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…

Where in the world does this book take us?

30th April 2025Elouise Chadwick

This week we have delved straight into case study one, the children considered the question, Where in the world does this book take us? We have focused our attention on a book titled ‘The Way Back Home’ written by Oliver Jeffers. The book has truly captivated the children and has encouraged them to imagine what it would be like if they were stuck on the moon. We have created some beautiful writing about things we might see, feel, hear and smell on the moon.

The children have practised their counting skills and have been counting the moon rocks in our maths area…

In our creative zone the children have been busy creating their very own space scene with flying rockets…

The children have also been inspired by Oliver Jeffers and have chosen to draw the characters from the story themselves. We most definitely have some artists in the making…

In our construction area, we have been busy making our very own rockets and spaceships. Take a look at our impressive models…

I wonder where our book will take us next week…

A week where Fairytale wishes do come true..

26th April 2025Sarah Winkley

To immerse and hook our Nursery children into our latest learning expedition “Once upon a time- who is hiding in the pages of this book?” We hosted a Fairytale Tea Party, with real china tea cups and where everyone came in their finest party clothes! The sun shone for us and the children really enjoyed spending special time together experiencing new things. To help the children understand what happens and how people behave at these splendid events, we first learnt a tea party song to the tune of “If you’re happy and you know it”. Why don’t you ask them to sing it to you?

In every good fairytale plot there is a mystery object that helps the hero or villain to succeed or cause mayhem! The children took part in a mystery object hunt, finding and naming the objects as they found them.

To embed the children’s understanding of these objects further and bring them to life we played a game of Pass the Parcel with the real objects hidden inside. This time the children discussed what the object was, how it feels and what it could be used for? The children had lots of fun and were really respectful and kind to each other by passing the parcel quickly and carefully to their friends.

As the week drew to a close the children work independently or in pairs as they wished, to decorate mystery objects using a variety of mediums such as felt tips, collage and special watercolour pencils. The importance of staying within the lines of the pictures was modelled to the children to help keep the shape of the mystery object, meaning that we would really need to be “Concentrating Crocodiles”. It was lovely to see the children who wanted to work in pairs, working out what they would like to create and choosing different children to work with, who wanted to create the same thing – being “Teamwork Tigers”. This beautiful artwork will be used to help create our final product. Well done Nursery, you were very pleased and proud of your beautiful work, as was I!

EYFS Community Meeting

25th April 2025Emma Powell

This morning we celebrated all of our learning in Early Years throughout the week. It was lovely to share our community meeting with our Nursery children and it was great to hear how hard they are all working for Mrs Winkley and Mrs Mortimer. We also shared Arthur’s amazing achievements at karate and he even showed us some of his moves!!

Here are our certificate winners for the week:

Sharing our Stories: 25/04/2025

25th April 2025Geoff Hewitt

Beautiful Work This Week

Here’s a selection of beautiful work from across the XP Trust from this week. To read about other stories from across the XP Trust, visit xptrust.org.

Top of the Blogs

Class 8 are Historians @ Green Top

Children dress up day @ Plover

Crowning the King and Queen of Carcroft @ Carcroft School

G31 Year 7 POL – Tonight! @ XP Gateshead

A Fairytale Tea Party @ Norton Infants

Fabulous Fieldwork @ Norton Juniors

Share your stories with us!

We now have a new dedicated news email so that you can send your stories, updates or ideas about potential news articles directly to us in Comms.

It might be something you or your students have achieved, a charity you’re supporting or anything at all that deserves a wider audience.

Write to us at [email protected] –  we want to hear about it, write about it and celebrate it!

A Fairytale Tea Party

22nd April 2025Elouise Chadwick

Today, the children in EYFS, have been hooked into our new expedition titled ‘Once Upon a Time’. The children came dressed in their best and attended our very own fairytale tea party…

We are looking forward to going on some fairytale adventures this term.

Easter Celebrations

21st April 2025Sarah Winkley

Nursery have had a wonderful time over the past week celebrating Easter. We began the week with a puppet show telling the traditional easter story of Jesus. The children listened carefully and were encouraged to ask questions after the show or explain their feelings or opinions about the story. Some of which were; “I think it’s sad because Jesus died” and “It was mean, because they made him carry that cross up the big hill”.

During their free play we captured some of the children creating their own puppet shows about Jesus, showing they were embedding their learning in their play.

The children baked and decorated their own easter themed biscuits, using flour, sugar, butter and an egg. They carefully took turns to weigh out ingredients with support and followed instructions to mix, beat, roll and cut out their dough. The children each chose their own easter time shape cutter and colour icing along with decorations to make their biscuits extra yummy!

We also had an egg-stra special visit from the Easter Bunny himself, who had heard about how hard we have been working and how kind we have all been, so decided to bring some of our treats early! He brought us an Easter Egg and we all had cuddles or high fives! There were some very excited children and grown ups….

At home we have been working hard and collaboratively with our parents to design and create a decorated boiled egg. Some entries were a single egg whilst others were a whole scene of egg themed characters. They were all absolutely amazing, so much effort and time had been spent working together. The winners of our EYFS competition in Nursery were chosen by the Reception children, who judged and voted for all of the entries (an extremely tough job). The winners were Willow from Am Nursery for her egg filled bonnet and Jenny from Pm Nursery for her Leonardo, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Well done girls! However a huge thank you and well done to everyone, as all of the entries were outstanding, such beautiful work and the children were so proud. Here they are…

We finished our week with lots of fun in the sunshine including an Easter Egg Hunt, the children had lots of fun.