Welcome back to school everyone!

EXPLORING PUMPKINS

The children were very excited to talk about Halloween and pumpkins today.  They spoke about how they had made a face on their pumpkin - we used the word 'carve'.  The children washed the dirty pumpkins and we spoke about why they were dirty and where they had come from.  The children also discovered what was inside the pumpkin when it was accidentally dropped!  We enjoyed talking about the 'skin', the 'seeds' and the 'pulp'! On our dough table, the children explored the orange peppermint playdough - it was very crumbly!  The children enjoyed making spider cookies - very spooooky!

We read a story called 'The Runaway Pumpkin' and we will be enacting this later today in our PE session!

Please enjoy this video of the story:

Here we are retelling the story of 'The Roll-away Pumpkin!'.

What is inside a pumpkin?

We learned some new language this week:

pumpkin

skin

flesh

seeds

pulp

Boogie Beats!

At the end of the week, we were excited to begin our intergenerational project with the residents at Smalley hall and Boogie Beats.  The children were super sensible as they walked through the village to the hall.  We spotted signs of autumn along the way, as well as places we remember and new places we had not spotted before.  We saw a tractor and a fire engine with its lights and siren on - I wonder where they were going?  When we arrived, we met Zita from Boogie Beats and some of the residents from Smalley Hall - they were so pleased to welcome visitors again and see the children.  We took part in a spooky, pumpkin filled music and story telling session before heading back to school.  Well done children - you were a delight to take out.  Thank you to our grown ups for accompanying us on our adventure!

We're going on a leaf hunt!

Week 2 - How do we celebrate Bonfire Night?

Today we thought about the sounds that we had heard over the weekend - we used language like 'whizz', 'bang', 'pop', 'crackle'. We learnt about Guy Fawkes and made our own Guy - each group built a different part of the Guy and then we put it all together - great work TEAM R!

We also thought about keeping ourselves safe around hot objects like a fire, an iron and hot water.

Week 3 - Fireworks and Diwali - the festival of lights

This week, we learned about another autumn festival that Hindus celebrate - this is called Diwali and is the festival of light.  We learned about a little girl called Jessica and how she prepares and celebrates Diwali.

THE STORY OF RAMA AND SITA

We acted out the story of Rama and Sita and learned about the diva lamps that guided them safely home.

SQUASH, SQUEEZE, PINCH!

...we waited for them to dry and then we decorated them.

We learned that Hindus celebrate Diwali with fireworks too, so we created our own outdoor firework display with paint and brushes!

OUR OWN FIREWORK DISPLAY!

On Welly Wednesday, we put on our puddle suits and wellies and we let our imagination flow with powder paint, soap flakes, brushes and mops!  We used the firework noises we had thought of at the beginning of the week and brushed the paint so that it looked like fireworks bursting in the sky!  Lots of laughter, lots of teamwork, lots of gross motor skills development, lots of fun, fun, fun!  The children led the way and were soon covered in gold paint saying they looked like a king!

Oil and water, with a splash of food colouring!

Class R love to explore with water, so I brought in some oil for them to see what happens when you add oil to water - the children were amazed to see it floating back up to the top.  We then used our pipettes to drop food colouring into the vase.  We thought the food colouring looked like fireworks bursting in the sky!

NEW FISH FOR OUR TANK

A special thank you for sharing some of your newly born fish.  You enjoyed showing your friends and telling us about your tank.  Thank you for your kindness.

ALL ABOARD THE LIBRARY TRAIN!

We were all very excited to climb aboard the train and enjoyed reading some books from our library with our friends.

REMEMBRANCE DAY

We looked at the beautiful poppies that we were wearing and thought about why we see lots of people wearing them at this time of year.  We spoke about how the poppy helped us to remember the soldiers who went to war and never came home.

We created a special surprise for our Year 6 buddies to say thank you for leading our special Remembrance Service in the hall.

Week 4 - Anti - Bullying Week - How can you be a good friend?

On Monday, we started our week by admiring all of the different odd socks! Look at all of the lovely designs!  They are all so different! We thought about how we are all different and that it is OK to be different.

We love the rain!

It might have been a super soggy week with plenty of rain, but we embraced it with our puddle suits and wellies.  We had so much fun exploring the puddles, umbrellas and the mud! We dug down deep into the soil and discovered little worms, we carefully used our trowels to scoop them up. We filled up buckets and containers to the top and emptied them.  We used words like 'gush' and 'cascade' as the water flowed down the pipes.  We discovered that the slide was super slippy when it had rain on it!  We asked 'Why is it so slippy?' and 'What can we do to slow it down?'

WELLY WEDNESDAY!

Today, we were blessed with blue skies and autumn sunshine! There was a definite November nip in the air, so we sang a song about how to keep warm in the autumn.  Our ideas included a hat, a scarf, some gloves, a coat, wellies, warm socks, zipping our coats up (which we are working so hard with doing independently). We then popped on our puddle suits and headed onto the school field to spot signs of autumn.  We had a checklist which we ticked when we spotted something on the list:

PROUD OF YOUR WRITING,

PROUD OF YOUR MARK MAKING,

PROUD OF YOU!

PUDSEY BEAR DAY!

We finished off the week by marking the special Children in Need day with spots and headbands!  The children were very excited to see Pudsey Bear.  We spoke about what why we have this special day each year and how the money raised helps children to have a happy and safer life.

Amongst many spotting activities, we enjoyed turning our pirate ship into 'The Pudsey Spotty Ship'!  We designed our own spotty Pudsey biscuits; we followed the instructions carefully to mix the icing sugar and used food colouring to make it bright yellow.  We then sat with our friends and enjoyed sharing our delicious snacks.

Week 5 - What does it mean to hibernate?

Here comes December....the countdown to Christmas begins!

Thank you for your beautiful Christmas tree decoration for

The Christmas Tree Festival at church.

The festival will take place on Saturday, 3rd December 11am-3pm at St John's the Baptist Church in Smalley.  The deadline for creating your bauble is Wednesday, 30th September 2022.

We enjoyed our Christmas Party!