Growing Curious Minds in Science Week…

13th March 2025Elouise Chadwick

Class 1 have enjoyed predicting, collaborating and experimenting this week. We started the week by dropping gummy bears into water, vinegar, salt water and sugar water. We were excited to see what happened although we were a little disappointed we couldn’t eat them when the experiment was finished!

Can you guess which liquid grew the biggest bears?

We then had a special invitation from the Year Three children at Norton Junior School. They invited us along to their science fair, where we got to find out some fascinating facts. We would like to say a big thank you to all of the Year Three children, they did an amazing job running the stalls and holding the children’s attention. Thanks so much for having us!

Celebrating World Book Day – A book is a dream you can hold in your hands…

10th March 2025Elouise Chadwick

What an amazing World Book Day we had at Norton Infant School this year! It started off with an exciting visit from the Mad Hatter and Alice in Wonderland. They read us a story and invited us to a very special World Book Day Tea Party.

We were getting very excited waiting to enter the Tea Party…

We couldn’t believe our eyes when we entered! We were in Wonderland! The buns and drinks went down a treat. A huge thank you to FONCA for making this magical moment happen! It really was a highlight of our day.

Back in the classroom the children looked at the work of Eric Carle, in particular we looked at the butterfly drawing from ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’. We spoke about how we can show accuracy when drawing and practiced looking carefully. We investigated the different lines Eric Carle used to create his butterfly. We then used watercolour pencils to add colour. The children produced some beautiful artwork…

Here are some inspirational messages that we discovered on Eric Carle’s website…

I think you will all agree that the children looked wonderful. Thank you for making such an effort with your costumes 🙂 It was a great day…

Clay Animals and The Songbird Cafe

5th March 2025Elouise Chadwick

Crew Chadwick has enjoyed taking part in some great ‘outdoor crew’ sessions this week, led by Mrs Jackson. In our first session, the children enjoyed sculpting clay into different animals. Take a look at some of our creations…

Our number one rule in Class 1 is to be kind, therefore we loved our next crew activity. We got to make bird feeders for all of the local birds and hung them in our Norton Songbird Cafe. Within minutes of them being hung on the tree, a beautiful robin was already feasting away! Looking after nature is something we spoke about in our last expedition, ‘How do we show we care’. It felt great, carrying out this act of kindness.

Crew Chadwick would like to give a BIG shout out to Mrs Jackson for planning and resourcing such great activities. We loved it! Thank you 🙂 xx

Art makes us happy…

5th March 2025Elouise Chadwick

In case study two the children have been answering the question ‘What happens to plants as they grow?’ Not only have the children been scientists in this case study, but we have also been inspired by Vincent Van Gogh and his series of ‘Sunflower’ paintings.

Each child did a great job mixing powder paints to create a large petal that we later turned into a bigger piece of artwork. We are looking forward to sharing the finished product with families at our celebration of learning event.

This week we have been working on our own versions of Vincent Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflower’ painting. The children have mixed different colours and shades to create a desired effect. I think we may have some budding artists of our very own in class 1!

Fitness Fun in Class 1!

27th February 2025Elouise Chadwick

The children have been showcasing their physical skills this week in P.E. This includes, balancing, jumping, dribbling and negotiating space. We had fun whilst keeping fit…

Play Is The Work of Childhood…

12th February 2025Elouise Chadwick

Our family learning session was a real success and the children loved having their grown ups in the classroom. For our children in the Early Years, play is serious learning and it was great to see our families in all of our areas. The children were painting, counting, sorting, reading, building, writing, pretending, creating and getting smart!

EYFS Community Meeting

7th February 2025Emma Powell

Well done to all of our superstars this week. It was lovely to share some wonderful acts of kindness and lots of examples of children working hard and trying their best, especially in phonics and maths. Keep up the super work Reception.

Know Yourself Grow Yourself!

5th February 2025Elouise Chadwick

As part of Children’s Mental Health Awareness Week, we decided to start off our day by drawing a ‘happy picture’. We had a range of drawings including Spiderman, rainbows, love hearts, Sonic and our families…

In crew, we then spoke about our feelings and that it is OK to be in the blue zone sometimes. We discussed what we can do in school that would make us feel happy and calm, and how important it is that we know how to make ourselves feel good again. The children came up with some wonderful ideas…

Growing Mathematical Minds

3rd February 2025Elouise Chadwick

Class 1 have been securing their understanding of the composition of numbers in recent weeks. We have been investigating part part whole relations, seeing that 5 can be made from 3 and 2. The children enjoyed acting out ‘5 Little Speckled Frogs’, which allowed children to deepen their knowledge through practical experiences.

In our recent counting collection session the children had some great ideas when recording their mathematical thinking. Keep up the great work!

Spectacular Spelling in EYFS!

3rd February 2025Elouise Chadwick

This week in phonics we are spelling longer, more challenging words. The children truly blew me away with their attempts today. They used their segmenting fingers and wrote down all the phonemes they could hear in the word. Keep up the great work Class 1!