Christmas Celebrations Part 1- Performance and Dinner

We’ve been practising our Christmas Performance for weeks!

We started practising in the Studio and learning the songs in classrooms then we got to go to the Hall and see where we would do it for real with our families watching.

We got better and better learning to remember our words until the grown ups didn’t need to remind us at all. We remembered our words and acting all by ourselves. We didn’t even need the grown ups to remind us when it was our turn to move.

We did a dress rehearsal when the Y1 and Y3 children to see us and help us practise at saying our words in front of an audience. We also got to try on our costumes for the first time.

Then it was the big day and it was time to show our families our Christmas Show- Whoops a Daisy Angel.

When we went in the big hall it was packed. We ran out of chairs and some of our friends and families had to stand up! It didn’t put us off though…. we were amazing! All the grown ups in school were so so proud of us for putting on our show and remembering all of our words.

Rightly so, our families and friends gave us a MASSIVE clap at the end to say well done and show how proud they were of us. Some of them said we were amazed that we were so confident to stand up in front of all of those people and speak.

Our fun day wasn’t over there though….. Wednesday was also Christmas Dinner day! We were all very excited to try our Christmas dinner and even the teachers had one as well.

You might spot some other school adults in the picture as well. We thought our school Christmas Dinner was yummy.

Our Christmas celebrations are well underway and we can’t wait for some more Christmassy excitement 🙂 We’ll be letting you know what we’ve been up to soon…..

Big thanks to all the parents carers who supported our Performance by not only attending on the day but also providing items for costumes when we asked.

Thank You! 

 

Healthy Living Week 2018

Before October Half Term we all took part in the whole school Healthy Living Week. We learnt about lots of different ways to keep ourselves safe and healthy.

First Mrs Murch came to talk to us about PANTS and our new friend Pantosaurus. It is important that we learn the special PANTS rules so we know how to keep ourselves safe.

There was a special rule to remember for each of the letters in PANTS.We had to remember Privates are private. 

Can you remember what all the rules were?

Grown ups- follow this link to find out more and to find the song Mrs Murch taught us. 

After that we had a doctor come to visit us and tell us all about staying healthy but also what happens if we need to go to the doctors.

We all had such a good time we decided we wanted a Doctors’ Surgery in our classroom and asked the teachers to turn our role play into a Doctors. We have loved pretending to be the doctors and the patients.

 

Another day we had a special PE session with Erol. It was hard work as we tried all the activities and kept our bodies fit and healthy.

Can you remember which your favourite activity was? Which one made you the most out of breath and tired? 

We were very lucky because we were able to borrow some special bikes from Taylor Shaw. They were called Smoothie Bikes because when you pedalled them you made the blender turn. We got to use them a couple of times. First, when we made pumpkin soup with the pumpkins we’d been growing and, second, when we made smoothies with fruit and yoghurt.

Which was your favourite? Can you say why? 

We did some other different food tasting as well to try new and healthy foods.

Some children weren’t to sure to begin with about trying new foods but they surprised themselves when they did try them.

We also had a very different type of PE session than the one with Errol. In this one we did some Yoga and learnt to keep our bodies steady and still. It took a lot of concentration but we got really good at it and wanted to practise for the rest of the day.

We also read a book called UNPLUGGED which taught us about the importance of spending time outside and not always being inside on the computer- even if its our favourite thing to do! We learnt that being safe and healthy online means it is good to be away from the computer.

Grown ups- you can find out more about Digital 5 a Day and how important it is to vary what children do on computers here. 

 

We had a fabulous week 🙂

What have we been learning? 

• To keep our bodies and minds safe and healthy. 
• To find out how special visitors can help teach us about staying healthy. 
• About different healthy foods. 
• About different types of exercise. 
• To keep our bodies private and what to do if we are worried. 
• To stay safe and healthy online and on the computer. 

How can you continue the learning at home? 

• Follow the links for grown ups above and find out more about the things we have been learning. 
• Encourage your children to try new foods. Make it exciting and let them help you prepare them before you try them. 
• Walk to school everyday and talk about why walking is the healthy option (or running, riding a bike or coming on your scooter)

Escape from the Volcano

Everyone had been talking about volcanos and playing a game called ‘Escape from the Lava’ for ages so we decided we should learn about volcanoes in class.

Miss Parker found a book which told us a bit more about volcanoes. Can you remember what it taught us?

We also watched a video that lots of us had seen at home. You can watch it again here. Can you tell a grown up how an island grows?

Then we watched some videos of some real volcanoes and found out there were volcanoes erupting right now while we were in school. We thought about how we would feel if there was lava coming towards our homes. Miss Parker told us about when she went to an volcano but thankfully it wasn’t erupting when she was there.

We thought how we would help the people in Hawaii escape after they wrote to us asking for help. We came up with a few suggestions.

There was lots more role play and children wanting to experience what it was like to be near the lava. Outside was a popular place for this and the children loved building bridges and other ways to stay safe. They used our loose parts in all sorts of imaginative ways and even added water to be lava.

 

As the children were so engrossed in making up stories we used this to practise our writing skills. First we had to THINK IT and decide what we wanted to happen in our story. We drew a story map to help us remember it.

Then we had to SAY IT for each sentence so we could remember what to write. Then we had to WRITE IT. We worked hard to sound out the words and think of the letters we needed to write. Here is the beginning and the middle of the story.

When we had written it we had to READ IT to see if we’d done a good job. Can you see the ticks and crosses on our writing? We used the sentence hand to make sure we’d remembered everything putting a tick if we had and a cross if we hadn’t. On Wednesday we forgot our capital letter but on Thursdays we remembered them.

from Sparklebox.co.uk

Do you think you could write the end of the story? You could write it on paper and bring it to school or put it in a comment below or an email.

Our learning about volcanoes went over two weeks because we were all so interested and there was so much to learn and do. We decided we wanted to make a volcano of our own and see if we could make it erupt. It took us all week to make. We started with a bottle and some masking tape.

Then we had to use papier-mâché to build the shape of the volcano. It took a long time because we had to wait for it to dry in between.

 

Everyone enjoyed helping with our volcano which was good because there were still more jobs. Next we had to paint our volcanoes. First we painted the mountain and the grass before we added the lava. We used one of our volcano books to help us think what the volcano should look like.

 

Finally our volcano was ready and it was time to watch it erupt. Miss Parker used bicarbonate of soda and white vinegar to create the lava inside the volcano. Everybody loved it and said it was well worth the wait.

We loved learning about volcanoes.

What have we been learning?

• To find out about volcanoes using videos and books.
• To find out where volcanoes are using first hand experiences and technology.
• To build our own volcano and watch it erupt.
• To role play what we think it would be like near a volcano which is erupting.
• To make up stories about volcanoes.
• To think how to stay safe near volcanoes and send our ideas to Hawaii.

How can you continue the learning?

• Watch the video above and talk about how the volcanoes grow.
• Use Google to find videos of real volcanoes and watch the lava flow (Make sure before doing any Google search with children that you have the appropriate safety measures in place)
• Continue the story above writing it either on paper or typing it.

 

Buildings, Structures and Homes

We had a great time in the first half of Spring term learning all about Buildings, Structures and Homes. The children decided this was what they wanted to learn about while we get ready for our New School.

First we asked the children what they would want to learn about…….

We read the story of the Three Little Pigs and it became our storytelling text for the half term.. Look on the blog for a post about our storytelling. The children thought about what they would use to build a house if the big bad wolf came to Manor Top and why that would be the best material.

Once some of the children had decided on the bricks to build a solid wall for the house the used the rest of the materials to create the rest of the house. Doesn’t it look great?

There were lots of other building activities for us to do too. We had great fun exploring them all. There was more going on than we could take photos of to show you!

The children loved the freedom and creativity of the role play area which they could make anything they wanted to be.

One our favourites was using the sand cement to build sticking the blocks together. If you want to make some at home just mix shaving foam with some sand- it’s that easy 🙂

There were lots of Elsa castles popping up all over the place but these ones with the sugar cubes were particularly popular.  What could you build from using materials at your house?

During the whole school Safety Week, Stephen from the new build came to talk to us about being safe on and near building sites. He also showed us some pictures of what our new school is going to look like. It was very exciting to see the pictures and we can’t wait to see it for real.

We’ll try and put some more pictures up of the new build as we get them. Keep looking back to check…..