This week we have enjoyed another week of exploring, creating, learning and having a go. There has been great excitement with continuing our topic of journeys and transport with people who help us. We have enjoyed getting dressed in the dressing up clothes and role playing people who help us. We have had paramedics taking other children to hospital in their ambulance (tricycle), lots of doctors and nurses helping children and adults to get better, firefighters putting out blazing fires. We had traffic police making sure the bikes, scooters and tricycles were keeping to the speed limit and parking in the correct place. We looked at and discussed what keep us safe outside such as “holding hands with a grown up near roads”, “Walking on the pavement”, “crossing roads at a safe place” and that “When the red man is showing at traffic lights we have to stop so that we do not get run over because the green light was showing for cars and lorries”. We looked at some road signs and then some of us made our own. After listening to ‘Working all through the night’ we were amazed whilst we were asleep how many people were working helping others including a little girl’s mother, who was a bus driver. Lots of us were particularly interested in the railway maintenance team working through the night to get the trains running again, Dudley stated they would need to have signs and signals so that the train did not crash into them. Some children then pretended they were railway maintenance workers fixing the brio track, whilst others made stop and go signs. Mrs Fenwick was very impressed with our ideas and problem solving skills of how to get the signs to stand up on their own including using little bricks, blocks, lids and tape. Some of us decided we wanted to make road signs. Ava decided she wanted to make a security screen for her big brother using junk modelling.

We have been learning about Ramadan. Ramadan is the most special time of the year for people who follow a faith called Islam. If you follow this faith you are called a Muslim. It is a time when Muslims reflect on being the best person you can be, like being kind and thoughtful. It is a time to be thankful and a time to come together as a community to help others. Ramadan begins with the sighting of a new crescent moon in the sky. Before Ramadan starts, some families may do a big spring clean and hang decorations around their homes like lanterns. Some children may have a special daily Ramadan calendar. We then discussed a time of year when our families get ready for a special time of year with decorations? Some children remembered that for Chinese New Year they had made lantern decorations, at Christmas they had decorated trees and made other decorations for their homes and school. Some children talked about putting decorations up for their birthday and there were lots of discussions about presents. We listened to ‘The Kindness Red’ by Ibtihaj Muhammad, we discussed what characters in the book did that had been kind, times we had done something that was kind. In the book their teacher had made a list of different worlds children would like such as Ice cream, Unicorn and Kindness World. We then thought of our own ideas for worlds we would like such as “Rainbow world” and “Sparkle world”, drew a picture and talked about what it would be like.

We have also enjoyed dressing up as witches, fairies and pirates this week. Erin suggested they could make, “Trick or treat bags and wands.” Some children made bags using paper, felt tips, tape and ribbon to put their treasure in. Oscar informed the pirates that their ship had sank whilst they were looking for treasure. It was then decided that they would need to make another one using wooden blocks, there was good teamwork to make another one. 

This week we have enjoyed looking at books independently, in small groups and as a whole class. Autumn sat in front of the class and shared the whole of her Peppa pig puppet story and then Moonie shared her Cinderella book. We have enjoyed spotting rhyming words, finding words and objects beginning with the same sound and there have been amazing big and small letters written with children's magic fingers. This week we were looking at ‘c’ and ‘k’ which made the same sound.

This week we have been doing lots of counting for various reasons and enjoying number rhymes such as ‘Five little men in a flying saucer’, ‘Five Currant Buns’ and ‘1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Once I caught a fish alive’.

During forest school we enjoyed exploring seeds, scattering them and planting radish seeds. We also enjoyed looking in the pond, we saw some frogs and noticed they were making lots of croaking sounds. We Looked for minibeasts under logs and were very excited about spotting worms and slugs. We also enjoyed climbing, using the swings, hammocks and using the mallets to knock pieces of wood into the ground.

Completing puzzles, using Mobillo, Duplo, clay and playdough have also been popular this week. . 

Next week we will continue with ‘People who help us’ . As part of this we will be making emergency vehicles if anyone has any bottle tops, lids, cereal boxes or other junk modelling that we could use, please can you bring these in.

Many thanks and looking forward to seeing you all this coming week for more exploring.

Best wishes

Mrs Fenwick