Cooking a healthy meal

This morning we were learning all about scales and weight as we explored the opposites 'heavy' and 'light'. This afternoon we continued our learning on weight and combined it with our learning on healthy eating to create a healthy meal. We followed a recipe to make cheese and vegetable pasta and talked about how the different foods would help our bodies. Pasta is a carbohydrate so it will give us energy and cheese is a dairy food so it will help give us strong teeth and strong bones. We should have at least five portions of fruit and vegetables a day to keep healthy and in our pasta we had onion, garlic, carrot, peppers, tomatoes and fresh basil.

We made sure we washed our hands first so they were nice and clean and wore aprons. We weighed all the ingredients carefully using the scales to make sure we had the right amount. When we were cooking we were very careful near hot things like the wok and sharp objects like knives, using our special safety knives to chop the peppers. When we had made the sauce and cooked the pasta we mixed them together then let it cool down a bit before we ate it so we didn't burn our mouths. Our pasta was delicious - some of us had lots of helpings! We did manage to spare a little bit for Miss Ayres and Mrs Waites to eat, and then Miss Groves came in and ate some too!

Big and small

Today we were learning all about the opposites 'big' and 'small'. We talked about different words for big such as huge, massive and enormous and different words for small like little or tiny. Miss Ayres showed us a mystery box - what do you think was inside it? It was... a smaller box! We opened that box and found... another box! We kept going until we had five boxes! Each one had to be smaller than the box it was in so it would fit.

We explored lots of things to help us understand size and measuring and help us practise comparing things by size, such as saying "this is smaller than..." or "this is bigger than..."

We explored the stacking boxes and also the Russian dolls - you have to put them inside each other in the right order or they won't fit!

We played a game on the whiteboard where we had to match the right food to the right bear based on its size - the big bear got the biggest food and the little bear had the smallest pieces!

We made models with different sized boxes and tubes.

We explored different sized shapes and explored how they could fit together. We also used 2D shapes of different colours to make pictures.

We drew pictures of things that are different sizes or cut some shapes of different sizes out ourselves.

We explored different sized bottles, jugs and cylinders in the water tray and different sized buckets and moulds in the sand.

We used different sized cutters in the playdough and also used our hands to shape the playdough into different things. Hannah shaped the playdough into a small, medium and large bowl - well done Hannah!

We looked at the plants we are growing and compared them - the bean that is growing in the sand is taller than the bean that is growing in the soil!

We made towers of different heights with multilink cubes and stacking counters.

We did a jigsaw of 'small, medium and large' - you had to match the right things together and put them in order from smallest to biggest to make the pieces fit together.

We looked at lots of books and stories about size including The Smartest Giant in Town, Mr Big and the Little Bear stories as well as non-fiction books about different sized animals.

We used the boxes to make tall towers!

In the role play area we acted out the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, using different sized bowls, spoons and chairs for the three bears.

What things can you find at home that are different sizes? What words could you use to describe them?

Healthy eating

This week one of the opposites we are learning about is healthy/unhealthy. We are learning what we need to do to keep ourselves healthy, including eating healthy food, drinking lots of water, getting exercise and getting enough rest.

We looked at different types of food and talked about whether we thought they were healthy or unhealthy. Then we learnt about the five different food groups and how they help our bodies. We learnt that carbohydrates (carbs) like rice, pasta, bread and potatoes give us energy, fruit and vegetables keep us healthy and we should have at least 5 portions a day, dairy foods like milk and yoghurt help us to have strong teeth and strong bones and proteins like meat, fish, eggs and nuts help us to grow. We also learnt about fats and sugars, like chocolate, sweets, crisps and fizzy drinks - these are foods we should only have a small amount of in our diet!

Then we made a healthy plate of food using paper plates and a range of resources including tissue paper and colouring pencils. We added labels and some of us wrote sentences about how the food in our healthy meal helps us, such as "Fish helps you grow" (Jack) and "Pasta gives you energy." (Emily).

When we have snack now we are going to be thinking about how the fruit and vegetables will help us to keep healthy and how our milk will help strengthen our teeth and bones!

What food do you like eating? Do you know which food group it belongs to and how it will help your body? When you're having dinner tonight, see if you can talk about how some of the food on your plate will help your body.

Martial Arts!

This morning we had our first WOW P.E lesson and started learning some martial arts! We had a great time and did lots of fun activities that helped us practise balancing, stretching, crawling, jumping and kicking our legs up high!

Well done to everyone, especially Emily, Fallon and Amber who received special stickers for their brilliant karate work. We're excited to see what we learn next week!

Opposites!

Welcome back to another term! This half term we are learning all about opposites. We have had fun exploring different opposites and trying to match items together if they are opposites, e.g hot and cold, big and small.

We are going to explore some opposites in more detail later in the term, such as light and dark, hot and cold and old and new.

Today we have been learning about happy and sad. We've been thinking about what makes us happy and sad and looked in the mirror as we explored what happy and sad faces look like. We also talked about how we could cheer someone up if they are feeling sad.

This afternoon Reception did some terrific writing about what makes us happy. We said:

I feel happy when...

"my brother tells jokes." - Finlay

"I ride my bike." - Blue

"I play with my elephant." - Jack

"it's my horse's birthday." - Tommy

"my daddy says don't smile and tickles me." - Fallon

"my brother plays with me." - Harrison

"I play with lego." - Charlie

"my dogs licks me because it feels tickly." - Emily

"I play with my cat." - Olivia

"people play right." - Harry

"my little sister gives me kisses because she's sweet." - Summer

An egg-citing end to the term!

This morning we participated in our annual egg rolling competition in the churchyard. There were a few 'eggsplosions' and one winner from each year group whose egg went the furthest. Well done to Amber, who won in Nursery and Harrison, our champion for Reception!

When we came back to school we looked at the fantastic eggs that have been decorated and entered into our decorated egg competition - the winners are yet to be announced but the entries all look terrific!

Then we went outside for our traditional egg hunt. As always, older children in the school showed real responsibility, taking care of the younger ones and guiding them in finding the eggs hidden around the playground.

After lunch we will be going to church for our Easter service, and then heading home for the Easter holidays!

 

Happy Easter!

From everyone in Nursery and Reception