Seaside Explorers.

22nd May 2026Sarah Winkley

Last week the children were hooked into our second case study about “Who would have adventures at sea?” Beginning with an immersive dress up day. Children came to school dressed in beautiful pirate, mermaid or other sea themed costumes. Teachers also dressed as a whole range of seaside explorers too, to broaden the ‘children’s understanding of who you may expect to see at the seaside having adventures. Don’t we all look brilliant!!

The children were engaged in story telling during Tranquil Tuesday crew, where they each acted out sea themed stories using props to use as problems and solutions, developing stories using our Tales Tool kit format. The children individually chose the props for the story they took part in making their story unique to them.

During our mindful Monday Crew the children made sea and sand sensory bottles to show them what happens where the sea meets the shore. This helped them to understand where people have adventures at sea and understand the concept of the stories being based either on or under the water.

Later in the week the children used a photo of them from our immersive dress up day, to help them write a sea themed adventure story using the tales tool kit format. The children chose whether they would be the character or the problem as some of our characters were goodies and some were more tricky! As the children told and drew their stories using a character, a setting, a problem and a solution, grown ups scribed for them.

Beautiful work

22nd May 2026Anna Wojcik

Class 4 have been working incredibly hard on their home learning projects this term. The children created some fantastic under the sea habitats and spent some time researching interesting facts about different sea creatures. They were super proud to present their work to the class. We have also been producing some excellent recount writing based on our fieldwork visit to The Deep.

Fieldwork to The Deep

18th May 2026Laura Parsons

Today, our Key Stage One children embarked on an exciting fieldwork visit to The Deep — and what an incredible day it was!

From the moment we arrived, the children were completely immersed in the wonders of the ocean. As they explored the aquarium, they encountered magnificent sharks, graceful stingrays, colourful tropical fish and fascinating creatures from oceans around the world. There were gasps of amazement, endless excitement and so many thoughtful conversations as the children connected their learning from school to the real world around them.

One of the highlights of the day was taking part in a fantastic workshop all about protecting our oceans from plastic pollution. The children learned about the devastating impact plastic can have on marine life and explored simple but powerful ways we can all help care for our planet. We were incredibly proud of the way the children engaged with the session — asking insightful questions, sharing their own knowledge and showing genuine compassion for the animals affected by pollution.

Perhaps the thing we were proudest of all was the children’s impeccable behaviour throughout the day. Their enthusiasm, curiosity and kindness shone from start to finish. In fact, several members of the public took the time to comment on how polite, respectful and engaged our children were — something that made all the adults very proud indeed!

The visit was a wonderful opportunity to bring our expedition learning to life and helped the children see that even small actions can make a big difference in protecting our oceans. We returned to school inspired, informed and even more determined to help care for the world around us.

Well done, Year 2 — you were a real credit to our school!

Diving into Case Study Two!

14th May 2026Elouise Chadwick

This week, we launched into Case Study Two by exploring the exciting question: Who would you see having adventures at sea?

The children arrived at school dressed as people they might spot in or around the sea, and what an exciting start to our new learning journey it was! We met pirates, sharks, sea explorers, turtles, mermaids and many more adventurous characters. The costumes and role play ideas really helped to immerse the children in our expedition learning.

Throughout the day, the children dived into imaginative storytelling and role play, creating exciting sea adventures together. They explored different characters, settings and problems their stories might include, using lots of wonderful language and creativity.

To finish our hook day, each child created their own story plan for an exciting sea adventure tale. Every story is completely different and full of imagination — from Sonic at sea to magical glitter and sharks that bite ! We cannot wait to begin writing and developing these stories over the next few weeks.

Uncovering a big problem

14th May 2026Elouise Chadwick

As we began Case Study One, we arrived at school to discover a shocking sight — plastic had been scattered all across our tables and learning environment! The children were quick to notice how messy it looked and shared that it made them feel sad and worried.

This sparked an important discussion about plastic pollution and how plastic in our oceans can harm sea creatures and their habitats. Through a think-pair-share activity, the children talked thoughtfully about the problems plastic can cause and worked together to create an anchor chart full of their ideas and learning.

We also read the beautiful and thought-provoking book The Odd Fish, which helped us reflect on the importance of caring for our oceans and environment. We wrote some great sentences too.

Inspired by our learning, the children have each brought in a plastic bottle from home ready to transform into a large piece of land art. We are so excited to share our creative environmental project with you next week!

Hooking into our ‘Sea Explorer’ Expedition

14th May 2026Elouise Chadwick

Children in Class 1 were hooked into our summer expedition by reading ‘Commotion in the Ocean’ written by Giles Andreae.  The colourful cast of sea creatures provided the perfect stimulus for children to make their own sea creatures. They used a variety of mediums, including paints, oil pastels and sketching pencils to create some beautiful art work that was proudly displayed around their learning environment.  As we joined in with the lively verses in the text, children became familiar with the different creatures that you find in our oceans. Each EYFS crew took a sea creature from the story and used non fiction texts to explore each creature further.

Staying Clean & Safe – Looking After Ourselves and Others

13th May 2026Laura Parsons

This week in our Key Stage 1 community meeting, we explored another important part of our guiding question: How can I be the healthiest version of me? Our focus was on hygiene and how simple daily actions—like washing our hands—can help keep us healthy and protect the people around us.

Understanding Germs

We began by thinking about why we wash our hands. The children shared great ideas, which led us to talk about something we can’t see but that is all around us—germs!

We explained that:

  • Germs are tiny and invisible
  • They can make us poorly
  • They spread very easily from person to person

To help bring this idea to life, we described germs as being like invisible glitter—they can quickly travel from our hands onto surfaces and other people without us even noticing.


Stopping the Spread

Through a short role-play, the children explored how germs spread and how we can stop them.

We acted out what happens when someone sneezes into their hands and then touches objects or other people—and quickly realised how easily germs can travel. We then practised a better way: sneezing into our elbow, helping to keep those around us safe.

We also compared handwashing habits, thinking about who is making safe choices and why.

When Should We Wash Our Hands?

The children shared lots of important times when handwashing matters, including:

  • After using the toilet 
  • Before eating 
  • After coughing or sneezing 
  • After playing outside 

It was fantastic to see how much the children already know about keeping themselves clean and safe.

Why Hygiene Matters

We talked about why these small actions are so important:

  • They help keep us healthy
  • They protect others around us
  • They stop germs from spreading

We linked this to our wider school community, reminding the children:

When we look after ourselves, we are also looking after everyone else.

Making Safe Choices

To finish, we played a quick game of “Safe or Not?”, where the children used thumbs up or down to show whether actions were helping to stop germs spreading. This was a fun and effective way to reinforce our learning.

Our Key Message

We reminded the children that small actions can make a big difference. Simple habits like washing our hands properly and sneezing into our elbow help to keep everyone safe, healthy, and ready to learn.

We were so impressed with the children’s understanding and engagement during this session. Ask your child what they remember about stopping germs—you might hear about “invisible glitter”!

Thank you for your continued support.

Hooray for Fish!

12th May 2026Sarah Winkley

Last week the children had been focusing on our super sounds phonics story “Hooray for Fish!” by Lucy Cousins. We had been thinking about rhyming words within the story and linking the patterns on the fish to our maths work. The children have consolidated their understanding of repeating pattern and have had fun creating their own patterned fish to continue to immerse and decorate our environment with.

During our last expedition the children enjoyed an escape room delivered by an expert visitor, so we recapped on our learning during that session to activate their learning and I constructed a phonics based escape room where the children had to match pictures to uncover a letter shape. They then used the letter shapes to build a simple CVC word linking to our expedition of the where the sea meets the shore to be able to escape from a shark!

Harry Saves the Ocean!

12th May 2026Sarah Winkley

Our second exciting text of our continuing first case study; “How can we help save the ocean?” is “Harry Saves the Ocean” by NGK and Sylvia Fae. This week the children entered Nursery to their beloved beach role play area, being trashed by more plastic pollution! This consolidated all of their prior learning from last week as the began to think rubbish in the sea and as you can imagine the children were so disappointed, sad and angered! This time the children had the skills they needed to be able to help problem solve the solution and were very happy to help recycle the rubbish and plastics into the correct recycling bins.

This week the children have been exploring the properties of 2d shapes and have been thinking about how they could use the shapes to create pictures of sea creatures. Here are some photos of their beautiful work.

The children have also been writing lists of all the rubbish and packaging which they have found in the sea, by hearing and attempting to write initial sounds. They were working so hard on their listening skills and produced some beautiful mark making and letter shapes with support.

“Oh that’s rubbish!”

12th May 2026Sarah Winkley

During our first week of case study one “How can we help save the ocean?” Nursery were outraged to discover that someone had been into Nursery and thrown rubbish, mainly plastic, all over our environment. The children were totally hooked into the case study immediately and shared some of their thoughts about how could we play and thrive in this environment? How did all of the rubbish make us feel? “Sad”, “Angry”, “Messy”, “Cluttered”, “Dirty”, “Shocked”, “Fuming”, “Cross”, “Upset” were some of the words that the children used.

They then drew faces using different emotions to share their feelings. Some children attempted to write initial sounds of feeling words.

This led to us introducing our first key text “The Odd Fish” by Naomi Jones. A story about a fish who finds a lonely “odd fish” (a plastic bottle) who hasn’t got a family of it’s own and they go on a journey to find the odd fishes family, only to find more rubbish. We consolidated our learning by immersing our water tray and sea creatures in plastic. The children attempted to help the animals by putting all of the rubbish into a bin.

On “Wise Wednesday” the children went on a gallery walk to observes real life pictures of creatures trapped, stuck and tangled in plastic. From this the children were guided to created an anchor chart of all the reasons why plastic is not good for our seas and the environment.

As part of our thoughtful Thursday Crew we thought about ways in which we could help the creatures, by thinking about getting rid of the plastic and rubbish properly. The children were introduced to recycling and were shown how to sort materials and put them into the correct recycling bins. The children each had a turn at this and did a great job.