The Foundation children have been busy little Christmas elves making all sorts of Christmas crafts ready for our Christmas market tomorrow.
We had to work together and think carefully about the order that we were doing things in to make sure we got everything right. The activities helped us to develop our fine motor skills as we had to cut and thread really carefully.
Miss Bond's family group had a great time outside today. They decided to build a structure using the crates and the planks. They worked together as a group, making it better and better. By the end of the session they had a bridge, a tunnel and a slide. It was big enough for them all to play on at once. As well as learning how to work together and share, they learnt how to cooperate and negotiate and how to build and construct, altering and adapting their work as they went along.
We are always looking for ways to help the children learn in fun ways, so they are engaged and interested. We have been trying to think of ways to encourage the children, especially the boys to write and more importantly to want to write.
We looked at our provision and saw that most boys loved to play in our fabulous outdoor area and that although there are mark making opportunities outside such as writing bags, chalk and blackboards and a large whiteboard, the boys very rarely choose to write, so we knew we needed to make writing a 'want to do' job rather than something that is a chore.
We decided to turn our outdoor playhouse in to a writing den. We set the fabulous Mrs Haywood off to work. With cargo nets hanging from the ceiling and fake grass for the floor the house has been transformed in to an exciting writing den that should appeal to boys.
It has been decorated with a variety of carefully chosen examples of texts that should encourage the children to read and mark make, from simple logos they will recognise from their everyday experience to newsprint and Star Wars posters.
There are a variety of pens, pencils and things to write on. These include badges, labels, clipboards, signing in sheets and post it notes. There are plenty of props to encourage talk and to use as a starting point for writing such as binoculars and a camping stove.
It is so exciting we can't wait to see the results! We will keep you posted with how the den develops!
On Thursday Ms Whimster came from St Giles Nursery to see how well we had settled in and to see how grown up we are at big school. It was lovely to see her and we enjoyed showing her around our lovely new learning centre. Ms Whimster gave the children their special books from Nursery. It was lovely to be able to take them home so that we could show our grown ups our learning.
Foundation were busy little bees on 'Making a Difference' day.
With the help of Asda on Nettleham Fields we made and decorated cakes to sell to raise money for the MS Therapy centre on Outer Circle.
We also made a difference to our school by clearing leaves. We learnt how we could put them in the compost bin to make even more of a difference in the future.
We have had a great day today sharing our learning with our grown ups. We showed them around our classroom and shared our work with them. They were all very proud of us and we all felt very proud of ourselves.
We have been working hard to learn how to share and play nicely together. We have been learning about ourselves and our families. We can now 'choose it, use it and put it away' when we are playing (though we still sometimes forget this!).
We had a very busy week last week. On Monday the rest of our friends joined us, making our new foundation area lovely and full.
We were very busy bees as we spent the week learning how to take care of ourselves, each other and our lovely resources.
We spent lots of time learning how to choose it, use it and put it away!
We are getting very good and knowing we need to stop and listen when it is wiggly finger time. We have also talked about why registers are important to keep us safe and we know that this is a time to listen and when it is our turn to try and answer in our big voices.
Look at all the fun we had trying out the different areas of the classroom.
We were very excited today as we banished rumbling tummies from Foundation with our fantastic Jungle Cafe. The children can have fruit and milk when they choose through the day. This means they can spend time socialising with their friends and making new friends too. We love our healthy jungle cafe.
After a very exciting summer where the builders have been busy we finally have a shiny new Foundation Area. The first 30 children started today and gave the space their seal of approval.
Exciting times are ahead for our new Foundation Learning Centre. Our aim for September is to have an amazing open plan area offering the best provision possible to all of our Foundation children.
We will keep the blog updated with progress over summer. Hopefully, while we are enjoying the break the builders will be very busy knocking walls down and building a new entrance for Foundation.
The exciting plans meant that at the end of term all off the Foundation area had to be emptied....it turns out we have quite a lot of stuff!!!
Here are some photos of the empty rooms (and one last look at the walls for Miss West!).
We will keep you posted with progress over summer and let you have a sneaky peek before September!
We have spent this term learning about different kinds of animals.
We learnt about farm animals, pets, dinosaurs and jungle animals.
We have painted animals, made models of animals, played with animals and recreated worlds, visited real animals and just generally been animalrific!
