News

We were excited to all be back together for our first Forest School session this term.  Our autumnal focus was to find out about the fascinating ways plants around us are spreading their seeds at this time of year.  A fun warm up game saw us spinning, floating and popping like seeds.  

The children explored our Forest School site to see how many different seeds they could find.  We investigated the seeds to find out how they move away from their parent plant and had a go at sorting them into groups.

 

We made paper spinning seed models and tested them out to see how far they could travel.

We found out it’s a great time of year to plant wildflower seeds as the soil is still warm and there’s plenty of rain.  We set to work digging, sieving and raking patches of ground so we can scatter seeds in our next session.  The children spotted lots of earthworms, black beetles and the odd ant living in the soil.

Next time you are in your garden or out and about in the countryside, why not take an empty envelope with you and see what wildflower seeds you can collect to add to our wildflower meadow.  

The week was kick started with a trip to the Nest for a morning of Crucial Crew sessions for Year 6 as they learned about how to keep themselves and others safe.  They worked through a series of scenarios and activities which included CPR and dealing with an emergency situation.  

Back in the classroom, we have continued with our ‘Little Ships’ narrative where the children have developed their use of sentences for effect, their use of commas in lists and for clarity.  We have some great stories developing and they have used lots of technical vocabulary gleaned from their topic lessons.  

Maths has seen a real buzz of enthusiasm this week as we have used our stem sentences and manipulatives to represent our understanding.  Our upper key stage children have been looking at hundredth while others have been bridging tens.  

In our Battle of Britain topic, we have continued to investigate the Dunkirk evacuation.  Foxes are keen to find out more and more about this topic and we have looked at what went well and what didn’t at the time.  Children then formed a debate in class to analyse their findings.  

The week was kick started with a trip to the Nest for a morning of Crucial Crew sessions for Year 6 as they learned about how to keep themselves and others safe.  They worked through a series of scenarios and activities which included CPR and dealing with an emergency situation.  

Back in the classroom, we have continued with our ‘Little Ships’ narrative where the children have developed their use of sentences for effect, their use of commas in lists and for clarity.  We have some great stories developing and they have used lots of technical vocabulary gleaned from their topic lessons.  

Maths has seen a real buzz of enthusiasm this week as we have used our stem sentences and manipulatives to represent our understanding.  Our upper key stage children have been looking at hundredth while others have been bridging tens.  

In our Battle of Britain topic, we have continued to investigate the Dunkirk evacuation.  Foxes are keen to find out more and more about this topic and we have looked at what went well and what didn’t at the time.  Children then formed a debate in class to analyse their findings. 

 

Otters have had another fantastic week, the children have all settled so well into our classroom routines and we are super proud of them. This week in our topic lessons we have been designing and sketching our own flying machines, with great success. We have been using a variety of pencils and charcoal to see how they create different lines and marks on the page. In our English we have been continuing to produce some excellent sentences about our narrative ‘Journey’. 

Our Reception children have been working really hard and have produced some fantastic work during our ‘Funky Fingers’ activities. They have been super focussed and have been doing lots of work with numbers this week, and have also been practising their letter formations. 

Hedgehogs’ week began with a visit from Rachel’s pet chickens.  The children were so calm and gentle with our little feathered visitors.  They enjoyed quietly watching them scratching and pecking the ground for food and listening to their tiny cheeps.  The children had the opportunity to stroke the chickens’ soft fluffy feathers.  Rachel showed us her chicks’ earlobes and we found out that the colour of the lobes matches the colour of the eggs the chicken will lay!  Some of Rachel’s chickens will lay blue or green eggs- wow!

We joined in with the traditional tale ‘The Little Red Hen’, using signing for the animals in the story.

Rachel kindly brought in a book about birds.  We tried matching the colour and pattern of bird feathers with the birds in the book.

We had some super writing going on in the den with two of our hedgehogs announcing with excitement that they were going to do their homework!

The extra windy day saw us based indoors but we amused ourselves by putting on puppet shows, mixing gloop using cornflour and water (which was curiously solid and runny at the same time!) and bringing the outdoors in by exploring conkers and chestnuts that had been blown off the trees.  If you go for a walk at the weekend, see what seeds you can find and please bring them in for us to explore next week.

Hedgehogs have been so creative this week.  We’ve had breakfasts cooked for caterpillars in our mud kitchen.  Natural paints have been mixed using juicy raspberries and blackberries found growing on our bushes.

Even our newest members have been able to independently choose the materials they’ve wanted to use. 

The children have invented games and invited each other to join in the fun. (Don’t worry, those bricks are made of sponge!

We harvested the last of our potatoes, some of which were used to mark make by rolling them in our natural paints.  The rest were grated and mixed into tasty hash browns fried on the fire.  (The egg we used in our cooking came from one of Rachel’s pet hens and the shell was a beautiful bluey green colour!).

What a brilliant week with this creative bunch.  We can’t wait to find out what fun next week has in store for us!