Things you learn about in Reception - what's normal?

[DestinationUnknown]

A friend's dd is at school in a different borough to my ds, they have both just started Reception. Her dd is very fired up and excited by the school assemblies which have been covering people such as Nelson Mandela, Florence Nightingale etc. Is this usual for YR children? As far as I can tell, ds doesn't even have assembly! Or learn about historical figures. I'm not sure where I would begin given the amount of context and thus explaining of related issues / concepts. I don't mind that he isn't doing this, or that friend's dd is, just intrigued about the differences between schools.

i suspect that your friends child is viewing a whole school assembly with performances by children in higher year groups - the topics you mention are not yrR topics butthey do appear later on

As cuppa says, dd sees the other years presenting on things like this. DD came home from school last week saying that assembly had taught them about 'humility'. Not sure how I'd even have begun to explain that to a 4yo.

Today in reception class, a nice man brought an animal transporter for them all to have a ride on. It was just back from the abattoir. This is eyfs Norfolk stylee.

They do topics like transport or nature or seasons. Or 'nothing' or 'can't remember' if you ask dd.

Thus far they did their own assembly on a recent theatre trip, they also go to assembly several times per week. Harvest festival tomorrow.

Several topics covered, "reading" books every night, small projects to do at weekends that are then expanded upon during the week.

They cook every Friday

This half term ds has done lots about the body and is on first name terms with most of his bones. He pretty much constantly sings a song about being deep down under the sea so I'm assuming they have been doing something about marine life too . Erm, a fair bit about Jesus (Catholic school) and then lots about numbers and they are starting on letters. Harvest festival assembly today had each class presenting something. Reception did the story about trying to pull up a turnip and the little mouse being the one who made the difference (ds was the little mouse, I may have almost sobbed) then there were ones about seeds growing into flowers and the story of Persephone and how the seasons came to be.

If the assemblies were on: Florence Nightingale, Ernest Shackleton, Nelson Mandela and Helen Keller I would think they must be at my kids school. Those are the houses. Reception has always started going into whole school assembly about Harvest festival, and then they play it by ear for that year group.

i don't know very much about what dd1 has been doing, other than that she went into the woods one day, and has acquired an understanding of how dolphins use echo location. I assume the two aren't linked, but she's being quite cryptic about the whole school business so I can't be sure.