Comic Relief 2025 at SAF

We celebrated Comic Relief 2025 in school by having a ‘Hop-a-thon’ on the field! Each class had a session to see how many hops they could do.  We also were selling red noses and children wore their own clothes.  Overall we raised £462 for the amazing charity.

For more information about where the money goes, please see here: What Your Money Does | Comic Relief

Safer Internet Day 2025

We marked Safer Internet Day today with a variety of activities. The theme this year is: ‘Too good to be true? Protecting yourself and others from scams online‘. We gathered in the hall for an assembly led by our Digital Leaders. They ‘scammed’ children into thinking they were winning some tempting prizes, but actually there were some bad consequences! The message was that if things are too good to be true…they often are!

Later on, EYFS used songs and small world play to tell the stories about being safe. KS1 took part in a variety of different activities and KS2 took part in the BBC Live Lesson where we had to identify the signs of a scam.

We even got a shout out on the BBC news feed!

C is for Community

This term in the EYFS the children are exploring the overarching theme of community.

The role-play area has been enhanced to enable children to show what they know about shops and supermarkets. Their language is being extended as they learnt about receipts, cashiers and aisles. It is also a rich opportunity to explore purposeful mark-making during play as children write shopping lists, receipts and food labels. The children have also been learning about foods and cultural foods eaten by the families we serve.

Children are being taught directly about shops during small group sessions in which they have shared information books, listened to environmental sounds in shops and learnt poems about key concepts such as trolleys.

The children in Reception are visiting a local shop in order to gain even more knowledge that they can use and apply in their acting.

 

Our ‘C is for Community’ walk

We have identified features in our community this morning. We recognised that the street names all begin with ‘s’ like ‘Sutton Hill’. We also explored inside the Community Centre, as our school artwork is displayed there.

Sealegs Puppet Theatre

Rob and his amazing puppets visited our school last week and we watched his interactive show Tales from the Farmyard.

It was a magical, musical affair which captivated all of the children and supported their listening and attention skills as well as their retrieval and inference skills.

Children were able to use their existing knowledge of classic songs like Old MacDonald and stories such as The Little Red Hen to join in and understand what was happening.

It was also a wonderful opportunity to pre-teach concepts and vocabulary about the farm which the nursery children will explore further in the spring term, and consolidate the reception children’s knowledge.

What do people celebrate and why? Learning about Diwali in the EYFS

Today we had special visitors to help us learn about Diwali Festival of Lights.

Our visitors Jan and Vicky follow the Sikh religion and talked to us about how they celebrate. We have also been watching videos about a family who follow Hinduism. We looked at diva lamps and the embroidered Indian suit that Jan wears to celebrate when she visits the temple. Jan brought in food that she had made and would eat to mark the festival and we were able to taste it.

We sang a song about candles and used stem sentences to support our conceptual knowledge of this celebration. We have also read a range of story and information books in order to develop our understanding.

“Some Hindus and some Sikhs decorate their homes with lights.”

“Some Hindus and some Sikhs give presents such as sweets.”

“Some Hindus and some Sikhs clean their homes to celebrate Diwali.”

A Visit From Nurse Sophie

Children have access to a wide range of role-play resources in the EYFS. They can use these in order to develop their vocabulary, imagination and story-telling skills. Our Home Corner is a constant feature in our setting in order for all children have access to nurturing, homely resources that reflect their lives and culture and those of others.

Practitioners enhance the role-play provision to link to the overarching theme during each term.

The Doctors Surgery has just opened in order for children to develop, use and apply their knowledge of the human body, as we focus in on ‘Our Unique Selves’ this term.

Practitioners plan cultural capital experiences, carefully at key points, so that children can access and use resources purposefully. Today Sophie the nurse visited. The children learnt about her uniform, equipment and role. They learnt new vocabulary such as patients, stethoscope and prescription and the meaning of these words by exploring resources and singing repeated songs.