Reception Adventures: Beginning to explore Food, Faith, and Farming!

Hello Reception Parents,

This week in Reception has been a true introduction to our school Food, Faith, and Farming Fortnight! Our learners have been busy exploring the world of farms, discovering where our food comes from, and learning through play, stories, and hands-on activities. From visiting imaginary farms through the story Farmer Duck to designing packaging for pumpkin soup, the children have shown curiosity, creativity, and teamwork at every turn.

This week in Phonics, we continued our exciting journey into phonics, learning the sounds ‘e’, ‘l’, ‘h’ and ‘r’. The children have been practising recognising these sounds in words, as well as writing them on our whiteboards. It’s wonderful to see their confidence growing as they begin to spot sounds all around them. I have attached a QR code to the end of this blog if you would like to continue this learning at home! 

On Tuesday, all children were invited to Drawing Club, where we combined our love of storytelling and creativity. We read the story Farmer Duck with lots of drama – asking, “How goes the work?” and inviting the children to join in with voices.

We also explored special words with actions:

• Quack – flap wings and quack loudly

• Plough – mime pushing heavy soil

• Weary – droop shoulders and sigh

We finished with a fun “What if…?” activity. We asked the children: What if Duck could ask for magical help? The ideas were incredible – from a magic plough to a talking scarecrow or even a robot sheepdog! The children’s imaginations really shone.

Special Visitor – World Sight Day:

On Tuesday, to celebrate World Sight Day, we were very lucky to be visited by our school friend Ashton. He taught us all about our eyes, the importance of getting them checked, and how eyesight can vary between people. The children were fascinated by all the facts and demonstrations.

In maths this week, Reception have been learning about composition of numbers 1-4. Using sentence stems like “1 and 1 and 1 equals 3”, the children are starting to understand how numbers can be made of smaller parts. We used cubes to practically build numbers 1-4, seeing how adding 1 each time changes the total. It was lovely to see their confidence in manipulating numbers grow.

Understanding the World – Farms & Farming

As part of our whole-school Food, Faith and Farming Fortnight, the children have been learning all about farms and farming. They have explored where food comes from and the role of farmers in our communities.

This week in Cooking, we explored what makes good packaging for food. The class worked together to create a whole-class design for our very own Pumpkin Soup packaging, imagining it on supermarket shelves. Creativity and teamwork were definitely on display!

And of course, Reception have had a wonderful time exploring all of the resources during Adventure Time, our independent learning session. It’s fantastic to see them making choices, developing new skills, and collaborating with friends.

It has been a truly engaging week in Reception, and we are so proud of all the children for their curiosity, enthusiasm, and creativity.

Reminder of events in the upcoming week:

We’re excited to invite all our Reception families to join us for our POW Family Harvest Celebration next Friday, 17th October 2025!

This is a multi-faith and no-faith harvest celebration, and we look forward to welcoming families to share in this special event together.

🌾 EYFS and KS1 Assembly: 10:30–11:15

🌾 KS2 Assembly: 09:15–10:00

Our Reception children will be taking part in the EYFS and KS1 celebration, and we’d love to see as many families as possible join us to celebrate the season of giving and to support children in their class contribution and celebrations. 

This year, Reception will be joining in with the harvest celebrations, beginning with a class trip to Maiden Castle Farm on Tuesday 14th October. Please ensure that your child comes prepared with suitable footwear, such as wellies, and a waterproof coat, as the weather can be unpredictable at this time of year.

During the EYFS and KS1 Assembly, Reception will be performing our harvest celebration song, which we have been learning in class over the past few weeks. We are excited to share our performance with you all on this special day.

In addition to our trip, the children have been working hard in their weekly cooking lessons, building up to making their very own class pumpkin soup! We’re excited to share this soup with families and friends during our Harvest Celebration and hope the children will enjoy talking about everything they’ve learned and created in the lead-up to this special event.

As part of our harvest celebrations, we’ll be supporting Dorchester Food Bank by collecting donations of non-perishable, in-date basic food items to help those in need within our community. Dorchester Food bank provides vital support to families struggling financially, and your contributions really do make a difference.

Here are some items that can be donated:

Milk (UHT or powdered)

Cereal, pasta, rice, pasta sauce

Tea bags, instant coffee, sugar

Biscuits, snack bars, jam

Toilet rolls, toiletries

Tinned items: meat, fish, vegetables, soup, baked beans, fruit, rice pudding, sponge pudding

Instant mashed potato

Thank you in advance for your generosity and support — we can’t wait to celebrate the POW Family Harvest 2025 with you all next Friday!

We hope you have all had a lovely weekend and we are excited for what is instore for this busy upcoming week! 

Miss Godden and The Reception Team