Reception
Welcome to the Early Years Foundation Stage
Our Reception at Hillcrest Primary School is a creative, fun and warm environment to explore and learn in. We focus on subjects such as Communication, Phonics, Maths, Physical and Personal, Social and Emotional Development as these are the fundamental areas of Early Learning.
Our aim is to foster a love for learning through investigative play and structured teaching sessions. As well as learning new skills we work on becoming members of the Hillcrest community, form friendships and become more independent.
We focus on developing positive relationships to ensure every child feels safe, happy, confident and excited about learning.
Our EYFS teachers and Early Years Practitioners have varying degrees of experience - added together, we have worked with children for over a hundred years! We bring different skill sets, knowledge and our own unique experiences to help the children in our care learn and discover together to create a better world.
Lucy Newstead – Early Years Lead
Our Classes:
RLN Lady Gaga – Lucy Newstead and Tanya Miles
Why Lady Gaga Class?
“The only thing that we all know, that we all appreciate in one another is kindness, so this has to come before all things.” Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga is one of the bestselling musicians of all time. She is a trailblazer in fashion, beauty (inspiring young girls to believe that they don’t have to conform the incredibly difficult beauty standards that society has been inflicting on them), and philanthropy.
In 2012, Lady Gaga launched Born This Way Foundation, a non-profit organisation dedicated to empowering youth, embracing differences, and inspiring kindness and bravery (she herself was bullied as a child for being ‘different’).
Lady Gaga is also an outspoken activist, philanthropist, and supporter of many important issues including mental health issues, LGBTQ+ rights, HIV/AIDS awareness, and body image issues. She speaks against oppression of all forms and fights for everyone who’s ever faced self-doubt.
“Be you, and be relentlessly you. That's the stuff of champions”
RCB Maya Rose – Liz Caudwell, Wendy Bonner and Louise Dix
Why Maya Rose Class?
Mya-Rose Craig (born 2002), also known as Birdgirl, is a British Bangladeshi ornithologist and activist. In February 2020, she received an honorary doctorate in science from the University of Bristol, and is said to be the youngest British person to receive such an award.
She created the non-profit organisation Black2Nature to run nature camps for black and minority ethnic children. Her honorary degree was awarded for that initiative, and in recognition of her advocacy for visible minority ethnic (VME) children and teenagers.
Here's to a year packed with fun and learning!
The EYFS Team
Teachers - Mrs Newstead, Mrs Caudwell, Mrs Bonner & Mrs Howard
Early Years Practitioners - Mrs Dix, Miss Miles, Miss McNeilage & Miss Hough
Term 6 Newsletter
Welcome to Term Six! We can’t believe we are now in the final term of Reception. This has been such an action-packed year. It’s been amazing to watch the children grow and learn over the past 10 months.
This term we are becoming explorers and thinking about ‘What is a journey?’ With this enquiry we are revisiting maps, discovering oceans (and how to look after them), investigating flight, sorting, designing and making vehicles.
Our first book is ‘Lily and the Polar Bears’ where we are thinking about immigration and refugees.
We are learning about Amelia Earhart, designing and building through the story ‘Rosie Revere Engineer’.
June is Pride month, and to celebrate LGBTQ+, Hillcrest are having a Pride day on Friday 8th July – we are continuing to use books and conversations to explore this, including ‘Rainbow, a first book of Pride’.
In art, we have a focus on sculpture. Initially by learning about the artist Anthony Gormley and creating our own clay figure for the Hillcrest field project. Ms Bonner has arranged a visit from Helen Jacobs at the RWA who is bringing in a Hare sculpture for children to touch and discuss, followed by a drawing activity in response to the sculpture.
We are building on our transition to Year One, by meeting teachers, visiting classrooms and having conversations about new routines. From Monday 4th July we will be lining up in the playground (like the older classes do) in the morning. We will let you know the space at a later date.
We also have a fantastic trip lined up to visit Lower Stock Farm with Farm Link. The children will be able to experience a tour of the working farm and look at the life cycles and habitats of animals – this builds on from our enquiry last term. We would love to have some adult helpers so please get in touch with the class teachers.
RCB Thursday 23rd June
RLN Friday 24th June
As we are now in the summer term, we will (hopefully) see some hotter weather. On hot, sunny days, please apply sun screen to your children before school and provide a sunhat and water bottle.
Finally, we are after lots of recyclable materials this term. Packaging from shopping, boxes, tubes, plastic containers etc, as we will be building vehicles. Next week in music, the children are making shakers, so any yoghurt pots (or equivalent) would be great.
The Reception Team
Term 6 Overview
