It’s Finished!

The Reception Space Station

My role play area is finished and I absolutely love it! It was made entirely by my teaching assistant and it looks amazing! I can’t thank her enough!

The role play area for this half term is a space station. We have used a mixture between pictures and images from Twinkl and things that the children have made themselves. There are lots of speaking and listening opportunities as well as fine motor and construction.

The planets and the rockets hanging from the ceiling were all made by the children themselves. As you can see, the wall is interspersed with images of space from the internet.

We blacked out the windows to allow the children the feeling of being in space. Space images were placed on top to give the children the space experience.

An alien one of the children created, hanging from the ceiling. I want the children to know that if they create something amazing then it will be displayed.

The children have been very creative using their construction and fine motor skills to make some amazing aliens to show us.

Using some boxes we had left over from Christmas gifts, and some kitchen foil, we made this amazing computer for the children to use in the role play area. I saw some children using this computer, they were planning their trip on the space station. Very cute!

I made these badges for the children and I was recently handed one so that I knew I would be allowed into the space station to join the children for a Space Party! Very exciting!

The box for our space shuttle here was almost thrown away! I managed to nab it and it has become the space shuttle. Painted grey and with shapes put on the outside (to encourage shape language) has inspired some wonderful pretend play!

Space is one of my favourite topics so we obviously have some role play costumes and resources already in th classroom. The children have really enjoyed the topic and are even giving me some topic based writing examples!

Space Journal

A Bit of Everything

We use Learning Journeys in our Reception. Instead of using maths and literacy books, we collect key pieces of work to appear in scrap books to show how the children’s learning has progressed over time.

The Space Journal is going to be the feature piece of work in the Learning Journey for this term.

	The title page It’s important for children to individualise their work. This black and white page is emblazoned with the title however the space badge in the middle is available for children to stamp their own mark.
	Astronaut Passport This page explores the development of how children have improved on writing their names since the beginning of term and
	Non-Fiction Page In this page we can talk about facts to do with space, for example that there is air and gravity in space just not a lot of it. Children are invited to draw a picture of waht they intend to write about, and then write a sentence about that picture. Lower attainers could state, quite rightly, that Mars is red. Higher attainers could write about gravity or the order of the planets.
	Phonics Page This page encourages children to explore phonics. Obviously, aliens do not speak English. Children on this page are encouaged to make up words using the phonic sounds they know, and of course draw a picture of an alien in the middle box. Drawing topic based pictures encourages children to use topic based creativity, develops fine motor skills and drawing skills.
	Labelling and Creative Design A mixture between fiction and non-fiction, children are able to create their own space ship design. However, as they need to label their diagram, their images need to have a lot of thought put into them. This encourages thinking skills as well as fine motor and letter formation skills.
	Maths The alien friend that we are doing in school will be made out of clay, but you could use salt dough or modelling clay. We have free flow/creative time in the afternoons (as the little ones are so tired and losing concentration by the afternoon, especially after a big lunch) and our aliens will be made the previous week in our afternoon sessions. We will then use the morning maths lessons to measure, weigh and thoroughly assess our aliens. Their vital statistics will then be input into this sheet along with a small photo of their friend.

If you would like to use the the space journal, you are more than welcome to download the file, for free.

The Space Journal is intended to be done across the entire half term, one page a week. The children will be taking part in other activities and will produce other pieces of appropriate work and written work, however this would be their special topic work to appear in their Learning Journeys.

New Role Play Area

The Space Station

I think role play areas are my favourite! I do like creating these lovely spaces for the children to work in.

This term, it’s a space station!

It’s not quite finished yet,  but I think my TA has done such a fantastic job building it that I wanted to show you what it looks like already!

I have more photos of the details!