Spring Term 2nd Half

Spring 2 has been an exciting term with the children training to become superheroes! We have looked at our favourite superhero and discussed and wrote what makes them super and we have imagined what our super power would be as we drew pictures using oil pastels of ourselves as superheroes. We then looked at how we could help save the planet in our own way and with the inspiration of Michael Recycle, we considered how we could recycle and pick up litter to make our environment a better place to be.  Litterbug Doug visited our playground and made a terrible mess so we cleaned up his mess, learned how to recycle and wrote him instructions telling him how to save the world like Michael Recycle. 

In maths, we continued to look at composition of numbers 5-8 and all the numbers hidden within them using games and interesting activities to support this. We also looked at odd and even numbers considering what makes them such, using words like equal and fair. The children are really becoming maths experts and can talk about numbers with confidence.  

We have had action packed PE where the children have developed skills in balance, agility, strength, accuracy and they have really developed their confidence in jumping and landing. By the end of this term, the children had all graduated superhero training.  

The children have loved the superhero role-play and small world and were excited to make up their own adventures about heroes and villains. They have explored the changing seasons as winter turns to spring and we have enjoyed seeing the daffodils bloom.  We loved having the mummies and daddies come into school for an activity; hopefully we will be able to do more of this during the last term.

As we move into the final term of Foundation Stage, we can’t wait to continue our adventure and our fantastic progress.  

Spring Term 1st Half

Class 1 and 2 have had another excellent half term on our topic ‘We’re going on safari…! We are very proud of how the children have continued to flourish and develop their skills.

This half term the children have sampled a variety of exotic fruits and created their own beautiful class poetry using their senses to describe the fruit. Also, they have produced observational sketches of a piece of fruit. The attention to detail was amazing!

Over the half term we have read a variety of books to the children linked to our topic. They really enjoyed hearing ‘Handa’s Surprise’ by Eileen Browne and took part in Talk for Writing where they thought of pictures and actions to memorise the story. We were blown away by the children’s efforts! Many children practiced the story aloud at home and posted videos of their retell. It was wonderful to see how the children’s confidence and enthusiasm for story retelling grew. Classes also innovated the story and added their own character, fruits and animals. They shared many wonderful imaginative ideas!

We have also had the opportunity to watch a real-life lion dance to celebrate the Chinese New Year! It was spectacular and the children were in awe of the lion dance, costume and traditional live music performed. They also took part in many Chinese New Year activities including making a traditional Chinese lantern, name writing in Chinese and learning the story and traditions of this special celebration.

In the final weeks of the half term children learned all about the art work of Edward Tinga Tinga and produced high-quality paintings in the style of the artist using a variety of painting techniques. They also enjoyed hearing Tinga Tinga stories and learning about the different animals and why they look or behave a certain way.

In class we continue to use our new phonics programme called Little Wandle. The children have practiced a different digraph and trigraph each day and new high frequency words including longer words to learn and spell. Children continue to make steady progress and can read words more readily and are also starting to read longer sentences as a class and spell a wider choice of words. In addition to this, children take home a phonics book every week and a library book to share with a grown-up.

In Maths we have been practising subitising by looking at objects and saying how many we can see, comparing numbers and also sorting objects. In addition to this we have looked at the composition of numbers 7-10 and practiced working out one more and one less than a number up to 10. The children’s Maths skills have continued to develop and their recall of number and subitising has been brilliant to see.

Overall, the children have had another excellent half term and continue to amaze us with their growing knowledge and understanding of everything taught! We can’t wait to see what children achieve next half term!