📚 World Book Day 2026 📚

6th March 2026Lauren Gate

This year our World Book Day had a Dr Seuss theme – a cat in the hat inspired crazy hat! Boy did the children deliver!! We had everything from gardens to space helmets and minions to globes – the children’s hats absolutely blew our socks off! 👒🎩

In crew this morning, Y2 created their very own crew murals inspired by their favourite books. We took time thinking of a way to represent our favourite books, drawing them and then sticking them all together to create our collaborative artwork.

We also spent some time with The Cat in the Hat himself this morning – we watched the story and then had a go at drawing our very own Cat in the Hats. What a great day!!!

Crew, Collaboration, Critique and Teamwork Tigers!

2nd March 2026Sarah Winkley

The last two weeks have seen the children in Early Years making large scale models of vehicles towards their final product for our expedition, “We are on the move – Would you travel by wheels, wings or other things?” Each child designed their own eco-friendly vehicle and the designs were judged by Miss Tunney. There was one winner from each crew and the children of that crew have began to work collaboratively to create and make their chosen design. The children have worked so hard to make decisions together, exchanging and suggesting ideas of how they could make their vehicles the best that they can be. Carefully choosing which materials would be the best to make their model out of, giving special thought to the eco friendly parts, such as batteries, solar panels, turbines, tanks, sails and propellers! They even took part in a simple vote to help make decisions, by placing a lolly stick on the materials of their choice.

Today as a hook to continuing to finish our vehicles the children took turns to look at each crews model. That crew presented what their model was, how it was powered and why it was good for the planet? The other crew offered critique of what they liked about the model firstly and then suggested what the model was missing to be complete. We had some lovely ideas to help enhance the models, suggestions included, “ A control panel”, “A steering wheel”, “A door”, “seats for the pilot”, “A tank” (to hold the power source), “a button to open the door”, “Windows”, “More wheels” and much more! This is an advanced skill for such young children and with careful scaffolding the children were beginning to understand the concept of critique – Well done Nursery.

Class 5 Artists: Learning to Draft, Critique and Improve

19th January 2026Laura Parsons

This week, Class 5 revisited Austin’s Butterfly, focusing on the power of critique and redrafting. We reminded ourselves what makes great critique truly helpful — it should always be kind, specific and supportive, with the clear purpose of helping each other improve.

Before putting pencil to paper, we spent time looking carefully at Conisbrough Castle through an artist’s eye. We asked thoughtful questions together:
What shapes can we see?
What do the lines need to look like?
Would our sketchbooks work better in landscape or portrait?

These discussions helped us slow down, observe more closely and make deliberate choices before we began.

We then got busy on our first drafts. They are strong starts — thoughtful, detailed and full of effort — but we know they aren’t perfect yet. That’s exactly where the learning lives. Tomorrow, we’re looking forward to giving and receiving careful critique, using each other’s feedback to refine our work and create even stronger second drafts.

Class 5 are learning that great art (and great learning) doesn’t happen in one go — it happens through reflection, feedback and the courage to improve.

Remembering and letting our lights shine.

11th November 2025Sarah Winkley

This week Nursery are thinking about cultural celebrations/traditions and have been exploring Diwali and Remembrance Day.

We began the week by hooking the children into Diwali, the Hindu celebration of light, by immersing the children in special Indian music and entering Nursery in the darkness, lit only by Diya lamps. The children were so excited and soothed by the atmosphere as they drew pictures of the diya lamps. They listened carefully to our key text “Binny’s Diwali” by Thrity Umrigar and learned that the lamps are traditional and used as decorations to guide in luck and light and warn off any darkness.

We have also paused to remember and celebrate the fallen and serving armed forces on Remembrance Day, by listening to an age appropriate story “Lest We forget” by Kerry Brown during our Tranquil Tuesday Reading Crews. The children came to school dressed in patriotic colours to show their support for the cause and made donations to the British Legion. Nursery have drawn some beautiful pictures of Poppy’s using their observational, considering shapes and simple details including colour.

Super Veggie Superheroes

16th September 2025Claire Goodyer

This week, Year One designed their very own Super Veggie Superheroes! From lightning-fast carrots to broccoli defenders of the planet, the imagination on display was truly inspiring.

Each child created a unique veggie-themed superhero and after completing their masterpieces, the children took part in a gallery walk, proudly showcasing their artwork and admiring their classmates’ creations.

Our First Expert Visitor – Author & Illustrator Phil Sheppard

4th September 2025Laura Parsons

Today we were lucky enough to welcome our very first expert visitor of the expedition – the brilliant author and illustrator Phil Sheppard!

Phil shared some of his fantastic stories with us, and we especially loved The Worm Book. There were plenty of laughs and lots of fun as he brought the story to life while reading aloud.

Afterwards, we took part in a draw along where we learned how to create our very own superheroes. The children did an amazing job and showed off some fantastic creativity!

To make the day even more special, we had the opportunity to buy our very own signed book by Phil – a real treasure to keep.

We all agreed that Phil truly deserved one of our special Community Hero awards for his craftsmanship and the quality of his work. What an inspiring start to our expedition!

Hook Week Adventures: Supertato and the Super Veggies!

1st September 2025Laura Parsons

As part of our exciting Hook Week, the children dived into the story of Supertato! We had so much fun meeting the brave superhero potato and the mischievous Evil Pea. The children loved joining in with the story, spotting the clues, and talking about what makes a superhero.

Inspired by Supertato’s adventures, we then got creative and designed our very own super veggies! From carrots with capes to broccoli with superpowers, the children let their imaginations run wild. Each creation was unique and showed off their brilliant ideas.

It was a fantastic way to kick-start our new topic and get everyone excited about the learning ahead. The classroom is now full of colourful, heroic vegetables keeping an eye out for any pesky peas!

Working together as artists

26th June 2025Claire Goodyer

In Class Three we have been studying and taking inspiration from the American artist Deborah Shapiro. She uses newspapers and magazines to create wildlife collage artwork. It was so much fun spotting the hidden words and images within the artwork during our gallery walk in the classroom.

We worked together to create our class collage.

We are incredibly proud of our beautiful work!

Class 1’s Seascapes…

14th May 2025Elouise Chadwick

Last week, our story ‘The Little Mermaid’ took us under the sea. We decided to create some beautiful paintings of the sea. We used powder paints and took our time to mix different shades of blue. The children enjoyed completing this task and they worked conscientiously, taking their time, which resulted in work to be proud of!

Castles fit for a future Princess.

12th May 2025Sarah Winkley

Thinking back to last week as we continue with our current case study; “Where in the world will this story take you?” The week began with a visit from a special owl, who dropped by with some postcard clues, which had photos of various castles and palaces from around the world on the front, where our mystery key character “C” may have visited? This helped to hook the children in to our next text Cinderella.

To excite and engage the children further they created beautiful crowns using creative materials during our “Tranquil Tuesday” Crew and off we went on an adventure to a castle to enjoy and immerse ourselves in our new key text, it was very exciting!

The children carefully observed the illustrations in the story and other texts about castles and used the inspiration to shape another piece of beautiful artwork for our final product. They also drew their own castles outdoors in their play and experimented with fairytale castle themed stampers indoors in our painting provision.

In our Maths learning the children explored 2d shapes, thinking about how they look and using words to describe their shape and properties during a dice game. I modelled to the children how they could use the shapes to build/ create a castle. Some of the children copied the examples or my model but most created the most beautiful 2d shape castles and named the shapes they had used, thinking about why they would be useful for certain parts of the building. Here are some examples; “The drawbridge is a rectangle because it’s long and can go up and down” or “These are my pointy roofs, they’re three triangles” and “My windows are circles”. Just look at some of our beautiful work.