Autumn 2 Learning

Dragons are always an exciting subject to talk about!

For our themed learning, we are learning to use words related to topics to increase their vocabulary, to understand the difference between non-fiction and fiction and to write words for a variety of purposes using the sounds they know.

We read the story of 'The Paper Bag Princess'. The story is about a princess who has her castle and clothes burnt by a fierce dragon. He steals her handsome prince so she needs to rescue him. Princess Elizabeth needs to wear a paper bag and goes off through the forest to defeat the dragon and rescue the prince.

We use a story map to order the events of the story and use words and actions to retell the story.

We ask the question, 'Are dragons real?' Some of the children think that dragons are real and some think they are only in stories. We use reasoning to explain our thoughts.

We find a magical book called 'Dragonology' which looks real because it has emeralds on the front and 'real' scales inside. We use the book to find out about dragons.

We use our sounds to label the dragon's body parts. 

We read the story of 'The Egg'.

The story is about a boy called George who finds a large dragon egg. He looks after the egg until it hatches. Then he trains the dragon. Ask your child how George trains his dragon?

Following this, we come to school a find mysterious eggs which makes us wonder where they have come from. It is very exciting because they might be dragon eggs. It is even more exciting when we find a letter from Dorothy Dragon. 

Looking after the eggs is very exciting as we wait for the baby dragons to hatch ready for training. We use ideas from how Hiccup trained his dragon to come up with our own.

We teach our dragon to fly, eat fish, scare princess, fight knights and breathe fire and we use our knowledge of sounds to write about dragons; what they look like and what they do.

Because George rides his dragon to Dragon World, we come up with our own ideas about here we would like to fly to on our dragon and what they could do there.

From this, we learn that the place where the story happens is called the setting.

We also use the Dragonology book to learn how baby dragons hatch out of their eggs and sequence the events.

We do eventually find out that dragons do exist today and watch a clip about a Bearded Dragon and how to take care of them.

We compare a fact book about Lizards and Dragons to the Dragonology book. The fact book (non-fiction) has photographs whilst the Dragonology book has pictures like in a story book which helps us to eventually decide that dragons, like in the story books, do not exist because we have not seen a photograph of one.

After that, the eggs disappear and Reception receive a thank you letter saying, 'Thank you for looking after my eggs. One egg hatched his name is Frederick!' At the bottom of the letter is a photograph of baby Frederick which is amazing. Dragons must be real?!  What do you think?

Now we can use words related to topics to increase our vocabulary; understand the difference between non-fiction and fiction and write words for a variety of purposes using the sounds we know.

During our themed learning 'Where Does Our Food Come From?' some of our Reception children celebrated Diwali. Some children even had birthdays. There are lots of celebrations. We talk about what we celebrate and how people celebrate differently which leads us into our new theme, 'Why am I Special?'

For this theme, we are learning to; talk positively about ourselves, to show sensitivity to others' needs and feelings and to know about similarities and differences between themselves and others, and among families, communities and traditions.

We learn that we are special because we are all different! We talk about the different ways that makes us unique such as our family, how we look, speak, our beliefs and many more!

We talk about events that we celebrate as a family. We learn about birthday celebrations. We know that we celebrate by sending cards, giving presents, wearing our best clothes to parties, and eating special food. We have birthday cakes, with candles on and we hang decorations like banners and balloons. 

We make a party house in our role-play areas, make cards and write invitations so people can come to our parties. We plan menus and make food ready for the party. We play party games like musical statues and pass the parcel. We have so much fun finding out about celebrations.  

We learn that people celebrate in different ways. Some of our Reception children celebrate Diwali. We compare ways that we celebrate occasions like birthdays with ways that Hindus and Sikhs celebrate Diwali. 

We learn about similarities and differences between us and our friends. We look at our hair, eyes and skin colour and talk about how we are all special because we are unique. We use mirrors to look carefully to make self-portraits. 

We talk positively about ourselves and talk about what we are good at, what we like and dislike. We know that even though we like different things we can still be friends because it is good to be different.

We learn to talk about our feelings and how we show our feelings to others. We learn to recognise how our friends are feeling too. We can help them if they are feeling sad, ask what is wrong if they are feeling cross or ask them to play if they are feeling lonely. As we are all unique, we have different feelings at different times. 

We talk about watching the fireworks display for Bonfire Night and notice that we feel different emotions. There are always some of us who do not like the big, loud noises whilst some of us do.

Now we can talk positively about ourselves, show sensitivity to others' needs and feelings and  know about similarities and differences between ourselves and others, and amongst families, communities and traditions.

We can talk about how we are all unique and describe ourselves positively.