We had a wonderful Outdoor Crew this morning, making the most of the beautiful sunshine! We started by circling up together for our check-in, taking some time to connect, share and enjoy being together outdoors.
We then had lots of fun taking part in Mrs Jackson’s nature scavenger hunt, exploring our surroundings and seeing what we could discover. It was lovely to see everyone working together, sharing ideas and enjoying the fresh air.
A brilliant morning of connection, teamwork, exploration and lots of sunshine and smiles!
This week, we completed our first Crew walkthroughs of the year — and what a wonderful opportunity it was to see our children and Crew Leaders already building such positive, caring and purposeful Crew communities.
Across NIS, we saw lots of examples of children belonging, caring for one another, working hard and growing their character. It was fantastic to see the care and attention being given to Crew time and the way our children are already beginning to understand what it means to be part of a Crew.
🐻 Our Care Bear Crews
Our Care Bear Crews showed some wonderful examples of positive communication, kindness and support.
We saw Crew Leaders using thoughtful prompts and communication to help children share their ideas and participate, alongside lots of kind, caring and supportive interactions. These small moments are so important in helping our children to feel that Crew is a safe and welcoming place where they are valued and listened to.
🪶 Crew Backshall
Crew Backshall showed a fantastic understanding of what makes a beautiful Crew circle.
The children were encouraged to think carefully about how they sat together and how they could make sure everyone could see and hear one another. One child explained:
“If our legs are crossed and knees are slightly touching we can make a perfect circle where we can see each other.”
What a brilliant explanation! 🌟
This is exactly the kind of ownership we want to see developing in Crew — children understanding not just what we do, but why it matters. The children were also encouraged to think about the care and attention they give to themselves, each other and their Crew.
💛 Crew Nightingale & Crew Earhart
There was a lovely warm and welcoming feel in both Crew Nightingale and Crew Earhart.
We saw children making clear connections between their actions, our character traits and HoWLs, with these being explained and discussed in a way that helped children understand what they look like in practice.
We particularly loved seeing children writing Golden Tickets for one another, celebrating the amazing character traits and HoWLs they have already seen their friends demonstrating this year. ✨
What a wonderful way to notice the positive things happening around us and remind each other that our character is something we build together.
🎨 Crew Parks & Crew Simmonds
In Crew Parks and Crew Simmonds, we saw children being encouraged to work hard and take pride in creating beautiful work.
It was lovely to see children being supported to think about the quality of what they produce and to recognise that beautiful work doesn’t happen by accident — it takes care, effort, perseverance and pride.
🌟 We are only just getting started!
Our first walkthroughs have given us lots to celebrate. Most importantly, they showed that our children are already beginning to understand that Crew is about more than sitting together.
It is about listening to one another, caring for one another, celebrating each other’s strengths, working hard, showing our character and making sure that everyone belongs.
A huge well done to all of our Crew Leaders and, most importantly, to our wonderful children for the fantastic start they have made to Crew this year.
Over the past two weeks Nursery have been introduced to Crew and what that means for us as a school. They are beginning to understand that we are all friends and part of a community where we share and care for one another with kindness at the heart of everything we do. The children have made an excellent start to their school learning journey and have had lots of fun exploring and experimenting in the new environment.
The children have learned to circle up at the beginning of their sessions and use their crew mascot as a tool to recognise when it is their turn to speak and share for checking in or taking part. We have explored our zones of regulations, helping the children to name and identify their feelings more easily. They used a lolly pop stick to choose which feeling monster they identified with at that time linked to one of our crew texts; “The Colour Monster Goes to School”.
In our second week we had an exciting visit from the “Kindness Elves”, two magical elves who brought us a gift! It was the story, “The Hugasaurus” which centres around what a little dinosaur can do to help teach her friends to be kind a play together happily and harmoniously. The children have been thinking about this in their play and we have taken pictures of the children in provision sharing, being loving lions and working together being Teamwork Tigers, two of our most important character traits which the children are gradually being introduced to.
As our crew weeks drew to a close the children created a piece of special artwork which will be included in a unique crew final product which will be revealed later, but I can share our beautiful self portraits that will feature on it.
Finally we have celebrated with a lovely Teddy Bears picnic for our community crew on Friday. Each child brought in their favourite soft toy to share with their friends and we talked about how we all have different ones that are our favourites, as we all like different things making us all special. Yummy treats were enjoyed by all. Beautiful work Nursery.
What better way to finish the week than with a Jelly Baby Challenge?! 😂🍬
On Friday, Class Five took on one of our most unusual challenges yet. Each child was given a very special responsibility — one Jelly Baby to care for for the whole day!
The mission sounded simple… keep it safe, happy and in one piece! 😬
Of course, there were rules to follow. The Jelly Babies couldn’t be eaten (obviously! 😂), squashed, dropped, bent or hurt. They had to stay with their carer unless they were safely tucked away in their specially designed home. There was also absolutely no touching, rescuing, stealing or swapping someone else’s Jelly Baby!
So, the children got to work designing and building somewhere safe for their Jelly Baby to live. They thought carefully about what their Jelly Baby might need to feel safe, comfortable and protected — and we saw some wonderfully creative Jelly Baby homes!
But, as you might have guessed, this challenge wasn’t really about Jelly Babies…
It was about compassion, responsibility and crew. ❤️
We introduced one extra rule:
You are responsible for your Jelly Baby, but you are also responsible for your crew.
This created some brilliant conversations throughout the day. What should you do if you notice someone else’s Jelly Baby is about to fall? Could you help without taking over? Could you show compassion without touching their Jelly Baby?
The children began to realise that being compassionate doesn’t always mean fixing something for someone else. Sometimes it means noticing, warning, encouraging, supporting or simply being there while someone works out their own solution.
There were moments of incredible concentration, a few moments of complete Jelly Baby panic 😂 and lots of thoughtful conversations about what it really means to care for something — and for each other.
At the end of the day, we reflected together:
💭 What did our Jelly Babies need from us? 💭 Was it difficult to look after something all day? 💭 Did we notice when someone else’s Jelly Baby needed help? 💭 How can we care for people in our crew without taking over? 💭 Can you show compassion without taking over?
And, of course, there was one VERY important question…
🍬 How many Jelly Babies actually survived the day?! 😂
What looked like a very silly challenge (and, let’s be honest, it absolutely was!) actually gave us the opportunity to explore some really important ideas about empathy, responsibility, boundaries, independence and what it means to genuinely care for the people in our crew.
We’re pleased to report that Class Five proved to be some very caring Jelly Baby carers indeed! ❤️🍬
A brilliant way to round off fantastic week in Class Five!
What a fantastic first week back we have had in Class 3! The children have settled in brilliantly and it has been lovely to see them growing in confidence, working together and showing what a caring and thoughtful class they can be.
Throughout the week, we have been thinking carefully about our Crew guiding question:“How does what I do impact others?”
This question has been at the heart of our discussions and activities. We have explored lots of different stories together, talking about the choices characters make and considering how their actions can make others feel. We have thought about the many ways we can show kindness, compassion and respect, and how even the smallest actions can have a big impact on someone else’s day.
We have also worked together to think about what makes our classroom a safe, happy and welcoming place to be. Every day, we have considered how we can look after one another, include others, listen carefully and work as a team. It has been wonderful to see the children putting these ideas into practice!
We didn’t stop at thinking about kindness within our crews and Class 3, we also thought about how we could make a difference to other children in our school.
The children decided to design and decorate some special biscuits to give as a little welcome gift to the children in our reception classes. They took great care with their creations and were so excited to make something that would hopefully make the youngest members of our school smile.
It has been a lovely first week filled with kindness, teamwork, thoughtful conversations and lots of opportunities to make a positive difference to others.
We are incredibly proud of how well Class 3 have settled back into school and can’t wait to see where the rest of this term takes us!
What better way to finish our first week together than with a Crew Breakfast! ❤️
We spent the morning sitting together, chatting, sharing food and continuing to get to know one another. It was such a lovely opportunity to slow down, enjoy each other’s company and celebrate what has been a brilliant first week in Year Two.
But what made our breakfast extra special wasn’t the food… it was the crew thinking that happened all around it.
The children decided that we needed to all sit together so that nobody was left out. Without being asked, they organised themselves, moved furniture around and worked together to create one big space where we could all be together. 🥰
And when breakfast was finished, they didn’t just leave it for someone else to sort. They worked together to degunge the classroom, put everything back and rearrange the furniture ready for the next part of our day.
These might seem like little things, but they are exactly the things we want our crew to be about — looking out for one another, taking responsibility, working together and making sure everyone belongs.
What a start to the year! 🌟
I couldn’t be prouder of Crew Attenborough and I can’t wait to see where our journey together takes us. 💚
What a brilliant first week back for Crew Attenborough! 💚
We have spent lots of time getting to know one another, learning what makes our crew special and, most importantly, beginning to understand what it really means to work as a team.
We have tackled lots of crew challenges, including one where we had to build the tallest tower we could. It was fantastic to hear the children thinking carefully about how they could work together. One child summed it up perfectly:
“We need to work together or we won’t do it.”
Another noticed just how important communication was:
“We did some good communicating to help us.”
And today, our collaboration skills were REALLY put to the test… because the floor turned to lava! 🌋
Working in small teams, the children had to figure out how to get safely across our classroom using only the stepping stones. Just when they thought they had cracked it, Mrs Parsons made things even trickier…
The floor was lava all the way to Mrs Bradshaw’s office! 😱
There was lots of problem-solving, communicating, encouraging, changing plans and, most importantly, persevering when things didn’t go quite right.
Step by step, the children worked together to pass the stepping stones all the way from Class Five, along the corridor and safely to Mrs Bradshaw’s office. And, of course, we couldn’t resist a sneaky little photo when we finally made it! 📸
What a brilliant way to finish our first week. We are already seeing the beginnings of a crew who listen to one another, encourage each other, solve problems together and don’t give up when something feels tricky.
We wonder what Crew Attenborough will be able to achieve when we really start working as one crew… 🌿💚
Today, Class Five took our guiding question beyond the classroom… and beyond the school gates!
Does crew stop at the school gates?
We decided that if our crew is about looking after one another, being part of something bigger and making a difference, then perhaps our crew should reach much further than our classroom.
We started by choosing some of our favourite books together. We talked about the stories we love, the books that make us laugh, the ones that teach us something new and the ones we think other people might enjoy too.
Then came the fun part…
We became Book Fairies! 🧚♀️🧚♂️
The children designed their very own Book Fairy characters and created special labels to go inside our books, explaining what our mission was all about.
And then we headed out on our crew mission…
Beyond our school gates and into our community! 🌳📚
Armed with our books and our Book Fairy labels, we hid our books in different places around Norton for members of our community to discover.
But there was an important part to our mission…
We weren’t giving the books away forever. We wanted the people who found them to read, enjoy and then re-hide them for somebody else to find.
So our books could keep travelling.
Our crew mission had gone beyond the school gates, but so had something else…
❤️ Our love of reading!
We loved imagining someone walking through Norton, discovering one of our books and wondering who had left it there. We wondered where our books might travel next, who might read them and whether they might make someone else’s day a little bit brighter.
It made us think about how being part of a crew isn’t just about what happens when we are together. It is about what we choose to do for the people around us — even people we might never meet.
So, after lots of discussion this week, we think we might have an answer to our guiding question…
Does crew stop at the school gates?
Absolutely not. ❤️
Our crew stretches into our community, our kindness can travel further than we can, and today… our books did too. 📚🧚♀️✨
This week in Class Five, we spent some time thinking about something that might seem very simple… circles.
But we quickly discovered that circles can be pretty powerful.
A circle has no beginning and no end. It is strong, connected and continuous. And, of course, circles are a big part of life in our crew. Every day, we circle up together — to listen, share, celebrate, solve problems and make decisions. There is something special about sitting in a circle because everyone is part of it. There is no “front” or “back” and nobody is left out.
Our guiding question this week has been:
Does crew stop at the school gate?
Today, we started to explore that question by thinking about all the different crews we belong to outside of school.
The children came up with an amazing range of crews — football teams, families, gymnastics clubs, church groups, dance groups, friendship groups and much more. We organised ourselves into our different crews and then started to notice something really interesting…
Our crews overlap!
We might belong to different football teams, different families or different clubs, but we often had people in common. We discovered that although we are all wonderfully different, we actually have lots in common with one another.
This led us to think about how we behave in our different crews. Do we act differently depending on which crew we are in? Or do the things that make us us follow us wherever we go?
We thought about our character traits and realised that being kind, respectful, courageous, honest or compassionate doesn’t just belong in the classroom. These are qualities we carry with us into all of our crews.
So perhaps crew really doesn’t stop at the school gate…
In the afternoon, we took our circle thinking into our art.
We looked at the work of Wassily Kandinsky and noticed that he used circles again and again in his artwork. We explored his use of colour, shape and pattern before setting off to create our own Kandinsky-inspired pieces.
This time, we created trees made from circles, bringing together our ideas about connection, growth and belonging with our love of circles. ⭕🌳
It was lovely to see the children begin the day thinking about a simple shape and finish it thinking about something much bigger:
Who are my crews? Where do I belong? What do I bring to each crew? And how are we all connected?
Perhaps our circles aren’t just something we sit in after all… ❤️
This week Class Six have been thinking about the question “does Crew stop at the school gates?”. As part of this, we have been thinking about what we can do to help our local community and we decided we were going to be Book Fairies!
All week the children have been working really hard. They have been showing respect when listening to the stories and even spent time designing and redrafting their very own Book Fairies.
This morning we have been out on a walk around Norton hiding lots of books! If you are out and about around Norton today, or even walking home from school, make sure you keep an eye out for a book to take home and read!
