The children in Class 6 are incredibly proud of their animal fact files and the art work they have produced for our final product. I was so impressed with their focus, enthusiasm, positive attitudes and the progress everyone is making.
Keep up the great work Class 6.
We made a Leap Day time capsule in class today not to be opened until February 29th 2028 – when we are in year six!
We included notes to our future selves. pictures and photographs – and made Mrs Parsons add it to her calendar so she doesn’t forget to give them to us!
We started our week off sharing some fantastic beautiful work and handing out some certificates to children who are working incredibly hard or are showing they are great members of our Norton crew.
We are looking forward to next week already! ⭐️
Mrs Parsons xx
Key Stage One have been researching different animals and their habitats this week. Each class has researched a different habitat and location around the world.
We visited each classroom this morning to look at their anchor charts and research to learn about the different locations around the world.
It was great to hear the children being Geographers and learning so much from each other.
Mrs Parsons x
The week commencing 05/02/24 Nursery were exploring their latest text within our expedition Once upon a Time – Who is hiding in the pages of this book? We were looking a comparison of the traditional tale of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”, through a text titled “Goldy Luck and the Three Pandas” by Natasha Yim. This story is a celebration of oriental culture made accessible to children through a traditional tale. The Children really enjoyed learning about the differences between the bears in the story, Goldy Luck and Goldilocks and the Chinese culture overall, which made great links for the celebration of Chinese New Year.
Goldy Luck, Mr and Mrs Chen had rice porridge known as Congee in their adaptation of the story, so the children played and investigated rice in the sensory tray. They filled red containers and and practised picking up Pom poms with chop sticks building their fine motor skills in our finger gym.
We then researched Panda Bears by looking at non fiction texts in our Tuesday Reading Crew using the text “ A Book of Bears” by Katie Viggers. The children learned where Pandas come from, where they live, what they eat and what they look like. We used this information and other stimulus to produce beautiful artwork of Panda faces.
Children experimented with Chinese dining within our role play area, sitting on floor cushions and using tweezers and chop sticks to eat pretend noodles in their role play. Nursery also had a Chinese food tasting crew on Thoughtful Thursday, during which they tried a number of new foods including noodles, Sweet and Sour Sauce and Prawn Crackers. Most of the children liked the noodles 🍜 and had second helpings. Some of the words used to describe the sweet and sour sauce were “Spicy”, “Tingly”, “Sweet” and “Hot”.
Nursery explored traditional Chinese dress and took part in their own traditional street parade. The children split into two groups and played a range of instruments and took turns to march and dance, exploring various levels in pairs using Chinese dragons. What beautiful work they produced!
Throughout the week children created various paintings of a Chinese theme including dragons and lanterns as it is officially the year of the dragon, 2024. This got us thinking about the year of the children’s birth which was for most the year of the Rat or some the year of the Ox. We watched of short video/puppet show about the ancient myth of how the Chinese calendar came to exist and the order of the animals by year. The children took part in an online tutorial modelled by myself to draw a rat 🐀, representing the year of their birth. The results were awesome, we have some budding artists.
Over the past week Nursery have explored and embedded our story of the week “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” The children began the week by being fairy tale detectives, as someone had been into Nursery over the previous weekend and broken our dollies chair, bed and left their empty food bowl laying around. The children were very excited and outraged by this, they had lots of different ideas of who this could be including; “the Troll”, “A big mouse”, “the Gruffalo”, “a bear” and “Goldilocks” herself.
Nursery played in oats, experimenting with filling and emptying containers of three different sizes, using small, medium and large spoons.
They explored and sorted hard and soft materials.
Using their maths skills Nursery measured the Three Bears using unifix cubes and worked hard to count how many cubes tall the bears were, using their fingers to encourage careful counting and 1-2-1 touch counting. The children revisited and used our key vocabulary Large, Medium and Small to describe Daddy, Mummy and Baby Bear.
As part of our Thoughtful Thursday Crews Nursery followed an online drawing tutorial, following step by step instructions and modelling from myself of how to draw a bears head. Our 30 hour children extended this activity to add the bears body using their own imagination.
As part of Flexible Friday Crew, the children all tried Porridge 🥣. For some children this was a new experience for others it was an alternate way to eat their porridge, as we had the option of either Golden Syrup or Sugar with our Porridge. Some children like “Jam”, “Nuts, raisins and Honey”, “Nutella”, “Raspberries”, “Blueberries” and “Strawberries” with theirs at home.
Finally to consolidate and bring all of our learning to life, Nursery took part in mini role plays of the story in front of their peers and grown ups. This takes a lot of confidence and most of the children enjoyed and were willing to take part in the experience using lovely story language. Well Done Boys and Girls! You’re all “Go for it Gorilla’s” and superstars!
There is no better way to start the week than with sharing the beautiful work that has been happening in classes. It was also lovely to give out postcards to those children who are always modelling our core values and HoWls during our community meetings.
I’m already looking forward to next week ⭐️
Mrs Parsons xx
Nursery have been working hard to resolve social conflicts this last week, as part of our first case study “How can the Goats and the Troll be friends?” This is within our new expedition “Once upon a time” and working towards answering our guiding question “Who is hiding in the pages of this book?”
Nursery have listened to the traditional tale of “The Three Billy Goats Gruff” and an alternative version of the story “The Three Billy Goats Fluff” by Rachael Mortimer. They have thought hard about the issues of both key characters; in that the Goats would like to eat the juicy, green, lush grass, but unfortunately they have to trip, trap across the bridge to reach it which in turns wakes up the Troll, who is desperate for some sleep, peace and quiet. Mummy Goat made the Billy Goats booties in the alternative story, but we wondered what if you insulated the bridge? So we have tried hard to make a quiet bridge for the Troll to live under using a variety of insulating materials. We tested baking paper, tinfoil, felt and bubble wrap. Here’s how we got on……
Some of the language and ideas expressed throughout this problem solving was amazing! The children said “the troll is grumpy because he is tired”, “the troll is frustrated because he wants to sleep”, “trip trap, trip trap keeps waking him up, because it’s noisy on the bridge”, “The goats need to be kind and go quieter”. The children spoke in depth about the materials, carefully using their senses to investigate them, some of the words used were; “Shiny”, “Crunchy”, “Crinkly”, “Rattly”, “Soft”, “Fluffy”, “Furry”, “Bubbles”, “Popping”, “Too loud”, “Quiet”, “Silent” and “noisy”.
What beautiful work Nursery – most children either came to the conclusion that the felt was the “quietest” or “softest” material or that the paper and tin foil were “too loud” or “noisy”. Some of the children thought about folding materials into layers to make the bridge even softer and one child thought about using the soft toy troll as a material, as he thought the felt was “still too noisy and the troll is bouncier”. Great experimenting!
In Reception the children have been exploring different resources and creating houses for the three little pigs. The children came up with some impressive design ideas.
To begin our spring term expedition Nursery have become Nursery Rhyme Detectives! Our task this week has been to find new clues each day to work out which Nursery Rhyme we are exploring that day. The children have searched high and low for clues and used their existing and new knowledge of Nursery Rhymes to work out which props fit with which Nursery Rhyme. Here are some of the props Nursery have found so far….
Also to immerse ourselves in our new expedition, Nursery have been working collaboratively to create artwork of large scale images of Nursery Rhyme characters and iconic objects. There have also been a couple of rather large mice around the Nursery Building!
