Spring 2024
EYFS Outdoor Spring Day
Well it certainly didn't feel like glorious Spring weather but we didn't let it dampen our spirits and we had a wonderful Outdoor Day for our Spring topic. We had such fun working together from Preschool to Reception.
Our morning consisted of lots of Spring activities where we rotated around so we each worked in our groups to try each of them:
From Nest Building that helped us think about the different types of birds that live in our woods. We tried to spot some, listen for some, found out about their life cycles, the different types of nests they build and then created our own.
We went on a bug hunt in our wooded area to hunt for worms, woodlice, spiders and ladybirds. We remembered to carefully respect them as we captured them in our pots and looked at them through magnifying glasses. Then we even built our little friends a bug house!
We had fun using natural materials to create Easter Bunnies, thinking about all the rabbits features too.
We also went on an 'Easter Egg Hunt' to find 'eggs' before collecting natural materials to make our own decorated eggs.
After a picnic lunch and a story we headed out for a nature adventure to spot some more wildlife and signs of Spring. Then finally back at school we planted our own conkers so we could grow our very own Horse Chestnut trees.
So much fun and adventure and we 'wowed' everyone how we worked together and helped one another. Good team work EYFS.
We started off our day by heading to the wild woods to think about Goldilocks and the Three Bears. On the way we spotted some frogs in the pond and geese flying up above us. Once we arrived at the woods we listened to the story before acting out our own mini Goldilocks drama. There were some great storyteller voices used!
We then headed to the beach to build some houses for the Three Little Pigs. We used the natural resources around us to build our houses - there were grasses from the dunes for the straw, lots of driftwood for the sticks and lots of different stones for the bricks. They really used their imaginations, adding shells for decorations and fantastic moats and trap doors to stop the wolf! One group even made their own "piggy town!"
We headed to Hindmarsh Hall for our lunch and shared some stories. One story was about the three little wolves and a big, bad pig! We also sang our 3 Little Pig song for the grown ups with lots of dance moves and actions.
After lunch we put up our hoods and headed back to the beach to build our favourite fairytale in the sand before heading back to school.
It was lovely to see how the class worked together in teams to complete their challenges and how kind and supportive they are to one another. A huge well done everyone!
We began a new story in RWInc 'Let's Sing' which helped remind us of the 'ck' sound and more blending as well as speeding up our 'Fred in our head' skills as we tried to blend silently before reading words out loud. In English we continued our 'We're Going on A Bear Hunt' writing which is already beginning to make a difference with our recording.
This week in maths it was all about comparison and using vocabulary such as 'more than' and 'fewer than' so we had lots of puzzles to solve to compare numbers.
Our week was of course filled with lots of dinosaur adventures and we were so excited to invite our families in to show them a snapshot of our learning as we performed an assembly. We really did 'wow' everyone with our facts and skills across the curriculum.
However, as well as our dinosaur learning in art we learnt how to make a wax resistant picture and use a water colour paint wash to make background as part of our paeloart. We continued our skills with NUFC and in addition we celebrated Chinese New Year. We found out about traditions, the culture and had fun embracing a bit of Chinese Creativity. Another highlight of the week was having our own Chinese New Year which involved Dragon dancing and having a feast, we even got our fortune cookies.
Then we must not forget our recognition of the nation online safety day. We work on safety continuously but it was good to have an extra emphasis for the day of how to keep us safe online.
Beach Day - Tuesday 30th January
WOW, just WOW! Well we were SO grateful for the glorious sunshine and despite it being Winter, we were so lucky and our beach day felt like a tropical Spring Day.
We made our way along to the beach taking note of the River Aln tide, spotting spring flowers of snowdrops and even the first daffodils as well as listening and spotting birds. Once at the beach we had lots of activities that helped us to explore and cement some of our dinosaur knowledge. We made our very own Dinosaur Worlds on the Beach and thought about what Dinosaurs would have needed and the geography of their land. After a little break we worked in Crews to create our very own dinosaurs thinking about the features they had.
On the way to lunch we came across the local sand artist 'Claire' from 'Soul2Sand' and got to see the early stages of her enormous sand art. We were incredibly lucky as after lunch we got to come and see the finished piece, even have a little go and then the best bit was getting to see it on the drone! What a treat.
Our focus for the afternoon was to understand local rocks and fossils. We found that there are different types of rocks and that they are made in different ways. We worked in our Crews to collect, gather and investigate rocks and fossils. Then finished our thinking by making a rock museum. Super geologists in the making!
Well done, Alnwick Castle Class.
It was a soggy start to the week before our absolutely glorious dinosaur beach day and fortunately sunshine was on our side so that was definitely a highlight of the week amongst the rest of our learning journey...
We began a new book 'Wuff Wuff' which helped remind us about the 'ck' sound as well as 'ff' and the tricky words 'the', 'my', 'I' and 'of'. In Maths, we used the 'Five Little Men in a Flying Saucer' to help us think about number composition.
Our afternoons were filled with singing our dinosaur songs, PE with NUFC, finding out about dinosaurs that live in the water and getting ready to invite you all in next week for our special Dinosaur assembly. We invited Preschool in for our dough disco time and had a wonderful dinosaur hunt with them too - so much fun!
Week ending 26th January
It may have been a stormy start to the week but it didn't deter our learning adventures!
In English we read a new story 'Pick it Up' which also introduced a different way to read and write a sound with 'ck' and 'ss'. In Maths we worked on our number composition to 5 and began by using the song '5 Little Speckled Frogs' but then adapted it into '5 Little Dinosaurs' - if you are lucky we will sing it to you! This helped us work out all the number bonds we can use to make 5, for example 4 and 1 or 2 and 3, we even started to look at 5 and 0. At the end of the week we worked on our 2D and 3D shapes and did some investigating with them.
We had fun in music building on our work and timings with singing and using the glockenspiels.
We are really enjoying our PE with NUFC too.
Then of course our dinosaur adventures continued. We looked at dinosaur tracks and what they could help us identify and we then had some fun making our own dinosaur tracks to help us through the rest of the week. In art we learnt about an artist called Henry De La Beche who was a paeloartist so we tried our own modern colouful paeloart!
We joined in with a fun experiment with Preschool to make a chemical reaction so we created our own mini volcanoes. We also had a busy time making our own copralites - we thought it was hilarious making dinosaur poo!
We were really lucky as so many people have artifacts that they brought or made at home so we had a nice dinosaur 'show and tell' session. It is so lovely yo see and hear about the learning that happens at home too! keep up the good work, Alnwick Castle Class.
It was exciting to begin the week with our 'Dinosaur Den' in full action! It worked perfectly for our thinking about skeletons and paleontology this week. We reminded ourselves about our learning about own skeletons in the Autumn term and why we need a skeleton. We then looked specifically at dinosaur skeletons and about the carnivorous dinosaur. We discovered that they would need sharp teeth, sharp claws and have a body featured so it can be fast and attack. We had our own mini paleontologists carefully digging up bones and using their knowledge to sort and identify dinosaur species.
In RWinc we looked and wrote about Story 4 'Jam' and in maths we tried to perfect our number ordering, recognising our numbers by describing their formation and shape which then helped us with our number formation of 1- 5.
There has been lots of wonderful learning and we definitely need some rest this weekend while we build up our back to school stamina again.
Week ending - 12th January
It is so wonderful to be back for 2024 and see and hear all the wonderful Alnwick Castle Class' news.
We began the week in full flow of our new Red Ditty stories and recognising and identifying our numbers. Numberblock games, Bingo and painting 5 Stampolines helped to refresh our speedy number work.
We also made a great start with remembering our musical skills from last half term using the glockenspiels and impressed Mr Moloney with our playing of notes. A start of a new term also gave us an opportunity to think about new beginnings, resolutions and our wishes for 2024!
There was much excitement to begin our dinosaur topic and we cannot wait to get going with our learning journey with it especially as we have chosen to make a 'Dinosaur Den' in our role play!
We have also begun VIP again and are all looking forward to doing 'Show and Tell' to the class as part of our VIP job.
SO much fun to be had for 2024 with a bit of dinosaur theme too!.