The Very Hungry Caterpillar

By Mrs H WILEMAN9th May 2023

Great excitement in The Hub for our new topic ‘What’s at the bottom of our garden?’

We looked at the life cycle of a butterfly through our story ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ by Eric Carle.

We demonstrated good sitting, looking and listening during our visual representation of the story. Good understanding was displayed, through eye gaze and pointing, to answer all our questions.

                                           

After some inspiration from our story, we explored our outdoor area for some very hungry caterpillars using our magnifying glass.

                                           

Can you imagine the excitement when some real live caterpillars arrived in our Hub for us to look after!

                                           

We immersed our classroom to make our caterpillars feel at home. We made a number line caterpillar, paper mache cocoon and symmetrical patterned butterflies. 

                                           

 

F2 Orchard Visit

By Jodie Buss29th March 2023

Wow! What a lovely morning F2 had at our local Pickering Community Orchard!

The weather held out for us and we definitely felt like Spring was on it’s way! We loved our leisurely walk round our community and looked for signs of Spring all around us!

When we arrived at the Orchard we were greeted and shown around the grounds… through the allotments where we spotted all types of different vegetables! Even some from this terms story ‘Oliver’s Vegetables!‘

We took a woodland stroll and spotted lots of signs of Spring- flowers beginning to bloom, animals beginning to emerge and the whole garden become more alive! We named daffodils, moss, bird nests, ladybirds, woodlice, spiders, earwigs and identified some local trees!

We also loved exploring the Orchard, where the apples are not quite ready yet, but the trees are beginning to bloom! Feeling the branches, trunks and leaves was great fun and we loved thinking of words to describe the different textures.

We were very intrigued at the bee hives, where the Orchard make their very own honey!  We talked about the process of how the bees make the honey and could see the bees leaving and entering the hive… busy at work!

We can’t wait to visit the Orchard soon… for some of our Forest School sessions….watch this space!

 

Y2 Plant Trees

By Miss P STATHERS16th March 2023

Year 2 have had a fabulous afternoon planting trees on the school field this afternoon. We each planted a tree. We planted them alongside a bamboo cane to ensure they keep their shape. On top of the tree, we placed a protective cylinder to ensure they do not get damaged. We can’t wait to watch them grow!

 

We’re Going on a Bear Hunt!

By Mrs H WILEMAN13th March 2023

We’re going on a bear hunt! We’re going to catch a big one! What a beautiful day!

We’re not scared, demonstrating our good looking and listening skills whilst watching our new story.

We absolutely love retelling all our stories through Tales Toolkit!

Mark making with paw prints, we completed our journey from start to finish using visuals to represent characters, a setting, a problem and a solution.

                                           

We creeped outdoors in search of bears using our own homemade binoculars.

                                             

Uh-Uh! We found grass. Long wavy grass.

                                             

Uh-Uh! We came across a river. A deep, cold river.

                                             

Uh-uh! We got stuck in the mud. Thick, oozy mud.

We made our own natural paintbrushes using sticks and grass creating our artwork using real mud.

                                             

Uh-uh! We stumbled across a forest. A big, dark forest.

                                             

Uh-uh! We had to go through a snowstorm. A swirling whirling snowstorm.

                                         

We arrived safely to school with our families through a real swirling, whirling snowstorm.

                                           

We had so much fun playing in real snow!

                                           

We made our own bears using a fork printing technique.

We’re still not scared!!!!!

                       

After completing the features on our bears… we felt very scared!

We ran all the way back home through the swirling whirling snowstorm, the deep dark forest, the thick oozy mud, the deep cold river, the long wavy grass, stumbled up the stairs and hid under the covers.

We demonstrated good teamwork skills creating the bedspread using a variety of materials to simulate the one in our story.

Can you spot us hiding under the covers?

We’re never, ever, ever going on a bear hunt again!!!!!

 

 

Gardening with the ‘HU4 Community Network’ Team!

By Jodie Buss20th June 2022

A BIG thanks to the local HU4 Community Network Team for donating a variety of beautiful flowers and herbs to our Foundation Stage flower beds! We had the best afternoon weeding and preparing our planters! We loved using our gardening tools and trowels, and getting our hands all dirty with compost and soil! We planted a selection of beautiful flowers, our favourites were definitely the Sunflowers! And we explored the different smells from the herbs (Thyme) and Lavender! We talked about some of the purposes of these flowers and herbs and what they needed to grow. We also carefully planted some strawberry plants, ready to be picked in the next few weeks! We can’t wait to watch our planters begin to fully bloom in the upcoming weeks…

 

Her Royal Majesty…

By Jodie Buss24th May 2022

In honour of the Queen’s upcoming Jubilee we have be doing all things Queenie this week! We had loads of fun in our Forest School session making mud portraits of our Queen. We talked about the texture of the paint we would need… not too wet, not too dry… we went digging for mud and then experimented adding water with our jugs to create the perfect consistency for our mud paint! It involved lots of digging, scooping, mixing, stirring… and group and pair talk about how much or how little water to add…

Finger fun in Forest School!

By Jodie Buss24th May 2022

This week in Forest School we worked on our fine motor skills… threading, pushing and pulling natural materials and making our very own nature boards. We went on a nature hunt around the grounds looking for different colours and textures of natural items. We loved discussing the textures, colours and smells of our collections and tried to identify everything we collected…

Forest School Perfume…

By Jodie Buss29th March 2022

Foundation Stage look forward to their Forest School Tuesday’s! And today we had great fun making our own perfumes…

We have been noticing the weather changing this week as the seasons begin to change and the world around us starts to grow again, the flowers, the bee’s, the tree’s! It’s all coming to life, the buds appearing and the shoots in the ground beginning to bloom. It’s the little things that you notice when you stop and take time to watch and listen… but these little things make a big picture of what’s happening in the world all around us.

We decided to go on a nature walk around school, looking for things that we could use to make our own perfumes and scents of spring. We talked about different flowers and weeds and collected bits from the ground and around us, using our senses…touch and smell. We talked about textures and scent and made observations of everything we saw.

We collected our findings and brought them back to our Forest School kitchen where we got stuck-in cutting, pulling, mixing, chopping, squashing, picking, stirring, pouring and sieving our very own Spring scents! We added a touch of colour, a splash of glittery magic and a lot of care and love into our recipes!

We compared scents with our friends, some smelt very strong! We discussed what we could smell and which ones we preferred…

Exploring ‘Green’

By Mrs L READ28th March 2022

Foundation Stage have been exploring all things GREEN!

We looked at how we can make green and explored different shades of it. We went on a green scavenger hunt to start with, exploring our outside area on a hunt for green things. We found lots of natural things around us- like leaves and plants! But we also spotted lots of toys and equipment that was green! We brought it altogether so we could explore the shade and then had a go at making our own shades of green, using white to make it lighter and black to make it darker. We explored what happens when we add more blue or more yellow.

In literacy we have been reading  ‘Jack and the Beanstalk‘ so lots of us decided to use our experimented green shades to create our own beanstalks! They looked absolutely superb, so we have showcased them around the classroom on display!

Forest School Fun!

By Jodie Buss9th March 2022

The sun shone for ‘Forest School’ this week as we had great fun in our first session back!

We loved getting our hands dirty and muddy planting and sowing seeds in our outdoor area! We talked about good places to plant seeds and the things they needed to grow. We looked at lots of different texts about Spring and looked out for signs all around us as we planted ready for Summer. This week in Literacy we have been reading ‘Oliver’s Vegetables‘ so we used our knowledge to plant our very own carrots, peas, broad-beans, beetroot and sunflowers! We discussed what we thought might happen to them over the coming weeks and how we would care for them. We had a go at pretending to be sunflowers ourselves, starting as a small seed and shooting up tall with our hands as wide as leaves!

We also had great fun planting some trees, ready to expand our outdoor forest area! We loved finding out about different types of trees, Birch and Oak, and talked about the roots and the very important job they do!

We loved getting physical using trowels, spades and rakes and loved coming together to work as a team!