Who’s that Trip, trapping over my bridge?

21st May 2025Sarah Winkley

Last week Nursery continued to be geographers as they explored the final part of our first case study “Where in the world will this story take us?” The children explored rivers, comparing our local river in Norton; the River Went to the River Congo in Africa.

To hook the children into their learning and help them explore their local area they observed the “Adventures of our Everywhere Bear”, as he sent them a special dojo message with photos of his trek to the River Went, through the magical forest. They loved to see their special class mascot out on his own adventuring and exploring around our village. Many of the children recognising key landmarks on his journey.

The Everywhere Bear beginning his adventure.

The Everywhere Bears adventures led us to our key text of The Three Billy Goats Gruff as we immersed ourselves into the story, due to it being set over a river. The children enjoyed learning about the characters in the story and identified that the Big Billy Goat Gruff was a hero and the wicked troll a villain. They were delighted when the troll was tossed into the river! Here are a few of our representations of the Troll and the Billy Goats Gruff from our maths learning this week focusing on triangles and rectangles.

This got us thinking about how deep the river might be? We then compared the River Went to a much deeper and wider river – the River Congo. The children took a gallery walk of photos of the river, noting differences and similarities between the Congo and the River Went.

We then boarded our imaginary canoes in groups of three, dressed with our binoculars and went on a virtual tour of the River Congo. Thinking about and imagining what we would be able to see, hear, smell and feel. We were very surprised when we were chased by crocodiles and sea snakes! We had to paddle fast! It was very scary and exciting. Not something you’d usually see or encounter at the River Went, thankfully.

The children had so much fun and used the imaginary experience to talk about what they may sense by a river. Beautiful work Nursery and something which you may get to experience for real sooner than you know as part of our fieldwork – shhh!!

Castles fit for a future Princess.

12th May 2025Sarah Winkley

Thinking back to last week as we continue with our current case study; “Where in the world will this story take you?” The week began with a visit from a special owl, who dropped by with some postcard clues, which had photos of various castles and palaces from around the world on the front, where our mystery key character “C” may have visited? This helped to hook the children in to our next text Cinderella.

To excite and engage the children further they created beautiful crowns using creative materials during our “Tranquil Tuesday” Crew and off we went on an adventure to a castle to enjoy and immerse ourselves in our new key text, it was very exciting!

The children carefully observed the illustrations in the story and other texts about castles and used the inspiration to shape another piece of beautiful artwork for our final product. They also drew their own castles outdoors in their play and experimented with fairytale castle themed stampers indoors in our painting provision.

In our Maths learning the children explored 2d shapes, thinking about how they look and using words to describe their shape and properties during a dice game. I modelled to the children how they could use the shapes to build/ create a castle. Some of the children copied the examples or my model but most created the most beautiful 2d shape castles and named the shapes they had used, thinking about why they would be useful for certain parts of the building. Here are some examples; “The drawbridge is a rectangle because it’s long and can go up and down” or “These are my pointy roofs, they’re three triangles” and “My windows are circles”. Just look at some of our beautiful work.

If you go down in the woods….

30th April 2025Sarah Winkley

This week began with Nursery taking a trip into the woods (within school grounds) to explore and experience what it would be like to be inside a forest as part of our first case study; Where in the world will this story take you? Our first anchor text of this case study is the classic fairytale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The children were so excited to go on an adventure and were also a little bit nervous about who or what they would find in the woods, as they explored using their senses.

Once inside the woods the children were relieved to find there weren’t any wolves, bears or Gruffalo’s! We used our senses to think about what we could see, hear, smell and feel with both our hands and feet. The children were read the story inside the woods to set the scene and bring the story to life. They really enjoyed it and listened attentively whilst holding their sticks, leaves, flowers and ferns.

Once back in the classroom the children shared thoughts of their experience and completed a class sense map, noting down ideas of what they could see, hear, smell and feel. There were some beautiful thoughts and sentences that were communicated from the adventure which really helped the children to understand what a forest is. We have used this knowledge and experience to inspire large scale pieces of artwork, which will be part of our final product in terms of creating a story setting. The children also watched a short video of a virtual tour through Sherwood Forest, in Nottingham, where they tried to spot Robin Hood! They then compared that to the experience of our school woods in Norton and talked about what was the same and what was different? They soon realised that forests were much bigger with larger trees, thicker bushes and more undergrowth. They also learnt that not only animals but people could also possibly live in a forest like in olden times. You have been great geographers Nursery! Here’s a sneak peak of our artwork…

Rockpool Explorers!

10th May 2024Rebecca Kendrew-Jones

Last week the children had a wonderful opportunity to explore a real life rock pool. They were able to touch a starfish, hold three types of crab and stroke an anemone. We also learned some amazing facts, the children’s favourite being that the whole in the middle of the starfish is both its mouth and bottom!

How can we save our seas? ♻️

10th May 2024Rebecca Kendrew-Jones

In our first expedition case study, children in the EYFS have been answering the question ‘How can we save our seas?’. To hook the children into this we completed a gallery walk looking at a range of images showing how plastic pollution is damaging our planet and endangering the creatures that live there.

I was amazed at how well the children reflected upon the images, articulated what they saw and how this made them feel. This was the start of a fantastic case study that prompted our children to become activists and make a stand against plastic pollution! Look at some of their amazing posters sharing the message to use our recycling bins to help save the seas!

Collaboration in Crew

4th May 2024Claire Goodyer

Last week when Ros Jones came in to visit she told us about the Peace Window, a beautiful stained glass window in Doncaster Mansion House. She told us that each symbol used in the design represented something from Doncaster’s history. In crew this week we worked together to research what each picture in the Peace Window represented and also found out that the window was made for everyone in the past and everyone today who seeks peace.

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 ⭐️