We started the term with a topic on 'Families'. We learnt about our bodies, our senses, keeping healthy and how we change as we grow.
We painted portraits of ourselves and our families and we made our own family trees.
We also learnt about the current Royal family and historical kings and queens. We really enjoyed making two large castles out of boxes; one of which was so big we could actually play in it! We also spent some time making paper crowns and
dressing up!
We had an unexpected snowfall which led to an exciting afternoon of outside activities building snowmen!
We visit the environmental area every Friday for our Forest School session. Each week we looked for
signs of Spring.
We saw the buds on the trees, the crocuses, bluebells. daffodils and primroses.
Our favourite topic was “Environmental superheroes.” We dressed up as superheroes, made our own costumes, and talked about how to save the planet. We went around the school turning off lights that were not needed, picking litter up with the grabbers and looking at the water
butt and compost bins.
We designed our own carrier bags that could be reused again and again at the supermarket. In our PE lessons we played Power Ranger musical statues and made a Power Ranger obstacle course. We imagined that the mats, benches, tunnels and hoops were swamps, deserts, shark infested waters, quick sand etc. and came up with ways to travel through, over and under them.
We have been making lots of creative art this term. We used crayons and paint to create Monet inspired pictures. For our Mother's day cards, we used our handprints to make colourful butterfly wings.
In February we celebrated the Chinese New Year. According to the Chinese Zodiac the Year of 2010 is a Year of the Tiger. which began on the 14th February 2010.
We made two giant dragons that we danced with to Chinese music.
We enjoyed trying to pick up noodles and stir fry that we cooked with chopsticks and playing in our Chinese Takeaway role play area. We made red Chinese gift envelopes in our ICT lessons.
As part of our 'growing' topic, we made rubbings of different surfaces around school. We made prints of twigs and leaves in clay. We also made miniature chinese cherry
blossom trees.
We have learn't about the Easter story. We acted out the story of when Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey, and how the crowds took palm branches and went out to meet him. They kept shouting: "Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord — the King of Israel!"
To celebrate Easter we have made Easter carrier bags, marbelled eggs or Easter cards and we painted boiled eggs. We also made bunny copters from paper and paper clips.
Our school took part in an Egg Care Challenge to support the work of the Children's Charity Barnardo's. A fundraiser from Barnardo's spoke to the children in an assembly about work being done to help children, young people and their families.
The children were offered the chance to decorate and look after a hard boiled egg for one week, while collecting kind donations from family and friends
giving our school the opportunity to make a BIG difference to the children and young people being helped by Barnardo's.
March 10th - 'Forest School'. Mrs Newbury found a Viking lady called Viki in our woods. She was lost because her ship had crashed! She asked us to help her find her friend Olaf. He had left a trail, she didn't know what it meant so we showed her how to follow it. Then we fixed her Viking long ship and she sailed away to her Viking Village.
The children made clay sculptures around the 'Forest School' They decorated the trees and logs. Harjai made a sunshine to keep us warm, Eleanor made a green man to look after Forest School and Phoebe made a spikey hedgehog.
All term we have been learning our Jolly Phonics; we really enjoy learning our new sounds, with the actions, stories and songs that go with them.
We are getting more and more confident to read and spell words by ourselves.
Want to know more about
'Jolly Phonics' and how to help your child? Click on the link button below.
On the 21st April 2010, the Reception teachers held a maths workshop for parents and carers. The aim of the workshop was to offer information about the children develop their mathematical skills and practical advice about how parents and carers can help at home. The adults were given a goody bag containing a pack of playing cards, a dice, some number cards and a number line, a booklet with information from the Early Years Foundation Stage and some number songs and rhymes to sing at home.
The parents and carers were given the opportunity to try out some of the ideas they had picked up from the session with their child using the pack they had been given.
We would like to thank everyone who attended for their support and we hope that the session was useful.
We have been looking at life cycles this term.
We looked at and discussed tadpole development and put pictures of the life cycle of a frog in order.
We looked at and discussed a caterpillar’s development. We put pictures of the life cycle of a caterpillar in order. We ordered 10 caterpillars from Insectlore.co.uk. It was fascinating to observe them make their chrysalises and turn into painted lady butterflies. When they hatched out we took them over our Forest School area to let them go.
Our caretaker has very kindly under taken some improvements to our Reception area resources. He has spent a lot of time in all weathers creating a wooden decking stage and seating, 2 raised bed planting boxes, a poled tent canopy and a huge sandpit.These have proved to be a huge success especially the sand pit which is proving to be very popular with the children. We have already got a selection of seeds growing well in the raised bed.
Our main topic for the first half term has been Stories and Rhymes. The children made cad gingerbread men to take home with instructions to send to someone who lives far away and that person had to send it back and he was plotted on a map.
We looked at the map and discussed where different places are. We followed a gingerbread trail around the environmental area. We had to read the clues to find him.
Volcano experiment – We discussed what a dinosaur landscape looked like and we discovered that there was no grass in those days! We made a dinosaur landscape for our dinosaurs to play in. Then we made a volcano out of clag and a plastic bottle. We put bicarbonate of soda inside the volcano and added food colouring and vinegar to make a frothing eruption!
We really enjoyed our ‘Owl Babies’ topic. After reading the book we were inspired to find our more about owls and nocturnal animals. We made an wildlife park role play area. This included pay and display for our bikes. We made our own binoculars that really work. We made a bird hide to watch birds from. Percy the Park keeper asked us to look after the nocturnal animals from his park and he sent us a real stuffed owl to look at. We had some artificial owl pellets to dissect, which showed us which animals owls eat.
Heavier/Lighter.
We used the scales in maths to compare the weight of different objects and find out how much they weigh compared to non – standard measures like coloured cubes.
Summer Forest School – We have had lots of fun since the weather has improved over our environmental area. We have been mud painting and making bird feeders. Puss in Boots visited us to tell us his story. He also told us about the spell that turned the giant into other animals. We collected the boots from around Forest School and rearranged the letters to find ingredients for the magic spell, leaf, twigs, stone, mud. We mixed it together and we all turned into different animals.
Teddy Bears Picnic – We stumbled across some bears having their annual picnic. They had travelled from all over the world. The special guests, pop stars “The Softies” had lost their instruments on the plane and so we made them some new ones from things we found around Forest School and joined the concert. They let us them for juice and fruit as long as we pretended to be
teddy bears too!
Forest School Workshop
On the 2nd July 2010, we hosted a Forest School Workshop so parents could join their children in their Forest School activities. We were thrilled with the response, 32 children and their parents attended the workshop.
We made hot drinks using a Kelly kettle, which was quite hard to light at first, but once it got going, it made some lovely hot chocolate and there was enough for everyone.
We also made bird feeders using lard, muesli, currants and attached the mixture to trees and twigs. We used home-made playdough to make sculptures and pictures using natural materials found around the area. The parents and their children made a fabulous den to play in and the mud paintings were beautiful.
We also used wood, hammer and nails to make a couple of bird boxes to put up in our Forest School.
It was a very enjoyable morning and we would like to thank everyone who attended.
Several parents asked for the recipe for the 1 minute playdough
1cup of flour
½ cup of salt
1 tablespoon of oil
1 tablespoon of cream of tartar
add food colouring is desired
Mix together and then add 1 cup of boiling water from the kettle and stir until it makes one big lump of dough.
The second half term topic was animals.
We learnt about farm animals on our visit to Cosford Grange Farm.
We had a tractor ride, went on a woodland walk and watched the mice come out of their traps.
Back at the farm there were many animals, we petted baby animals and fed the goat and lambs.
When we came back to school we set up our own farm. We had a go at “shearing sheep”. We blew up a white balloon, covered it with shaving foam and then stuck cotton wool on top. We used a piece of thick cardboard to “shear” the foam and cotton wool off the balloon.
We tried not to hurt the sheep!
We also pretended to milk a cow. We took a rubber glove and pierced a small hole in the end of each finger to be the udder.
We filled it with water and tied an elastic band around the top then we tried to milk the cow!
The teachers got very wet!
We have introduced a new video link area on our Learning Platform.
These videos will be updated and added to each new term when possible.
Click on the link button to view our current school videos!
To return to our web site click on the browser 'Back' button.
Summer Play – We love our new sandpit. We pretended we are at the beach and bury each other’s feet in the sand and dig and build sandcastles its so much fun on a lovely sunny day! We have grown and ate our own vegetable; potatoes, carrots, strawberries but the slugs ate the cabbage. We have also grown nasturtiums and flowers that only come out in the sun.
The last two weeks of the term were very busy with our class assembly which the children performed beautifully. Also we were very busy with a Summer craft weeks in which we made postcards by finger painting minibeasts onto card. We have made paper plate octopuses and pretty collaged tropical fish. We have learnt how to draw dolphins and fish as well as making . We have made friendship bracelets to give to the friends we have made in Reception.
