Autumn Half Term Bulletin – 2021
The first seven weeks of term flew by. The children settled in well to their new classes and worked hard and with great enthusiasm.
We welcomed Jim Tantram, the new Nursery Manager, during the Summer Holiday Club and he too has learned of the new rules and routines, as the term started.
It was wonderful to be able to welcome parents back into school to attend the Nursery Harvest Songs and Pre-Prep and Junior Harvest Festival. The children were wonderful and sang beautifully. Their focus has now moved on to thinking about the Christmas performances. All being well, we hope that parents will also be able to attend these. Please look at the online calendar for the dates.
Year 2
Year 2 have enjoyed learning about The Great Fire of London. In groups, they made small wooden houses having first learnt how to use loppers to cut the wood to make them! The children then threw their houses onto the Forest School fire pit to demonstrate how quickly wood sets alight.
The children wrote their own accounts of Samuel Pepys’ diary and worked in groups to act out and become the characters that he had written about. The Science topic this half term has been electricity and the children have loved creating their own circuits and switches. In Geography the children have been ‘visiting’ different continents and have shared their enthusiasm for different countries by bringing in and showing wonderful artefacts to the class each week. In PSHE, the children have discussed the topic of Being Me in My World. The children talked about feelings and responsibility and they acted out a responsibility that they might have at home which other children had to guess!
YEAR 1
Year 1, have had a very busy seven weeks. In art, the children studied self-portraits of different artists and used various media to create their own self-portraits. In History, the children were excited when looking at toys past and present and had great discussions about their parents’ and grandparents’ favourite toys. In English, the children have shown their creativity with work based on the book Shark in the Park, with plenty of writing and creating a lovely display. The children enjoy taking their spelling books home and they have worked hard at learning their words and are doing very well in their spelling tests. They have also learnt about verbs, nouns and adjectives. In DT lessons, the children have been making moving pictures with split pins. The children demonstrated plenty of resilience when they cut out their animals and fixed fiddly split pins. In Maths the children have been studying teen numbers and learned the value of estimating and there has been plenty of addition and number bonds to loop games while Bingo has been very popular. We have revisited the properties of 2D shapes, making a variety of 2D pictures and we have had a go at naming shapes with varying numbers of sides – from a circle to a decagon. We have been creative and made a variety of 2D pictures.
RECEPTION
The children in Reception have relished the start to their school career! They all settled in extremely well using their learning power of adaptability to embrace all the challenges that were set. Their topics this half term have included Harvest and Autumn and a variety of texts have been shared with the class which have led to discussion and fact finding sessions including learning where flour comes from and how bread is made. They especially loved making delicious hibernating hedgehog bread rolls! In Forest School they learned the forest and fire circle rules, followed by discussions about the seasonal changes which effect both plants and animals and also made beautiful forest flags for the ‘Scarecrow’s Wedding,’ which involved natural printing of leaves. In Maths the children learnt about subitising to 5, number formation, comparisons of amounts and repeating patterns. The children are all enjoying the phonics and enjoy singing the song and completing the actions. Letter formation and name writing is developing extremely well. All the class have developed in independence and confidence in so many ways over this half term.
CHAFFINCH AND KINGFISHER
The children started by focussing on the ‘All About Me’ theme which gave the children an opportunity to learn more about themselves and observe similarities and differences between each other. We started by asking the children to look in the mirror and talk about their features. The next step was to find out each child’s height and weight. The children took turns to stand on the scales and beside the height chart.
The children also compared how they looked now to how they looked in a photo they brought from home.
For Autumn inspired activities, the children explored printing in autumnal colours using apples. They also made wonderful Autumn trees using a hand print and sponge print mark-making and also createdHalloween themed pumpkin pictures and observational drawings. The Harvest Festival themed songs the children learnt with Mrs Radley were performed beautifully at our Harvest Songs morning.
NIGHTINGALE
It has been a fun and active first term for the children in the Nightingale class and they have settled well in their new classroom. The children have been very creative in our many craft activities including exploring powder paints in water, painting with sticks, chalking outside and on the blackboards and using Dabby paints! They became explorers when they went for walks around the school grounds, collecting leaves and sticks to bring back to their classroom. The Nightingale children now attend a new session, ‘soft play’, where they are encouraged to move in different ways on soft PE equipment, going over, under or around developing their physical skills while having fun.
ROBIN
The Robin class have enjoyed going on lovely walks through the parks and on the playing fields exploring the world around them. They have had lots of fun splashing in big puddles in the Lodge playground together and have loved going to soft play every Friday; climbing on obstacles and using their energy as they run around. They have also enjoyed colouring in different pictures of their choice using pencils or painting.
SPARROW
The Sparrow children have been practising their listening skills through music and story time with their friends and teachers and have especially enjoyed nursery rhymes. They have also benefited from and enjoyed lots of walks to the seafront. Seeing the children’s faces light up when they observe their surroundings is wonderful. The children have been mark-making using paint brushes and their own hands to decorate tree pictures and to help with their physical development, they have been climbing on the soft play area and wooden frame.
From the above, it is clear that the children have been very busy and have earned a restful half term break. Term restarts on Monday 1 November and promised to be just as busy, if not more so!
Have a good half term.
Armelle Wilkinson
Head of Nursery and Pre-Prep
