School Blog
Learning, Transforming and Growing
‘I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go.’ Genesis 28:15
‘I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go.’ Genesis 28:15
We settled back into school well after the holidays. We are excited to be exploring the works of the Artist Kandinsky this term as part of our topic on circles, spots and polka dots. This week we have looked at circles and colour and have been enjoying books by French Artist Herve Tullet. We particularly enjoyed “Say Zoop!” looking at different size of circles and the patterns they can make. We have been exploring our new computer and have been engaged in playing maths games on Izzy’s Island.
In the classroom have been engineers making steps for the Slinkys and investigating how far they travel. We have enjoyed using books in our learning, using them to cook, prompts to help us create pictures and artwork and simply enjoying a story snuggled down on Miss Prud’homme’s new chair! Outside we have been making pumps and exploring water. We have also been perfecting our jumping, making sure we are landing on two feet.
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During half term the adults reflected on the classroom and added things to develop our opportunities and independence further.
We have a castle role play, complete with dressing up, fairy tale books, metal goblets, crowns and treasure. We will be exploring story language over the next term. We are very excited to be part of the Oxfordshire trial of Tales Toolkit, another way to support our language and imagination development. We also have a sewing station. We will be developing our fine motor skills, creativity and independence over the year. Miss Prud’homme has had great fun making some examples to spark our creativity! We made observational drawings of fruit and vegetables for Harvest. We used a variety of media to create our pictres including collage, pastels, colouring pencils and tissue paper painting.
We looked really carefully at what we could see. “It’s a bit orange, a bit yellow spotty” “I can see brown on the top. It goes into the inside”. The children stood up in assembly to talk about what we had been doing. We showed pictures of us cooking and exploring food. We also showed everyone the vegetables that we had grown in our garden. It’s the end of our first term! We are becoming increasingly independent accessing phonic and maths resources to support our independent learning.
We enjoy sharing books with each other and imaginations are getting better and better as we are building and making. We have been fascinated after observing what would happen when we blew into a pipe with the submerged in water. “It’s a water volcano!” Nate found some pumpkin seeds and wanted to plant them. He decided to plant them in a tub rather than the ground “because it will be easier for me to look after”, he told the adult. “I will know exactly where it is planted”. Nate self-resourced a pot, soil and spade and planted his seed. The adult worked alongside Nate and they talked about other things his seed might need to grow. Adult introduced vocabulary (germinate, root). Nate wanted to write a sign so others would know what was planted. He bought paper, pencil and bluetac to the garden to make his sign. Nate could identify the initial sound and the adult supported Nate to match phoneme to grapheme by modelling the mnemonic. Nate was fully focused on his activity making. Another adult introduced the ideas of the birds eating seeds in gardens and gave Nate an idea of covering his planted seed with leaves. Nate made links with his own experiences “we could make a scarecrow, I’ve seen one in someone’s garden when they had planted lots of vegetables”. Nate asked the adult for “old trousers, a jumper and a head” for his scarecrow. The adult Nate thought about what they could use as the filling for their scarecrow. Nate suggested leaves and with his friends he began stuffing the clothes with leaves. Nate experimented with the different sized leaves seeing which made the most rigid stuffing “big dry leaves are better”, he decided. He spent a considerable period of time focused on his activity, getting just the effect he wanted. Nate asked for a hat and wellingtons for his scarecrow. Nate found a suitable spot for his scarecrow to sit near his plant. He was very proud of his achievements and wanted to show his friends and all the other adults who visited the classroom. Nate was keen to plant more and the adult suggested that they visit the Garden Centre during lunchtime to see if there was anything else they could plant. Nate, James and the adult went to the Garden Centre. Nate chose some Daffodil bulbs “they are very bright and will make everyone happy”. The adult drew attention between blubs and seeds. “These bulbs are really big already”. The adult talked to James and Nate about paying with a debit card and looked at the contactless payment system.
We have been really active this week. The adults in our class introduced cable drums, planks and ladders to see what we could do with them! We also have a new slide to use.
It was fantastic and we remembered to be ‘Fantastic Fledglings’ taking turns and supporting our friends. This week we explored the sewing table. There was lots of opportunities to talk about maths as we measured out our wool and the size of our stiches. It was tricky at first be we helped each other, using lots of positional language.
“I need my wool a bit longer because I want to sew along this line”. “Put your needle on the top then the bottom and then up and then down again” The children cooked chocolate brownies this week. There was lots of opportunities for maths and literacy as they followed the recipe and weighed out the ingredients.
We explored Clay in the classroom this week, developing our fine motor skills and language. We looked at physical changes as we investigated what happened when we added water to the clay, and watched as it dried out too. “it go hard”. “It’s all slimy when there is water on it”. “I like it on my hands, it’s so smooth” We used UV colour changing beads to make bracelets and necklaces. It was fascinating watching the beads change colour when we took them into the sunlight. You can see how engaged we were.
We also enjoyed using the hoover in the classroom. We love exploring technology and asked Miss Prud’homme if she could find other things for us to try. We enjoyed looking at the magazines in the reading area, spotting words and characters that we know. We investigated bubbles in the water trays, adding washing up liquid and glycerol. The results were amazing!
“The bubbles are always round and you can see lots of colours when you look at them”. “You had to shake the hoop to make sure that all the water went over it or it didn’t work”. “You have to move slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly or it will go …. |POP!”. |
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