This week as part of our Toys topic we had a visit from Stevenage Museum. 

Kate who worked at the museum, brought lots of old and new toys for us to look at and play with. 

Luckily, we had already learnt about the 'past' and 'present' so we knocked her socks off with the things we already knew!

We looked at the way children watched cartoons, what their teddies felt like and how their dolls used to look like. We also realised that we still played with toys that children used to play with from the past.

We had a great visit and learnt so much!

Hello, this week we had our Toy Workshop. We had to investigate different toys and work out if they were old or new. We loved exploring and playing with the different toys. 

We even learnt about how cartoons used to made. We got to see an old baby bottle that was made of glass. We loved ordering the dolls from oldest to newest. 

We got to play with lots of different toys. We hadn't seen some of them before. The Jack in a Box made us jump! The Diablo was fun to use. We knew how to use the skipping rope and it was fun to play with it. 

Well done Beech Class, have a lovely weekend. 

Miss Weston, Mrs Kandola and Miss Dela. 

Diwali Day in Reception was amazing! 

We arrived into a dark classroom where Diwali music was playing! We had a boogie in the morning while the children came in and showed off our amazing bright clothes. 

We made Diwa lamps out of clay, Diwali lanterns and ribbon dancing sticks. 

This afternoon we had a very special visitor. A parent from Year 2 came down to teach us some Bollywood dancing! 

We used our ribbon dancing sticks to dance around the hall to some amazing Bollywood music. 

We have had an amazing day! Happy Diwali 

This week in reception we have been exploring and learning more new skills. In maths we learned how to measure length and height using the key words, long, short, tall and short so in our outside area we had a painty teabag throwing competition. We dipped our teabags in pant and threw them as far as we could. After we had impressed Mrs Kirby with our throwing skills, we measured the length the teabags had traveled with our footsteps. The longest teabag travelled 14 of Mrs Kirby's footsteps and the shortest travelled 4 footsteps.  What can you measure using footsteps at home?

In our mud kitchen, we found a selection of flowers and dried flowers so we set about making a range of culinary delights. We made a fragrant cold soup with bay leaves, a fruit, petal salad and a scrumptious mud muffin. We also decorated a few stones with our favourite fruits  and vegetables so we can make our meals even more sensational! Of course we make lots of mess as it is a very busy kitchen but don't worry, Mr Sharp our site manager has installed a wonderful water pump to help us with washing up. We can show you our washing up skills at home too. 

In our topic lessons, we have been learning about toys in the past and present. We researched toys that children played with many years ago and realised that we still play with some of them now. We were surprised to see, toy cars, marbles and teddies were popular in the past. While we were researching our toys, we had a visit from Amy who was selling poppies. Some of us wondered why we buy poppies so we found out that we wear poppies to support people that served in the war many years ago to help their countries. 

This week in our Jigsaw lesson, we learned a little more about each other. We had a visit from Jigsaw Jack. We learned that if we are holding Jigsaw Jack, it was our turn to talk. First we spoke to our talk partners and then we took turns to hold Jigsaw Jack to tell the rest of the class something we were very good at. We discussed how special we all were and how good we all are at different activities. Some of us are brilliant at jumping into a swimming pool, riding a horse, using our scooters and counting. 

We are really busy with our phonics! We learn a new phoneme everyday. 

We also have our very own Phonics books. We take it in turns to practise writing in our books.

This week we learnt that a sentence has...

"lots of words in it"

"finger spaces to break up the words"

"full stop to tell everyone the sentence has finished!"

Hello, this week the children have loved exploring our outside area. Beech Class love exploring the outside and creating wonderful mud food. Thankfully they all had their special mud kitchen suits on! Some of the children also helped to scoop out a pumpkin. It was lovely to see Beech class getting involved in the outside area. This weekend, see if you can explore an outside area near you.

This week in Maths we have been learning about length and height. The children have enjoyed building towers and using our key words taller and shorter to describe them. I wonder if anyone can compare the height of their teddy bears at home?

In Jigsaw this week, we have been practising our Calm Me Time. The children have learnt how to use their breathing to make them feel calm and relaxed. Maybe Beech class can show their adults how to breathe in through their nose and breathe out the rainbow. :) 

Have a look at some of our mud kitchen chefs in action! 

Well done Beech class, another great week of learning. Have a wonderful weekend. 

Miss Weston, Mrs Kandola and Miss Dela.

What another busy week Birch class have had. This week in PE, we have been learning how to balance. We pretended we had joined the circus and needed to walk the tightrope. We learned that we needed to keep our head and eyes still and hold out our arms to keep our balance. Some of us needed an extra challenge so we tried to star jump in the middle or at the end of our equipment! It was all very exciting. Can you help us learn a new balance at home so we can demonstrate it in PE next week?

During our Jigsaw lessons this term we will be celebrating our differences. This week, we took turns to tell each other what we were good at. We noticed that some of us were good at the same things and some of were good at different things. We decided this was really good because we could all help each other learn how to become better and learn new skills.