Happy Friday!

Another successful week over.  Our daily routine is becoming established as we are now following the same pattern of events throughout the day.  We have been using our visual timetable to help us see what is coming next.  You will find one in your bags today so take some time over the weekend to share with your families.  Can you spot three circle time pictures?  These are the times of the day when we play games as a whole class.

Circle Time 1 – Write Dance and a Listening Game, Circle Time 2 – Maths, Circle Time 3 – Dough Disco and a shared story. 

During our Write Dance sessions, we move to music with a focus on moving our hands, wrists, arms and shoulders to make them strong for handwriting later in the year.  This week’s song has been “We can do anything” and we have been jumping, swinging, stretching and shaking our hands/arms.  Our Listening rule this week has been “Good Listening is Looking at the Person Talking to you”.  We have been using our “looking glasses” to spot objects in the cabin, our friends and the grown1-ups.  We then enjoyed a matching game where you had to find two grown-ups that were the same.  During Maths we have been counting forwards and backwards to 5 with our song Five Green and Speckled Frogs.  We giggled as they splashed in the cool pool and got some of you wet.  Our dough disco is an outdoor game as we use our Quiet Area to move the dough to a song each week – this week it has been Mrs Mander’s choice of Happy.  Enjoy this weekend.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOWDb2TBYDg  If you have a favourite disco song, let us know as we have a lot of dough disco sessions throughout the year and always need new (and current) suggestions!  Our shared story, again in the Quiet area, has been Brown Bear, Brown Bear.  Our favourite game was when Mrs Mander blindfolded herself and tried to turn the pages in the book and listen to the animal sounds you made.

On top of all this circle time fun, we always have two daily Play and Explore sessions in the Forest School.  This week, Mrs Allen has been talking to you about playing safely in the sand.  Keeping those tools down low, keeping sand away from friend’s eyes/faces and most importantly, sharing the tools on offer.  She has practised using her whistle a lot and every time you heard it, you had to stop and show her empty hands.  You have enjoyed chalking on the patio area with our new chunky chalks; it is so great to see that tripod grip so early in the year.  Mrs Allen also had the ribbons out as you decorated the sand netting with some excellent weaving.

A message for parents – please could you help support us during mealtimes at home as we are working on using tools (knife, fork, spoon) not fingers for our food, tasting/licking/nibbling something new every day (even if we don’t like it) and sitting still, waiting for our friends to finish their food before moving on.  Thank you!

Mrs Mander, Mrs Allen, Mrs Franklin, Miss Turner (am), Mrs Hampton (pm) X