Settling in…

Over the past eight days of this brand new school year, Nursery have been immersing themselves, exploring and adjusting to their new environment. The children have had lots of fun and have began to make new friendships through Crew and playing together. We have been learning all about what Crew is and how we gather for Crew each day, circling up and sharing information about ourselves. We have taken part in crew challenges where the children have had to work together to play simple games and compete against either Crew Mortimer or Crew Winkley. The children have worked very hard to understand and take part in the games and shown courage when talking in their Crews.

Passing the ball above their heads in their crew line.

Gathering balls and replacing them in the baskets – fastest crew first.

We also had some surprise visitors this week that have helped us to begin to understand how to spread kindness. They were the “Kindness Elves” and they brought with them gifts for the children which were Everywhere Bears for each crew. These bears will be sent home each week with a child from both crews, to have adventures of their own, just like the children from our hook text “The Everywhere Bear” by Julia Donaldson and Rebecca Cobb. The children are very excited to have met the elves and have been trying hard to show kindness to each other.

Meet our Kindness Elves ❤️

We were surprised to find some special visitors in our class this morning. The Kindness Elves left us a special gift…our very own ‘Everywhere Bear’.

The children have loved having snuggles and we all had a chat about what we will do with ‘Everywhere Bear’ when it is our turn to take them home.

We are hoping the kindness elves return soon! ☺️

What an amazing first week back

We have really enjoyed getting to know each other in Class 2 and have loved exploring in all of our areas of provision. We particularly love our new outdoor area – it is amazing! We are already looking forward to the year ahead….it’s going to be lots of fun.

Our first community meeting…

This week in reception we have been talking to the children about our Habits of Working and Learning, which are, WORK HARD, GET SMART and BE KIND. Today we got to celebrate our stars of the week. We must say a huge well done to all of the children for settling into full time school so seamlessly.

Here are this weeks stars…

Crew week in Year One

We have had an amazing week making new friends, playing team building games and decorating biscuits. In crew we focussed on our guiding question: ‘How does what we do impact others?’ and we discussed how we can show our kindness to others. We visited Class 1 and Class 2 and shared our biscuits with them. What an amazing week we have had!

What an amazing start!

The children in Class 1 have settled in beautifully this week. They have enjoyed getting to know all the different areas of the classroom…

We’ve loved exploring our new outdoor area…

Time Capsule ⏳

We spent the morning creating our very own class five time capsule. We wrote a letter to our future selves, drew around our hands, measured how tall we are and included a picture of our favourite things. We have sealed it ready to open it on the last day of year two to see how much we have learned and grown.

Introducing the new Class Five!

What a great first day back we had! We started the day with a Play-Doh challenge, followed by bingo! In the afternoon we shared the story Our Class is a Family (Here is the link if you would like to share the story at home!) We made an anchor chart of how we thought our classroom is like a family and added some art work of our families. We even managed to find a little bit of time for some construction!

Brilliant start to the year Class 5 – well done

From The Ground Up: LISTEN NOW!

Check out one of our students’ latest beautiful Expedition products, featuring powerful folk songs created by Year 7 at XP Gateshead, inspired by the rich mining heritage of North-East England. From performing mining-related songs to studying historical events and visiting Beamish Museum, our students have captured the essence of the miners’ stories.

Dive into the history and heart of mining communities with us and listen along in all your favourite places here!

Every child is an artist…

Over the past two weeks the children across Norton Campus have been creating a piece of artwork that represents an olympic sport. The children have well and truly showcased their talents and artistic flair and have produced some beautiful artwork. Today we got chance to see the work they have created and we went on a Norton Campus gallery walk. Here’s what we saw…

The children took great pleasure in walking around both sites looking at the beautiful artwork that was on display…

The children across Norton Campus also wrote some beautiful postcards to one another which were warmly received and made everyone smile 🙂

Thank you to all those involved in this. It was a great success!