We have been very busy this week in Early Years! The children have been really enjoying their new story “The Night Pirates” and it has served to inspire them during their choosing time. We have seen lots of map making and treasure hunts both inside and outside, sieving for jewels, digging for coins and even following directions leading to London Bridge!
We have also enjoyed our PSED learning with Harold this week. We have been focusing on the Friendship and Caring parts of our scarf, as we think about how we can help our friends if they may be feeling upset. Lots of children decided to write ‘shout outs’ for their friends, sharing kind comments with one another. This activity really put a smile on our faces as we noticed that being kind to others helped us to feel happier too.
In Yoga, the children’s sun sequence is really developing well as the children begin to build fluency with their movements, linking one move to the next. We really have been working very hard on our breathing skills to calm and focus our busy brains!
This concentration is also noticeable during our other learning times. In maths we have been exploring numerical patterns within our learning about number bonds to ten, and also spotting how amounts increase and decrease as you count on and back.
Saplings have been doing a great job in making links between their phonics carpet times and their choosing times, noticing the sounds that they have been learning cropping up throughout the day, such as the Z as in zip as we get ready for outside play! Ash have been building their understanding of fluent word reading of more familiar words. They are also using their knowledge of blending, to read words including multisyllabic words, and segmenting in order to write words, short phrases and sentences.
We have been so lucky to have not one but two special visitors for our story times this week! Mrs Lloyd-Williams shared two of her favourite stories with the children, Cannonball by Sacha Cotter and Josh Morgan, and Hallibut Jackson by David Lucas. The children were really excited to ask Mrs Lloyd-Williams lots of thoughtful questions linking to the texts, particularly in light of the words in Canonball that were written in a different language.
The children were also, truly, in awe of our friend Louis who came to read the Gruffalo to us all. You could have heard a pin drop as the story was read so fluently from the beginning to the end. After Louis returned to his class, the children were curious to know how old Louis was… “Seven?! But I’m five! That’s only… two years older isn’t it?” cries such as these and similar were heard across the carpet. The children were so very captivated and inspired.
World Book Day celebrations were a huge hit in Early Years as the children got to share their vegetable creations and talk about their favourite stories in class. Later on in the day, we were incredibly proud to see them displayed in the school gallery alongside our friends’ creations in the older years. Such celebrations have inspired the children to write and illustrate their own stories, adapted from their favourite books, such as Supertato, or developed from their own experiences.
