We started off the term with many celebrations and enjoyed learning about the history behind them.  We started with Diwali, the Festival of Lights.  We made rangoli patterns and read the story of Rama and Sita with diva lamps.  We learned about Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot and how to keep safe during firework displays.  We painted firework pictures using elastic bands!  We observed a two-minute silence at the war memorial in our village and heard The Last Post being played.  Ms Harrison borrowed her granddad's war medals which we passed round and carefully looked at.  We also held and looked at one of the hats he wore as a pilot in the air force.  It's been a busy term!

Let's Explore

We’ve had a very busy start to our new school year in Thistle Class!  So far, we’ve read the texts; The Bad-Tempered Ladybird, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, Mr Gumpy’s Outing and Where’s My Teddy?  We’ve read them so many times that we can recite big chunks of them!

We’ve enjoyed exploring art using paint and forks, pencils, pastels and rolling conkers around in paint.  We’ve also explored sets in maths using our classroom resources to match, sort and compare objects using different attributes.

We have been working hard in phonics to learn new sounds.  We are also learning to blend sounds together to read short words like ‘mad, dig, hop, jam and sat’.  Alongside learning the sound for the grapheme shown, we’ve been learning how to correctly form letters too.

We’ve become scientists and discovered the effect of soap when put in water sprinkled with pepper.  Through watching this, we learned about germs and the importance of washing your hands with soap.

Our favourite part of this term so far has been going on a bear hunt!  We armed ourselves with a map, binoculars, torch, magnifying glass and explorer’s hat and off we went.  We eventually found one but it turned out to be our teacher in disguise!

A new start.

Our new class name is Thistle Class.  We have been looking at the Scottish Thistle and drawing pictures of them using oil pastels and collage.  We have learned different facts about Scotland and where Scotland is on a map of the UK.  We have even had a go at Scottish Highland Dancing!

We have had fun exploring our new environment, learning new routines and expectations and getting to know each other.  A lovely start to school everybody, well done.