It has been lovely to welcome all the children back after the Christmas break and a big warm welcome to all our new starters. This week the children in Foundation Stage One have been thinking about signs of winter. They started the week by exploring the technique of printing to make snowmen pictures. The children ventured over to the girls’ school to look for signs of winter to create a book and they manipulated play dough to create snowmen. The little explorers have been in their school garden, learning about animals that hibernate and they have been making dens for them.

FS2 have had an exciting start to their new key text ‘Mrs Armitage on Wheels’ with Mrs Armitage herself paying the children a visit and asking them to become engineers. The children were eager to design new adaptations for her bicycle. They had some useful suggestions including snack trays, rocket boosters and even a radio! Almost all the children thought the bike could do with some extra glitter and decorations. Mrs Armitage will be back soon to inspect the additions to her bike. The children also enjoyed their visit to the Owl’s Den where they created art work in the style of Andy Goldsworthy. 

Over in Year One, the children have enjoyed designing maths games for the FS1 children and can not wait to see if they will be chosen to visit their younger school mates to play their games with them. In ICT the children have designed their own avatar and have enjoyed learning how to log on to their own Chromebook and have started to explore Purple Mash. The children worked in teams at Forest School this week and focused on making natural portraits. They noted the seasonal changes in the area and, although it was chilly, there were smiles all round! 

The children in Year 2 have had a busy first week back. They were challenged to create a maths based board game for the children in FS2. These games will be played with the FS2 children next week with prizes awarded for their favourite. The Year 2 children have risen to this challenge and have worked collaboratively in small groups to devise some excellent games. In maths, the focus has been money, with the children identifying coins and notes and counting as well as comparing quantities of money.

In literacy, comprehension skills have been practised, phonics skills sharpened and the children have continued to work on the correct presentation and punctuation of sentences. Alongside this, the children are continuing to work on the correct joining strokes in handwriting lessons and applying this to their independent writing.

What a fantastic start to the spring term!