“Let’s put on our mittens and button up our coats . . . ” The awe and wonder of winter!

Our curriculum takes into account seasonal and natural opportunities that we know children will be fascinated by! We have been learning about the season of winter and spotting signs outside. This topic has been a vehicle for cross-curricular learning; developing children’s understanding of time, making physical marks in the frost to develop our motor skills, developing our knowledge and understanding of the natural world and encouraging us to communicate.

By being immersed in real experiences and enhancing this with poems, songs and books the children have learnt many words and concepts such as, “frost, bare, evergreen, hard, robin, frozen, ice, snow.” Adults encouraged children to use adventurous language too – “That shard of ice looks like a shark’s fin!”

The adults have high expectations of children and have been talking and showing them how some birds migrate to hotter countries in the winter. The children have been feeding the birds in different ways as they know that food is harder to find in the winter. Lacie used her knowledge of three, from our mathematics sessions, to subitise three pieces of cereal left on one of our bird feeders! Octavia and Archie spotted a nest and built another for the birds to lay their eggs in, in the coming spring. (This will make their future learning easier as they make connections to past experiences.)

The shape of the ice fascinated the children and they loved changing the shape by throwing, smashing and crushing the ice! We explored the concept of being trapped too, as there were many natural and some man-made objects stuck in the ice.

We returned at different times of the day and noticed some of the frost had gone. Some children had theories about why this happened and it led us to think about the scientific concept of melting. The children experimented melting the ice with their bodies, including their tongues! This made us think about what ice was made from.

Our Sequence of Learning for Expressive Art and Design

We have designed and made baby food, following our whole-school sequence for learning in DT.

We were able to apply our knowledge of babies, their development and needs to this project. We learnt skills to cut and puree fruit and vegetables. This is key knowledge we will need to be successful in year 1 when we design and make a healthy smoothie.

We gave some to baby Rowan’s mother to give our learning a real purpose.

We used information books to follow recipes and the fiction book Avocado Baby to inspire us. We are hoping baby Rowan becomes as strong as Avocado Baby once he’s eaten our designs!

Our first experience of the theatre

We plan a range of experiences to ensure children gain cultural capital by attending our setting.

After watching Sealegs Puppet Theatre at school in November, we visited Theatre Severn this week to watch an exciting performance of Dear Santa!

It was filled with music, songs and magic! The children were enthralled by the props, lights and actors. They listened and attended for a long period of time and joined in with nursery rhymes and actions.

We had studied the story by exploring the book, presents and used the theme of toys to develop our pre-phonics learning of environmental sounds. It is also an innovation of Dear Zoo which is one of our core texts.

“My favourite part was the cat!”

“The elf was hiding!”

“Santa sent something else.”

A particular highlight for some of the children was the journey on the minibus. They chatted about the, “huge lorries” and, “high bridges” they observed on the way there.

We’re Going On a Baby Hunt!

Our curriculum is sequenced in a way which ensures children are given time to practise, layer their understanding, make connections and apply their learning to new contexts.

Our learning about babies has helped our Religious understanding of the Christian story of the first Christmas.

Stories are at the core of everything we do. We have listened to versions of the story in books, films and through images and artistic interpretations as well as through small world story-telling, puppets and role-play.

We had a visit from Becky Dotson who is a Christian herself. She helped us to explore the story through song. We loved it because it was an innovation of our reading spine book, ‘We’re Going On a Bear Hunt.”

Everything we do is for a reason! We were inspired to draw the Baby Jesus in his manger and used these as our Christmas Cards for our families.

The children also applied their knowledge about faces, from last term. Check out those eyelashes and nostrils!

Oh baby! Have we always been this way?

Take a look at our sequence of learning about babies. This addresses lots of knowledge from the area of learning Understanding the world.

Children can now answer our enquiry question; Have we always been this way?

“No I’m a child now. When I was a baby I was little and didn’t talk!” Octavia

“I was different when I was a baby. I not a baby now.” Archie

“When I was a baby I had nappies. Now I don’t!” Emmie-May

Our learning about this topic won’t stop here . . . we are looking forward to a baby clinic role-play in the future to apply our knowledge. We will explore pregnancy, growth and care in more detail over time so that our knowledge is secure and deepened.

Real experiences enrich our learning, making it memorable . . . Baby Rowan

We have been learning about babies as part of an Understanding of the World project.

We have analysed objects, looked at baby photographs, learnt songs, nursery rhymes and explored a variety of books about babies.

We now know a range of vocabulary and concepts linked to this.

“When I was a baby I went in a pram because I couldn’t walk.”

“I was a baby a long, long time ago.”

“Babies need a high chair or they would fall off!”

“A crib like rock a bye baby.”

“I’m a child. I have a cup not a bottle.”

Today we had an expert visitor, a real baby visit the setting. We noticed the size of the baby, it’s clothing and the things it needed. We told his mummy what we knew and asked whether the baby drank from a bottle or had a nappy. We sang it a lullaby.

Poppy, poppy what do you say? Wear me on Remembrance Day . . .

We have been exploring our school value of respect by learning about Remembrance and poppies.

Children learnt and can recite a poem about the meaning of and symbolism of the poppy.

We used this as a meaningful way to develop our learning in art.

sequence of learning form

Leaves are falling, leaves are falling, one fell on my nose!

Children learn about the seasons as part of our science curriculum.

We encourage children to notice the world around them and during forest school sessions they have been intrigued by signs of autumn. Big ideas that have been drawn upon are trees and the weather.

We have used information and story books to reinforce this scientific knowledge.

Children have sang songs and learnt poems in order to develop their conceptual knowledge of autumn while also giving them the language to be able to describe it.

Most children now have the language of, “leaves, acorns, apples, squirrels, falling, red, brown, orange, yellow, cold.”

We also make meaningful links across the curriculum; watch out for how we use apples in our Expressive Art and Design cookery project . . .

Our school library is open!

We have hundreds of new, engaging books that children will be bringing home to read. They depict a diverse range of characters and settings. Every child in our school can pick up a book and see themselves reflected in it. They can be the hero, adventurer or sidekick!

We have books for everyone; all ages and abilities are catered for. These texts will develop a life-long love of learning for our children. We also have a fancy online library system to track children’s interests and reading journey.

Our children know that they must care for and respect the books. This is one of our school values. Please ensure that they are loved as much at home as they are in school.

Keep posting your child’s fantastic reading on Seesaw. It makes such a huge difference to their learning and happiness.

Each day, alongside our topic we are teaching and supporting children to . . .

  • Remember new routines such as following our rules, taking turns and respecting our resources and environment. Children are learning about the routine of the day and the expectation that they attend small group time.
  • Listen and attend to others in a range of contexts including when playing, singing nursery rhymes and looking while a adult tells a story.
  • Make secure relationships with educators and children by playing with and alongside others.
  • Regulate their feelings and develop resilience.
  • Use self-help skills such as putting on our coats and using the toilet.

 

CEOP
Untitled
RHS Five Star Gardening Award
Safeguarding Logo
Diversity Matters
Gold Award PE
Mental Health Award
ARC Silver Award
Shropshire Cricket Primary School of Year 2023
Skills Builder
Dyslexia
Parent View - Give Ofsted your view on your child's school
© Sir Alexander Fleming Primary School 2022
Shropshire web design by kiskadoo