A Time For Celebrations; Ramadan and Easter

During the spring term children in nursery and reception learnt about a range of celebrations from different religions and cultures in order to develop their knowledge of People and Communities. This also supports the school value of being respectful and prepares them for their future lives.

The children learnt about the Muslim celebration of Ramadan by looking at books, artefacts and participating in crafts. They learnt that the moon is very important to some Muslims who participate in Ramadan and talked about the countdown to Eid and fasting. The children learnt vocabulary related to clothing some Muslim’s wear like a hijab. One of the children brought in a hijab from home which further enriched children’s learning and made the new vocabulary even more meaningful.

The children learnt about the Christian celebration of Lent and made pancakes at forest school. Practitioners layer children’s knowledge through a range of experiences. They read and acted out the runaway pancake, luckily ours did not run away and we managed to gobble it all up! The children were able to safely sit around the fire. The children and staff explored the Christian story of Easter through storytelling eggs and designed Easter cards. The children participated in an ‘Easter Tea Party’ which was decorated with salt dough crosses they had made a Christian symbol of the cross.

Practitioners were able to draw out connections between the two religions with children.

 

 

A is for Alive!

During the summer term we embark on a project all about living things. Topics are chosen by staff in order to encompass seasonal fascinations, pre-requisite knowledge needed in later years and cultural capital opportunities.

At forest school this week we observed how the frogspawn we had found had changed and grown into tadpoles. We described the way they looked and how they moved and used an information book to develop our knowledge about the lifecycle of a frog. Some children subitised that there were four tadpoles. “I can see two and two and that makes four!”

We also found newts and were able to compare them to frogs.

Home Farm Attingham Visit

Today the nursery children visited a farm in Shrewsbury to deepen their knowledge of farm animals in a meaningful, real-life context. This knowledge is crucial to support their later learning in science.

The children have been exploring farm animals and their features in a range of ways including books, rhymes poems and games.

Today the children noticed the hair and snouts on the pigs, as well as the udders on the cows. They were able to feed lambs and kids using bottles of milk. This is the beginning of understanding which animals are mammals and how they can be identified. Seeing young animals also support their understanding of the season of spring and the lifecycles of animals.

The children had to use our school values of respect and bravery in order to care for and feed the animals.

It was a truly wonderful, memorable day.

 

British Science Week in Nursery

In the Early Years we pride ourselves on developing curious thinkers who notice features of the world around them. This week we have celebrated British Science week and invited our parents in to join in with our learning about the season of spring.

Curriculum topics are chosen by staff based on children’s interests, cultural capital and the knowledge we believe is fundamental to later learning. Children are taught pre-requisite knowledge for the key threads in the National Curriculum of Animals including Humans, Plants, Materials and Seasons.

We provide active, memorable learning experiences and children have ample opportunities to be immersed in the natural world. Through weekly forest school sessions and daily outdoor learning children are given holistic opportunities to develop their scientific enquiry skills including observation, prediction and generating questions. Check out the children looking at slugs and daffodils, hunting for signs of spring and planting beans.

Books are a high priority in our setting and both non-fiction and fiction texts are selected and shared with children regularly to develop their knowledge of key themes.  This week we used books about frogs to understand more about the frogspawn that we found in the pond. Nursery rhymes, songs and poems are taught and learnt which develop children’s scientific conceptual knowledge and vocabulary. This week we have been learning a poem called Popcorn and the children chanted it and noticed how the heat of the fire changed the hard kernels into soft, puffy pieces!

Some of these photographs will be added to our class timeline to support children to reflect and recall their learning and remember it as time passes.

 

 

 

Year 6 ~France 2024

Our Year 6 set off in the early hours of Monday morning to catch a ferry from Dover to Calais. After 16 hours of travelling they eventually arrived at Chateau Beaumont. They had a fantastic time and spent their days exploring le Mont St Michel, the zoo, markets, supermarkets as well as spending time climbing, archery, fencing and team building. French night meant that they could experience a French delicacy of snails and frogs legs!!

The experience was amazing and the children thoroughly enjoyed it!

Everyone arrived home by midnight on Friday and I imagine spent a lot of the weekend sleeping.

Well done and thankyou to the wonderful adults: Mrs Pigg, Mr Johnson, Mrs Adams and Mrs Wust that gave up their time to go and the parents for allowing your children this experience.

We’re Going On A Bear Hunt!

Educators at Sir Alexander Fleming have selected a reading spine of core literature that children will be immersed in throughout their time at our school.

These books are chosen as we believe they are a right of passage, they are age appropriate, they match recommendations from leaders who are experts in literacy and they give our children knowledge about diversity in our world. They also enable us to teach our curriculum and link to other subjects.

Nursery have been exploring Michael Rosen’s book. This books is awesome become it teaches children rhythm, repeated refrains and environmental sounds which is apart of our phonics curriculum. It is also developing children’s geographical understanding and understanding of the world around them. Children will be mapping out the places in the next few weeks.

It’s raining, it’s pouring . . .

Children attend weekly forest school sessions. These sessions provide amazing opportunities to explore the world around them, natural objects, the season and the weather.

Today we got soaked and had so much fun in the process! What better way to learn about the rain than be immersed in it!

We sang lots of songs and nursery rhymes about the rain in order to develop our conceptual knowledge and widen our vocabulary.

We used all of our senses to explore the rain. We talked about what we could see; water gushing down the drain, rain pitter-pattering on the puddles. We talked about what we could feel; the cold water on our skin, hair and tongues. We talked about what we could hear and imitated these sounds using our mouths which is a part of our pre-phonics learning. This is all really important knowledge the children will need for later in year one when they explore materials and whether some are waterproof.

This also helped our gross-motor skills. We applied the skilling of jumping that we have been exploring in our gymnastic sessions; landing of bended knees. Children needed to take manageable risks to jump from objects. Some even applied jumping and landing in a star shape.

C is for Community

We plan our EYFS curriculum using ‘big’ ideas. We have progressed from thinking about our unique selves to how we are part of a community.

This ensures learning is meaningful, drawing on children’s personal experiences and extending their knowledge through a range of new ones.

Today the children had a memorable visit from the Police and Community Support Officers. They have been studying the role of a police officer and the equipment they use through books, poems and songs. Children were able to compare Police Officer Dominik’s uniform from Life Savers the book to Police Officer Sam’s. The children applied and used vocabulary such as, “radio, helmet, handcuffs, siren, protect” while also learning new words such as, “custody, baton” and, “shield.” They learnt about different ways the police travel and how they help others.

This knowledge will be very useful when we apply it to acting in our Police Station role-play area.

This topic about community also allows us to develop children’s understanding of place which supports their geographical understanding as they move through the school. Watch out for our religious education learning too as we learn about religious communities; We have arranged for an Imam to visit in the next few weeks . . .

 

What makes a home a home?

This is our learning all about homes.

Practitioners here plan the curriculum with our unique children, families and community in mind. We choose topics that all our children can relate to and have had experiences of so that we can engage and motivate them. We set a home learning task and ask our families to share aspects of their lives that we may not know about. This supports children’s speaking and communication skills and develops their awareness that others may be similar or different to them.

We found out that most of our children live in houses but some of them live in bungalows. We explored the different features including the rooms in certain homes. Our core text of Peace at Last by Judith Kerr supported us to differentiate between rooms; having themed resources about different rooms develops children’s language in the best way possible, as they are able make connections. We sang songs about homes and looked at how homes are portrayed in books. Children acted out what they learnt about homes and applied this in our home corner provision. We compared different types of homes. Children built and designed homes in the small world provision and we enhanced it with a caravan. The project inspired us to construct and mark-make in a variety of contexts. We were able to innovate songs about houses to songs about a range of different homes. This project has allowed us to recognise and celebrate diversity.

This learning will continue and be extended in the Spring term, as we think about how our homes fit into our community in Sutton Hill and how homes have changed from the past. These threads are woven throughout our whole school Geography and History curriculum and will lay the foundations for later learning.