Weeks Commencing 10th March and 17th March - Dinosaurs

Over the last two weeks, our learning has been focussed around dinosaurs, a topic that the children already had a lot of interest and knowledge about.

In English, we read a selection of books about dinosaurs and Mary Anning, including: Excuse Me, Are you a T-Rex?, The Fossil Hunter, The Girl and the Dinosaur, Dinosaur Bones and Fabulous Facts: Dinosaurs. Our writing activities included drawing and labelling pictures of dinosaurs, writing a story about a dinosaur encounter and writing questions to ask a palaeontologist.

In Science, we continued our learning about plants, thinking about identifying common plants and which plants we eat, linking this to our learning about herbivores, carnivores and omnivores.

During our Forest School sessions, we learnt about how birds are related to dinosaurs and made our own bird feeders as well as finding dinosaurs on the field and creating habitats for them.

In our continuous provision time, we made a herbivore salad, looked for dinosaur bones in the sand and roleplayed being palaeontologists, including looking for fossils in our rock collection. We also used clay to make our own fossils by imprinting dinosaur figures.

In R.E, we had a lesson on Ramadan where we learnt about customs such as fasting; we even tried dates, the food eaten by Muslims to break their fast, which is considered a good deed.

In Maths, the Year 1s have been learning to use number lines to add and subtract and to find 1 more or 1 less than a number and our Reception children have continued to explore the composition of the numbers 1 – 5 as well as deepening their understanding of the concept of zero.

The highlight of the last two weeks however, was a visit from a real palaeontologist who came to the class to speak to the children about his job and his discoveries. The children were very excited to ask him the questions they had written in English and learnt a lot from this real-life fossil hunter. The children are also looking forward to our trip to the Sedgewick Museum in Cambridge to learn more about dinosaurs and see some of Mary Anning’s ‘finds’ in real life.

Weeks Commencing 24th February and 3rd March - Jack and the Beanstalk

Our focus for the last two weeks has been the fairy story 'Jack and the Beanstalk' which has been linked to our learning about plants in Science. Activities have included: reading various versions of the story, writing descriptions of the giant and retelling the story in English, measuring beanstalks with cubes in Maths, making magic bean shakers and sandwiches in DT, creating beanstalk collages using natural resources in Forest School and decorating golden eggs in Art. We have also squeezed in some dance in which we imagined we were beanstalks emerging from the ground and growing up to the sky. 

 

 

 

Week Commencing 10th February 2025 - Valentine's Day

Love was in the air this week as we celebrated all things Valentine's. The children wrote self-love affirmations, made tissue paper flowers and, having read the story 'Under the Love Umbrella' created their own love umbrellas to show who loves and cares for them. We were also lucky enough to be joined by Eagle Owl Class for some buddy reading and assistance with these tasks and, in Science, we experimented with different materials to find out which would be the best for an umbrella.

 

Week Commencing 3rd February 2025 - Chinese New Year

We had lots of fun this week learning all about Chinese New Year. The children enjoyed reading lots of texts and watching a range of videos all about the customs and celebrations that take place during this time, including: 'I Love Chinese New Year', 'Cleversticks', 'The Great Race' and 'Winnie the Witch and the Chinese New Year'.

Activities this week included: using chopsticks to pick up different items and move them into egg boxes, role playing the story of The Great Race, painting banners with Chinese writing, making Chinese dragons and writing numbers in Chinese. 

The highlight of the week,however, was when the children had a go at cooking and eating some noodles, soy sauce and prawn crackers. It was lovely to see the children having a go at using chopsticks and trying new foods and flavours. 

 

Week Commencing 27th January 2025 - Winter

In Pygmy Owl Class, we have been reading the text Winter's Child and writing about what the main character Tom got up to in the winter wonderland. In Maths, our Reception children have been learning to represent the number 4 in different ways and our Year Ones have been learning different subtraction methods. 

In P.E, we learnt about the importance of using the right amount of power when moving a ball and put this into practice by playing a game of tennis ball golf which involved rolling a tennis ball into a hoop in as few rolls as possible. 

On our Forest School Friday walk we spotted evergreen and deciduous trees and built some hibernation dens for animals, thinking about providing them with shelter, warmth, a bed and some food for when they woke up. We then spent some time on The Mound, enjoying the 'mud slide' and much fun was had by all!

 

 

 

Week Commencing 20th January 2025

We have had a busy few weeks in Pygmy Owl Class. We have begun our learning about the natural world by looking at the seasons and weather. The children have learnt about the changes that happen to trees in different seasons as well as how the weather changes and the order and features of each season. 

In English, we began by watching a video called Automne and thought about the changes that happen to the earth as the seasons changed. This prompted some writing about the different seasons. We then moved on to reading the Percy the Park Keeper story 'One Snowy Night' and did some work about what Percy was like and how we knew from the story as well as writing thought bubbles for Percy at different points in the story. The children also enjoyed role playing the story in the continuous provision time and even indulged in some hot chocolate to warm up, just like Percy!

In Maths, our reception children have been learning to subitise numbers up to 5 and our Year 1s have been working on addition and subtraction. 

The children have also enjoyed experimenting with mixing colours to create colours linked to each season and using these to create finger print pictures as well as having a go at creating a watercolour wash for a background for a seasons picture. 

In P.E we have been learning to throw and catch and have made clay and stick hedgehogs in our Forest School Friday session.