Designing, Developing and Defining ‘Fun’ 🎲

23rd February 2026Laura Parsons

This week, we revisited one of our big guiding questions: What is a game?

The children began by thinking deeply about what makes a game a game. Is it the board? The rules? The players? The competition? The challenge? Together, we explored the component parts of games and generated a long list of materials we might need — boards, dice, counters, cards, questions, instructions and packaging.

Then came a lovely moment of realisation: when all of those parts come together successfully, they create one very important outcome — fun.

Explaining Our Learning

We were proud to welcome Chris Backe in to work with us. The children confidently explained what our board game is about and why we have been learning so much about Doncaster’s landmarks, geography and history. It was wonderful to see them articulate the purpose behind their learning — not just what they had done, but why it mattered.

Having a real expert in the room helped to reinforce that this work is authentic. The children are not just completing a task; they are designing something meaningful for a real audience.

Making Thoughtful Design Choices

Next, the children designed their own game cards and carefully placed them into plastic pouches. This wasn’t just a practical step — it was a design decision.

We discussed:

  • Durability — game cards need to last.
  • Protection — they will be handled many times.
  • Material choice — why plastic, rather than paper or fabric, would be most suitable.

It was fantastic to see the children thinking like designers and manufacturers, considering the properties of materials and the long-term use of their product.

Creating, Testing and Adapting

The children then moved on to designing their own boards. This involved creativity, teamwork and — importantly — adaptability.

As they began to play their games, they quickly realised that rules sometimes need refining. Some games were too easy. Some were too tricky. Some needed clearer instructions. Rather than seeing this as a problem, the children embraced it as part of the design process.

They:

  • Tested their ideas.
  • Adapted their rules.
  • Improved their layouts.
  • Refined their thinking.

This kind of iterative design process is exactly what real game designers do.

Learning with Purpose

We were incredibly lucky to spend the morning refamiliarising ourselves with Doncaster landmarks, supported by a real expert guiding our thinking. This helped the children ensure their questions, illustrations and gameplay accurately reflected the place we call home.

Throughout the session, the children demonstrated:

  • Collaboration
  • Critical thinking
  • Creativity
  • Pride in their local area

Most importantly, they showed that when knowledge, skill and imagination come together — it really does create something special.

We can’t wait to share the finished games with you soon! 🎉

Celebrating Chinese New Year in Class 5

10th February 2026Laura Parsons

This week, we have been learning all about Chinese New Year and how it is celebrated. We found out that this year is the Year of the Horse and enjoyed learning about the animals in the Chinese zodiac. We also discovered which year we were born in, and lots of us were excited to find out we were born in the Year of the Pig or the Year of the Dog!

This morning, we tried something new by practising our handwriting in Mandarin. We had a go at writing Happy New Year  and talked about how different the characters look compared to the letters we usually write. We also made beautiful Chinese lanterns using bright colours and patterns, which we were very proud of.

It has been a fun and interesting way to learn about another culture, and the classroom has been full of excitement as we celebrated Chinese New Year together. 🐎🏮

A Visit from the School Nursing Team

9th February 2026Laura Parsons

This morning, we were lucky to welcome the School Nursing Team into school for a special visit. They helped us learn all about what school nurses do and how they support children to stay healthy and well.

We spent time learning about our teeth, what their job is, and why they are so important. The children talked about how we can take the best care of our teeth, including brushing twice a day, choosing healthy foods, and visiting the dentist.

It was a really engaging session, with lots of great questions and thoughtful contributions from the children. A big thank you to the School Nursing Team for helping us learn how to look after our bodies and build healthy habits for the future. 🦷✨

“Heal the World… Make it a better place”.

3rd February 2026Sarah Winkley

Yesterday Nursery were hooked into learning for our second case study, How Can we power our vehicles without damaging our world? Through the medium of role play. Nursery staff pretended to be planet earth and a car. The Earth explained to the children, all of the wonderful things that it gives to help us and animals live happy lives including; water, air and food.

Then along came a car, with its polluting clouds of fumes and smoke! It refuelled at the petrol station and was busy tootling around creating more and more pollution.

Sadly all of the cars smoke and fumes began to make the earth poorly…

The driver of the car, then stopped to think about how they could make a small change to help make a difference to the world and help the world to get better and for us to have cleaner air… By walking to places more.

The children were so immersed in the roleplay, that they continued the role play in their free flow play, thinking about the fuels we use to power our vehicles and which vehicles used fuel to make them work? They talked about “diesel”, “petrol” and “electric” cars.

This week the children are also exploring a pollution play tray linked to our thoughts of saving the earth. They have began to explore what happens to the rainforests by large vehicles causing deforestation and how the warming gases and fumes make the ice caps melt that the polar bears live on.

Nursery have been inspired to think of small changes and little ways in which we can help, through our key text “Please Help Planet Earth” a Ladybird eco book. We have found that we can turn off taps, save electricity by turning off lights when we’re out of a room, we can recycle rubbish and place all rubbish in bins, we can plant flowers for the bees and butterflies, we can grow our own vegetables to save the rainforests from being turned into farms, we can help to feed the birds and most importantly we can walk to more places or take a bus or a train to help keep pollution fumes lower. Beautiful work Nursery!

🎉 KS1 Sponsored Dance-a-Thon – What a Day! 🎉

30th January 2026Laura Parsons

What an amazing day we had at our KS1 Sponsored Dance-a-thon on Friday 30th January! The children brought the energy, the smiles and some seriously impressive dance moves — and we are so proud of every single one of them.

Thanks to your incredible generosity and support, we are thrilled to share that we have raised an incredible £1,060… and counting! 🤩
This fantastic total will go directly towards the cost of producing the children’s very own KS1 Doncaster Board Games, helping us keep the final cost as low as possible for everyone. We are also continuing to work with sponsors and supporters to make this project even bigger and better.

💃 How did we dance the day away?

We kicked off the morning in style with a high-energy Zumba session in the hall, led by Mrs Ponsonby and Mrs Murray, which certainly got hearts pumping and feet moving!

Throughout the day, each class took part in a range of fun, creative dance activities, including:

  • 🧊 Ice Dancing and 🎲 Dice Dancing games in the classroom
  • 🖐️ Finger dancing to explore movement through different music styles
  • ✏️ Pencil dancing, where children drew how the music made them feel
  • 🤸 A dance–themed PE lesson to finish the structured part of the day
  • 🎉 And of course… party dances during Golden Time to end on a high!

Children took turns dancing so that every crew was represented throughout the day, showing teamwork, resilience and lots of encouragement for one another. We were also lucky to have some grown ups join in the fun, adding to the excitement and buzz around school.

🎲 Why it matters

All the money raised will support our KS1 Doncaster Board Game Project, where children are designing and creating their own board game inspired by local landmarks. The final game will be professionally produced so that all KS1 children can enjoy playing it — a brilliant example of learning, creativity and community coming together.

💛 Thank you

A huge thank you to all our families for your sponsorship, encouragement and enthusiasm. Every single contribution is helping to bring the children’s ideas to life — and days like this remind us just how powerful learning can be when it’s joyful, active and shared.

Well done KS1 — you danced your socks off! 🕺💃

Class 5 Artists: Using Critique to Improve

20th January 2026Laura Parsons

Today, Class 5 built on yesterday’s learning by taking part in purposeful critique. With sketchbooks open and first drafts in front of us, we carefully revisited our work and gave feedback that was kind, helpful and specific. Everyone listened thoughtfully, asked questions and showed real respect for each other’s ideas.

Using this critique, we then began our second drafts. You could see pupils making deliberate changes — adjusting shapes, refining lines and thinking carefully about composition. The improvements were thoughtful and intentional, showing just how powerful feedback can be when it is used well.

We also transferred these critique skills into our writing, as we began our non-chronological reports about Conisbrough Castle. Just like in our artwork, we edited and improved as we went along, rereading our sentences, making changes and strengthening our work in real time. This process required honesty and integrity, and the children supported one another brilliantly, offering feedback with care and respect.

Class 5 continue to show that critique isn’t about pointing out mistakes — it’s about helping each other grow, whether as artists, writers or as a crew.

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.

Wheels, Wheels, Wheels.

18th January 2026Sarah Winkley

This week Nursery children have began exploring their first case study into our new expedition “We are on the move – Would you travel by wheels, wings or other things?” In this case study we are focusing on what vehicles move by wheels, wings and other things? We started with wheeled vehicles with the help of our primary text “Car, Car, Truck, Jeep” by Katrina Charman. We learned the “Car, Car, Truck, Jeep” song which is sang to the tune of one of our familiar Nursery rhymes, Baa, Baa, Black Sheep. At the end of the week the children were filmed singing part of the song (which included wheeled vehicles) and this was shared with parents via Class Dojo – check it out!

To activate the children’s learning we shared photos of their own experiences on wheeled vehicles, here are a few.

We also engaged in transport themed yoga where the children used their physical skills to hold poses pretending to be a car, a train and a boat.

We played Vehicle Pass the Parcel, where the children sang as they passed around the bag before taking out a vehicle, attempting to name it and making the sound that it makes. To deepen their understanding of some vehicles the children matched their pass the parcel toy to emergency service vehicles using photo cards.

To consolidate our learning we drew a car, following step by step instructions, using lines both straight and curved and circles. We were very careful in our observations to try and copy our teacher as accurately as we could. Our drawings were amazing!

We were challenged to build vehicles indoors and out using all kinds of construction materials.

Our maths learning focused on parking a number of vehicles in a car park and counting each mobile, to check how many there were in the spaces? We were challenged to think about how many more we could fit in the car park too.

And in our creative moments we collaged a car from our choice of coloured papers and glue, which we will display on a stand to make it look like it’s driving along on its wheels. We also learnt how to finger paint and created vehicles such as a car, a lorry and a train using different parts of our fingers.

To demonstrate all of our new knowledge we finished the week by creating a list of wheeled vehicles. We each took turns to think of and draw a different vehicle and were encouraged to think of and say the initial sound to label the vehicle on our list.

What a fun filled week it has been. We’re excited to explore vehicles that go in the air next.

Money in Maths

13th January 2026Laura Parsons

Today in Maths, we continued to practise making different amounts using coins and notes. The children worked together in pairs, exploring different ways to make the same total and explaining their thinking to each other.

There was lots of brilliant teamwork on show, with children showing respect by listening carefully and compassion by supporting their partners when they found something tricky. It was lovely to see everyone encouraging one another and celebrating success together. A great lesson full of collaboration and mathematical thinking!

Maths in Action in Class 5!

12th January 2026Laura Parsons

Class 5 have been working incredibly hard in Maths today as they consolidated their learning from last week. Using real coins, the children worked practically to make different amounts, discussing their ideas and supporting one another along the way. It was wonderful to see so much teamwork and resilience as they tried different combinations and checked their answers.

Later in the session, we used the iPads to continue our learning through a range of Maths games. The children showed great integrity by challenging themselves, choosing different games and levels of difficulty to really push their understanding.

A fantastic effort from everyone today – well done, Class 5! 🌟