Spring Term: Week 5
This week started with the children thinking about another of Super Andro’s Learning Powers – collaboration. The children learned that working collaboratively in a team happens in the animal kingdom as well as amongst people. They watched in amazement as tiny ants working together could move objects many times heavier than themselves. They discussed how people working together can achieve things more quickly that one person working alone and that working with other people means they can talk to each other to help find solutions if they come across problems. Together Everyone Achieves More.
Monday morning was full of excitement as Year 2 began their ‘dragon’ work. The children wrote beautiful descriptive sentences about their dragon and then drew, painted and decorated their mythical creatures. Mrs Tomsett and Mrs Worsell were blown away with the wonderful original designs. All the children in Year 2 are enjoying Ms Miles-Lewis’ PE lesson; balancing, rolling and core strength are being taught and enjoyed. Love is in the air as the children begin their Valentine’s Day sewing. Hopefully by the end of this mini project they will be able to sew on their own blazer buttons!
Year 1 have shown great ambition this week. They have become authors and illustrators, planning their twisted tales, based on The Three Little Pigs. Their chosen characters ranged from sloths, llamas and koalas to little ponies. Mrs Reed and Mrs Bates are looking forward to listening to all the stories. The home-schoolers have excelled and are always up for a challenge. The phonics lesson was no exception and they impressively wrote 10 sentences and read all the Year 1 common exception words. Florence had completed all her work independently and then took photos and uploaded them. The children have also enjoyed participating in the mental maths warm up. In the Forest and Garden School lesson, the children worked collaboratively to build homes for a little pig, making sure it was stable enough to prevent the wolf from blowing them down. In computing the children have illustrated posters to advertise their amazing stories. It has been an exciting fun-filled week with inspired and motivated children who have completed some super independent writing. Well done Year 1.
Reception have been learning to calculate one less this week. A baker’s shop was set up in the classroom with real hot cross buns. Needless to say the children had to taste the buns too! They made queens’ crowns while learning the digraph ‘qu’. And they learnt all about polar bears and drew them using white chalk following instructions carefully. The polar bears theme continued into their cooking lesson, where they worked collaboratively to make polar bear biscuits.
This week, during the Cheeky Chefs sessions, the Chaffinch and Kingfisher classes made shortbread biscuits. Mrs Marshall asked the children what kind of biscuits they would like to make and they replied ‘butterflies and flowers’. Cooking as a group is a great way for young children to begin to learn to accept the needs of others and take turns and share resources. They collaborated well and all took turns at mixing the dough and rolling it out. While one child was rolling out the dough, he observed ‘They are like pancakes’. Another child exclaimed, ‘I’m like a chef!’ Another said decisively, ‘I want to make a blue butterfly’. Cooking is also a great maths activity, weighing out the ingredients on the scales, cutting different shapes and making sure they share the amount equally between them all. The ultimate pleasure was, of course, tasting their shortbread biscuits during afternoon snack time.
This week the Nightingale staff created paintbrushes with a difference. They froze water and dropped paint into the middle, adding a lolly stick to use as the handle. The children had enormous fun exploring what happened as they swirled the ice-lollies on paper and watched the paint seep out, creating lovely patterns. They spoke excitedly about what they could do with the ice: “Super melty,” “I’m going to crack it”, “Put it in the oven to melt!” The children also worked hard pinching coloured sand from the pots to sprinkle on their collage pictures; a fun way to further develop their fine motor skills.
Mrs Nicholas and Miss Maynard popped into the Robin class last weekend and gave it a make-over. The children really enjoyed their new room and had lots of fun. They particularly liked the new Dear Zoo book exploration table and the new home role-play area. The children also produced some quite lovely art work with glue and coloured sand, exploring different textures and colours.
The Sparrow children have explored the light table this week. It is a fabulous learning tool that enhances sensory play opportunities. The activities and learning experiences are endless and encourage a range of skills such as fine motor development, hand-eye coordination and colour recognition. The children really enjoyed using the 3D sensory wooden shapes, mirror shapes and jelly letters. They also used their hands to see their own shadows and created shapes. It was so lovely to see the joy on their faces as they explored.
Armelle Wilkinson
Head of Nursery and Pre-Prep
