What an exciting creature-filled week we have had in Reception as part of our ‘Beastly Beasties’ topic.
This week, we have been looking at the story of ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ by Eric Carle. We sequenced the order of events in the story then practised our literacy skills by writing a sentence about what he had eaten. We learned about caterpillar life cycles; how they start as an egg, pop out as a caterpillar, become a chrysalis and then they can transform into a beautiful butterfly. We were fascinated to find out that Eric Carle used the wrong word to describe one of the stages of the caterpillar’s lifecycle as only moths build cocoons out of silk and plant matter. Butterflies become a chrysalis and develop a hard, camouflaged exterior. On Tuesday, each class received a batch of five tiny caterpillars. We are very excited about monitoring their growth and seeing them go through metamorphosis to change into butterflies.
Our tadpoles have taken a long time with their metamorphosis this year and the children have been monitoring their growth since Easter. This week, an exciting development occurred. Some of our tadpoles have grown tiny back legs and are beginning their journey to transform into froglets. Everyone enjoyed spotting the tadpoles with legs and drawing them.
In mathematics, we have been comparing numbers using the vocabulary of more, less, fewer and equal. Last week, we started using Rekenreks which were a little tricky. The children are now much more confident using them and did an excellent job comparing amounts and finding out how much more or less different values were from each other.
