Bonfire Night, Sparklers and Whatever Next!

This week we have focussed on Bonfire Night, and who Guy Fawkes was. The children loved watching videos of firework displays and noticed the circular shapes in the fireworks and also heard some of the noises they made, such as, bang, pop, sizzle etc.

They got very creative and made firework paintings, using cardboard tubes, twisting the tubes to make a swirling circular shape. Using the sensory blocks, the children created models of rockets by either building them upwards or lying them flat on the ground and joining them together to make a rocket shape. We also made edible sparklers using breadsticks, melted chocolate and sprinklers.

‘Whatever Next!’ is our Talk for Writing  focus story for the next two weeks.  You can find this story on youtube – encourage your child to tell you story with the sound off, using the pictures as a guide. See if they can tell you what is happening in each picture.  It was great to see the children dress up as little bear, putting on the colander as his helmet and using the blocks to make the box rocket. I loved how they added the small logs and pretended that they were buttons for the rockets.  We have also enjoyed singing ‘5 Little men in a flying saucer’ and doing a scarf dance where we followed instructions and also moved and swirled our scarves faster or slower to match the music. The children were also fantastic at following instructions as we have now started our Brushing Buddies toothbrushing programme.

Move to the Beat! Zoom to the moon! Yum! Yum! Faster! Faster!

This week we have focussed on activities around ‘Black History Month’.  The children loved going to the Junior Hall to meet the Hibbert family who brought in lots of artefacts related to their Jamaican heritage.  They particularly enjoyed playing the steel drums and were fascinated by the sugar cane and how it was turned into sugar.  They showed us the Jamaican football shirts which inspired some of the children to talk to them about football and Forest. I was very proud of how confident they were to speak with our visitors.  We also listened to the story, ‘Coming to England’ by Floella Benjamin and how Trinidad looked different to England. This led us to talk about how Floella settled into her new school and how we should all be good friends to each other.  We also read the story, ‘Baby Goes to Market’ and talked about the fruit the children saw at the market.

Handa’s Surprise was also a favourite this week and we counted the fruit Handa had in her basket.  We did lots of sorting activities, continuing to name colours, as well as notice which objects were the same, matched or different.  Please keep using these words at home to help your child to understand their meaning.  We matched monsters to their coloured shoes and made towers with Duplo, wooden blocks and cubes and the children had a go at copying my tower e.g. red on top and yellow on the bottom and then tried to spot when the tower was different. We played animal dominoes and it was great to see the children have a go at matching the animals and their friends helping them when it didn’t match.

Weekending 30^th September 2022

We had a busy week talking about our school and some of the people that are important to us at school.  We looked at the school website and some of the people in the office, Tracey in the kitchen, as well as other teachers we see each day. We also had a walk around the school and visited the office. The children were excited to see photos of themselves on the website and they talked about who they saw and what they were doing.  They were amazed to find tomatoes growing as well as a huge pumpkin. They also picked grass to feed the guinea pigs.

We also talked about firefighters and how they help us and they loved listening to and learnign the song 'Five Little Firemen'.  We remembered how we had to go outside and line up quietly during our fire drill. They loved playing on the small world fire engine and house tuff spot. I could hear them telling little stories about how they could help the people and save them. We also had lots of children enjoying being doctors and nurses taking care of each other and the babies.

There was lots of activity in the creative area; we made playdough and mixed colours – this week we focused on how to make orange. The children painted one hand yellow and the other red and then rubbed them together to see what colour they made. Some said that it was like magic. Later, they enjoyed mixing the colours  themesleves  to make red, yellow and orange pictures.  We also loved listening to the story, Mousepaint where the mice mixed other colours to make new colours.

 T