We are Rockpool Experts!

1st May 2024Sarah Winkley

Yesterday the whole of EYFS had the most amazing expert visitors come into school to share and show us what a rock pool is and what species of creatures can be found inside them. The children were thrilled to get up close and personal with Shore Crabs, Spider Crabs, Hermit Crabs, Purple Sunshine Starfish, Regular Starfish, Sea anemones, Sea Urchin’s, Mussels and Barnacles. They learnt many interest facts about the creatures from Mike and James from Aqua Explorers provided by Aqualease.

The children were very receptive to the creatures and many pushed themselves out of their comfort zone to explore and experience the creatures either by touching them or holding them. Nursery asked some interesting questions to the visitors and also shared their existing knowledge that they have learnt so far with the expert visitors.

It was an amazing learning experience to really engage and enthral our children, as most will have never experienced these creatures in real life before and it has helped the children to have a better knowledge, understanding and compassion for the creatures we are learning about in our current expedition “What happens where the sea meets the shore?” Such beautiful work!

Immersed in Plastic Pollution.

29th April 2024Sarah Winkley

Last week Nursery began the week by being literally immersed in plastic pollution. They came into Nursery to litter scattered all over their beautiful environment, (inspired by our primary text “Harry Saves the Ocean” by NGK) which they had helped to decorate during the hook week of our latest expedition “ What happens where the sea meets the shore?”

The children sat for register and Crew amongst the rubbish, as planned for them to understand how the sea creatures must feel in our oceans. A few of the children commented during their crew session (whilst being asked about their feelings) about; “Feeling sad because of all of the trash”, “It’s like a bomb’s hit!”, “All of this plastic makes me feel sad” and “I feel angry, because of all of this rubbish- Who’s made this mess?”

We talked about how we could help to make this better and the children suggested “Put it in the bin” and “Recycle it”. So we did… the children helped to recycle the pretend rubbish into various recycling boxes.

Later in the week the children explored freeing see creatures that had been caught in plastic and trapped in ice. The elation the children felt after they had freed the creatures was a joy to see, as they were so empowered to help. They enjoyed the activity immensely.

Nursery ended the week on a high by pretending to be sea creatures during a physical activity session with Coach Ellie who kindly came to visit us. The children had to move in a variety of ways like sea creatures and work collaboratively in teams to win games and collect “food” for their group. They all had lots of fun and there was lots of laughter.

Beautiful work! Well Done Nursery – We certainly understand what the problem is in our oceans.

Resilient Artists

29th April 2024Laura Parsons

We began our art case study this afternoon by looking at Doncaster landmarks and beginning to create pieces to represent them. We began with the Yorkshire Y. We though about tints and tones and practised our colour mixing skills to help us with our final pieces whilst some of us got drafting!

I was blown away with the perseverance and resilience shown to create the perfect shape. We thought about critique and redrafting and we were really proud of our creations.

Keep it up Class 5 – you’re creating beautiful work!

Mrs Parsons xx

Spots and Dots

25th April 2024Laura Parsons

We had a great community meeting this morning. We thought really hard about resilience and bravery particularly when it comes to completing beautiful work that we might find tricky.

We listened to the story called The Dot about a little girl called Vashti who found art difficult but worked hard and succeeded. We all got a dot of our very own to create our own mini piece of art work which we put together to make our very own dotty masterpiece.

We finished our community meeting with crew champions – we are really proud of all of you.

Mrs Parsons

Dear World…

24th April 2024Rebecca Kendrew-Jones

Today the children in EYFS had a wonderful time going to the Junior School hall to listen to children in Years 3 and 4 sing Dear World. This song was written by Key Stage Two children in their previous expedition that explored the importance of looking after our planet.

In their current expedition the children in EYFS are learning all about sea conservation and the need to recycle plastic waste so it was a perfect opportunity to listen again to Dear World and the poignant message it has. Thank you to the Junior School for a fantastic performance, the legacy of your beautiful work lives on!

Human and Physical Features

22nd April 2024Laura Parsons

Class Five have blown me away today with their Geography skills. We started by thinking about the differences between human and physical features. We worked collaboratively to sort images into the two groups, we kept reflecting and changing our minds the more we went through the construct part of our lesson. Finally we used our learning to identify these features on different maps of Doncaster.

Awesome job guys ⭐️

We are Sea Explorers!

18th April 2024Sarah Winkley

As our hook week has rolled out, Nursery have had lots of fun exploring and immersing themselves in all things lurking beneath the surface of the sea, underpinned by our hook text, “Commotion in the Ocean” By Giles Andreas. The children have searched around Nursery for clues of what they may find in the sea? They have learned about how these sea creatures survive and their anatomical features such as; gills, scales, fins and flippers.

The children then created fabulous sea creatures of their own using various craft materials, mediums and techniques. These include jiggling Jellyfish, Octopuses and shimmering Fishes – just look at our beautiful work!

Finally the children have worked hard on beginning to understand and explore our guiding question for our new exciting summer expedition “What happens when the sea meets the shore?”

As part of our Thoughtful Thursday Crew the children used their own experiences to draw pictures of what they recall visually about the seaside and talked about, What does the sand feel like? How does it look on the beach? Their ideas were collected in crews to form spider diagrams.

We then practically explored how the sand and water make the shore by creating sensory sea bottles using sand and blue coloured water. The children were thrilled to experiment and see how the sand and water mixed and then settled separately, creating their own beach in a bottle. It was a fabulous experience for all.