Term 5

Week 1

This week we have been reading My Daddies, a story about a child who has two adoptive daddies and through the stories they read have lots of adventures. We started the week by drawing pictures of our families.

 

        

We decorated hot air balloons. We used our fine motor skills to tear the tissue paper before sticking it onto our picture.

                                        

We had a brilliant PE lesson outside, practising our ball control skills. It was lovely to see the children working so well together.

 

     

During Phonics, we have been thinking about body percussion. We have thought of some brilliant ideas about what parts of our bodies we can use to make noise. At the end of the week we placed pictures on the screen and had to copy all of the actions! It was a lot of fun :-)

 

      

 

We have had an amazing first week of child initiated learning! We have been exploring the sand, drawing, chopping, creating with play dough, completing puzzles, and getting to know our new friends.

                             

Term 4

Week 6 Easter

We had a brilliant visit to St Martins Church. We listened to a simplified story of Jesus and the resurrection, we searched the church and counted how many crosses we could find and also listened to the Hungry Caterpillar story.

              

During maths we have been working together to complete puzzles.

          

Transition

We loved spending time together as a new class. The children who are joining from Plums enjoyed exploring their new environments and there are already some budding friendships forming :-)

                  

 

Week 4 & 5

We have had lots of fun reading Aliens love Underpants and have completed some fun activities to go along with the story. We created aliens on our alien dress up day, went alien hunting around the school, looked at google earth and then created our own earth pictures using paint.

        

 

            

 

                                       

In PE Mr Brooks has been teaching us how to ride the balance bikes.

 

      

Week 3

This week has been all about Supertato! In our family worker groups we thought about what super power we would have if we were superheroes.

We designed our own superhero costume.

      

    

Our Superhero mask-making stay and play activity was the most popular so far this year! It was so lovely to see so many parents come along and have fun making masks with the children. 

            

For Maths this week, we have been thinking about 'dots'. We each had a dice and lots of dominoes. We took turns to roll the dice, and we had to say when we could see 1, 2, or 3 dots. We then looked at the dominoes and did the same with the dots on them. We are getting so good at subitising to 3.

  

In PE we have been practising our ball skills again this week. We started by bowling and then worked in pairs to pass the ball to each other by rolling and kicking.

          

We have been incredibly busy during our child-initiated learning this week. We have built buses and gone to the seaside on them, we have played instruments, completed puzzles, chopped herbs, made pictures using elastic bands and created some lovely pictures at the art table :-)

                   

Week 2

This week we have been reading the traditional tale The elves and the shoemaker. Our first activity was to design our own wellies using fabric.

        

We have been practising taking our shoes and socks/tights off and putting them back on!

 

  

We had a brilliant time painting with our wellies. We stepped into the paint and then ran around the garden seeing how much mess we could make! We then lined up for the 'wellie wash'

          

During PE we made the most of the lovely weather and practised our ball skills on the playground.

  

In Maths we have been matching, talking, pushing and pulling. We sang along to Humpty Dumpty and then had to build our own walls using lots of different resources. We needed to make our walls sturdy enough to hold our own Humpty dumpty.

            

Our child intitiated learning has been full of grating, chopping, bouncing, dancing, drawing, saving ducks and making hot chocolate :-)

                  

 It was lovely to see so many parents come along to our World Book Day event. 

 

 

Week 1

We started the new term by reading No Matter What by Debi Gliori, a sweet story about a small fox who is worried that his mummy may not always love him. Mummy reassures him that, regardless of who he is or what he becomes, she will always love him.

For our first activity, we went up to the woodland area to create some artwork. The children were able to wander around and decide what they would like to draw.

        

 

                 

            

We have been practising our name writing again this week. We are all getting really good at tracing our names.
We will soon be ready to have a go at writing them independently.

  

In PE we have been focussing on our balancing skills. We moved around the obstacle course, climbing, jumping, and balancing. 

                  

Our child-initiated learning has been full of play dough modelling, building, role playing, reading, cutting and drawing.

                

We started phonics this week. We met Joe who lives in the Phonics Shed. We have been learning all about the skills we need to be successful in phonics, listening, looking and thinking. We have been really impressed with how well the children have taken to phonics.

  

 

Term 3

Week 6

We had a very busy last week to the term with lots of different activities. We started the week by making bird feeders to support our Chicken Licken story from week 5.

  

We are continuing to practice writing our names!

 

    

We have been working on our scissor skills.

      

Our last Boogie Tots session was all about love and friendship. We did lots of dancing with a partner and finished the session by creating a love train and travelling through the 'Teacher Tunnels'!

                

It was lovely to see so many parents come along to our food tasting stay and play sessions! We were so proud of the children for trying foods that they may have never had before.

                      

Week 5 

This week we have been reading the traditional tale, Chicken Licken. The story of a chicken who gets hit on the head by an acorn, and he thinks the sky is falling down. He sets off to tell the king and meets lots of other feathered friends along the way, including Turkey Lurkey and Drakey Lakey. Unfortunately, they never make it to see the king as they come across Foxy Loxy, who tricks them into following him to his lair where his family eat Chicken Licken and his friends!!

Our first activity was thinking about words that rhyme.

    

We had a fun-filled messy session investigating eggs. All the children had an egg to crack and explore. They had a brilliant time, squelching, poking and describing the eggs.

 

                    

As a treat for a snack this week, we had waffles, strawberries and squirty cream :-)

We have been developing both our gross motor and fine motor skills in child initiated this week by building obstacle courses, cutting, using tweezers with poms poms and practising our name writing.

 

                      

 

 

Week 3 & Week 4

This week we are reading The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson. We had a brilliant time at Jeskyns Country Park. We found the Gruffalo and all the other characters in the book, we explored the fairy garden, played in the play area and enjoyed our lunch as a picnic. We had lots of members of the public commenting on how well behaved the children were. We are super proud of them :-)

                              

We made our own Gruffalos using paper plates, tissue paper and coloured paper. We are getting really good at using scissors.

      

We sequenced the story of the Gruffalo.

 

  

We have been busy during our child-initiated learning this week. We have been cutting, creating, gardening, roleplaying and retelling the Gruffalo story using puppets.

          

We made Gruffalos using our handprints.

                  

We had a brilliant time making Gruffalo crumble! A simple recipe using biscuits, chocolate, butter and syrup. We used dried apricots to represent his eyes, raisins for his tongue, purple jelly tots for his prickles and green smarties for his poisonous wart! 

 

    

In Maths we have been subitising up to three items. We are getting very good at this :-)

          

We had a Gruffalo-themed Boogie Tots session with Nina where we re-enacted the story to music. This was so much fun as always.

    

During our child initiated learning, we have been weighing and measuring, building, roleplaying, exploring money, painting, transporting water, reading, and playing instruments!

 

                      

Week 2

This week we met Barbara who had been having a terrible day with everything going wrong! Her mood worsened and eventually her mood turned into a 'Wobbler' who followed her everywhere, copying her. In order for the wobbler to disappear, Barbara had to find a way to make herself happy again. This made the wobbler disappear. We have had lots of activities around emotions this week, talking about them. We also completed a sorting activity.

 

    

 We made our own wobblers!

                              

We had an amazing first Boogie Tots session! We did lots of dancing and listened really well to Nina. We are really looking forward to next week!

        

We have had a very busy child-initiated learning this week! More ice/water exploration, building racing cars and buses, painting, investigating capacity, and bug hunting.

 

                  

Week 1 

We started our new term by reading Dogger by Shirley Hughes. This is the story of a little boy who loses his favourite teddy. We drew our favourite teddy.

        

We decorated toilet rolls to make telescopes.

 

  

We used our telescopes to go on a dog hunt around the school! We even found a real dog :-)

      

Our child-initiated learning has been busy with puzzles, building, investigating ice, reading, playing musical instruments and much much more.

         

Term 2

Week 7 - Christmas week!

We have had a very busy week with the Christmas Fair, making biscuits and party games on the last day. Pin the nose on the Rudolf was lots of fun :-)

 

          

We had a very special visit from Father Christmas who told us a story and gave us all a book. The children were so excited to see him and sat beautifully during the story.

 

    

 

Week 6 - Christmas

We started the week with our Christmas craft-themed stay and play sessions. It was lovely to see so many parents joining in with the crafts and spending time in class with the children. As promised, it was a complete glitter fest :-)

                    

We read the story of the nativity and drew the nativity scene.

    

We had a lovely time at the campfire! The children were incredibly sensible and listened carefully to the instructions to keep them safe. The biscuits went down a treat!

            

Our child-initiated learning has had a slight Christmassy theme, as well as puzzles, building, water play and exploring our newly made-over classroom.

 

                              

Week 5 - Mog and the Baby

 

We started this week by reading Mog and the Baby by Judith Kerr. In the story, Mog and her family baby sit for a small baby, Mog is not keen as the baby makes so much noise! At the end of the story, Mog runs from the house, followed closely by the baby, and Mog has to stop the baby getting hit by a car! For our activity we thought about what we need to do when crossing the road, and then went outside to practice.

        

We made our very own Mog using paper plates and other craft resources.

  

We had a brilliant time shopping in Morrisons! The children were incredibly sensible walking from the minibus to the shop and then again walking around the shop picking up our items from the list :-) 

   

We had an action-packed PE lesson with Mr Brooks! We worked our way around an obstacle course practising our climbing, jumping and moving along benches. We were so proud of the children, they waited patiently for their turn, and we saw some real resilience in them.

            

Our child initiated learning has been full of developing our physical skills, role playing, reading, sharing, and much much more!

                  

Week 3 - Harry and His Bucketful of Dinosaurs

 This week in Pears we have been reading the book Harry and his Bucketful of Dinosaurs by Ian Whybrow. We have been talking about the story and finding out what we already know about dinosaurs and learning some new facts. We have been looking at different dinosaur books, printing with dinosaurs, making dinosaur puppets and making dinosaurs with playdough.

  

 

   

   

In Maths we have been learning to count objects such as dinosaurs and also counting sounds too!

 

     

We have really enjoyed PE, playing travelling games and moving in different ways.

  

 

In child initiated play, we had lots of fun!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 2 - The Magic Crayon

This week in Pears we have been reading The Magic Crayon written by Amy Sparkes and Ali Pye, the crayon has magical powers which make her drawings come to life. We have been drawing our own magic pictures using a silver pen and talking about friendships.

    

We learnt about Remembrance Day and we watched a special animation that lasted the duration of the two-minute silence.

   

  

 

In Math's we have been learning to count back from 5  to 0 by singing different nursery rhymes. We sang "zoom zoom zoom we are going to the moon" and after our rocket had blasted off we threw pom-poms up in the air.

 

In PE we have been balancing on balls and playing a listening game with the parachute.

 

 

 

     

We have had lots of fun during child initiated time.

 

 

 

  

 

  

   

Week1

 

In Pears this week we have been looking at different types of celebrations. We have been talking about Guy Fawkes night, Diwali and Halloween and how we might have celebrated them. We have been reading the book called Lets Celebrate 5 days of Diwali. 

We have made Diya lamps, painted fireworks, chalked fireworks and used water sprayers to make them disappear. In the home corner we have, we explored different herbs and rice that smelt of spices. We have also looked at autumn leaves and decorated them.

  

  

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Math's we have been exploring some of the first steps of counting, singing lots of counting rhymes to support children with the correct number order and counting on fingers.

  

In PE we are learning to listen to instructions, control a ball and move it around our bodies. 

 

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child initiated play we have enjoyed playing in the leaves.

...And playing in the shared area.

 

 

  

 

Week 8 - Kipper and the Monster

This week's book was called Kippers Monster and the book explores how shadows are made. The role playarea was made into a dark room for the children to use torches and experiment with reflective materials. We even made an electrical circuit.

 

 

 

We took Ted, the school dog, around the local area for a walk.

 

 

 

  

In PE this week we practised throwing the ball. It was great fun!

 

 

 

 

In math's we continued to look at patterns, experimenting with different materials to make them.

 

In child initiated time, we explored making potions in pumpkins using bicarbonate and soda and vinegar and had fun balancing on an assault course.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 7 - Kipper the Dog

This week in Pears we have been reading Kipper by Mick Inkpen, a book about a dog called Kipper, his basket gets in a terrible mess and he looks for somewhere more comfortable to sleep. We have talked about our pets, where they sleep and also looked at  homes for different animals.

  

  

In PE we pretended to be scarecrows and played a game which involved hanging PE equipment on our friends' heads and hands.

  

 

In Math's we have been listening to familiar stories and songs with repeating verses and clapping along  also making repeating patterns with natural objects. 

 

In child initiated we have really enjoyed looking at the pumpkins with magnifying classes, trying to get the pumpkin seeds out with tweezers and hammering tiny pins into the pumpkins. We also enjoyed playing with pumpkin spiced playdough, making spells in the bubbly water and playing in the shared area.

 

We had an amazing Stay and Play with so many parents and grandparents coming to play with their children.

   

 

 

 

Week 6 - There's a House inside my Mummy

 

 

This week we have been reading the story There's a House inside My Mummy by Giles Andrews. The story is told from the eyes of a child about his Mummy having a baby. 
We have had so much fun looking at photos of us as babies, trying to work out who the photos were of. The children have enjoyed talking about what they looked like and if they had any babies in their families.
Thank you so much for all the shared photos! 
  

 We have also been learning about animals and their babies, matching up pictures and talking about whether their babies look like them.

 

 

During PE we have been learning how to roll, bounce and stop a ball.

  

 

In Maths this week we have been exploring and building with shapes and objects. We have built huge towers and use 3d shapes to balance and build. We even built with real 3d objects such as tins.

 

In child initiated we have been enjoying the Autumn weather, collecting leaves and playing the shared area.

   
    Week 5 - Peace at Last

This week we have been reading Peace at Last by Jill Murphy. The story is about Mr Bear who is struggling to sleep due to all the noises he can hear in different rooms. Most of our activities have been listening activities in the classroom, but we did go on a sound walk around the school to see what we could hear. We heard a phone, footsteps, helicopter, voices and birds!

    

During PE with Mr Brooks, we were super heroes. We practised our ball skills and throwing skills.

 

      

Our child initiated learning has been full of chopping, painting, mark making, pattern making, cleaning and so much more :-)

                                             

 

Week 4 - Goldilocks and the Three Bears

This week we have been reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Our adult-led activities have included sequencing pictures from the story, creating our own Goldilocks and building on our cutting skills, and thinking about size.

         

 

   

 

          

The children have been incredibly focussed on their child-initiated learning this week! We have been building, painting, exploring with water, chopping, climbing and making a nice cup of tea :-)

                      

            

During Mr Brooks' PE lesson we worked on our ball control and balancing skills. 

        

    

 

 

Week 1 in Pears 

The term started brilliantly with the children finding their feet with confidence and taking on new routines like professionals. They have been able to use their big voices on day one and two to tell us their names and to name our teddy bear. Have a look at the confident pears below. 

Pears were so confident on the carpet that we moved on to our first story, 'My Mummy has a house in her tummy'. This book was met with smiles and laughter as the children wondered how on earth a mummy could have a house in their tummy. Pears were then able to split into their family worker groups to discuss who lives in their house with them. This really helped them to build on their personal, social and emotional development and supported their communication skills too. Have a look at the beautiful houses that some of our pears made using loose parts.