What a fantastic half term we have had Ladybirds and Gruffalo’s exploring our new topic ‘Ready, Steady Grow’. We have absolutely loved this topic and been super invested in learning all things plants, flowers, farming, harvest, and animals.

We have learned so many stories and had so much fun enhancing our learning in our enhanced provision areas making marvelous creations such as our very own beanstalk collages, self-portraits, observational drawings of fruit baskets, printing with vegetables, creating symmetrical butterflies, and have been ever so proud showing our wonderful work around the classroom and on our WOW wall.

We have worked so incredibly hard in our Maths and have been Maths superstars learning all about combining two groups, addition, time, length and height, 9 and 10 and comparing numbers to 10.

We have been very busy using our Phonics knowledge to create wonderful pieces of writing about what animals we can find on a farm, instructions how to plant a bean, describing the animals in Handa’s Surprise, and writing all the different types of food that The Very Hungry Caterpillar eats.

We absolutely loved dressing up for World Book Week in our cosy pjs and loungewear, we loved reading alongside our partner class, sharing beautiful stories and reading to one another. We were also proud to take part and raise money for Comic Relief!

One of our favourite moments this half term was planting seeds, watering them and popping them in the sunlight, and watching our beanstalks grow tall like Jasper’s beanstalk. Another favourite moment has been looking after the eggs ready for them to hatch into baby chicks! We have watched them grow from eggs in the incubator and kept the classroom warm and quiet for them to grow into little chicks.

We even had a very special visit from a Farmer in her tractor and found out so much information about his farm, and even got to sit in her tractor!

We are so excited to learn all about our new topic after Easter ‘Big Wide World’.

Wow! What a super start to 2024 in the Ladybirds. We have absolutely loved our topic ‘Starry Night’ and have learnt so much about space, the first moon landings, famous astronauts and nocturnal animals.

We have produced some wonderful artwork after studying the painting ‘The Starry Night’ by Vinent Van Gough, the children were so proud of their own versions of the painting and have enjoyed sharing their artwork on display in the classroom.  

In computing this half term, we explored the Bee-Bots (programmable floor robots) for the first time, and we were so impressed with how capable the children were at programming them to complete a space mission to the moon.

The children have been fascinated by space travel and astronauts and have spent lots of time in our own very own rocket! We have packed picnics for the moon like baby bear from the story ‘Whatever Next’ and we have dressed up as Neil Armstrong and reenacted the first moon landings.

We have been on a nocturnal animal hunt around the classroom in the dark with torches! This was lots of fun and we couldn’t believe how many animals came out at night. We also enjoyed learning about shadows and night and day, the sun, and the moon and why it gets dark at bedtime.

We ended the half term with our carer’s week. The children looked amazing all dressed up for work! On the Monday we had a special visit from the fire service. We loved finding out lots of facts about the engine and asking our own questions all about fire fighters and their job.

Week Beginning: 15th January 2024

What a wonderful second week back we have had Ladybirds! We have been so very busy learning all about our new topic ‘Starry night’. Our story of the week has been ‘Owl babies’ and we have been learning about capacity.

We have had so much fun in the playdough area making our very own animals, In the creative area we have been painting with feathers and creating owl pictures, and on the fine motor table we have been using our fine motor skills to grip feathers with tweezers and place the tweezers in the correctly numbered bowls. In our small world area we have been playing with different nocturnal animals and woodland materials. On our writing table we have been labelling different parts of an owl. We have been learning about nocturnal animals and wildlife this week.

In our writing groups we have been using our Phonics knowledge to write about different nocturnal animals, and in Maths we have been learning about capacity using mathematical language such as empty, full, nearly empty, half full, nearly full.

Next week our story of the week will be ‘Whatever Next’. In Maths we will be learning about 6 and 7.

Have a lovely weekend Ladybirds!

Week Beginning: 8th January 2024 

Welcome back everyone, it has been lovely to see you all and hear all about your Christmas holiday!

We have got straight into our new topic Starry Night and have really enjoyed sharing the story peace at last. in the small world area we have enjoyed exploring animals that we might find awake at night – we learnt that these animals are called nocturnal animals. On the creative table we have made silhouette puppets of different nocturnal animals and on the writing table we have been labelling animals.

In our writing groups we have bene thinking about our bedtime routine and have worked so hard to write words and simple captions about what we do before we go to bed.

In maths we have been comparing and subitising numbers using dot plates, domino pieces and cubes.

Next week we will be sharing the story of owl babies and in maths we will be looking at capacity.