Christmas themed fun and learning

In the run up to Christmas most of our learning was Christmas themed, we wrote stories about a Little Red Elf and a lost toy, we painted Christmas trees and drew Christmas trees (inspired by the stories: The Christmas Pine and Pick a Pine Tree), we played Rudolph beetle drive with tricky words and spot arrangements on a dice, we played lots of counting games, did Christmas jigsaws played Christmas describing games, wrote lots of Christmas cards. We also played Christmas snap, made Christmas repeating patterns on bracelets, on paper chains and made Candy canes. We enjoyed reading lots of Christmas books and listened to Christmas stories on the audio book player. We also enjoyed lots of dressing up as Christmas characters and helping the Little Red Elf to solve problems like: sorting out the Christmas gifts for the Numberblocks and working out what was in some of the Christmas parcels.

 

Making Christmas cakes

We read the story of Lucy and Tom’s Christmas and were inspired to make our own Christmas cakes using a traditional recipe. We followed Mrs Noden’s Grandmother’s cake recipe and worked in teams to do different jobs, grating orange zest, measuring the dry ingredients, cracking eggs, creaming the butter and sugar together and chopping cherries. We all had a go at mixing the

cake 8 times and making a Christmas wish as we mixed. We spooned the mixture into bean cans and Mrs Noden took them home to bake. The next day we put marzipan and icing on the top and wrote a gift tag for the cakes so we could give them to a loved one.

Making Christmas decorations

For our final Forest Schools session of the year we were sent a bag of items to help us make our own Christmas decorations for the tree, we drilled holes in wooden disks and then used paint to make a thumb print snowman.

Making Christmas trees outdoors

…made a Christmas tree
From sticks upon the ground.
She/he laid them in a triangle shape
Right where they were found.

It wasn’t tall or glittery
But everyone could see
Christmas magic still appears
In every kind of tree.

In our woodland in early December, we made Christmas trees using natural fallen resources. We counted to make sure we had at least 10 sticks each and talked about the length of our sticks using the language of long, short, longer, shorter, longest and shortest. We tried hard to place our sticks in order according to their length to help us to form a Christmas tree shape.

Mrs Johnson and Mrs Clasper witnessed some excellent teamwork, collaboration and giggles as we reflected on our creations. Enjoy looking at our photographs.

Bonfire night inspired learning

We had a week of bonfire night inspired learning! Starting off with Ziggy telling us about a bonfire celebration he went to with his friend Anna who fell in the mud. We have made our own safe fireworks and helped a firework company design firework displays by counting carefully.

A Bonfire party

 

On Wednesday, we received an invitation in the post from Squirrel inviting us to his bonfire party! When we arrived in the Woodland, Squirrel was not there because he was busy preparing for the party. He had left his to-do-list though so we could give him a hand preparing.
Our photographs show us singing a bonfire song which we added to in our work in music this afternoon, making natural sparklers by tying the leaves to a stick using a pipe cleaner, talking about safety around the fire pit and how Mrs Gregory would create the fire. Finally, we enjoyed the edible sparklers that we made using chocolate melted on the fire by Mrs Gregory. What a super morning we all had.

A visit from a helicopter

We really enjoyed our visit from a helicopter!

Careers and aspirations role play

We took part in lots of role play – exploring different careers we could have; being scientists, working in a doctors, working in a vets, a beauticians, a hair dressers, an explorers, a train driver, an ice cream shop, a bakers, a cafe, an authors office and an archaeological dig.

Learning about vehicles

During our careers and aspirations week we explored careers we could have that involve vehicles. We enjoyed the car wash and the garage.

We learnt about Harvest Celebrations

We joined in with the Harvest celebrations in school and we looked at photos of Harvest displays in Christian Churches. We talked about what they all had in common.