Holly Class - stepping back into the past...

We have loved looking at and hearing the children talk about their wonderful family trees this week. Some of the children have not yet had the opportunity to share what they have brought in so we will continue to look at them next week. Thank you so much to everyone who spent time making them and sharing family memories!

We stepped back in time this week after reading the story 'Peepo!' and looking at the illustrations of a house and life about 80 years ago. We worked together to set up our role play home corner as the front room from Peepo, complete with cups and saucers for tea, black and white family photographs on the walls, a pile of logs outside the door waiting to go in and be put on the 'fire', and even a washing line of clothes. As you can see from the photos the children really enjoyed playing some of the toys like the ones we had seen the the book and comparing them to the toys we have in our classroom now. The children came to the conclusion that less of the toys were made from plastic and so for the rest of the week I challenged them to have a 'no plastic toys week' which they approached with great enthusiasm and creativity! 

In our maths lessons this week, all of the children have been working on doubles. We have done lots of practical work spotting doubles on dominoes, dice and numicon around the classroom. The Reception children found doubles by dotting paint and folding their paper over, whilst the Year 1 children learnt how to write he number sentences and find doubles of some bigger numbers. 

The children have used great imagination in our literacy lessons as they have become authors to the sequel of No-Bot! We found lots of tubes around our classroom that were just like Bernard the robot's arm (that he had lost at the end of the story we read), so the children came up with all sorts of things that it could be mistaken for if someone else found it. It was a magic wand, a broomstick, a tunnel and ramp for some cars and even a branch in a tree. The children have each planned their ideas into their story using a clever post-it story map and we are excited to get writing next week. 

A highlight of our week was the visit from Mr and Mrs Pilcher on Tuesday. They very kindly brought Mr Bumble to see us and Mr Pilcher showed us how he puts new shoes on horses and ponies! We had a look at some very big and very small horse shoes and then watched as Mr Bumble had some shoes taken off and they were replaced with new ones. We found out all about the different tools that are used to do this and even got to say hello and stroke Mr Bumble afterwards. 

We also had a wonderful visit from a Police Constable, who kindly came into school to tell us about his job.  We had opportunity to look at his uniform and try parts of it on.  All the children enjoyed the experience.

Year 1 also had their first swimming lesson this week. They were all very excited on the bus to the pool and all did brilliantly. I was very proud of everyone giving it their very best effort! 

Have a lovely, well deserved weekend everyone!