13th February 2026

We celebrated Chinese New Year this week and the children have really enjoyed the activities around this special celebration. They worked together to make a lion, ready for a lion dance later in the week. We made lanterns and other decorations as well as tasting some Chinese food in our classroom 'restaurant'! 

In maths we have been making pairs and finding out about odd and even numbers as well as playing games to explore the composition of numbers 6, 7 and 8. The children have also continued exploring measures by making their own dough - there was a lot of problem solving involved as they filled cups with ingredients and tried to make dough that was neither sticky or too dry. 

They washed the doll's clothes as part of their water play, following our 'Peepo' book last week. They then put them on the washing line outside to dry. This activity encouraged lots of teamwork, motor skills and vocabulary.

6th February 2026

The children really enjoyed our ‘pop-up museum’ in the school hall this morning. We were all history detectives and looked for clues to tell us about the artefacts. The children handled the artefacts carefully and had some fantastic ideas about how objects might have been used. They also had a go at sketching some of the objects. Great 'history detective' work Foundation!

5th February 2026

What a super week! We have noticed some great teamwork this week. The children have worked in pairs for some of their activities and it is lovely to see them helping each other and using lots of 'kind words' to give encouragement. We had some great teamwork outside making 'rocket launchers' to launch the balls into the air. The children have enjoyed exploring clay and using watercolours as part of their creative activities this week. We have looked at the book 'Peepo' and have talked about life in the past and how some things were different.

30th January 2026

What a busy couple of weeks we have had! Some of the children had introduced dinosaurs to our class volcano so we followed this interest and found out a bit about dinosaurs. The children really loved using a kit to dig for dinosaur bones and we looked at information books and video clips to learn a few facts. Stories around this topic led to us reading Cave Baby and the children used a cardboard box to make their very own cave! During their forest school session they were introduced to charcoal and had a go at drawing with this. 



To help with their writing, the children have been practising 'holding' a sentence in their heads. Of course we have made this idea a bit more exciting by remembering the sentence as a secret code each week. The children love this activity and it has really helped when they come to order or write the sentence later in the week.

16th January 2026

This week we have continued reading our traditional stories with a focus on Jack and the Beanstalk - the children have really enjoyed joining in with the story and using their voices in different ways as well as coming up with actions for certain words. We have also looked at how stories can be told in different ways and watched clips from the Nutcracker ballet. A small group of children made a volcano this week using construction equipment and we decided we would explore this further by learning about volcanoes. We have made a volcano in the classroom and we are sure the children will enjoy playing with this. Some of the children have written signs for the volcano area and we have looked at a clip of a volcano erupting. We will continue to explore this idea next week. The children have also enjoyed working together to create 'animal worlds' and it is lovely to see such super teamwork!

9th January 2026

What a lovely first week back we had! Our focus story was the Gingerbread Man and the children really enjoyed telling the story using actions to ‘talk the text’. We will continue sharing traditional stories over the coming weeks. We have a jewellery making area in the classroom at the moment and the children made their own beads by painting pasta; we can’t wait to see how this develops!

The interests of the children are of great importance to us and they have come up with some great ideas for water play this half term. They have also enjoyed searching for images on the computer around their own interests, with support from an adult, using these to create pictures. We will be developing this idea further with the children making their own books. In our PE session, we all enjoyed moving to music as different fairytale characters. We finished the week by baking gingerbread people and the children very much enjoyed tasting these!

14th November 2025

This week the children made poppies in different ways to mark Remembrance Day. We talked in simple terms about why we wear poppies. Later in the week the children prepared vegetables and we made a delicious vegetable soup!

7th November 2025

We have had a great first week back at school. In our creative activities, we have explored the colours and shapes of fireworks through different painting and mark making techniques. The children have enjoyed wool-winding to create firework shapes too. We even used sparklers outside!

The children learnt that people celebrate in different ways and we talked about Bonfire Night as well as the festival of Diwali. The children learnt the story of Guy Fawkes in simple terms too.

In our outdoor area this week, the children have enjoyed working as a team to solve the problem of transporting the plastic balls from one area to another using the guttering and pipes. There was a lot of communication involved as well as perseverance!

24th October 2025

What a brilliant week we have had! We all had lots of fun decorating pumpkins; the hot chocolate and s’mores around the forest school fire were definitely a highlight too!

Later in the week, we talked about harvest and watched clips of farmers harvesting their crops. The children found it interesting to look at the different machinery used and learnt that some fruits and vegetables are collected by hand. This prompted us to have our own ‘apple harvest’. The children collected apples from the garden - they particularly enjoyed using our own ‘Tractor Ted’ and baskets to put them in. After this we sorted, washed and dried the apples before weighing them and ‘selling/buying’ them in the apple shop!

Once the children had ‘bought’ enough apples, they chopped them up and we made a delicious apple pie. Of course we had a little scoop of ice cream on the side too! What a lovely way to spend our last week before the half term break!

17th October 2025

Our story this week has been Room on the Broom - we have read the book and watched the short film. The children have enjoyed playing with broomsticks in the outdoor area as well as making hats and adding other props to enhance their play ideas. They are also having lots of fun in our ‘pumpkin patch/shop’ in the role play area at the moment. 

During one of our class discussions we learnt that the children had watched a show at a birthday party recently. This led to a stage being built outside using the large blocks so the children could put on their own shows. They loved this activity and we recorded some of their fabulous performances! The children enjoyed watching the recordings together afterwards. 

We continue to talk about how we are feeling as part of our learning around ‘Being Me in My World’. The children have enjoyed drawing faces on pumpkins to represent different feelings this week.

As part of their learning in maths, the children have used balance scales to weigh objects and use the vocabulary heavy, light, same, equal and balanced. They have also predicted which object they think will be heavier. In phonics this week, our letters are m and d. 

We are looking forward to seeing as many of you as possible at our pumpkin decorating session on Monday at 2pm.

10th October 2025

What a busy week we have had! This week the children have been learning about hedgehogs. They worked together to make a fabulous Hedgehog Hotel for our wildlife garden as well as using different materials in the creative areas of our classroom to create hedgehogs. They have listened to stories about hedgehogs and have found out about other animals that hibernate during the colder months. Our new vocabulary this week includes the words hibernate, nocturnal, spines and hoglet.

In our daily phonics sessions, the children have learnt the letter sounds for i and n. Every day we are practising sound blending - putting these sounds together to read simple words. When the children are ready, they will be given a set of ‘grapheme tiles’ to practise matching pictures and letters at home; they may also be given a ‘sounds’ book or ‘little blending book’.

More information on phonics and reading will be given at our meeting for parents on Thursday 6th November at 9am.

In maths this week we have compared size with a focus on length. We have done this in different ways using the indoor and outdoor environments. We will continue to do this next week, as well as looking at simple patterns.

The children have enjoyed our recent PE sessions in the hall - they have used the large apparatus for climbing and balancing then jumping and landing safely. They have listened carefully to the instructions to help keep everyone safe when using the apparatus.

26th September 2025

The children have really enjoyed using natural materials in their learning recently - we are making the most of the Autumn leaves starting to fall. Last week the children used these items to create faces, make pictures and decorate crowns to wear.

Thank you for sending in the baby/toddler photos - we enjoyed guessing who everyone is and the children talked about how they have changed. If you haven’t had a chance to send a photo yet and would still like to, we will continue looking at these on Friday afternoon as part of our Jigsaw PSHE session.

The children have made a good start to learning the letter sounds in our phonics sessions - we spent last week looking at ‘s’ and ‘a’; this week they will learn ‘t’ and ‘p’. To help them to form these letters correctly and use them in writing when they are ready, we are doing lots and lots of mark making through drawing and having a go at tracing/writing letter shapes and patterns.

In maths we have done a lot of matching and sorting items into sets recently using a variety of objects and pictures. We are using the words ‘same’, ‘different’ and ‘similar’ when sorting the objects.

19th September 2025

The children are enjoying the activities around our topic of Being Me in My World. These activities will continue next week when we look at photos of the children when they were babies or toddlers and talk about how we change when we grow older. We will also continue exploring the natural world around us.

Our daily phonics sessions have begun and next week the children will learn the letter sounds for ‘s’ and ‘a’ - look out for our phonics information event for parents (date tbc soon).

In maths the children have been learning how to write the numbers 1 and 2 correctly. This week we will look at the formation of number 3 as well as play games involving matching and sorting objects and pictures.

Our outdoor learning sessions are going well; the children are learning how to be safe in the wildlife garden and we are looking forward to our first session with the fire when we will be able to cook something to eat!

In PE the children have practised finding a space and moving around our hall carefully. They have also had a go at controlling a ball by pushing it around, kicking it carefully and throwing and catching it.

12th September 2025

We had a super week at school - the first full week for the children and they have coped well. They are picking up our daily routines and have managed to collect their own lunch from the serving area at lunchtime too.

We all enjoyed the story Monkey Puzzle by Julia Donaldson this week. We have learnt a song about this story and will be practising the song with Makaton signs over the coming weeks. The story was a lovely introduction to our topic ‘Being Me in My World’ and we will be talking about the ways in which we are similar and different as part of this topic next week.

The children have all had a go at mark-making and drawing as well as practising writing their first names. There have been lots of opportunities to play in the classroom and outdoor areas and it is lovely to see the children making friends and having lots of fun!