Fun in the sun!

This afternoon there was a beautiful blue sky and bright sunshine, so we headed out to the penfold with the parachute. We played lots of games that helped develop our teamwork and listening skills - not to mention working our arm muscles! We all had lots of fun and worked together really well. We really enjoyed the cat and mouse game - Emily was a particularly tricky mouse to catch! We also played games with balls and beanbags, and Emily suggested we try and throw the beanbags onto the parachute and make it land on the matching colour. Not only was this a great idea, but she explained her game to the rest of the class really well. Well done Emily!

A special visit!

We started this week learning about babies and how we have grown and changed since we were babies. Then we started looking forward, thinking about how we will change as we grow older. We set some goals for ourselves that we would like to achieve by the summer term and thought about all the things the bigger children in school can do that we'll be able to do when we're a bit bigger! Then we started learning about different jobs. Yesterday we learnt about a lot of jobs and how people can help us through the work they do. We learnt that police officers keep us safe, doctors and nurses look after us if we're poorly, vets take care of animals, postal workers deliver the mail, firefighters put out fires and rescue people - and lots more!

Today we had another special visitor - it was Dexter's mummy again! This time she came in to talk to us about her job. She is an osteopath, which means she looks after people who have hurt their bones or their muscles. She brought in a model of a spine to show us and taught us lots of things about our body and how to take care of it. We learnt that we have 206 bones in our body, the smallest bone is in our ear and the biggest bone is our femur (thigh bone). Things like milk and cheese contain calcium which helps keep our bones strong and healthy, and it's important to get lots of exercise and sit up nice and straight!

We all learnt a lot and really enjoyed looking at the model of the spine. A big thank you (again!) to Dexter's mum for coming to visit us and help us with our learning!

When we were babies..!

This week we are learning about how we grow as people. Yesterday Dexter's mummy brought Dexter's little sister, Lucille, into our class to visit us. She is five months old and we really enjoyed meeting her and learning about all the things she can and can't do. We learnt that she can't walk or crawl, but that the next thing she is going to learn to do is roll over. She also only drinks milk, but soon she can start having proper baby food. She was very good and gave us lots of smiles - we enjoyed her visiting us and some of us had some cuddles with her! Thank you to Dexter's mum and Lucille for visiting us!

Today we were talking about what we were like when we were babies and thinking about how we've changed. We brought in photos of ourselves when we were younger and had to try and work out who was who from just looking at the photo!

When we had worked out who was who we each talked about our photo and some of the differences between us as babies and now. There are a lot of things we can do now that we couldn't when we were babies, and we look different too - we are bigger, we have more teeth and we have more hair!

Beautiful butterflies

This morning we were learning all about butterflies and something that's very special about them - the pattern on their wings is symmetrical! We talked about what this means and looked at some examples to help us understand. Miss Ayres showed us how to paint on half of a piece of paper and then fold it over to make a symmetrical picture! We then tried our own, either doing patterns or a butterfly.

We also had some butterfly templates to decorate, either by colouring or using sequins and buttons. We had to think carefully about where each one would go so the butterfly was symmetrical. Then we added straws for feelers and put them on lolly sticks to make them look like they're flying!

We used the symmetry tool on the iPads to create symmetrical pictures.

We also used the interactive whiteboard and decorated a butterfly, looking carefully at the picture we had to copy to make sure we chose the correct colours.

We also looked at some funny pictures of monsters - only half the monster was there! To see the whole picture we had to use mirrors. When we put the mirror next to half of the monster, we could look in the mirror and see the whole picture.

We also explored size with our butterfly puzzle. To fit the pieces in you have to make sure the smallest one goes in first, and then the next smallest - if you don't put them in in the right order they won't all fit!

In maths we continued to explore symmetry and worked together to put coloured stacking counters on a butterfly picture.

Sharing our learning in a class assembly

This morning we shared some of our recent learning in an assembly in front of the whole school and lots of parents. It can be really scary to stand up in front of a lot of people (especially when you're only 3, 4 or 5 years old!) and we all did a terrific job.

We told everyone about our visit to the farm and Harrison, Jack, Fallon and Luke read their recounts. Some of us showed pictures we had made of lambs and Leo and Dexter showed some of our photos. We also told everyone that we had been learning about how other animals grow and Emily, Summer and Fallon showed their terrific models of giraffes and zebras. Finally we told everyone about our learning this week - all about the Very Hungry Caterpillar and the life cycle of butterflies!

Well done everyone in Nursery and Reception :-)

Litter picking!

This morning it was a beautiful sunny day and lots of us were playing outside. We were using our 'grabbers' to pick up some leaves when we found some litter - rubbish that had found its way onto our playground. We talked about what we could do and decide we should pick it up and put it in the bin. Since there aren't any bins outside, Mylo thought we should get a plastic bag to put the rubbish in, which he did.

After that some of us were very busy picking up litter from the playground. We talked about how some people drop rubbish and how it can make places like the countryside look very untidy, which makes us feel sad. We can try hard to make sure we always put our rubbish in the bin and encourage other people to do the same. We were being very responsible this morning (this month's school value) in tidying up and making the playground look even better - well done to all the litter pickers in Nursery and Reception!

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

This week we are learning all about life cycles and we are beginning the week by learning how caterpillars turn into butterflies.

To help us learn this we read the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar and did lots of activities to help us learn the story as well as developing some of our other skills.

We used sequencing cards to get the story in the right order. We had to use our reading skills to help us and look at the book to check we had things in the right order. Doing this also helped us practise our counting and develop our understanding of the days of the week!

We practised our number recognition and ordering using caterpillars with numbers on.

We took turns and waited patiently as we played our Very Hungry Caterpillar game. To know how to play we had to listen carefully to instructions and we had to make sure we waited until it was our turn.

We did some writing about what happens in the story or what we know about caterpillars and butterflies.

We matched picture cards with the food the caterpillar eats with the right day of the week. We had to look in the book to make sure we had got it right.

We used our fine motor skills as we manipulated the playdough to make different things including a leaf, legs for the caterpillar, a cocoon and wings for the butterfly.

Check back later in the week to find out what we learn about butterflies and see some of our beautiful butterfly pictures!