The Wildflower Garden (EYFS)

During Spring 1, the children enjoyed learning all about dinosaurs.  They enjoyed listening to lots of stories and looking at non-fiction books about dinosaurs, learning about what they ate and their special names.

We loved playing with our mini-me figures

"My dinosaurs is a long neck." Fossil pasta "My dinosaur is a plant eater."

We learnt about extinction and had to free the endangered animals by cutting the string to free them.

We read 'Dinosaurs Love Underpants' and later, we played 'Pairs', matching pairs of pants

Celebrations! Happy New Year!

This week we have been learning about Lunar New Year.  We talked about how this festival is celebrated around the world.  Last week, we enjoyed taking part in some fun activities, as some of our parents from Hong Kong came to school to talk to us about how Chinese New Year is celebrated.  This week in our classrooms, we enjoyed many activities focussing on Lunar New year.

The children had to tidy the furniture in the small world house – can you sort the furniture so that it is the correct room?  We also enjoyed making tea in the water tuff spot.  They loved exploring the textures of the tea bags and the changes which took place in the colour of the water.  They have also developed their pouring and transferring skills as they made their tea.

We also talked about how we get ready for a celebration and how it is traditional to clean your house to get ready for Chinese New Year.  They took this task very seriously, as they cleaned the role play house before they decorated it.  They noticed that many of the decorations were red and yellow and they made patterns using only red and yellow bobbins, cubes and pegboards.

In phonics, we are continuing to develop our listening skills and following instructions.  We learnt how to play the game ‘Find Dex’.  One child hid Dex, as another child had to wear a blindfold so they didn’t know where Dex was. After they took the blindfold off, they had to look for Dex and their friends beat the wooden blocks quitter or louder depending if they were close to Dex or far away.  It’s very similar to the game Hot or Cold. They did really well understanding the instructions and everyone was very keen to have their eyes covered so that they could search for Dex.

In Maths, we have continued to look at numbers from 1-5 more closely. We have been subitising and saying how many we can see and also loved swatting the correct group to show groups of 1,2,3,4 or 5 camels.  We have also been working on recognising how many objects are in our 5 frame.   We also did the correct number of jump, taps on our knees, claps, as well as show that many fingers to match the number.

Block play is always very popular and this week the children were really creative as they made some fabulous play equipment for their themselves or the dolls.  They made slides for the babies and seesaws for themselves.  There was lots of trial and error and working together to make sure that their inventions worked.  It was wonderful to see them so focussed as they planned together and listening to each other’s ideas.

Who does that job?  Our personal histories - celebrating our brithdays

This week we have been focussing on our personal histories and we have been learning all about birthdays.  We have made playdough cakes and added beads and candles to them. The children had a go at counting the candles they had added to their cake.

We planned a birthday party for Dex, our Classroom dinosaur. We shared ideas about what we needed for the party and had a go at drawing pictures to show what we wanted for the party.  The children were encouraged to talk about their drawings and describe their marks. 

Our focus story is ‘Spot Bakes a Cake’ and on Friday, we made cupcakes and sandwiches for Dex’s birthday. We also played Musical Chairs which the children really loved.

In Maths, we have been looking at the number one and talked about what it looked like and how there was usually an object on their own when we counted one thing.  We have also been learning the rhyme,' One Finger, One Thumb Keep Moving'. We also did marble painting and the children loved moving the tray around and watch the lines the marble covered in paint created on their paper.

We also loved decorating our Class Christmas tree to get ready for celebrating Christmas over the next two weeks and we've been busy joining Poppy and Daisy Classes and working really hard at learning our songs for our Christmas performance. 

This week, we have continued to talk about people who help us such as people who collect our bins, clean the streets, construction workers, dentists, nurses and doctors.

Thanks to all of you who were able to stay for our Reading morning; the children loved reading and playing with you.

Poppies, Remembrance and Children in Need

Thank you to everyone who supported our ‘Children in Need’ activitie today.  It was great to see the children coming to school dressed up.

Thank you also for those who brought money in for toast for the appeal today- we had buttered toast and jam and butter on toast and for those who didn’t like toast, we made jam sandwiches.

We also attended our first whole school assembly where Mrs Mitchell weighed the giant pumpkins which had grown in the Outdoor Learning garden.  I was incredibly proud of how the children sat and listened really well.

We have been talking a little more about Remembrance Day this week and some of the children said that they remembered their grandparents who aren’t here anymore. Some of the children said that they had seen some people with poppies on them and some had seen it on the television.  We made our own Poppy wreath by painting our hands red and adding black dots to the centre. We joined them all together to make our beautiful wreath. We made red, green and black playdough and practised making playdough balls and squashing them down with the palm of our hands to make the poppies and we were really good at rolling the playdough to make long stems for them.

The children have been much more confident at exploring the classroom. They added more resources to the water and pushed the boats down the pipes by pouring water behind them. They experimented to see if more water made the boat move faster and less water made it move slower.

After three weeks of telling the story, ‘Whatever Next!’, the children know the story very well and were able to tell me the story explaining the main events of the story.  I was very proud of how many of them remembered words such as colander and helmet and said, ‘Whoosh! Out into the night’.

Festival of lights 

This week the children have enjoyed watching videos of families celebrating Diwali.  They loved the song 'Diwali' and they made Diya lamps from salt dough where we mixed water, flour and salt and talked about them being dry, wet and then changing to being sticky when they mixed together.   They were intrigued to see how they went from being soft to being very hard so that they could paint them and add decorations to them. We also looked at different Rangoli patterns and had a go at creating patterns in the tuff spot which was filled with coloured rice. The children are getting more confident at mark making and made dots, lines and wavy lines  as they created their own Mendhi designs and firework drawings.  We looked at shapes and also made shapes using lolly sticks and used the words, straight lines, 3 sides for a triangle etc.  The children also made some fantsastic models using the Mobilo; they made long ladders, tall towers and rockets.

Bonfire Night, Sparklers and Whatever Next!

This week we have focussed on Bonfire Night, and who Guy Fawkes was. The children loved watching videos of firework displays and noticed the circular shapes in the fireworks and also heard some of the noises they made, such as, bang, pop, sizzle etc.

They got very creative and made firework paintings, using cardboard tubes, twisting the tubes to make a swirling circular shape. Using the sensory blocks, the children created models of rockets by either building them upwards or lying them flat on the ground and joining them together to make a rocket shape. We also made edible sparklers using breadsticks, melted chocolate and sprinklers.

‘Whatever Next!’ is our Talk for Writing  focus story for the next two weeks.  You can find this story on youtube – encourage your child to tell you story with the sound off, using the pictures as a guide. See if they can tell you what is happening in each picture.  It was great to see the children dress up as little bear, putting on the colander as his helmet and using the blocks to make the box rocket. I loved how they added the small logs and pretended that they were buttons for the rockets.  We have also enjoyed singing ‘5 Little men in a flying saucer’ and doing a scarf dance where we followed instructions and also moved and swirled our scarves faster or slower to match the music. The children were also fantastic at following instructions as we have now started our Brushing Buddies toothbrushing programme.

This week we have focussed on activities around ‘Black History Month’.  The children loved going to the Junior Hall to meet the Hibbert family who brought in lots of artefacts related to their Jamaican heritage.  They particularly enjoyed playing the steel drums and were fascinated by the sugar cane and how it was turned into sugar.  They showed us the Jamaican football shirts which inspired some of the children to talk to them about football and Forest. I was very proud of how confident they were to speak with our visitors.  We also listened to the story, ‘Coming to England’ by Floella Benjamin and how Trinidad looked different to England. This led us to talk about how Floella settled into her new school and how we should all be good friends to each other.  We also read the story, ‘Baby Goes to Market’ and talked about the fruit the children saw at the market.

Handa’s Surprise was also a favourite this week and we counted the fruit Handa had in her basket.  We did lots of sorting activities, continuing to name colours, as well as notice which objects were the same, matched or different.  Please keep using these words at home to help your child to understand their meaning.  We matched monsters to their coloured shoes and made towers with Duplo, wooden blocks and cubes and the children had a go at copying my tower e.g. red on top and yellow on the bottom and then tried to spot when the tower was different. We played animal dominoes and it was great to see the children have a go at matching the animals and their friends helping them when it didn’t match.

Weekending 30^th September 2022

We had a busy week talking about our school and some of the people that are important to us at school.  We looked at the school website and some of the people in the office, Tracey in the kitchen, as well as other teachers we see each day. We also had a walk around the school and visited the office. The children were excited to see photos of themselves on the website and they talked about who they saw and what they were doing.  They were amazed to find tomatoes growing as well as a huge pumpkin. They also picked grass to feed the guinea pigs.

We also talked about firefighters and how they help us and they loved listening to and learnign the song 'Five Little Firemen'.  We remembered how we had to go outside and line up quietly during our fire drill. They loved playing on the small world fire engine and house tuff spot. I could hear them telling little stories about how they could help the people and save them. We also had lots of children enjoying being doctors and nurses taking care of each other and the babies.

There was lots of activity in the creative area; we made playdough and mixed colours – this week we focused on how to make orange. The children painted one hand yellow and the other red and then rubbed them together to see what colour they made. Some said that it was like magic. Later, they enjoyed mixing the colours  themesleves  to make red, yellow and orange pictures.  We also loved listening to the story, Mousepaint where the mice mixed other colours to make new colours.

Our Five Senses

Next week we will learn the song, Miss Polly Had a Dolly.  Please practise this at home with your child. 

Thank you.

Getting to know you

Settling in to the Bluebell Class

Move to the Beat! Zoom to the moon! Yum! Yum! Faster! Faster!