Welcome!

We have been so busy since the Easter holidays!

We have welcomed three new children to Caterpillars class and to make them feel at home we have changed our role play area in to a home corner.

We looked on "Twinkl" online to see what pictures we could find to put in our house. We thought it would be good to have a sink and a TV. We printed out the pictures and then drew our own pictures, looking really carefully at the colours and shapes we could use.

We have been super mathematicians in our new maths area, balancing objects using our scales and exploring different shapes with puzzles and tap a shape. Caterpillar class have been practising writing numbers 3 and 4 in the sand.

We are still anticipating the arrival of our very own caterpillars and have been reading the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. What foods did the caterpillar eat? Where did the caterpillar come from? What will happen to him next?

Ooops!

After lots of hard work by Mrs Beaufort and the children making beautiful Easter baskets, Mrs Ledger has fallen at the last hurdle and forgotten to give them out, oops!

I'm so sorry to have forgotten, but I promise not to eat the chocolates over the holidays...and at least the children have a good incentive to come back to school!  We'll keep the baskets safe and give them out on the first day back.

New Life

Caterpillars and Butterflies were very lucky this morning to have a visit from Em and Peter from Sandridge Church. They asked us to have a look outside to look for signs of new life. We spotted blossom, buds, daffodils, tulips and we also saw a crocus.

 

Em talked to us about how Spring is a time when new life starts to appear. She told us how some Christians believe that Jesus died and came back to life at Easter. She read us a story about a dove who saw lots of new life as well as seeing Jesus happy with his friends after he had come back to life.

Em and Peter gave us all our very own egg. They asked us to decorate them to show that Easter is a time to celebrate.

Looking forward to a busy final week...

We've got lots going on in the final week of term, so we thought it might be useful to have a little recap of everything we've got planned:

. Please begin to return library books over next the next week, in preparation for Easter.  (Sorry that books couldn't go out as normal today, there was an issue with the library computer.).  Reading books will be sent home as normal, and all children will have reading books over Easter.

. The children have now had their final PE session before Easter so kits will be sent home ready for a wash.  Please return kits in the first week back after Easter, complete with trainers/plimsolls.  The children have really enjoyed going outside for PE now that the weather is warming up.

. Thank you very much to those of you who have already contributed a craft donation.

MONDAY

Em and Peter from Sandridge Church will be visiting us to do some work around the Easter story, learning about New Life and Spring.

TUESDAY

The children will be making some Easter baskets and bringing home a few chocolatey treats!

WEDNESDAY

All welcome for the fun run in the morning!  After they've worked up an appetite the children in EYFS will be enjoying their hard-earned pasta party; Butterflies and Caterpillars are welcome to stay in their fancy dress outfits all day (please note the older children in school will be expected to change out of their outfits after the fun run).

Don't forget the talent show is taking place on Wednesday evening.  Tickets required.

THURSDAY

All parents welcome for the end of term celebration assembly at 9am.  The school day finishes at 1.30pm at which point there will be an end of term Teacher bake sale.

Thank you all for your efforts at home and support this term, the children are doing a great job, and we look forward to seeing everyone refreshed after a restful Easter break.

Green-fingered Gardeners!

Today in the Early Years Unit the children have been helping take care of the gardening area.  They dug out all of the weeds and old plants from our vegetable tyres and found some very interesting creatures on the way!  The soil in the tyres is now ready for lots of digging next week, before we plant some of the seeds we are growing in pots.

 

 

 Before....

 ...and after!

We also relocated our insect hotel as we are developing the gardening space.  We moved in some guests straight away: we recognised worms, caterpillars, slugs and snails, but wondered if anybody at home can help us to identify the two mystery creatures we found whilst we were tidying up?

https://ladybirdplantcare.co.uk/chafer_grub.html we've found it!

And what is this?!

The new insect hotel under construction.

Fit and Healthy!

This week in Foundation stage we have been thinking about how to stay fit and healthy!  With lots of talking about healthy foods we have been saying 'booo' to too much sugar and 'yey' to fruit and vegetables! 

 What's hidden in the jelly?!

 In our Maths we have been working hard on our counting and in Butterflies we have also been solving problems by halving - very important when our mascot Bob is trying to share his fruit fairly with his friend!

Lots of concentration as we take up Mrs Beaufort's challenge to halve shapes!

 

Using our senses to explore and describe different fruit and say how they are different or similar.  

International Food Day

Today was International Food Day so Butterflies class went and had a look at the big map in Reception to see some of the countries that children in our class come from; we also looked at some of the countries that families in our school might be bringing food in from.  We thought about what questions we might need to ask our visitors so we could find out about the food they'd brought.

 

The children in butterflies and caterpillars really enjoyed meeting the parents and tasting some of the food. We were feeling so inspired that we carried on back in the classroom...our theme for the last fortnight has been Chinese New Year.  We've also started thinking about the difference between healthy and unhealthy food, so we decided to make and try some stirfry - it was delicious!  Our hard work didn't stop there though, whilst we were busy cooking, Butterflies also used ordering connectives to start thinking about sentences we could use in a recipe so that other people could make our stirfry.

 

 

 

Back in the classroom, we used our creative skills to create stir fry plates with wool, paint and foam shapes for vegetables. We talked about what we would add to our stir fry to make them healthy.