Category: Primary

Exploring our topic of “Up in the air” 

We have been exploring our topic of “Up in the air” in room 4. We are looking at what animals are in the air. We have been using our mark making skills and our fine motor skills to create some wonderful artwork. 

To make butterfly pictures we used our mark making skills to spread paint and then folded over to make a symmetrical design.

We made a honeycomb design by spreading paint on some bubble wrap and then printing this on to our printed honeycomb design in relation to bees.  

We made bees too! We wrapped yellow and black yarn around a bee shape to do this. 

The seagulls were very happy that we made some bird feeders. We used seeds and lard mixed together and stuck them to a pine cone. 

As part of our sensory story “Up, up, up” we have been using a prop of an umbrella that has twinkly lights to turn on when a switch is pressed. We have been enjoying exploring this. 

This term our topic will be ‘Up in the air’. In room 5 we’ve started this topic by reading the story ‘Wings!’ by Paul Stewart and learning about birds. ‘Wings!’ is the story of a penguin who desperately wants to fly but is unable to. His friends try to help him but finally he realises he can swim instead. To start the topic we read the story and painted penguins.

Our learning has definitely embraced the festivities!

In literacy, our story took a festive turn as we explored “Supertato presents Jack and the Beanstalk” and “Supertato: Evil Pea Rules”, exploring pantomime and snowy themes!  We set up our own performance space and dressed up as different characters, engaged in a snow themed bucket time, and that’s not to mention the real stuff making an appearance!

In expressive arts we’ve been drumming to festive tunes, and our rhythm has been fabulous!  We’ve also been working hard on our Christmas show performance, practicing our dance moves (and letting supporting staff know what we like best to help us dance – we’ve been loving ribbons, pom poms, scarves and soft toy Santas!  We worked hard to make our Christmas video, which played in the background for our performance.  You can see our video here: https://youtu.be/Q7adWXCrDTc

We’ve also developed our classroom space, with a new sensory corner, cosy area and mini library, which are making for a lovely cosy atmosphere for the end of term!  We plan to make full use of this with a pyjama movie afternoon for the end of term!

Wishing all our families a lovely holiday!

Mug cakes are the perfect, low-mess solution for our sweet tooth and easy enough for our pupils in Room 8 to make under supervision. There was no hot oven; instead, we had a personal-sized treat ready to enjoy in mere minutes with the help of a microwave.  

Our favourite mug cake is a mug cookie. It’s got a classic chocolate-chip cookie flavour but a bit of a cakey crumble. We may have overdosed on the chocolate chips, but we weren’t sorry, especially for a Friday afternoon. 

Here are some helpful tips we used for making our mug cakes:

Mix, mix, mix! 

While most of this mug cake recipe is stirred upright in a coffee cup, we made sure we mixed everything well. 

From our experience, we suggest using a fork to whisk the ingredients and a small spatula to clean the bottom before you cook. Nothing ruins your mug cake faster than finding a glob of flour on your fork.

Take it slow. 

Microwaves vary in wattage and strength, so we had to take care not to overbake. We started at the low end of the recipe recommendation and checked, then added 15-30 second bursts until the cake was puffed and looked dry.

We enjoyed it! 

Room 4 have been getting into the Christmas spirit while using fine motor skills. We made Christmas decorations with outdoor ed and put them on the school Christmas tree. Salt dough decorations have been made and painted. Melted snowman art was lots of fun as well as Christmas cards. 

Today we had a fun and active festive cooking session with Liz. 

We worked together to measure out all the ingredients we needed before putting them into the food processor to mix. Using a switch we were able to take turns mixing everything together. Everyone did a fantastic job taking turns, smelling and touching the ingredients and actively participating in the baking process.

Room 4 have been working on exploring their mark making skills in class. The children have been making amazing progress with this as you can see.

The pupils have also been exploring different technologies and how we use them. We decided to use a blender to make some tasty smoothies using milk, strawberries and bananas. It passed the taste test! 

Did you know there are SUPERHEROES all around us? 

Superheroes are ordinary people who do EXTRAORDINARY jobs.

Absolutely anyone can be a SUPERHERO if they want to. All you need is imagination, hard work and lots of kindness.

During this term, we had many activities where we encouraged the children to listen carefully to how that person’s job involves helping others and gave them time to ask questions about what they have heard. We used a selection of photos of ‘Superheroes – people who help us’ in activities as matching pictures/words/sentences. Also, we introduced and explained new vocabulary and encouraged them to listen to each other’s suggestions.   

One of our favourites has been the ‘People who help us’ themed role-play – ‘I’m a dentist’, inspiring the children to use the new vocabulary they learned during the topic. 

We created a class display, ‘All about our superheroes who help us.’ We had a big poster, ‘You are my superhero’, and we took pictures with all staff around the school that help us daily. We want to say a big ‘Thank you’ to all of them.

The most important activity has been with our superheroes – the parents. We spent one hour singing and dancing, having an excellent time together.

 Well done, Room 8!#