Welcome to Reception 2025 - 2026!

Our new cohort of children have settled into St Oswald's smoothly and are already enjoying the learning environment to the fullest!

We are currently learning about our three school rules, which you can talk about at home too..

• Be Ready - children are practising how to listen carefully and respond to each other
• Be Respectful - children are trying hard to use their manners, be polite and kind to people, places and things and to be honest
• Be Safe - children are learning how to look after our bodies physically and mentally.  We will be continuously supporting children to adopt healthy lifestyles and eating habits as well as helping them develop emotional literacy and adopt effective self regulation strategies

Our phonics journey is underway and children will soon be reading ready - look out for our reading workshop dates that will be coming out soon to help parents get to terms with what reading looks like in reception.

Reading Workshop for New Parents:  Coming Soon!

Our Curriculum

Our curriculum is designed to be flexible so that children's unique interests are supported.  In planning our curriculum, we aim to ensure children are well prepared for their transition and progression into year one.  We recognise the use of clear, focused learning intentions as an effective tool in gaining intended learning outcomes. The thematic, objective-led planning is underpinned by the systematic teaching of the skills required for children to learn, creating the firm foundations for Key Stage One and beyond.  Our learning environment is language rich, as practitioners provide supportive and reactive interactions to ensure that learning is instantly captured and enhanced. These ‘in the moment’ interactions provide instant or planned next step activities.

Forest School

Every Thursday at 1:30pm until 3:10pm

Children love to get stuck in with digging, bug hunting, den building and cooking in the mud kitchen.  Parents are asked to bring children to school in the morning ready for forest school and bring waterproofs and wellies in a bag - so leave your school uniforms at home.

PE

Our PE days are every Friday morning.  Children will get changed at school so make sure they have their kit ready.  It is best to name all items - even pumps!  We support all children to do this as independently as possible and celebrate their successes (this might be why their top is back-to-front sometimes).  

Unique You!

Every Friday at 1:15pm

Each week one child will be selected to take home our 'unique-you box' and bring it back on Friday ready for small class celebration of being unique.  We would like children to carefully consider items that they would like to share with the class to reflect their unique characteristics, likes, dislikes, interests and skills.    These could be photographs, certificates or items that are meaningful to the children.  Children are encouraged to share what they have brought in and to talk about what make them 'them!'.  The class are always very keen to ask questions and have their turn!

Outside gates open at 8:35am

Classroom doors open at 8:40am

Register 08:45am

Doors close at 08:45am

Children arriving after 08:45am should enter via the main school office.

Nursery Classroom

Children should enter via the nursery doors at 8:45am.

For half days in Nursery, our morning sessions finish at 11:45am and afternoon sessions open at 12:15pm.  Children being collected and dropped off at these times should do so at the main office.

Healthy Eating

Here are some quick guides to keep your children healthy. We encourage healthy eating at school and here are a few ways you can encourage healthy eating at home too. 

Reception and Nursery Open Day

Thank you to all parents that attended our last open day.  It was a great turnout and I hope you enjoyed it too.  We run workshops throughout the year to support parents on how to support children at home.  If there is a workshop you would like me to consider, please let me know and I'd be happy to oblige. 

This year we aim to run:

Ready Steady Read - a workshop for parents on how to support reading development in the early years

Fun Foundations - A workshop for parents on how we develop pre-writing and writing skills in the early years and what simple things you can do at home to develop other vital foundational skills such as number sense and calculation in the early years and how you can support at home

Now We're Talking - A workshop to help parents understand how we develop language and communication in early years and strategies you can do at home to support this too