Autumn 1

Settling In

The new Year R children have settled in really well and have spent their first few weeks at school exploring the resources in their classrooms and outdoors. They have had so much fun!

The Little Red Hen

Over the last few weeks, we have been learning to sequence and retell the story of the Little Red Hen. This all started when somebody left a story sack in our classrooms. After lots of discussion, we agreed that the things all belonged to the Little Red Hen story.

Then, we received a letter from the Little Red Hen asking if we would be able to help her out by making some bread for her. First, we had to find out what ingredients we needed and then what to do with them. Finally, we were ready to bake our bread. We made a roll each and some extra rolls which we sent to the Little Red Hen. It was delicious! 

The Dot

This week we have been reading a story called The Dot. It is about a girl called Vashti who thinks she can’t draw. But then she decides to have a go; and using her tortoise learning power she discovers that by trying hard she can create beautiful artwork.

We looked at some of Kandinsky’s artwork which he has created using dots and circles. We worked together, using the elephant learning power, to create our own masterpieces!

Autumn 2

Percy and the Park Keeper

We have been reading a Percy and the Park Keeper book called The Lost Acorns. Percy and his friends Mole and Squirrel plant spring bulbs in the Autumn and hunt for squirrel’s missing acorns. We had two exciting visits from Mrs Smith who helped us to plant our very own spring bulbs in the flower beds outside Class 2 and some special bulbs we planted in pots that will be ready for us to take home for Christmas too!

The story got us wondering about moles and wanting to know more about where they live and what they look like, so we started an investigation to find out and then used our DT skills to design and build homes for moles. We found out lots of information about moles. Maybe your child could tell you what they can remember?

 

   

Children in Need

This year for Children In Need we donated £1 each so we could come into school wearing all things spots, yellow and even our pyjamas! There were special biscuits for sale and we had great fun doing lots of Pudsey Bear activities as well as learning the Strictly Come Dancing 25 step challenge routine to show to the other class.

 

Repeating Patterns

This week we have been exploring and learning about patterns in maths using coloured blocks, elephants and multilink cubes. First, we used coloured blocks to understand patterns that repeat. For example; red, blue, red, blue, red, blue. Then, we explored more repeating patterns that weren’t as simple and had a go at drawing our own patterns too! We even decided to use our new pattern knowledge to decorate our pot collars for our festive flowers we planted with Mrs Smith a few weeks ago.

 

Christmas maths games

We have been playing some themed games to help us practise our careful counting, subitising and part-whole skills that we have been learning this term. One of our favourites was decorating the Christmas tree. We had to roll the dice and collect the right number of baubles. Then, roll again and collect in a different colour. We then counted these two ‘parts’ to find out our ‘whole’ number of baubles on the tree.

Christmas Crafts

In the lead up to Christmas, we enjoyed lots of special activities, including Christmas crafts where we used our handprints to make a class door wreath, as well as snow globes with us INSIDE! We also coloured, cut out and decorated a Christmas tree. But best of all was being part of our first Key Stage 1 Nativity, where we were donkeys, shepherds and sheep, and we performed to all our families. Our teachers and LSA’s were extremely proud of us!