A big well done to our Jack and Kai who received the Newcastle achievement award.

Jack has made outstanding progress on his VOCA, blowing us all away with his skills.

Kai has overcome so many worries on his move over to Hadrian after a long time being home-schooled.

We watched the awards live on screen in the music studio with their very proud parents.

This week we have been learning all about Pacchanta in Peru. Pacchanta is located in the foothills of the snow-capped “Ausangate”, at an altitude of 4200 meters above sea level.

We have talked about how we might get there, what the weather might be like. We all decided we would need to be well prepared for hiking mountains, so we packed our backpacks with all the essentials such as blankets, drinks, snacks and our tents.

We set off after circle time and hiked around the school grounds until we reached our basecamp (flow area) where we set up for the day, with great teamwork our camp was up in no time. We listened to traditional Andes music, we made our own music with different instruments the made some traditional Peruvian panpipes.

It was a great day, all of us are so excited for our next adventure!

Have a great weekend, take care.

For the last few weeks we have been working on a special art project which was Banksy inspired! It has been great messy fun!

The children explored painting using our spray bottles! We tied our art project in with the war topic we have been working on, the children we so interested why and how the children had to evacuate, (why our art shows our class packed with their bags waiting for the train) they were so empathetic for the children having to leave their families during the war, it made everyone realise how lucky we are to be able to go home to our loved ones everyday.

We walked around the caterpillar garden in awe of the art produced by classes across the school! There were some amazing creations!

We have had a very busy week rehearsing our dance for the ‘Dance Festival’ the children looked amazing in their costumes and did a fantastic job, all will be revealed when we return to school. In between our dancing we managed a day in the yurt, where we did story yoga and had a pamper afternoon.

After this busy week it is fair to say everyone is tired now and ready for a weeks break! Hope you all have a wonderful half term.

See you back Monday 7th June.

We have been planting and learning about the growing process, we can now name the different parts of a plant such as the roots, stem, leaves and flower, we also know to grow plants and seeds they will need warmth, water and sunlight. Under a microscope we examined all these parts closely.

We have also planted our own runner bean which we are excited to watch grow. We have put them in a warm sunny place as we now know that what is needed to grow..

We all now know our story this term “The Giant Jam Sandwich” so well, so in our English lesson we had a class quiz and amazed the adults with our knowledge.

We made a giant jam sandwich (not as big as the one in the story) in our food technology lesson, the best part was eating it at snack time. Fair to say we are now jam sandwich experts so we decided to share our skills and make a cooking show video inspired by our book! We had some very confident instructors hope you enjoy our video.

https://youtu.be/ptgY5yla7uoz

Sending best wishes to all our families celebrating Eid this week!

Manhoor came in with her family all looking beautiful and very kindly brought a chocolate cake for her friends to share. It was delicious thankyou.

Have a wonderful weekend.

We have been practicing our independent dressing skills for a few weeks now and we are starting to really see the progress!

Dressing can be a complex activity.

Children need to be able to master a number of skills such as co-ordination where a child needs to be able to create co-ordinated movements, using one arm and both arms. A child also needs the control of hand movement that require fine motor skills, such as fastening buttons. Motor skills where a child needs to be able to move his or her limbs and body in a full range of movements requiring muscle strength and flexibility in their joints.
Balance – being able to maintain their balance whilst changing posture/position both with eyes open and shut.
Perception – having an understanding of various sizes and shapes of buttons and also knowing the size of arm holes.
Stereognosis – being able to feel their way without relying on sight such as finding arm holes with a jumper over his or her head or fastening buttons behind at the back.
Body Schema – being able to tell right from left and the difference between arms and legs.

All very big words but helps us parents break down all the actions needed when getting dressed that can make it a bit tricky for our children.

We use most of these motor skills in our daily activities but have really been focusing on clothing and using our fine motor skills, which will help us become more independent and confident in our every day life. We were very persistent and did not give up, we tried fastening zips, buttons and shoe laces on our own clothing and trying our friends clothing, as you can see we have been very busy.

Hope you all keep practicing at home.

Look at us go!

A few of us in class struggled to get our coats until we mastered this magical trick!

Have a wonderful weekend, stay safe.

It has been lovely to welcome the children back after the Easter break. The weather has been chilly but lovely and sunny so we have managed to get out into the outside area’s, it has been a wonderful busy first week back in class. all the children have been really focused and worked hard.

In literacy we have begun reading two new stories, ‘The Giant JAM Sandwich’ and ‘The Flower’. The children are really engrossed in the stories and have been asking some very interesting questions and also giving some very thoughtful opinions. We have been around the school grounds to see what flowers we could find, the children recorded how many different colours and sizes they could find and we made an e-book with our photos.

We had a fun art session in the music studio where we began to work on our new display for class, we have some very artistic, imaginative children the display is going to be amazing!

Our football lesson restarted on a Monday lunchtime so can you please make sure your child has suitable, comfortable footwear.

With the weather getting warmer could you please send in some sun cream and sun hat for your child please.

Have a great weekend.