Young Coders

11 of our UKS2 children have signed up for the Young Coders competition this term. We will be working on Scratch to design a game to help people ‘Budget Better’, which is this year’s theme. We analysed a range of games today to get some ideas for our own ones. We are excited to see what they come up with!

Design Brief: To Design A Patterned Decoration From Malleable Materials

We followed the whole school sequence of learning for Design Technology in order to design a patterned, malleable decoration.

We used photographs of Christmas Trees and appraised patterned baubles.

We then explored ways to create everyday patterns and then repeating patterns. This supported our vocabulary development.

Then we explore salt dough and clay and ways to create patterns such as pressing, using tools, beads and sequins.

We evaluated our designs and discussed what we liked and how we could improve them.

The decorations took pride of place on our Christmas Tree.

A Throw Back to December – A Time To Celebrate!

We had a very busy end to the autumn term . . .

As part of our People and Communities topic we learnt about how some people celebrate Christmas. The children learnt about the Christian story of the Nativity through small world, role-play, songs and books. They were inspired to make marks of some of the significant characters. We stole the show in Our First Nativity performance, there was not a dry eye in the hall! This took lots of self-regulation and courage.

The children also shared photographs of celebrations that they have participated in at home. This evoked lots of rich language of comparison.

The countdown to Christmas was very exciting and we used our Advent Calendar to see the passing of time. We placed a star in the five frame each day and could describe whether it was full, nearly full, empty or nearly empty. We could see whether we had a long way to go and as we were getting closer.

National Space Centre

Year 5 had a wonderful opportunity to travel to Leicester on Tuesday to look around the National Space Centre, to enhance our learning about Earth and Space. We explored the various galleries and even got to climb the rocket tower! We finished the day by going into the planetarium. It was an amazing experience and the ‘oooh’ and ‘aaaahs’ of the children spoke volumes!

We’re Going On A Baby Hunt!

Becky, who is a Christian, from Sutton Hill Church came to visit the children in nursery and teach them about the Christian story of the first Christmas.

This has supported the children’s learning about celebrations. The children have been exploring the story in a range of ways such as through books, small world resources and songs and this experience supported their deeper knowledge of the beliefs of some Christians.

Bebras Challenge Results

In our assembly today, we celebrated our successes in the National Bebras Challenge which all KS2 children took part in last month. The challenge tests children’s problem solving skills through a variety of questions, and all children should be proud of how they showed resilience and understanding to complete it.

All children will receive a ‘Participation’ certificate, whereas some will receive a ‘Merit’ in they finished in the top 50% in the school, or a ‘Distinction’ if they finished in the top 25%. The top performer in each age category will also receive a ‘Best in School’ certificate.

A special ‘Gold’ certificate is also awarded if they children finish in the top 10% of the country, and we were so pleased to be told that 5 of our children achieved this. They will be invited to the National Finals competition in March which we are very excited about!

Great job everybody!

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

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.

“Babies can’t walk very well. Need a pram.”

“I was a baby a long, long time ago. Now I am a child.”

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

“I’m a child. I have pants not a nappy.”

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 Reya a lullaby. We also met Rowan who is 1 and discussed how he is older than Reya but younger than us.

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.

Exploring Seasons

Children in the Foundation Stage have access to the outdoors on a daily basis. Children learn about the seasons through first hand experiences.

This week it snowed! It was a wonderful opportunity for children to use all of their senses to explore this first taste of winter and it evoked some descriptive language.

“It’s freezing cold!”

“Crunch, crunch, throw it at you.”

“Look at the sky, it’s grey.”

“My footprints go round and round.”

Poppy, Poppy What Do You Say? Wear Me On Remembrance Day.

Exploring form through the topic of Remembrance; The practitioners in the EYFS follow our whole school pedagogy for art, which started by looking at artist Andy Goldsworthy’s work. The children then collected red, natural objects from the garden. This also enabled them to notice, observe, sort and classify objects.

The children have watched videos, listened to stories and compared images of soldiers from the past and soldiers now. They can also recite a poem all about the significance of poppies.