Spring 2, 2023 

Clever Kittens learnt about the work of British artist, Vivienne Cawson.  Her passion lies in painting flowers in their season using watercolours. Children did observational paintings of a daffodil under the supervision of an adult in the indoor environment and independently outside. It was lovely to see children returning to the easel to paint daffodils to refine their artistic skills.

This half term our main topic theme has been about Superheroes, both real and imaginary. We celebrated World Book Day in our PJs and snuggled up reading lots of stories together.  Children from Year 6 came into class to share their own rhyming books and Superhero stories from our bookshelf.  We believe ‘Reading in our Superpower’.

In the home corner, the Clever Kittens dressed up as real life superheroes – Fire-fighters, Police Officers, Doctors, Nurses and showed lots of interest in the different occupations.  They used the available resources to create props to support their imaginative role-play and able to use a stethoscope appropriately.  For the finale to our topic, we welcomed our special visitors,  Sgt Green and Nurse Green. We looked at the different equipment used by nurses and were able to have our arm bandaged.  Sgt Green took our fingerprints and we all had the opportunity to dress up and ask questions.  The visitors inspired the Clever Kittens and some expressed their desire to become police officers and nurses of the future.

Clever Kittens played our large Superhero Board Game, learning to take turns and use their developing mathematical skills, subitising and recognising numerals.

It was so wonderful to have families in the classroom for another Stay, Play and Learn session.  Children were able to practice writing their name on the Easter cards they created. Clever Kittens also entered the Easter bonnet competition.  

In our Talk for Writing, we used a non-fiction text to create a list of instructions of ‘How to grow a cress head’, using mathematical vocabulary of ‘first’, ‘next’, ‘after that’ and ‘finally’. After learning the instructions, we used them to plant our own cress head. After about a week the cress had grown and we made our own egg and cress sandwiches – delicious!

As a school, we looked at the self-taught Artist, Bob Barker from Yorkshire, focussing on his depiction of ‘light’. Clever Kittens used charcoal to represent the moon shining through a tree in winter, using the technique of smudging within their drawings. We looked at our own shadows on the playground when the sun was shining and we chalked around them. We also created hand-shadow paintings using black card and white paint.

Clever Kittens used torches and lights in the dark den to read and share stories. We had an assembly to watch experiments on light conducted by Science teachers from Wingfield Academy.

In Science week, we had a fabulous time with lots of fun to be-had. ‘Little Laboratory’ attended school and we had a carousel of activities where we experimented as mini scientists.

We helped to plant a tiny forest of over 400 trees (Friday 17th March) for our ‘Back to Nature’ project to help improve biodiversity.  After their hard work, children really enjoyed having a rest and drinking hot chocolate and orange squash.  We had trees donated from Woodland Trust, Endeavour Sheffield and Sheffield Fruit Trees.  The Major of Rotherham, CLLR Tajamal Khan attended to plant a tree. We were helped by CLLR Foster, Council members, Liberty Steel, Vertex and Rotherham United Community Sports Trust.

In class, we had construction magnets, and magnets to investigate which objects were magnetic and which were non-magnetic.  A table top was set out with light, colour and reflective resources, exploring how you can shine light through some materials, but not others.  Our final science investigation was really tasty. We made Chocolate Easter Nest buns and had the opportunity to change materials from one state to another by melting the chocolate, combining different ingredients, and then cooling them. Yummy!

What a super half term!

Spring 1 2023

For our topic ‘Tales from around the World’, we invited Kuda, who used to live in Zimbabwe, to come and talk to us about her experiences in Africa.  She taught us a dance called ‘Making Melodies’, which involved us using some very unusual dance moves.  We learnt how to say Good morning in Shona, one of the languages in Zimbabwe, ‘Mangwanani’ and Good Afternoon ‘Masikati’. We also know that a lion is ‘shumba’; a giraffe is ‘twiza’. We read the book ‘Walking through the Jungle’ and retold the story using actions in Talk for Writing.  We drew our favourite wild animal from Africa using wax crayons.

We celebrated the Lunar New Year of the Rabbit by tasting Chinese food - trying hard to use chopsticks.  We made Chinese fans and firework pictures. Continuing the festivities, we had a roaring time watching the Sheffield Lion Dance Company perform a Chinese Lion dance. We then performed our own lion dance, using percussion instruments in time to the music, expressing our feelings and ideas. Gung Hey Fat Choi (Happy New Year).

Continuing our geographical journey, we learnt about the Polar Regions.  We watched an experiment to make realistic looking ‘fake’ snow from powder, slowly adding water and watched how it changed from one state to another and expanded – it felt cold just like real snow! We then separated the animals and created ‘small worlds’ of the Arctic (the top of the earth, where the Inuit people live) and Antarctica (bottom of the earth, where nobody lives because it is too cold).  Clever Kittens then decided which polar animal they wanted to paint.

Thank you to parents for helping the Clever Kittens with their home learning.  We have had a colourful display in the classroom of rain-sticks and Chinese lanterns.