Weeks 4 & 5

For the next two weeks we are reading Jaspers Beanstalk by Nick Butterworth. We started by reading the book and then planting our very own beans, following the steps carefully.

   

We learnt about the days of the week and thought about what Jasper did with his bean on each day.

 

    

We went hunting in the woods for slugs and snails! Some of the children really surprised us with how brave they were catching them! We bought them back to class and put them into the tank to keep in the classroom for a few days.

     

We made our own snails using paper plates, tissue paper, googly eyes, felt tips, glue and scissors. We are getting so good at working independently :-)

                     

 Our child initiated learning has been full of exploring seeds and gardening equipment, building, mark making, enjoying the sunshine and much more!

 

             

We started our second week of Jaspers Beanstalk by using our fine motor skills to create our own snail trails. We used cotton buds and pva glue to follow along the drawn lines and then sprinkled them with glitter.

            

We made our very own beanstalk in class! Whilst out searching for slugs and snails last week, we found an amazing branch. This week we decorated it by using our scissors skills to make leaves and sticking them onto the branch. The finished product looks amazing!

      

We used our ever improving art skills to draw Jasper from the story. We were all super proud of the pictures that we created.

       

Week 3

This week we read the Traditional Tale Puss in Boots. It is a story about a young man who is left a talking cat by his father when he dies. The cat tricks the king into thinking that the young man is very rich and important, so that the king allows the man to marry his daughter.

We created our own pair of boots, using our fine motor skills to tear pieces of tissue paper to decorate them.

                      

We practiced our cutting skills. We cut along a straight line and then had to stop at the snail, ensuring that we all had a complete piece of A4 paper at the end of the activity rather than lots of little pieces!

 

    

We have been practicing writing our names again, either using our name cards, having the letter formation modelled for us by an adult or independently. We are really starting to see progress in their writing :-)

 

          

We have been practicing writing our numbers from 0 to 5. The children were incredibly resilient with this task as it was not easy! 

          

Our child initiated learning has been action packed this week despite the weather. We have been exploring in the woodland area, balancing, drawing, and making shapes using elastic bands.

 

              

Week 2

This week we have been reading Daisy eat your peas by Kes Gray and Nick Sharratt. The story is about a little girl who refuses to eat her peas. Her mummy tries to bribe her with a lot of different things like puddings, bikes, chocolate factories, wonderful holidays and animals! Daisy only agrees to eat her peas if her mummy eats her sprouts, so they both agree to disagree and eat pudding instead!

We thought about healthy and unhealthy foods. We talked about how we can have unhealthy foods but only in moderation. Our activity was to cut out healthy and unhealthy foods and sort them onto a paper plate.

                        

We had a food tasting session. The food we tried was red pepper, green olives, mushrooms, sweet pickle, pepperoni and mango. All the children made us so proud as they all at least tried some of the foods. Surprisingly, pepperoni was the runaway winner!

 

      

As part of our name writing practice, we had the letters of our names written on 'peas' which we had to cut out and put back in the correct order to make our names.

 

                    

We had lots of fun during our child initiated learning using the new science and nature buckets. We caught flies, spiders, slugs, ants and woodlice. We looked at them in the bug pots and then carefully released them back into the wild!

   

As an end of week treat, we visited the large play area on the top field! We had so much fun using the different equipment and are looking forward to spending more time up there in readiness for starting school in September :-)

            

Term 5 - Week 1

This week we have been reading Two Daddies by Gareth Peter and Garry Parsons. The story is about a child who is adopted by two daddies, and they have lots of adventures through reading stories. This has meant we have read lots of extra books this week.

We started the week by drawing our families.

   

We read Captain Flinn and the Pirate Dinosaurs. We then practised writing numbers on our gold doubloons before cutting them out. 

    

We read one of our class favourites The Snail and the Whale. We used the Pointillism technique to create some snail art.

          

We have started learning Phonics this week. We met Joe who lives in the phonics shed. We started by colouring in pictures of Joe, thinking carefully about what he looks like and what he wears. We read Joe's story, which gave us lots of actions to follow, so if your child starts chanting "clap clap, stomp stomp, brush brush, pat pat, pinch pinch, squeeze, knock knock" they are reciting what they have learnt! We have thought about what skills we need to be successful in phonics, looking, listening, thinking and taking turns.

 

  

Child initiated learning this week has been full of building, puzzles, singing, playing  instruments, teamwork, cooking and developing our fine motor control.

 

                 

Week 5 + 6

For the last two weeks of the term we are reading Aliens love underpants along with other stories from the series. This first story involves aliens coming down from space to steal our pants!

Our first activity was to create our own alien using playdough, googly eyes and pipe cleaners.

                      

 

We decorated some pants using ribbon, wool, coloured paper, sparkly material and glue.

 

                  

We looked at Google Earth and talked about what the earth looks like. The children were incredibly knowledgeable and knew that the blue was water, the green was where we live and the white was clouds! We then had a go at painting the earth.

 

                    

Parachute fun in PE!

 

   

We went Alien hunting around school! Some of the cheeky aliens were hiding really well. Even Mr Andrews helped us find one.

   

We baked fairy cakes ready to decorate on our alien dress up day.

 

  

Our child initiated learning had been jam-packed full of riding bikes, creating aliens, investigating the 'alien gloop', dancing and puzzles. What a great couple of weeks we have had :-)

 

         

Week 4

This week's story is all about a little fox who worries that if he changes or acts differently his mummy may no longer love him. She assures him that no matter what he does or becomes, she will always love him.

Our first activity was to think about our emotions and how they make us feel. We discussed happy, sad, angry and silly. We listened to pieces of music and moved our bodies to show our emotions.

 

   

We decorated a picture frame and put our family photo onto it.

 

              

We went up to the woodland area and explored it. We were looking for something beautiful to draw. Once we had found what we wanted to draw, we grabbed our clipboards and pencils and away we went!

     

  

         

We have been practicing our name writing this week. We are starting to see some real improvements :-)

          

Our child initiated learning has been incredibly busy again this week. We have been colour mixing, role-playing with pirate ships, climbing, building, threading and trying to build domino tracks.

 

              

Week 3

This week we are reading the story and singing the song Hickory Dickory Dock. The children thought the story was funny as there were lots of different animals running up the clock, including a crab, a snake and a bear!

Our first activity was to listen to the story, look at the clock that Mrs Jessop was holding up and then find the correct number of which "o'clock" it was. We were amazing at this and most of the children could find all the numbers from 1-12.

      

We made clocks by cutting out the hands of the clock, writing the numbers onto our paper plate and using  split pin to attach it all together.

                      

We played Bingo to practice our number recognition!

   

We had lots of fun with Mrs Jessop in PE this week. We practiced our ball skills in pairs, firstly rolling the ball to each other and then throwing and catching with our partners. We have some budding cricketers in Pear Trees as our throwing and catching is brilliant :-)

      

Cooling down after a very busy PE lesson!

   

Our child initiated learning has been filled with measuring, reading, cleaning, drawing, and making the most of the sunshine in the outside shared area with our friends from Peach and Plums :-)

                         

Week 2

This week we are reading the Traditional Tale of The Elves and the Shoemaker. The children enjoyed this story and thought the elves were very kind for making the shoes for the shoemaker and making him rich! They also thought it was a bit cheeky when the shoemaker made the elves some clothes, and they never came back after that :-)

Our first activity was to 'design' our own shoe.

      

We practised taking off our shoes and putting them back on again, making sure they went on the correct feet!

 

    

We practised our fine motor control by threading strings through hole-punched story-themed pictures. Look at the concentration on their faces!

          

We tailored our daily exercise around our book. We put on our wellies, jumped into paint and ran around the playground making lots of footprints. It was great fun and the children covered the whole of the playground!

      

We thought about size. We had to cut out the shoes and place them in order from smallest to biggest.

     

 We have had a very busy child initiated learning this week. We have been singing, dancing, playing instruments, painting, chopping, balancing, role-playing, and investigating!

           

 

Term 4 - Week 1

Welcome back to the new term Pear Trees, I hope you had a lovely break.

This week we are reading Supertato. We will being doing lots of activities based around the story. Our first activity was to make superhero masks. The childrens cutting skills are getting so much better with practice.

                  

We made our very own Supertatos using real potatoes, black paper, googly eyes, and pipe cleaners!

              

We thought about if we were superheroes what our costumes would look like. We had to think about the colour, whether we would show our faces or wear a mask, what we would wear on out hands and feet and whether we would have a logo.

    

In Maths we have been working on our number recognition and counting.

         

We have had lots of messy child intitated activities this week! We have had mashed potato and frozen vegetables in the water tray, flour and lolly sticks to mark make in, we have been chopping and snipping vegetables. We have also been dancing, building and creating.

              

Week 6

This week we are reading Chicken Licken. Chicken Licken goes for a walk and gets hit on the head by an acorn. He thinks the sky is falling down, so he goes off to tell the king. He meets lots of other bird friends along the way, and they all go together, until they make the mistake of trusting Foxy Loxy, and they all get eaten!

Our first activity was to create our very own Chicken Licken.

               

We walked to Mote Park to feed the birds by the lake. The children were absolutely brilliant! They walked sensibly, listened carefully when we talked about keeping us safe if any dogs went past. Lots of members of the public said hello to us as they walked past. Once we got to the lake, we all made sure we stayed sitting on the benches to feed the birds so that we were away from the water's edge. It was a fantastic two days and hopefully the children enjoyed the experience as much as the adults did :-) Mrs Jessop was also very brave (as she is terrified of birds) and hand fed the geese! They were surprisingly gentle.

 

        

We were supposed to be making chicken shaped biscuits but unfortunately the Amazon order did not arrive in time! We made normal round biscuits instead. They were delicious and we enjoyed them while watching Topsy and Tim before lunch :-)

      

Although our child intiated learning has been limited this week due to our park trips and the weather, we have still had fun splashing in puddles, taking over the main carpet to build a track for our cars, creating marble runs and well as exploring the new pebbly area in the outside construction area!

        

Week 4 & 5

For the next two weeks we will be reading The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson. We will taking part in lots of activities based around the story and will also be sharing lots of other Julia Donaldson books.

Our first activity was to use our fine motor skills and trace around the outline of The Gruffalo to create our own drawing. This was not an easy activity as it was hard for the children to see where they had already traced, but as always their resilience kicked in and we produced some fantastic Gruffalos!

            

  

We made Gruffalos using paper plates, tissue paper and coloured paper :-)

                  

We had fun in PE this week. We played "Please get out of my house". If the children were in a hoop, they had to do different actions and the children not in a hoop had to ask their friends politely to get out. The children really enjoyed the activity, although they sometimes forgot their manners :-)

       

We made Gruffalo crumble using biscuits, butter, syrup, chocolate, raisins, dried apricots, jelly tots and smarties.

           

We have had some fun-filled-child-initiated learning. We have been role-playing The Gruffalo story, using playdough to create Gruffalo's, chopping, cutting, sticking, pouring, building and balancing. We even went to London on our very own bus!

                

  

Week 3

This week our story is Barbara throws a wobbler by Nadia Shireen. In this story, Barbara is having a very bad day and her mood gets progressively worse and eventually a 'Wobbler' appears! The wobbler is a symbol of Barabara's bad mood and she eventually manages to control her mood and makes the wobbler disappear. We looked at pictures of people showing emotions, either sad, happy or angry and to cut the out and place them on the correct circle.

      

We used playdough and created our own 'Wobblers'. We thought carefully about what they would look like and added the features accordingly.

                

We had fun doing some cosmic yoga as part of our daily exercise!

  

As it has been extremely cold this week, the majority of our child initiated learning this week has been indoors, although we have had time in the shared area each day with our friends from Peach and Plums.

     

Week 2

We started the week by reading Dogger by Shirley Hughes. The story is about a little boy who loses his favourite teddy. We drew pictures of our favourite teddies, there were a variety of dinosaurs, unicorns, teddies and superheroes.

 

 

    

We made telescopes and then went searching for dogs around the school!

         

Our first PE lesson of the term was lots of fun! We practised balancing and jumping.

 

      

Child initiated learning has been action packed this week! The sprinkling of snow was extremely fun, we have been chopping, making music, colour mixing, painting, climbing and much more :-)

 

 

           

Welcome back to Term 3 Pear Trees!

We started the week by drawing either our favourite present from Father Christmas or out favourite toy to play with.

     

We practised our gross motor skills by using chalk to draw different marks on the fences and gates outside. We are getting really good at our large scale mark making.

      

We then practised tracing our names :-)

  

Our child intimated learning has been very productive this week. We have been building, threading, drawing, learning with the arctic animals and ice, and building train tracks.

      

Christmas Fun

The last two weeks of term have been filled with lots of Christmas fun! It was so lovely to see all the parents come into class and spend some time creating Christmas crafts. The classroom was bathed in glitter by the end of the day, but seeing the childrens faces when the parents arrived made the mess worth it :-)

                

We have been busy making Christmas cards and melting snowman biscuits.

                     

We had lots of fun at the Christmas fair and we were lucky enough to pay a visit to Father Christmas.

 

    

We finished the term with a Christmas party! We had party food and played lots of games. The children really impressed us with their musical statues and musical bumps.

  

Term 2 - Week 5 The Little Red Hen

We started the week with a visit from Jack at ZooLab. He bought with him some animals and read the children a story and then the children got to meet the animals. We were able to look at the frog (he wasn't allowed out in case he jumped away!) and a spider (we could not touch her as she does not like people). We were allowed to touch and hold the corn snake, the giant snail and the giant cockroach! The children loved seeing all the animals and were very brave and sensible when handling them.

We read the story of The Little Red Hen and then sequenced pictures from the story.

We made hens using our handprints!

We made dough like The Little Red Hen did. We had lots of fun adding flour, salt, powder paint and water and mixing it all together to see if we could make dough. We managed some dough and lots of slime! 

Our child initiated learning has been action packed this week! With water and ice exploration, maths, building, practicing our mark making and to top it all off the snow put in an appearance which made for a very exciting morning!!

 

Term 2 - Week 4 Mog and the Baby

This week we are reading all of the Mog books in the series by Judith Kerr. In the first story, a baby comes to visit Mog and escapes from the house and goes to run across the road. Luckily, Mog saves the day! We thought about road safety and practised how to cross the road safely on our outside road in the shared area.

Our child initiated has been full of counting, pouring, climbing, splashing, threading and bashing!

We had our first go at tracing our names! 

Term 2 - Week 3 Dinosaurs

This week we are continuing our Dinosaur learning. We are thinking about the fact that dinosaurs are now dead. We started the week looking at their skeletons and then making our own using cotton buds.

Our child initiated learning has been action packed this week! Practicing our fine motor skills, drawing, creating dinosaurs using paper plates, digging for bones in the sand, making pasta in the mud kitchen and making 'apple heads' using the potato head accessories.

 

Term 2 - Week 2 Harry and his Bucketful of Dinosaurs.

We started the week by looking at the book and then going on a dinosaur hunt in the woodland area with our buckets!
 

We decorated dinosaur footprints!

In Maths we ordered dinosaurs by size from smallest to biggest.

To end the week, we had our pyjama day! It was so lovely to see every child take part in this, even Mrs Jessop and Miss Adams joined in!! We listened to our story, snuggled up under our blankets with our cuddly toys.

For Remembrance Day, we painted poppies and observed our two minutes' silence while watching the Cbeebies Poppies animation.  The children were brilliant, as always :-)

Term 2 - Week 1 Halloween and Bonfire night

Welcome back Pear Trees, I hope you all had a lovely half-term break!

This week we are learning all about Halloween and Bonfire night with a week of craft activities. We started the week making ghosts using paper plates, felt tip pens and tissue paper.

 

We made crazy pumpkins! We had to cut out our pumpkins and then add eyes and mouths. This was a great activity for continuing to practice our cutting skills.

 

For firework night we had a carousel of different activities. We made glitter fireworks, painted lolly stick fireworks and most importantly edible sparklers!

 

 

We also made painted toast for our snack on Friday :-)

 

Although the weather has not been kind this week, we have still managed some amazing child-initiated learning! We have been practicing our letter formation on the IWB, thinking about colours and numbers on the malleable table, investigating with water inside and outside, making pumpkin soup in the mud kitchen and much much more :-)

Term 1 - Week 6

This week we have been reading There's a house inside my Mummy by Giles Andreae. The story is about a little boy and his mummy who has a baby in her tummy. We have been learning all about babies and how they grow in their mummies' tummy and what the mummy needs to do to help them. For our first activity, we had to draw a baby in the mummy's tummy. We were really good at this and had a good idea of where the baby should go!

Throughout the week, we looked at scan photos (some of which were children in the class) as well as YouTube videos of babies moving in their mummies' tummies. On Wednesday, Arthur's mummy, who is a TA in school, came into class and told the children all about the baby in her tummy and what she does to take care of him. 

On Thursday we thought about how we look after ourselves and we practised brushing our teeth! The children were amazing and really surprised us with how independent they were with the activity. They also had a really good knowledge of why we need to brush our teeth :-)

 

 

Term 1 - Week 5

This week we have been reading Peace at Last by Jill Murphy. We have done lots of adult-led activities around listening. We went on a listening walk around the school and heard children and adults talking, the staff in the kitchen cooking our lunch, birds singing, the wind blowing the leaves on the trees and traffic driving past the school.

We had PE with Mr Copeland outside this week!

 

We created outside pictures using chalk on black paper.

Our child initiated learning has been action packed this week! We have been practising our fine motor skills, building sandcastles, balancing on our obstacle course, riding the bikes in the shared garden with Peach and Plums, we even had a disco in the house on Friday. Mrs Jessop bought us a sparkly curtain and some glow sticks :-)

 

 

Term 1 - Week 4

This week we have been reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears. We started the week by just talking about what we could remember from the story. The children amazed us with their knowledge, even using different voices for Daddy Bear, Mummy Bear and Baby Bear. We then put pictures from the story in order.

We then went on to think about the size of the objects that Goldilocks found in the three bears' house. We had to cut out the pictures and place them in the correct column for who they belonged to. Although some of us struggled with the cutting, we were very good at putting the pictures with the right bear!

 

We made our own Goldilocks using wool, ribbon, paper and string.

Our child initiated learning has been very varied this week. We have been counting, building, role-playing with superheroes, having tea parties both inside and outside, painting and chopping vegetables!

Term 1 - Week 3

This week we have been learning all about Kipper. We have read lots of books about Kipper. Our first activity was to decorate a Kipper outline.

We went for a walk in the woods to collect sticks to make nests for the squirrels like in the story.

We went pond dipping! Although we did not find any frogs, we had a great time looking at the bugs we found!

We read Kippers Birthday and then experimented with cake ingredients. We then had a treat at snack time to celebrate :-)

Our child initiated learning has been action packed this week with building, painting, obstacle courses, using our fine motor skills, role playing in the new role play room, reading and jumping in puddles!

Term 1 - Week 2

This week we have been practising our gross motor and fine motor skills. We went on to the playground and used the chalk to make large circles, lines and zigzags. For our fine motor skills we practised our threading.

 

We had our first PE lesson with Mr Copeland!

 

Our child initiated learning has been brilliant this week! We have been dressing up, getting messy with cornflour and water, investigating with the water, bug hunting and building obstacle courses :-)

 

Welcome to Pear Tree Class!

The children have had a brilliant first week and are already extremely settled and getting used to the new routines.

For our first Adult Directed session we passed a teddy around our circle. When we were holding the teddy we told our friends our name, when our friends were holding the teddy we listened carefully to what they were saying.

 

We had a go at painting our self-portraits!

We played a traffic light monster game using musical instruments! We had to watch Mrs Jessop hold up either a green monster or a red one. When it was green we could play, and when it was red we had to stop. We practised using tempo, playing quickly and slowly.

Our first week of child initiated learning has been amazing! We have been using play dough, making puzzles, building, learning with the water, building in the sand and generally having lots of fun!

We have been very good at snack time and are already doing our own washing up!!!