifting our feet, it was amazing, thank you to Wheel Education for teaching us for the next five weeks.

In PSCHE we learned about Jigsaw Jennie and about how important what we think and feel is, by describing our favourite toys. We had lots of fun and enjoyed spending time with Jogsaw Jennie.

We shared number songs and rhymes together to support our mathematical learning this week, as well as this we started our Number Sense maths scheme, learning all about the ‘oneness of one’ and snapping the number.

Thank you for your support this week, the children were so tired when they left us tonight, they have had a good week making new friends, playing, and trying lots of new things!

Mrs Fearby, Mrs Wharton and Mrs Sutherland.

Week Beginning 8th September 2025

Welcome to Reception!

Welcome to Reception 2025 for our amazing children and families, and welcome back to our gorgeous Nursery children from last year, we were so happy to have everyone join us this week!

We have had a fantastic start to the new school year! The first week has been full of smiles, laughter, and settling in as our children explored their new classrooms, made new friends, and began to build routines that will help them thrive.

Our youngest learners have enjoyed exploring the indoor and outdoor environments to help them feel comfortable and confident - from outdoor adventures to imaginative role-play, it's been a joy to see their personalities shine through. We have really enjoyed learning new songs about our body parts, our faces and also movement songs to support our listening skills.

As well as supporting these skills we have also been giving our fine motor skills a real workout by smashing and mashing berries, vegetables and dough, and enjoying cutting and chopping (and eating!)

Some of the highlights of the week included creating our families using stones and discs and naming who lives in our house, making handprint keepsakes for our first week in Reception and drawing our self-portraits, giving children a chance to express themselves and make something special to mark the beginning of their journey this year. These lovely creations will be treasured reminders of how much they’ve grown by the end of the year, and should be coming out to grown ups next week when they are dry. We have also enjoyed going through our summer memories bags with each other in circle time and talking about what we got up to. If you haven’t sent yours in yet you still can!

We have also introduced school lunches this week, and it has been a delight to see so many children enjoying healthy, balanced meals together.

Lunchtimes have been full of chatter and new friendships, helping to build a real sense of community.

Well done to all of the children for settling in really well, it’s going to be a great year.

PE will start next week. The children will need to come in their PE kits on Wednesday which they will wear all day.

Please remember to put names in all clothing!

We are so looking forward to next week and our full days in until 3:20pm.

Thank you for all of your support, Mrs Fearby and the Early Years team.