Summer Term: Week 9

18 June 2021

It was a wonderfully warm and beautifully sunny start to the week and it has been so lovely to take many activities outside the classroom. The week began by continuing to learn about the Fundamental British Values. This week’s theme was Individual Liberty. To demonstrate this, a new set of school rules were dictated, such as no talking about football, no eating of green apples and certainly no smiling! The children were quite shocked and concerned about these new rules. It led to much discussion about how many people in this world, in the past and still now, are not free to do as they wish. The children realised how lucky they are to be able to choose what they do and say, who they can be, all whilst remembering that there are still certain rules to be followed to keep everyone safe and happy.

The children have had another glorious week in Year 2. The beginning of the week brought sunshine and they enjoyed spending lots of time in the outside learning environments. The children used their collaboration skills to collect elderflower in the forest and transform it into the most delicious cordial. They collected large sticks to make a den and used team work to collect petals from flowers to press to make a bookmark. The children created a piece of descriptive writing about themselves for moving up day; the Junior Department teachers will love listening to their fondest memories of the Pre-Prep, as well as getting to know what their interests and hobbies are.

Year 1 have been very creative this week, making clay sea life sculptures. Though a little tricky to do, the firm favourite was sculpting a puffa fish. In English the children started a new topic ‘Pirates’. There was much excitement when choosing their Pirate names and making pirate passports. The theme was carried over into Forest School, where the children worked collaboratively to make pirate ships and dens. They also went on a pirate treasure hunt. In maths they have been busy adding and subtracting with money.

Reception have continued learning about minibeasts this week. They made their own bugs using craft materials and painted caterpillars using their hands. In maths they used ladybirds to revise number bonds to 10 and doubles. They drew their own ladybirds on the patio. Each ladybird had to have 10 spots shared in different ways on the two sides of their back, the children then wrote the number sentence on the patio too. In Forest School they went on a minibeast hunt and identification trail. A very exciting and busy week.

This week the Kingfisher class started to prepare for their summer holiday. They talked about what they might need and agreed that a passport would be useful. They created a passport office so that the children could have their photos taken. They then glued their photos into the new post-Brexit blue passports and had to write about who they were. One wrote her age “I am 3”. She also decided to use her thumbprint to identify who she was. As there wasn’t the special ink, she decided to draw her thumb onto the passport, taking great care. Meanwhile, the Chaffinch children made sandcastles in their new beach role play and had lots of fun pretending to be on the beach and going on a boat!

This week the Nightingale children have loved learning about how colours are made, they mixed different colours of paint with water. Using pipettes, they then began to transfer different colours from one tray to another, observing both the patterns in the paint and the colours being created. Mixing white and red was a particular favourite with two children saying ‘pink is my favourite colour’.

This week in the Robin class the children have been working on independence ahead of the older Robins moving up to Nightingales in September. They practised taking their clothes off before nap time and washing their hands independently. The older children in the class have suddenly begun to show they are toilet-ready toddlers, which the teachers are all so proud to see. The children had great fun getting their feet messy in the garden, when they created a big footprint trail across a big roll of paper. The explored lots of other mark making techniques, some of which were very…creative! They counted as they walked across the paper, to see how many steps they could make.

The Sparrow children engaged in some sensory exploration this week, using different textures and materials including ice, water and mirrors. They loved seeing their reflections.