Reception's first full week back!

It's been lovely having the children back in class and they've certainly come back to school with a wonderfully positive attitude. When we went in the forest this week, we discussed New Year's Resolutions and talked about ways in which we would like to better ourselves. The children were very open minded and we had such lovely answers like, 'I'd like to help mummy with the laundry at home' and 'I'm going to start putting things in the dishwasher more!'. Other children said they wanted to be able to do forward rolls this year and try hard with their drawings. It was a lovely conversation in the log circle. 

We also introduced the children to our new Worldviews lesson. This was a lovely afternoon, where the children discussed the importance of friendship and answered the question, 'What is a friend?'. We made a 'friendship recipe', played games with our friends, where we focused on sharing and we made paper chains of our friends.

Reception Newsletter

This week in Reception, we have been looking at the story of The Rainbow Fish. The children have done some lovely writing and they have been using some wonderful vocabulary related to the book, during the school day. We've heard children discussing their 'hairband that is glistening' and talking about the 'shimmering leaves'.

In Maths, we have been looking at 2d shapes and the children have been playing patience with the cards and matching 2d shapes, as well as discussing the properties of simple shapes such as squares, rectangles, circles and triangles. 

In our visit to the forest, we have been looking at the wonderful colours around us - especially when we look at the leaves on the trees. We explored around the forest and found as many different colours as we could and displayed them all on coloured paper amongst the trees. It was a lovely afternoon.  

Our PSED focus was looking at how we are all special and unique. The children took part in a lovely activity, where they all looked at themselves in a mirror and discussed what they saw. We then talked about how/ why we are all different. During activity time, some children chose to take part in some colour mixing, where they experimented with adding light and dark to colours to try and make a replica of their hair colour. They were wonderful artists!

Year 1 Newsletter

 What a fantastic start to Year 1 we have had!  Our first two weeks have been filled with forest scavenger hunts, learning about our changemakers, Mary Seacole and Florence Nightingale, experimenting with new art skills and much much more!  We are so proud of how the children have settled into their new routines and lessons. They have been amazing!

'What is a forest?' scavenger hunt. 

Creating washes using power paint for the background of our portraits

1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th...

Using ordinal number to describe our colour preferences. 

'Red is my 3rd favourite colour.'

Nursery's Wonderful Week! Endangered animals, playdough hedgehogs and forest masterpieces!

 

Nursery has had a busy week so far…

We have been learning all about endangered animals and why it is important to help them as we don’t want them to become extinct. The Green Turtle won the vote with the Leopard and Orangutan in joint second place. Every child got their own vote, and they could see it tallied up on the whiteboard.

 

We have been making playdough hedgehogs in class. This has given us lots of opportunities to develop and extend our maths skills. The children were asked to roll a die and see whether they can recognise the number on the dots without counting (subitising), if this was tricky, they were asked to use 1:1 correspondence to touch each spot and count the numbers in the correct order. They then had to match the number on the die with the correct number of matchsticks (spikes) for their hedgehog. They had to do this a few times to make their hedgehog spikey!!

 

Before heading to the forest this week, we looked at some pictures of sculptures and artwork from an artist called Andy Goldsworthy. We spoke about him only using natural objects to make his art like sticks, stones and leaves. This was the inspiration for our own natural artwork. The children worked really hard at finding things they could use without picking leaves and flowers that are still growing. They knew they could only use things that had already fallen to the floor. The children used their Imaginations and were so enthusiastic saying..

“Mrs Rooney look at my Masterpiece” Ava

“This is a rainbow” Freddie

“It’s a blossom castle.” Charlotte M

“It’s the Great Pyramid of Giza” Edward

The children enjoyed using crayons and paper and rubbed them on to make tree rubbing pictures. I think you will agree they all look wonderful. Some children used their imaginations in other ways in the forest like riding horses, making superhero dens and creating houses for snails.

Snakes in the forest!

 Last week when the nursery children went to the forest, they helped find all the snakes that had escaped! There were 15! They listened to the story, 'The Gruffalo' by Julia Donaldson and were able to tell me that  the snake in the story lives in "a log pile house." Once the children found the snakes, they collected lots of stick, twigs and logs to make their own log pile houses for our escaped snakes. The children were able to link the snakes in the forest to a previous story we read about a girl called Miranda who brought a pet python to school. We spoke about how some people have pet snakes and some snakes live in the wild. The children were so excited about finding the naughty snakes and this encouraged lots of discussions around snakes. The children explored their gross motor skills in the forest by climbing trees and dragging logs to make snake houses. The forest is a great place for the children to use their imaginations, some of the children pretended they were playing the drums (wooden stools and sticks). Some children showed interest in finding mini-beasts that live in the forest. They tipped the logs upside down and found a range of mini-beasts including slugs, worms and woodlice. This supported conversation about how we treat and look after living creatures. The children understood it was not kind to stamp or poke them. This was a great link with our animal topic this term. We had so much ssssssnakey fun!  

Marshmallows and hot chocolate in the forest!

 This morning Moore class visited the forest and had a lovely treat of warming marshmallows on the fire and hot chocolate! We sang Christmas songs and even say Happy Birthday to Mrs Rogers.  We then had some free time to build our log creations (and cover ourselves in mud!) 

Kusama's forest afternoon!

 

This afternoon Kusama class had a wonderful time having Christmas in the forest!

All around us there were sparkles. We made dens for our elf Buddy, jumped around in the squishy mud and swung on the tyre swing.

We toasted yummy marshmallows on the fire. They were so gooey and delicious! 

We also sang songs around the campfire and enjoyed some scrumptious hot chocolate and cream.

What an amazing afternoon!
We would like to say a massive thank you to Mrs Rawding who helped us with the fire!