‘From January up to May, the rain it raineth every day.’ — William Shakespeare

Oaks 1:

Well…February has made a particularly soggy start, we have been outside as much as possible catching water, decanting and exploring capacity and weight. As previously mentioned, if you do have a spare coat for torrential rain days that would be fantastic!

We are continuing to venture out for Wednesday walks as much as the weather allows, the nature reserve will start exploding with colour and new life in the next few weeks…we hope! In our cosy classroom we have been reading Turtles who turned the tide, the new edition from Rachel Bright. It’s another moralistic tale; the children are loving it and Gozzle is the new Julia Donaldson book that teaches how embracing differences will enrich your life!

We continue to use recycled materials in our day-to-day construction and creation area, we now have an oak tree in our classroom for self-registration and we are painting corks as acorns. Our life lesson regarding nurturing, respecting and taking care of our resources and toys is reflected in our class every day and we hope at home you continue the theme of taking care of books, toys and the environment around us. Jolly phonics is a daily element in our learning, and the children are making such amazing progress. We are now blending words and looking for things beginning with T.

This week we celebrated Chinese New Year by making dragons, horse stain glass and tasting some yummy cuisine! Next week we will be turning our attention to matters of the heart, all things valentine Don’t forget to join us on Friday 13th 2-4pm for our afternoon tea, we will be preparing freshly baked scones! Please continue to read every day with your child, it remains the best possible way to increase vocabulary and boost communication skills!

Star Of the Week:

Willow, who has been a ray of sunshine on very dark days….showing kindness and empathy to her friends.

Thank you, Sophia, and team

Forest School:

We explored away from base camp and discovered several things which enrich our knowledge of nature, cockatoos have taken residence in the surrounding trees which exploded in colour as they took flight; the children labelled them ‘noisy’ but I believe, admired their beauty. A deer raced through the woods ahead of our party alerted by keen eyed Alaire who summoned everyone to silence so as not to frighten the animal; it’s beauty and majesty caught us all off guard.

Back at basecamp, the children not only prepared lunch with great efficiency but they also made damper bread; working very hard to mix to a fine dough (using a clever calculation of water to flour ratio – not an easy task) they then moulded their ‘sausages’ carefully around sticks ready for cooking over fire. Date syrup was the ideal accompaniment. 

Well done team, that was tricky.

Saplings:

We have had a lovely and busy time in our room, enjoying stories and fun learning activities together this week.

The Saplings proved to be huge fans of Michael Rosen’s charming story We’re Going On A Bear Hunt. The children enjoyed listening to the story and joining in with the actions and repeating words. This helped to develop their listening skills, language and confidence.

When we’d finished reading the story, we set up a sensory bear hunt for the children where the Saplings had the chance to explore different textures and materials while looking for the bear. They were very exicited and curious, and this activity supported their sensory development.

We also read Julia Donaldson’s popular story The Gruffalo. The children showed a great interest in the plot and enjoyed looking at the pictures and talking about the characters. Feeling inspired by it, the Saplings went onto create Gruffalo paintings using tissue roll. This arty activity was brilliant for fostering creativity while also helping the children work on their hand-eye coordination.

Stars Of the Week:

Jamie S and Harrison – For settling so well in their new room.

Seedlings and Acorns:

The Seedlings have been focusing on the colours green, blue and purple this week, while the Acorns have been learning all about farm animals (which are always popular.)

At the start of the week, the youngsters joined up for a lovely woodland walk where we talked about all the colours we could see in nature. We pointed out green grass and blue flowers, reciting the words of We’re Going On A Bear Hunt as we walked.

The Tuff Trays we set up for the children were extremely popular this week too, with our farmyard display a firm favourite. This featured cocoa powder to represent mud, sticks to interpret woodland and oats to symbolise hay and water for the ducks to swim in. The Seedlings’ favourite Tuff Tray offered the chance to boost fine motor skills as the children were challenged to sort pom-poms into different coloured tubes. Luca and Arlo were brilliant at making the correct choices.

The Acorns loved splashing as they set about washing farm animals clean in a big bath of soapy water, with the children diligently making sure each creature was spotless. Lettie would have happily enjoyed this activity all day!

Later on in the week, the Seedlings helped make some sensory bags filled with different green items. The children were ever so fascinated by the different textures on offer and were excited to learn another colour to sign.

Painting was a key part of our week and we had so much fun crafting blue and purple circle tinfoil artwork in a Tuff Tray using cardboard tubes.

We finished our jam-packed week adding the next three colours to our rainbow collage – pink is the only shade we have left to do now.

The Acorns also enjoyed a spot of animal bowling. The children were presented with  a ball and sensory bottles with farm animals on the front. The Acorns were tasked with throwing the ball and mimicking the noise of the animal on whichever bottle they hit. During a feeding activity, the children scooped oats into a cardboard cut-out of all different farm animals, to fill their hungry tummies. This helped to enhance fine motor skills while also supporting independent feeding at mealtimes.

Stars Of the Week:

Seedings: All our little Acorns who have started to transition to Seedlings, they’ve all been doing so well.

Acorns: Georgia – For all her great animal impressions and learning new words such as chicken and tractor.

Oaks 2:

This week, Oaks 2 have been exploring textures with paint using sponges and other implements. 

We began by mixing white with red on a black background. Devon really enjoyed swirling the paint across the canvas, while Cornelius and Marco chose to drive cars through the paint, creating track marks. Each time the painting image altered, a practitioner took a photo.

We also embarked on some colouring in and managed to produce a new sign for our room. Jasper loved using big arm movements as he created the ‘O’ in Oaks.

We’ve also been working on our rhythm, beating the syllables of our name on our new drum while also counting and listening to the beat. We discussed how some children have two syllables in their names while others have just one. Cornelius was excited to learn his name had four syllables. He then wowed the class by counting all the way up to 20.

Star Of The Week:

Cornelius – For adjusting into his new room so well and for amazing us all with his counting skills.