EYFS Mrs Barker 2021-2022

What a busy week we have had celebrating Chinese New Year as part of our whole school Cultures Week.

We began the week by sharing the story of The Chinese New Year – The Great Race.  We found out why each year is named after a different animal and how they chose who would be the first animal to represent a year.

On Wednesday we made, tasted and compared Chinese and English dumplings.   We got very sticky fingers rolling the dumpling dough into balls.   We liked the taste of them both, but the English dumplings were the favourite of most children, especially dipped in gravy, yummy yummy!!

As it is the year of the Tiger this year, we made another tasty treat …….Tiger biscuits.  We used coloured icing to create a tiger face.  Don’t they look fabulous.

Today, we got to try on some beautiful Chinese outfits.  We thought we looked like the Emperor and the Princess from the story about the Great Race we read earlier in the week.

In the Art & Design Area we have all been busy making our own Chinese Dragon, which we will use in PE to do some Chinese dancing.  We are really looking forward to doing this tomorrow.

Tricky Word Warriors

Do you like our collection of Word Warriors who help us to read lots of tricky words and help us to use them in our writing?

What helpful little friends we all are.

We’re going on a shape hunt, we going to find some big ones, we’re not scared, what a beautiful day!!!!

What a beautiful Welly Wednesday we had searching for shapes.  Just look at how many different shapes we found.

We collected lots of sticks and twigs and had a go at making our own.  We used the words sides and corners to describe our shapes and made sure we collected the right amount that we needed.  We were super clever at remembering that we needed 4 twigs of exactly the same size to make a square and that we needed 2 long and 2 short twigs to made a rectangle.

Colin the Chameleon

We have really enjoyed having another special visitor to our classroom.  Colin the Chameleon joined us for Phonics, he helped to give out the boards and pens and we all had a go at writing his name.  We did a fabulous job sounding out Colin.  Colin also did a fabulous…

Welly Wednesday

We really enjoyed our afternoon exploring outside in our lovely school grounds.

We first noticed that the trees looked different.  We stopped and talked about what had happened to them.  We remembered that back in Autumn the leaves change colour first and then fall off.  We also remembered that it had been very windy and the wind could have blown them off.

We found a HUGE pile of leaves and enjoyed playing in them.  We used words like scrunchy, crunchy, crispy and wrinkly to describe them.

As we walked along the grass at top of the field we found some plants that had the same name as some of the girls in our class.  We found some Ivy, Holly and some Willow.  We also found a Daisy but unfortunately for the boys we couldn’t find any Sam or Dylan.

Some of the children noticed big piles of mud on the school field and we talked about why they were there.  The children left some gifts of Ivy and sticks just in case the moles came back up.

We looked closely at the branch of a pine tree and talked about why we thought the foliage was called needles.  We picked a few of the needles off and could feel that they were a little bit sharp just like real needles.

Inside the Nature Area we got out the paper and pens and had a go at drawing what we could see.  Some children found hairy rocks, a big wooden chair, a bird box, flags and even a horse eating the grass in the field.  We had a go at writing labels to say what our drawings were too.  What super little writers we are!!

We had a new member of the class join us today.

He sat beautifully on the carpet for register and was very well behaved.

He helped us with our sounds during Phonics and enjoyed joining in our Maths session to write a number line up to 10.

What a superstar superhero!!

This week we have been exploring counting in 2's.

We brought pairs of socks in from home and created a washing line in the classroom.  We loved counting in 2's to find out how many socks we had.

During our Maths sessions we created a number line using the willow numbers and then collected…

During our Time to Talk session this afternoon, I asked the children ….

Do you think Polar Bears and Penguins are friends?

There were a lot of mixed responses with some children saying yes and some thinking no because the Polar Bears would eat the Penguins.

They were very…

We have been exploring stones and rocks.  This is because one of the children brought a little stone into school to show his friends.  He really loved the shape of the stone and said it looked like a dinosaur tooth.

We all had a look and a feel of the stone and we also thought that it looked…

What a fabulous morning we have had exploring the ice that Jack Frost had left for us in our outdoor area.

We searched for signs of Winter and found lots of lovely frozen things.

We used tools to break the ice and used the ice to build an igloo for the penguins.

When we had just got…

Our new topic is called Winter Wonderland.

We will explore:

The changes that happen during Winter

The types of weather associated with Winter

The places that have snow all year round and the types of animals that live there

We are really looking forward to this new topic and…

What a fabulous afternoon we have had, talking about and exploring pirates.

Our 'In the moment' activities started with reading Dylan's pirate story that he had brought in from home.  We really loved the story and wanted to explore pirates a bit more.

We made up adventure stories with…