Moving into Reception and Year 1 are two huge milestones for younger children. When the children start reception, they are start thinking of themselves as ‘big boys and girls starting school’ and likewise when children move from Reception to Year 1, the children face a new key stage, where the way they learn changes as learning becomes more formal.
We, at Sherfield, like to make a huge deal of these big transitions and one way we do that is by celebrating our first one hundred days in Reception and Year 1. Each day, as a class, we count from 1 each day we have attended school. This opens up wonderful opportunities within our maths learning.
The children, on a daily basis, count each day they have attended so later in the year, they are counting beyond 50! We practise counting backwards as well as counting in 2s, 5s and 10s. It also enables the children to understand that 100 is a big number by putting their learning into a real life context.
The children start to understand the place value of numbers i.e. what happens after we have 9 ones? This helps the children to recognise and access numbers within 100. When we reach to one days – we have a big party where we celebrate all things 100! They create artwork of what they will look like when they are 100, they build towers with 100 cubes and many more! Happy 100 days of school!