Once upon a time………

Hi everyone – our topic this term is ‘Fairy-tales’, and the children are thoroughly enjoying exploring this theme.  It’s been great fun to incorporate this into the children’s learning, and so far we have focused on Jack and the Beanstalk, The Three Little Pigs, Goldilocks and The Three Bears and The Gingerbread Man.

The children have loved the repetitive rhymes within the stories and songs and now love to help us with the words and Makaton signs as we read and sing them together!

There have also been lots of ‘fairy-tale’ activities on offer to incorporate the children’s outcomes and overall development, a few examples are – playing with pigs in mud, scooping up, counting and sorting bears hidden in porridge oats, making piggy houses from straw, sticks and bricks, mark-making by drawing Goldilocks curls and piggy tails, and making dough, rolling and cutting out gingerbread men to use in play.

It has been great to see the children’s play skills and imaginations grow as they spend time in the role play areas of the classroom – The Three Little Bears House and our Jack and the Beanstalk castle were a hit, and currently we now have a construction site to build houses for The Three Little Pigs and a kitchen for Gingerbread Men to be made and then chased!

We are sure the children would love to hear these stories with you at home also, and no doubt they will join right in with their favourite parts!) – Ellen and class team.

Ah where do we start!  We have had such a great year working with your amazing children – it has been a privilege.  From Dinsosaurs and Pirates to the Circus – this year has been great fun as we have seen your children thrive, learn and build new friendships.

This last week has been amazing as the school enjoyed a Hadrian Music Festival – wow – what an extravaganza!  The children experienced an amazing Holi festival, a musical meander, a Brazilian Carnival, a Ceildih, and a One Love festival. We loved observing the children to see what inspired them to dance, sing, tap their foot or just ‘be’ in the moment with the music,

We all hope you have a lovely summer break – the children will be ready for it after all their hard work – as are we!  Here’s to fun in the sun (fingers crossed!), before we return in September for another busy year, from all the team!

The children are thoroughly enjoying our new ‘Pirate’ topic this term.  We have en’compassed’ (pardon the pun!) our pirate theme throughout lots of our lessons and activities.  We started by ‘pirating up’ our classroom sneakily after the children had gone home.  It was just great to see the children’s faces as they entered their class after the weekend!

In order to help the children understand a little about the pirate world we invited a friend to come into school to meet everyone – Captain Raggybeard was his name and the children were just captivated when meeting him and when listening to his tales.  The children also enjoyed a trip to the beach to ‘look for treasure’ as well as a visit to the ‘Fun Shack’ which is a pirate-themed soft play.

During numeracy the children have practiced their counting by putting jewels into their treasure chests which they made in Art, and also exploring sand to find and count pirate coins.  During outdoor learning fun was had by collecting treasure in our school gardens.

In literacy we have looked at some of the core vocabulary with the children by experiencing the words, sounds and Makaton signs and matching them to pirate objects, Sensory story time and pirate songs have also been fun – for the staff as well as the children!   There will be lots more activities on offer of a ‘piratey’ nature after the half term holidays – so watch this space!

Hi everyone – here’s just a snippet of some of the fun activities the children have been taking part in, and experiencing this week.

The children did so well in PE – following an obstacle course and thinking of different ways of moving and travelling.  We have also seen some lovely sharing, taking turns and playing with friends this week as we continue to work on these skills throughout the school day.  In art and design the children enjoyed making colorful marks to replicate the Big Top circus tent in line with our topic.  Food technology was also a hit – the children helped to make biscuits by weighing, mixing, and exploring textures before they ate them in snack time – the best bit!

Happy weekend everyone from the team.

Good moving along the bench in PE

I’m trying it this way

Using a body board to move

Circus Big Top colours in Art

Exploring textures in cooking

Concentrating hard on my fine motor skills

I’m full of energy in soft play with my friends!!

I love my personal story book

This week Class 8 have enjoyed throwing themselves into lots of fun activities.  The children have especially been enjoying our topic ‘The Circus’ with role play, dressing up, time practicing their circus skills, and being creative in art and design.

The children have also worked hard in literacy and numeracy this week, as well as enjoying PE, cookery, soft play, hydrotherapy and rebound – all in all another busy, fun week!

Have a lovely weekend from Class 8.

We have been having so much fun in the weeks leading up to Christmas! We made lots of Christmas decorations to decorate our classroom and take home. We had fun in the snow and did some snow painting. We got to go and see the pantomime which was so much fun! We were all very brave during the loud noises and bright lights and we did some fantastic dancing and singing! Our families and friends came to see our brilliant Christmas show where we all dressed as elves and prepared presents for Santa. We even got to meet Santa himself! He came to our school and gave all of us an early Christmas present because we have been so good. We are all so excited for Christmas but can’t wait to be back in the New Year!

We had such a busy Monday! In the morning we did our sensory story ‘Dinosaurs in the supermarket’. We love this one because we get to have a bubble storm at the end! We are getting used to all of the different textures and sensations we experience in this story, especially the ice and frozen peas!  In the afternoon we had PE. We are now so brave when it comes to balancing and jumping.

Another great day on Tuesday! In the morning we worked on our maths skills and completed so many different number activities both individually and as a team. In the afternoon we went to soft play and thrive room. We are working on playing nicely together and using clear communication to help us play games, take turns, and share. We have been talking a lot about our emotions and how certain words or actions might make others feel. This is helping us to be the best friends we can be.

On Wednesday we had a lovely yoga session. We are learning new stretches and poses as well as lots of dinosaur names! In the afternoon we had lots of fun decorating dinosaur feet using our cutting and sticking skills.

On Thursday we had a great hydro session. We love singing songs in the pool and getting to make a big splash along with the actions. In the afternoon we had some box time sessions, working on all of our individual targets. We are coming such a long way already!

On Friday we did some lovely choosing during free play. We worked together to make music, practicing our ‘fast’, ‘slow’, and ‘stop’. We also did some fab role playing with our hair dresser toys. We used our words to tell each other what we wanted and made some beautiful hair styles for each other!

On Monday morning we did our sensory story ‘Dinosaurs in the supermarket’. It was lots of fun! We got to make a mess, make loud and quiet noises, and tidy up just like the dinosaurs in the story. In the afternoon we had a very busy PE lesson. We did lots of throwing, catching, pulling, climbing, and balancing. We are working on using the key words/signs “more”, “stop”, “fast”, “slow”.

On Tuesday morning we did some fantastic maths work. We are working so hard and improving everyday! We are recognising numbers to 10, counting out amounts, matching amounts to numbers- so much work! In the afternoon we went to the thrive room to work on our communication and language skills. We are all doing so well when it comes to using our words/signs, and are able to have productive and positive interactions with each other.

On Wednesday we went on our dinosaur yoga adventure! The children are getting very good at recognising and naming different dinosaurs and at using their bodies to tell a story.
In the afternoon we made some dinosaur bones for our sand area, it was so much fun!

On Thursday we got on our bus and drove to the supermarket. While we were there we were on our best behavior! We had a list of items we had to find (all the same items from our story). Working together we managed to find everything we needed. We made sure to keep a look out for any dinosaurs that might be hiding in the supermarket too! As a special treat for being so good, we bought some cakes and brought them back to school to eat before home time.

Thank you everyone for your Children In Need donations on Friday!
We had a fab day! We had a special assembly where we spoke about what we had been doing to support Children In Need. There was even a competition to see which class had made the best Pudsey potatoes, take a look at ours!  In the afternoon we decorated some Pudsey biscuits, they were delicious.