The sunnier days have been very welcomed in Early Years, especially as we have been able to take more learning into the outdoor environment.
This week, the children listened to the story of Cave Baby by Julia Donaldson. The grown ups were very impressed that they could name other books by the same author. After looking at cave paintings that the baby painted, along with pictures of real cave paintings, they brought their learning to life by creating cave paintings outside on the playground. There were some magnificent woolly mammoths, brown bears and people. It was just like going back in time to the days of the cavemen!
Some of the children have been enjoying playing emergency services during choosing time, so we spent a carpet time learning more about the police and how they help us. They learnt about the uniform they wear, where you can find them and even some police animals that also help the public. We had many police officers catching baddies in the outdoor learning environment afterwards.
In maths, Ash are continuing to develop their knowledge of odd and even numbers and are becoming more confident to recognise an odd and even number, with and without resources. Saplings children have been thinking about one more than a given number, using multilinks.
The children have been continuing to use the story, Handa’s Surprise, to support their writing in Literacy. This week, they were thinking about how Handa would carry the fruit on her head and how it must have felt for her to carry it on her head on a long journey. Ash children wrote some super independent sentences describing how it would have felt.
We enjoyed searching for animals from Handa’s Surprise who were hiding in the Forest for part of one of our Forest School sessions. The children were able to remember which fruits the animals took from Handa’s basket.
Saplings children have been wowing us with their phonics knowledge as they continue to practise their sounds and blend them to say words, whilst Ash class have been learning some very tricky new graphemes and reading longer sentences, using their phonics knowledge to help them.
Friday’s forest session with the Woodland Rangers was very exciting as the children were allowed to use real ‘grown up’ hammers! They placed leaves in a piece of material and hammered them to make prints on the material. They ended up with some amazing prints.
Recently we have been thinking about the life cycles of animals such as frogs and butterflies. This week we started to think about plants and their life cycles. Some of the children planted seeds and discussed what they need to be able to grow. We have our fingers crossed that ours will grow.
