Headteacher: Anna Moss

Happy Friday everyone!

What a beautiful week of sunshine we have had to return to.  The layers of clothes are starting to peel away for us all.  This, along with some excellent practising of doing our own zips up over half term, has made our transitions in and out of the Forest School so much quicker.  For some, you are ready for Reception already!

This week we have continued along our Families topic by starting our Mummy topic.  Your mummies’ faces were there to greet you on arrival on Monday morning – what a pleasant surprise.  They have been watching us in our circle times this week and seem very impressed by your ability to listen and join in!  We have met a new friend in Phonics – Cyril Squirrel.  He is our very own rhyming puppet and only talks in rhyme.  It turned out he was a very hungry squirrel and we had to keep feeding him Silly Soup.  Can you remember how many objects we needed in our soup and what these objects needed to sound like?  In Write Dance we have started dancing on the tables (!) but not as you think it sounds – we have added in our big arms movements to our songs and have been taking our hands around the Mulberry Bush in the water and soap combinations.  Our Nursery Rhyme has been Hickory Dickory Dock which linked to our Maths focus of TIME.  We have stolen the teaching clocks from the main school and have been naming the face, the numbers we can see and exploring the movement of the long and short hand.  Can you remember which one moves faster?  The blue one or the red one? Which one is Mrs Mander?  Which one is Mrs Allen?  Why?  Outdoors we started to read the o’clock times as we played “What’s the Time Mr Wolf?”.  Have a look at the analogue clocks around your home this weekend and see how they look the same and different to ours.  After lunch we have been joining the disco and twisting our wrists (very tricky!) to “What does the Fox say?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jofNR_WkoCE – apologies if the children have been singing this on repeat at home!

With the warmer weather, meant a return to the Quiet Area after lunch for our Communication and Language session (C&L).  These sessions are all about practising your listening, attention, understanding and speaking skills.  The latter is the one we are trying to develop – talking in front of a large group.  Luckily the mummy photos took away all your inhibitions as you shared some lovely thoughts, comments, stories about your mummy.  We even had fun playing “Where is my Mummy?” where we mixed them all up on the carpet, chose one and said “That’s not my Mummy”.  I am sure I have heard this line before from a very popular story we know – a focus for next week I think!  Mrs Allen has enjoyed hunting in the Forest School with you using the magnifying glasses.  Lyla did a super job when she found our very own daffodils growing.  Pippa also seemed to be the Worm Queen as she kept finding and rescuing them!  You shared the story “Spike’s Best Nest” and then had the chance to weave sticks together to make a birds nest.  In the afternoons you have continued to build up the bug hotel using sticks and stones.  The wind on Tuesday was also a great opportunity to explore how we can get the streamers to move in the wind and dance with them.

A message for parents – I look forward to seeing you all at Parent Consultations next Wednesday and Thursday.  The zoom link will have now come out in a parentapp message.  Please enter the waiting room five minutes before you allocated time.  Appointments are 15 minutes long.

Have a lovely sunny weekend everyone – don’t forget to keep looking for those signs of Spring when you are out and about!