Autumn Term 2
Something very exciting happened over the holidays so our last assembly of the term was a very special one in preparation for Miss Mansfield's wedding. We played games, she practised walking down the aisle and we gave her gifts and cards. As you can see the wedding was a very special day indeed!
Robin Hood - What a way to end the term! We visited the Dukes theatre as a whole school on the last day to celebrate the end of Autumn term and start of the Christmas holidays. It was magical from the very start. What a big adventure for reception. We travelled on a coach to Lancaster and then watched the amazing pantomime Robin Hood. We even had a chocolate treat and drink during the interval. It was a great show and made us laugh lots. It was a very exciting day!
Reception, Year and Year 2 were super resilient runners during our reindeer rush! Thy ran and ran and ran! Six laps of the entire school without stopping. What a big achievement and lots of money raised for ST John's hospice. Well done!
Outdoor learning fun
This week we celebrated everything Christmas. We made Christmas decorations, designed Christmas cards to send home- they even had a pop up surprise inside them. We made a calendar for 2023 with hand drawn pictures of ourselves and the adults in our class to take home to our families. We has a Christmas workshop where we practised wrapping presents and put them under the tree. We made and wrote gift tags to stick on them. We wrote a list to Santa of the presents we would like to get. We posted our Christmas cards in our post box and delivered them to our friends.
Christmas party. We had a wonderful time at the Reception and KS1 party. We played lots of games, danced and even had a suprise visit from Father Christmas who spoke to each of the children and gave them a special little gift. After all the partying we went back to class for a super party picnic with treats and Christmas crackers!
Wriggly Nativity! What a fabulous performance the children did three times over! Such wonderful singing and acting from all of our reception and KS1 children. They should all be very proud of themselves. A lot of practice and effort went into the production and everyone tried their very best and were so brave on the big stage in front of all their grown ups. A big well done!
This week we have looked at winter. We have learned about snowflakes and their unique patterns. We read the story the Gruffalo's child and sequenced the pictures and retold the story with puppets. A few children decided they wanted to make igloos but needed snow bricks so they wrapped lots of the wooden bricks with white paper to create their blocks. We made snowflakes by snipping pieces of paper with scissors. We investigated how to free the animals from the ice. We located on the globe where arctic and Antarctic animals come from and discussed why Polar Bears and Penguins would never play together!
Birthdays! This is something we are all very knowledgeable about. We shared our experiences of our birthdays and talked about the different ways we like to celebrate our birthdays with our family and friends. We looked at our birthday board and creatd a chart to see which month had the most birthdays in from all of us in our class. We looked at pictures of ourselves when we were babies and talked about how we have changed over the years as we have got older. We listened to the story Kipper's birthday and talked about how Kipper was feeling when his friends didn't come to his party. After that we decided to make a list of all the things we would need to buy to have a birthday party of our own. In Maths we couted the candles on cakes of different teddies and matched them to their birthday cards, we decorated cakes with the correct number of sweets and counted which teddy had more toys when we played a game of sharing. We also played lots of party games with our friends and made lots of party decorations for the house.
This week we have been thinking about our environment and how to care for the world we live in. We have learnt about recycling though the story 'Messy Magpie' and recreated our own recycling centre to sort out metals. plastics, paper and card. We have used lots of different materials to make other things such as repurposing our rubbish to make models in th creative area. We also used some old nuts and bolts to make loose part pictures. We also used the computer to help Peppa Pig clean a rubbish filled beach. As a class we learnt a recycling song and performed it together at the end of the week. We also used our phonics to help us create posters to encourage people to look after our planet.
On 11th November we held a 2 minutes silence to remember the soldiers that died in the war after watching the children's animation of the rabbit who represents the soldiers during the time of the war in what is now regarded as Flanders Fields. In reception we have been creating lots of poppy themed art work and models. Everyone in school has written a message on a poppy for our display in the main entrance.
The Rainbow Fish. This week we have been learning about the story 'The Rainbow Fish' We have learnt so much about colours and patterns. We decorated our own rainbow fish in the colours of our own choice. We sequenced the story using pictures and puppets to help us retell the story and discussing how the characters may feel in the story and thinking of describing words about the rainbow fish.
Odd Sock Day - Monday 14th November. Today we celebrated 'Odd Sock Day'. We all came to school wearing odd socks to raise awareness of being individual and unique. We read the story Simon sock by Sue Hendra and talked about why it's great to be different. We danced in our odd socks and designed odd sock posters.
Bonfire night and Firework week - we watched fireworks on the smartboard and explored light patterns with torches and glowsticks. We recreated fireworks using the interactive whiteboard and paint package. We also talked about firework safety and remembered our trip to the firestation. Fireman Sam helped us to stay safe and gave us some rules to remember when celebrating bonfire night. We made sparklers in the creative area, used the building blocks to make a small world bonfire display, practiced out letters in the firework glitter sparks and practised writing our names on firework explosions! We listened to the story of Guy Fawkes and learnt the rhyme 'remember, remember the fifth of November'.
Diwali week - This week we have been learning all about Diwali, the festival of light that is celebrated by people who are Sikh or Hindu faith. We learnt that it is celebrated each year because of the ancient story of Rama and Sita. We listened to the story and then made some beautiful rangoli patterns and built a temple. We also made Diva lamps from clay, which we decorated and created some mehndi designs.
This half term we will be learning through the theme of 'colours and celebrations.' Autumn term is a busy time in the school calendar and we will be looking forward to lots of new learning opportunities.
