After discovering a bog baby in forest school, our literacy focus has been on the story of The Bog Baby. We painted and labelled pictures of a bog baby and then completed a drama activity. We used some great language and expressions to show how the characters might have been feeling when they squelched through the mud, fished in the pond and found a tiny bog baby. 

March 2025

This half term we have been learning about different food groups and exploring more about fruit and vegetables and why there are good for us to eat!  We discovered that vegetables are full of vitamins and nutrients which our bodies need to work properly.  We learnt how to ribbon, grate and cut vegetables to prep them ready for us to eat. 

In English we have been learning about the story ‘The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch’.  The children came up with the idea of making Mr Grinling a lunch and the children voted to make sandwiches!

February 2025

We have been learning about the Jewish tradition of Shabbat.  We made Challah bread and really enjoyed tasting it!

January 2025

We have been very creative this half term learning how we can combine different art technique to create different effects.  We learnt how to attach fabrics to cardboard using our pencils!  We explored the use of chalks and pastels and seeing how they draw differently when wet.  Used glue to attach fabrics as well as using it to create a shiny texture.  We created our final art pieces using all the skills we have learnt!.

We have had so much fun exploring our forest school area this week.  We were lucky enough to experience all different weather conditions in the forest – from wet and windy to misty and foggy!  The children had fun creating shelters and beds to keep warm.  The children were also inspired to make natural Christmas tree decorations from a beautiful branch they found!  We created ladybirds from seeds we found around the Cherry trees and had lots of fun on the swings.

We explored what our senses can tell us about religion and belief. To understand the importance of our senses, we explored a piece of chocolate using one sense at a time- taste was our favourite! We learnt about how Hinduism uses all the senses during worship. It was interesting looking at the objects used during puja (the act of Hindu worship).

When we returned from break on Monday, we discovered a big mess in our role play area! One of us spotted that there was a soft toy in the tree! We went to investigate and look for clues. We were so surprised to find other toys hiding! A bear in a box, a ladybird in the shop area and a kangaroo sleeping in the bed of the little house! Thankfully, we all managed to find a toy. We then named our toys and thought about adjectives we could use to describe them. We came up with some really good ideas and worked hard on writing sentences about them!

Over the past few weeks we have been learning about ‘painting’ in our art lessons.  We learnt how to name and label parts of a paintbrush and we sorted our paintbrushes by size.  We learnt to use the ‘dip, dip, dab’ technique to help us have better control when using paint.  We have to dip our paintbrush in water, tap off the excess and dip the brush into the paint.  We then dab the brush onto our plain pallet before starting to paint on our page.  By holding our paintbrush like a pencil, we learnt that it helps us to have great control of where we want toe paint to go.

We have begun learning about the artist Mondrian and using his art work to inspire our art pieces.  We cannot wait to complete our final art piece over the next few weeks. 

We had lots of fun in the rain at Forest Schools this week!  We enjoyed exploring the area and seeing out different it feels in different weather.  The children enjoyed exploring the mud kitchen area and enjoyed creating picture menus and creating wonderful dishes and drinks for the adults!  The children also expressed an interested in making dens with various ropes, twigs and tarps, as well as pond dipping to see if they could spot any frogs.  With Jules Jackdaw, our forest school lead, the children had fun using the various tools to create different vehicles.  Lots of children wanted to build cars and boats out of branches, sticks and wheels.  It is so lovely to see their creativity flourish in our outdoor area. 

We have had a wonderful start to the year exploring what we know about ‘place value’.  We began by working as a team to sort objects by different categories and counting how many were in each set.  We used our ‘comparison’ vocabulary to make observations about the different sets.  We reminded ourselves how to count objects and actions accurately.  We have also been practicing to read numbers as words and making amounts using a variety of equipment.  We explored numicon, base ten and bead strings to create amounts.