This week has been particularly busy. The children have been creating more amazing structures in the construction area as well as having a go at making pairs with socks on the washing line.

It has been quite difficult to get our heads around there being 2 socks in 1 pair but we each put our legs out in front of us at snack time and everyone told me how many socks they had on. Once we had drawn everyone’s socks on the board, we counted each sock. There were 44 socks in our classroom. We then put a circle around each PAIR of socks as 2 socks belong to 1 person. This helped us see the pair. We had 22 pairs of socks.

We also spent time crafting some love notes for people around us as it is Valentines Day today! It has also been Liam and Frankie’s 5th birthdays so we have also managed to fit in two lots of birthday cards and happy birthdays!

Amazing creations this week.

This week the children have been getting creative with our wooden resources in the classroom and outdoor area. Some children enjoyed creating a traffic light/car ramp with the children being traffic lights for the bikes zooming over the bumpy road. The children listened to the colours: stopping at red, moving at green.

Some children enjoyed helping each other create a castle using the wooden blocks and resources. They imagined turrets and bridges over water, with blasters at the back to deter bad guys!

Adonis and Ian have been incredibly creative with the indoor construction blocks and made this whole city on their own! Some incredible, imaginative play this week!

This week we have bee using scales to compare weight and capacity. The children enjoyed finding two objects in the classroom and being human scales. Allowing their arms to drop down with the heaviest item and lifting the lighter item up into the air – just like the balancing scales!

Key vocab we have been using: heavier, lighter, up, down, weight, balanced, equal, the same, higher, lower

The police visiting us was a massive highlight this week – a huge thank you to our community officers who volunteered their time to come to talk to us today. Not only did the children get to dress as police officers, they got to sit in the van AND had chance to stand in the ‘bad guy’ bit at the back! Our favourite part was the lights and sirens – Zarrar and Luke from RS switched these on for us.

This week it has been so sunny and actually really warm in the sunshine so we have enjoyed being outside after being cooped up for the past week.

We have had lots of gross motor activities going on to support the children with this aspect of their development, without them even realising that they are doing ‘learning’! Using big paintbrushes and water to paint the chalk wall clean, riding bikes and scooters, using the building bricks to be like a builder to make a front door and lots more!

The children have been making mud pies in one of our flower beds so may come home with some mud splattering! Please do send a spare pair of trousers/socks if you know your child is likely to spend time in messy play!

We have some lovely new provision areas in our classroom and the children have been producing some amazing things. The train track has come to life with children building elaborate bridges over the tracks, setting up loops and adding trees to the middle sections.

Our shop is coming to life with children queueing to buy food, paying at the tills and getting a receipt for their food. We have fake money with food being priced at the till by our cashiers!

Christmas week photo update!

Nativity week! We have been building up to this all half term, the children were performance ready and have loved dressing up, saying their lines and wiggling to the songs. Here is our filmed performance for anyone who wants to watch it again! We are so proud of the children as standing on the stage is daunting at any age. Thank you for all of your support with costumes, line learning and song singing!

Buddy book night! What a lovely evening we had, albeit a little crazy! Unfortunately our tv screen is not working in our classroom, so although we had some chilled out Christmas songs playing on the laptop, there was no short film or Christmas show to watch to keep everyone calm! We had 30 minutes of madness, including hot chocolate, presents, biscuits and playing with our buddies. The best bit was being in pyjamas at school of course!

This week we have been dressing up in some of our school nativity costumes. The children have independently been acting out scenes from our nativity and from the Christmas story.

We have enjoyed thinking about a journey story this week after learning about Mary and Josephs journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem.

The children made up their own journey stories for their story squiggle and we had some fantastic ideas!