Christmas Fun!

10th December 2020Tracy Gooderick

It has been a very busy few weeks in our class starting all our Christmas learning and activities. Below are some photos of some of the kinds of things we have been up to.

In Maths we have been working on our counting and numeral recognition through fun games like ‘Snowman/Snowball’! The children thoroughly enjoyed throwing the snowballs to knock over the snowmen and counted their scores. They then found the numeral to match! They were also working in teams so it was very noisy with lots of cheering! Lots of fun!

They have also been learning the Christmas story in RE and in cookery they have been finishing their Christmas cakes. In Art they have been ‘Using tools’ this half term and this week they have been practicing using glue spreaders by making lovely Winter Snowflakes and forks to paint Christmas Trees! And of course you can’t start Christmas without a bit of Winter Sensory Fun with snow!! And singing around the Christmas Tree!

Its also Human Rights Month so the children in our class have been experiencing what its like not to be able to see, like Helen Keller, by playing pin the nose on Olaf! They thought it would be easy but it wasn’t! They have been learning about Helen Keller and who she was, and all the work she did for people with disabilities and Human Rights. They also did some photography and painted their faces to recreate a work by Ai Weiwei another Human Rights Activist.

Very busy!

We HAVEN’T started Christmas!

27th November 2020Tracy Gooderick

This week in class the children have been exploring more ‘old’ toys and items in Humanities! They used and old camera not connected to a phone!, a camcorder (remember those?!) and a gameboy, as well as a variety of old phones (with buttons!). The children loved this! They also learned how to play Hopscotch and worked on their numeracy skills while enjoying the old game. In Maths this week they have been playing Trasketball!! The children have been practicing their throwing skills to get the trash ball into the numbered cup.

Of course it has got a little bit messy with sensory fun time and painting some mermaid pictures with cotton buds and they have also painted some beautiful mermaid hearts for the Care Home Ferguson Lodge to cheer the people up there who may not be able to see their families at Christmas.

The children have also been lucky to take part in some special events this week-they attended a fabulous Diwali workshop in the Dance Studio and went their view their mermaid road sign creation in the outdoor gallery ‘Caterpillar Street’ based on the work of the artist Clet Abrahams. We loved everyone’s creations!

Lastly we HAVEN’T started Christmas and we HAVEN’T started making their Christmas cakes or decorating their tree in the class ready for next week……………………….well…..maybe just a little…………….

Fun. That is all.

19th November 2020Tracy Gooderick

This week in class we have been having lots of FUN! Sensory fun, messy fun, fun with toys and cookery fun!

The children have been learning about Victorian Toys this week as part of their Humanities topic and they made their own. They made thaumatropes and cup and ball toys and they thoroughly enjoyed it!! We have saved Mr Rollings lots of money by making our own toys for Christmas!

We have also been working on their Road Sign for Caterpillar Street and they have linked their creation to our topic of Mermaids. We can’t wait to show you when its finished.

In the Yurt on Wednesday we made pancakes and today watched a Virtual Panto of The Wizard of Oz. The children really loved this and made us all very happy to have a little bit of Panto cheer even if it wasn’t in the usual way.

Mehvish is our achiever of the week! She has done some fabulous work on matching sentences this week with her cookery recipe. Well Done Mehvish!

We Will Remember

13th November 2020Tracy Gooderick

This week has been a sea of red in our class. The children have been making beautiful poppies for our Remembrance board using plastic bottle bottoms and handprints as well as practicing their fine motor skills by cutting poppies out and mark making in red and black. Bilal and Max have been doing some really good standing at the table this week to do their work. Mehvish and Sabina have been improving their skills using a paintbrush and produced some lovely paintings of poppies.

In our class this week we have also been learning about the Artist Clet Abrahams and we have started work on planning our Road Sign based on his work for our new ‘Caterpillar Street’ in school! The children made stop signs by painting really neatly using brushes and sticking a favourite Disney character of their choice on them in a funny position.

They have also celebrated Diwali this week by making Coconut Ladoos (which the children just ate most of the condensed milk when making!) and learning the story of Rama and Sita. In cookery the children made ‘Mermaid Soup’ as part of their English story ‘The Singing Mermaid’. It was VERY smelly! They used prawns, spinach, Ramen spice, sweetcorn and garlic!

Today has been Children in Need and the children have been for a Pudsey Bear treasure hunt in the mud kitchen. They also wore Pudsey clothes and jamas and raised lots of money for the charity.

This week our star was Nelson who received the class certificate for his excellent work choosing his name from a choice of names and for settling in really well into our school!

Have a lovely weekend!

Toys and Fireworks!

6th November 2020Tracy Gooderick

This week we have been lucky enough to start our new humanities topic Toys: Old and New! This is our favourite ever topic!!!! The children explored all the toys and games in the classroom and chose their favourite. Max and Sabina did some research about Toys and Max definitely knew his way through the online Toy Shop catalogue! Linked to toys the children have been learning about Gifts in RE and we started this unit with a game of pass the parcel. It was really interesting to learn all about how we were feeling when we saw the box. We did lots of work on emotions. Also this week the children were very lucky to see some lovely Fireworks at our school Fireworks display. We also made some beautiful Fireworks pictures in class using a ‘splat the teabag’ technique! It got quite messy (nothing new in our class!).

Next week we have Children in Need on Friday so come in yellow, Pyjamas or Pudsey dress if you like!

Mucky Pups

23rd October 2020Tracy Gooderick

This week has been absolute carnage in our class! We have been soooooooooooooo messy everyday doing lots of Autumn and Halloween activities, most of which involved paint! The children have been spray painting, messy painting and had lots of fun. The photos speak for themselves.

Happy half term holidays!

Our first full week and what a lot of learning!

16th October 2020Tracy Gooderick

This week has been our first full week in school as a class, we are still missing some friends but will hopefully see them soon. The children have had SUCH a busy wee of learning and fun activities!

They have been working on number songs and Pirate patterns on flags, free painting to make lovely thank you cards for our friends that donated money to school and what a messy bunch of artists we have!

The children are working on a Pirate theme this half term and they have practiced their fine motor cutting and mark making skills by making a giant Pirate treasure map! There were sharks and islands and lots of lovely colours and lines on it. They also learned about the Pirate Blackbeard and made an ‘old’ Pirate map by painting with tea and coffee. the children loved this and the smells and tastes of the tea and coffee. The paper has now dried and looks very old! Ready for next week to make their own treasure maps.

Blackbeard left the children a treasure map on our day in the Yurt and they had to follow it to find shapes leading to a treasure of chocolate coins hidden in the Yurt! In the Yurt they toasted marshmallows on the fire and in the afternoon they snuggled up and watched Peter Pan. Captain Hook is so mean!

Other activities have been looking at Kente cloth, trying on wigs for our Sonya Boyce based Art Display for Black History Month and they have also made a Pirate Smoothie with the ingredients of spinach, banana and melon! The children have been working on recognising their names and they are beginning to achieve this. We are so proud of them!

Today the children have been to the mud kitchen. They love this time on a Friday!

Such a busy week!

Oh and we had PE outside!! Phew, we need a rest over the weekend!

Happy Friday!

 

IMG_8649

We’re Baaaacccckkk! Part 2!

9th October 2020Tracy Gooderick

After another few days off we were very happy to get back to school again!

The children have been learning about Kente Cloths this week as part of Humanities to celebrate Black History Month. They have been learning the story of The Spider Weaver and the history of Kente Cloth. They made their own ‘lines’ Kente patterns for our class display as part of their Art topic of ‘Lines’. They practiced their cutting and sticking skills as well as painting and printing. It was a sunny afternoon so we went outside to do this.

Today the children have also been outside in the Mud Kitchen working on their Core Vocabulary skills. We have alot of very quiet children in our class and the Mud Kitchen really motivates them to use their big voices!

As part of our wellbeing afternoon today the children had a class disco and ‘ME’ party because they LOOOOOOOVVVVVVVVEEEE music and dancing! We also had Vikki and George at home on zoom saying hello and joining us for a while. We all had a lovely time! We are going home tonight happy!

 

We’re Back!!!!!

2nd October 2020Tracy Gooderick

Hi everyone

After two long weeks of home learning we are back in school! We returned on Wednesday with a lovely first day back in our school Yurt. In the Yurt the children had a fantastic day doing music activities, Pirate themed cutting and sticking and they had hot chocolate around our Yurt fire.

Yesterday the children did some Pirate themed Dance in PE. They learned moves for the Dance cards and then put three together to make their Pirate themed dance. They danced to pirate sea shanties.

In the afternoon they followed instructions in English to make Apple and Cheese Pirate Ships in the Cookery room. The children used their reading skills to match symbols to find the utensils needed and ingredients. They then used their fine motor skills to practice chopping skills and building the ships. Then of course they ate them back in class!

Today the children have had a very funday Friday and spent time in the mud kitchen and home corner as well as working on their inset puzzles in the classroom.

We have all had a great first week back with lots of outdoor learning!

Have a lovely weekend.

Back to School

6th September 2020Tracy Gooderick

Hi Everyone,

For those of you I directed to the Blog for news of coming back this week I have a few things to share. We are really looking forward to a new school year in class and we have some new friends starting with us. It’s been a LONG summer holiday this year! It has been such uncertain times and I’m sure all of you and the children are anxious about what school will be like now but we will be doing our best to make sure it is as safe and as normal as possible for the children. As always we are here if you have any worries, just send a message or call school to chat to me or one of the team. Children start back school on Tuesday 8th September.

Now more than ever it is important to keep things coming in and out of school to a minimum so we will again not have home/school paper diaries but we will be working on the ClassDojo system of communication. It was a big success last year and over lockdown it became a lifesaver for keeping us all connected. Some of you will be familiar with it and will just need to join this year’s class using your personal code on the sheet I will provide on Tuesday. If you are not familiar with the App please read below.

Class Dojo is a messaging service and it works LIKE a facebook page or Blog in which you can see photos and posts I will make about the day the children have had. However only parents of children in the class can see these posts and photographs as well as me and class staff.

You can message me directly and you can also share photographs of the children at home, which they love to look at in circle time.

This is an App which you need to download on your phone. (or if you would rather you can just google search on the computer – it’s just easier on your phone)

How it works:

Download the App ClassDojo

Follow the instruction sheet with you own personal code

Send me a message on the messages tab to let me know you have joined

Hopefully we can get everyone connected! The children will love using it at home as well to look at photographs from the school day.

In class I also use it to give the children virtual points linked to a monster they have created and they are always very motivated by these points!! At the end of the week the child with the most points will get a dip in the special box as a reward. So you can see how many points they are getting daily.

I will pick up messages on school computer between 8am and 5pm but feel free to message at night as long as you are aware they won’t be read until school time. Any absences must still be reported to the school office via telephone.

If your child requires emergency medication / inhaler please make sure it is sent into school on Tuesday.

Please make sure that you put your child’s name on ALL items of clothing that are sent into school as always.The class team for this year is me, Tracy, plus Yvonne, Vicki and Adam. We are really looking forward to working with your children and getting back to normal(ish). Please be assured that all guidelines will be followed and we will be keeping your children and ourselves very safe. Any queries feel free to call. Or message!

See you all on Tuesday!

Tracy