On Thursday and Friday this week, we have been learning all about the Queen's Jubilee. The 'Little People, Big Dreams - Queen Elizabeth' book has been at the centre of our learning, with lots of activities both adult and child-led stemming from this. We have explored coloured sensory trays with red, white and blue spaghetti, decorated crowns with jewels using tweezers to develop our fine motor skills, read simple sentences to make different shapes with floam, manipulated pipe cleaners to make our own crowns and used a castle within our small world area to represent Buckingham palace. 

In Maths, we have continued to explore 3D shapes enjoying a very catchy song to help us remember the shape names... I am sure your child will be able to give you a fabulous rendition of "the 3D shapes I know"! 

During our PE, we have continued to develop our skills for cricket and developed our dynamic movements too, making cat like moves and stretches and navigating obstacles.

I am looking forward to learning more about the platinum jubilee next week. Collaboratively, we have written a list of exciting ways we can celebrate together as a class on Friday too!

Have a lovely weekend,

Mrs Nuthall :)

What a busy end to our week in Oak Class.

We explored the book 'Oliver's Vegetables' by Vivian French and artwork by Guiseppe Arcimboldo to inspire our learning. Firstly, we collaborated our ideas and named as many different fruit and vegetables as we could, creating a word bank and researching any we were unfamiliar with. On Thursday, we used real produce to make our own version of Arcimboldo's portrait work, choosing appropriate shapes for different body parts. On Friday, we printed with vegetables and fruit, to create a different version of a portrait. 

We have also enjoyed creating our Farm Shop role play area together, using loose parts to engage our imaginations and some pictures of real produce too. By using loose parts such as shells, felt balls, wooden cups, stones and pebbles and rings, the children can explore, create and imagine at their own discretion adding their own purpose and meaning to each object in their play. What we as adults may see as a pebble in a plastic lid could be an ice cream to one child, or a stem of broccoli to another.

Most children enjoyed exploring playdough and runner bean seeds, a variety of life cycle puzzles, mini-beasts in compost and a huge selection of our library topic books within continuous provision. 

During PE this week, we have focussed on our gross motor development skills and dynamic movements, learning to link movements, work together in small groups, practising cricket based skills, and enjoying fantastic parachute games too!

In Maths, we have been learning about the properties of various 3D shapes. We will continue this next week too.

I hope you have a lovely weekend.

Take care,

Mrs Nuthall

Happy Monday everyone- here is last week's belated blog!
We had an exciting week last week on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday with Miss Prince learning all about how plants grow and their lifecycles. We even started writing a journal to track the growth and life of the sunflowers we planted! In maths we were learning all about sharing in equal groups - the children had a lovely time sharing cubes and picnics for different creatures and always making it fair.
At Forest School we were learning about bugs and drawing them outside including writing some labels for them with our new outdoor writing kit. 

Then on Thursday and Friday, the children looked at another bird life cycle with Mrs Nuthall. 

On Thursday and Friday, our learning was inspired by the book Owl babies by Martin Waddell. We  listened  to the story and explored different activities within our continuous provision, such as role play, fork owl art, pencil control and opportunities for independent caption writing too,

During PE, we practised and developed our running skills and our very important listening skills too, waiting for instructions and following them carefully. 

In Maths, we continued to learn about 2D shapes, making different pictures using them. We enjoyed a shape hunt too.

This week, we will be learning about why trees are important for the world and how planting them can help the planet in forest school. If anyone has a spade we can borrow on Wednesday, please let Miss Prince know on Dojo or in the morning. 

Hope you all had a lovely weekend, 
Miss Prince, Mrs Nuthall and the Oak Class Team.