Autumn 2 2022

Once upon a time … there was a class of children called The Clever Kittens and they began exploring different traditional tales. They read about Goldilocks and the Three Bears and The Three Billy Goats Gruff and retold the stories through Talk for Writing, using intonation in their voices for the different characters. 

They had a visit from Land Artist, James Brunt and had a terrific outdoor adventure using all natural treasures: golden and brown leaves, conkers etc.  He helped us to create a natural piece of artwork. They read an information book about Bonfire Night to discover why we celebrate the 5^th November. Guy Fawkes and his friends tried to kill the King but the King’s soldiers stopped them just in time and put them in prison. We celebrated the festival by watching fireworks on screen, whilst sipping chocolate milkshake and eating marshmellows.  The Clever Kittens created fireworks pictures, which are, displayed in the classroom.

They discovered the meaning of poppies in an introduction to Remembrance Day.  We had two minutes silence to remember and think about all soldiers, past and present, for their bravery and commitment to save our country.  We painted poppies in the style of the American modernist artist, Georgia O’Keeffe, who is famous for her paintings of flowers on a large scale. 

The Clever Kittens quickly got into the festive spirit and made the home corner into the Christmas home corner.  The dining table was set-up with the traditional turkey, Yorkshire puddings, carrots and the must-have sprouts.

Throughout the term, they have been learning about 2D shapes and using mathematical terms to describe them.  They created their own Christmas cards for their family using, circles, squares, triangles, rectangles and stars. Merry Christmas!

During the final week of term, we all went on an exciting coach trip to the theatre to see the pantomime ‘Beauty and the Beast’. We all had a wonderful time together - Oh yes we did!

After weeks of practise, the Clever Kittens performed their own nativity for their families, dressed up in various costumes. Finally, they celebrated together with a Christmas party and a visit from Father Christmas, so they must have been on his good list.

Happy New Year everyone!

Autumn 1 2022

The Clever Kittens have now settled well into their exciting adventures of school life at Redscope.

Our first topic theme has been ‘This is Me’ and we explored all about our feelings through the book ‘The Colour Monster’.  Every day as the children come into class they find their photograph and place it on a particular Colour Monster depending how they feel.

We looked in the mirror and used our fine manipulative skills, tools and techniques to create our own portrait with clay. They are all mounted on display in our classroom, but don’t worry, they will be coming home.

We went on an autumn walk to Barker’s Park.  On our walk we had the opportunity to notice different aspects of the outdoor environment in our local area and changes in the season.   We found brown, orange, red leaves, conkers, acorns and all natural materials we could use to create an autumn collage.  We also had a ‘listening moment’ to listen for sounds around us whilst walking in the woods.  We tried to name and describe the sounds we heard to help us in our phonics learning. We could hear the birds tweeting and the wind making the leaves on the trees rustle.  We used our senses to notice different sights, sounds and smells.

We had three Stay, Play and Learn sessions to welcome our parents/carers into our classroom environment and to show them what we have been learning.  We used our beautiful autumn foliage and treasures we had gathered whilst we were out exploring on our walk to create an autumn collage. It was a terrific way for our young children to combine art and nature. For the background of our collages, we used a painting technique called – Smoosh painting! (Children blended and mixed colours together with their hands on top of the cling film).  It is a wonderful way for children to observe what happens when certain colours blend and it is a lovely sensory experience. The most amazing part was having our parents/carers in the classroom and seeing everyone together!

We learnt about the Artist, Andy Warhol and painted our face and hands in the Artist’s pop-art style using bright colours.  Children were able to show different emotions in their paintings such as happiness and sadness.

This half term, we used ‘Talk for Writing’ to sing a familiar nursery rhyme and then innovate the rhyme by changing some of the words, Twinkle, Twinkle, became Meow, Meow.  Vocabulary Cat helped us to learn new vocabulary and the meaning of new words singing our Word Rap and clapping the syllables in the words.  We also narrated a non-chronological report about ‘How to keep your teeth clean and healthy’.  This was inspired by a special visit from the Dentist and Dental Nurses from Kimberworth Dental Practice to teach us how to look after our teeth. We now know that we should brush our teeth twice a day for two minutes, after breakfast and before going to bed.  We also need to eat healthily to keep our teeth healthy and visit the Dentist regularly.  The Dental Nurses returned to school to listen to our report and were very impressed with our knowledge and the information we had remembered. Parents/carers can view this on class dojo. 

Children began their learning journey of subitising in Clever kittens (the ability to instantly recognise the number of objects in a small group without the need to count them). We were able to be super subitisers using conkers, pinecones and other resources.  Through number rhymes, e.g. 5 Little Monkeys, we talked about simple addition and subtraction and how the number grew bigger when we added and smaller when we subtracted/took monkeys away. Finally, we looked at patterns e.g. spots and stripes on animals, on our clothes and in our homes.  We made repeating patterns with a variety of media e.g. leaf, conker, leaf, conker, leaf, conker.

The Clever Kittens were involved in the whole school sponsored walk and managed to walk an amazing 10 laps of the KS1 playground. We helped to raise an incredible amount of money for our trip to the Rotherham Civic Theatre in December.  A huge thank you to everyone who contributed!