This week, the children in Reception have helped their teachers build a bug hotel for our outdoor garden. The children have spent a long time collecting various natural materials like leaves and sticks to create a home for minibeasts. We have also planted wildflowers to encourage lots of visitors to our bug hotel. The children are now very busy looking after the seedlings and of course hunting for minibeasts. At Roebuck we are minibeast hunters!

It has been extremely busy in our Reception Classes with so much going on. A few highlights from the last two weeks have included learning about bubbles as part of science week. We wanted to find out if bubbles are always round. We had so much fun experimenting with water, washing up liquid, glycerine and different types of bubble wands. We even made our own wands out of pipe cleaners! We have also been learning about Easter and in our classes discussed how we celebrate Easter with our families. At Forest School we went on an exciting Easter egg hunt! Our teachers had hidden lots of different coloured easter eggs around the forest for us to find. We had so much fun finding them. We ended our Easter themed week by looking after real-life chicks! We found out how to look after them and the life cycle of a hen.

Well, done to all our children for another great term. We hope you all have a wonderful Easter. In Reception we are superstars!

This week in Reception, we have been very excited to learn about the Lunar New Year and welcomed in The Year of the Dragon. On Monday, we had an experience day where we took part in lots of different activities based on the Lunar New Year. The children learned dance moves using features of the Lunar New Year such as fans, fireworks and lanterns. The children were very creative and made their own lanterns which they decorated and put up in our classrooms. We also learned about the different types of food eaten in China and throughout the week the children made their very own noodle stir fry. At Roebuck we are Chefs!

This week the children have been very excited about our new topic 'Let's Explore'. We began our new topic by exploring our local area and created a mind map of what makes Stevenage special. We identified lots of places including, the football stadium, the cinema, the shops, the theatre, Marks and Spencer's, Fairlands Park and many more! We then looked at photographs that had been taken in and around Stevenage and tried our hardest to recognise where they were taken. We also used Google Earth to zoom into the school and different places around Stevenage. The children all enjoyed contributing to a class display of our local area and made different types of homes, shops and buildings. During our Child Initiated Learning time, some children have been busy writing independently about what they see in our local area. What a fun week it has been! At Roebuck we are geographers! 

This week in Literacy, we have been reading the text 'Jack and the Jelly Beanstalk'. Grandma Fantastic has been giving the children some tricky words, but the children have been using their robot arms to sound them out amazingly. We have been describing the taste of jellybeans and was even able to taste some to give us some ideas. The children came up with words like 'sticky, sweet, tasty, yummy, gooey'. We based our Forest School session on their Literacy book this week and made our very own nature-inspired beanstalk. The children were brilliant at following instructions and working together and were pleased with their finished creation. We look forward to seeing if anything travels down the beanstalk at next week's Forest School session! At Roebuck, we are nature explorers! 

This week has been another busy one in our Reception classes. The children enjoyed completing a set of 'choosing' challenges. These challenges included painting a picture of a pumpkin, tapping golf tees into a pumpkin and using paint rollers to paint the floor with water. All these challenges are designed to develop the children's fine and gross motor skills, which are vital for writing. This week, the children visited Forest School again and learnt about hibernating animals and pretended to be squirrels and hid acorns in the forest. The children also enjoyed collecting objects such as leaves, sticks, and plants to create a picture of a hedgehog. At Roebuck, we are Adventurers!