Once Upon A Time

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Jack and the Beanstalk
This week we have started our new topic of Once upon a time… Choosing Jack and the beanstalk as our focus story. At the start of the week, together with Miss Coghlan, all the children created a short story of Jack and the Beanstalk and added their own actions to help them remember. They were incredible at helping Miss Coghlan remember the story and actions all week. During the language for thinking sessions the children explored different vocabulary to use for describing the characters from the story and were able to sequence the story using pictures with simple sentences to summarise.
Discovery time
During independent time the children got creative using Jack and the Beanstalk as their focus. They made playdoh beanstalks, created pictures using and leaves, role played with stick puppets, labelled characters from the story, used cubes to measure and compare different sized beanstalks and recreated the story using stickle bricks.
Empathy Day
To introduce this concept Miss Coghlan went through some of this amazing book about empathy. After discussing what empathy was and how we can show it, the children went through some scenarios. They were asked to discuss how those children might be feeling, have they ever felt like this and what could you do to help.
‘I’ve felt proud like that boy when I got a certificate from dancing’ Beaux
‘I’ve felt upset like that girl when I hurt my leg too’ Evin
‘I could help the worried boy if they want to chat’ Poppy
‘I could tell the sad girl that things will get better’ Ollie S
‘I could ask the lonely girl to come and play’ Lennox
Maths
The Swans have been learning all about odd numbers at the start of the week. They are now successfully able to identify odd and even numbers from looking at the amounts and the numerals. They worked super hard during their maths lesson with their partners on this. Then, at the end of the week, they learnt all about positional language and… wow! They were amazing at this! With their partners they played a barrier game of building something using 3 or 4 pieces, described what pieces went where for them to have the same, but there was no peeking allowed. Their language and description of position was fantastic.

Transport

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The Swans started their week with Muddy Monday, where they created fantastic pieces of art using mud to paint. The created lots of different patterns and pictures with their partners.
During the rest of the week the Swans continued to learn about their topic: Transport. During continuous provision time, they sorted transport  that flies in the sky, goes on water, drives on the road, or around a track. They showed amazing creativity and teamwork when building their own tracks and garages to park their vehicles.
They built on their great fine motor skills using the scissors to cut out parts to design their own types of transport.
Swans also demonstrated their growing sentence writing using their phonics and tricky word knowledge to write about transport.
They were even very lucky to have some of the Year 6 children come and read them stories at the end of the week. It has been a fabulous week. Well done, Swans!

Transport

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We started our first week back with a check-in to see what the children did during their holidays and to discuss how they were feeling about things. The children were able to tell our emotion monsters one thing that made them happy in the holidays:
‘I went to the park and had an ice cream’ Evin
‘I went on a plane’ Tyler. W
‘I got to have a sleep over at nanny’s’ Beaux
They also did a great job sharing one thing they didn’t like about the holidays:
‘I didn’t like it when I fell over’ Poppy
‘I didn’t like that I didn’t see my friends’ Ollie. S
‘I didn’t like it when it rained because we had to stay at home’ Kadi
For this next half term Swans will be learning about transport. We started the week by reading the amazing book Naughty Bus by Jan and Jerry Oke. The children loved the story so much that we continued to do lots of different task to build on the story within our language for thinking time. Elsewhere in the classroom and outdoors, the children demonstrated their learning from our maths session about ‘first, then and now’ by building their own addition stories using a bus. They used their fantastic writing skills to label buses and creativity to create their own buses using the blue bricks outside.

What a wonderful world! Looking at Plants

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As part of our topic ‘What a wonderful world!’ during our Language for thinking time this week we have been focusing and learning about plants. The children started their week by learning what a plant needs to grow, moving on to what the parts of the plant are and what their job is. Finally, by the end of the week the children were able to order the life cycle of a plant.
In our continuous provision time, the children took full advantage of the sunshine and did some amazing planting and exploring of plants in our reception outdoor area.
The children enjoyed drawing and labelling flowers independently.
They explored real plants and flowers in the tuff tray with magnify glasses, matching the phase 3 sentences to the correct plant pictures.
The children have also painted fantastic pictures of real-life flowers. Fantastic job Swans!

Infinity and Beyond

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This week the Swans have continued their learning focus about space. The children have learnt lots of new facts about our solar system and astronauts. The children have learnt about astronauts from the past (such as Neil Armstrong( and present (astronauts like Tim Peake) within our language for thinking sessions.

During our continuous provision, the children have been busy demonstrating their independent skills by cutting out playdough stars to match a given number, making junk model rockets, and building communication skills with space small world.


At the end of the week the swans did an amazing job making their own star biscuits.

Number Focus

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How many ways to make 7
The swans this week have been focusing on the number 7,8 and 9. They can now identify the number, make the number in a variety of ways.
Independent reading
This week the swans have taken a keen interest in the book area. They have been enjoying lots of authors but especially our focus author Nick Sharratt.
People Who Help Us
As part of our termly topic, we have been learning all about who helps us in school and how. We had a special visit from Mrs Hatfield to tell us all about her role at school and how she helps us.

Children’s Mental Health Week

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Mental health Week
As part of the national Children’s Mental Health Week the Swans have been discussing what good mental health is, and if your mental health is not so good what could help.
‘Getting lots of fresh air makes you feel better’ Beaux
‘Eating healthy food makes you feel healthy’ Ollie S
‘Doing exercise gives you energy to feel better’ Kadi
‘Talking to a friend or adult is nice when your sad’ Poppy
We also created our own exercise routine to do if we are feeling low, the children learnt how breathing and doing yoga can improve your mental health. At the end of the week, we discussed and drew pictures of what makes us happy and how to stay focussed on them when we feel down.
Discovery time
This week the Swans have been focussing on applying the phase 2 sounds they have learnt and their numbers 6,7 and 8.

People Who Help Us

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This week the Swans have been busy recapping all they know about People Who Help Us in our community. They have continued this theme into their busy time. They have all worked hard using their amazing reading skills to match the High Frequency Words.
They have painted some fantastic pictures of police, firefighters, and ambulances.
They have also worked their socks off in maths learning lots of new language about weight and capacity.
Well done Swans!