Acorns

What a fantastic start to the new term! The children in Acorn Class have settled into their routines beautifully, spending these first few days making new friends, learning names, and discovering how to share our space and toys together.

Here is a look at what we have been up to:

Games & Early Learning: We’ve been playing matching games like picture bingo and memory pairs. We also had our very first phonics lessons, where the children learned "magnet eyes," "my turn, your turn," and how to use "golden sitting" to listen closely on the carpet.

Outdoor Adventures: Rain or shine, we’ve been exploring the Garden! The children pulled on their wellies to splash around in our new mud digging area, built impressive tractors using blocks, crates, tyres, and cable reels, and practiced putting on safety helmets to ride the bikes.

Active Play & PE: From tackling the climbing frame and sliding down the slide to joining their first PE lesson with Mr. Neary, the class has been on the move.  Mr. Neary was so impressed by how calm, attentive, and great at listening everyone was!

It has been a truly joyful beginning, and we are so proud of how well the children are adapting. We can’t wait for all the fun learning ahead!

Year 1 & 2

A huge congratulations to all our Year 1 and year 2 children for returning to school with such a positive and calm attitude. We have been so impressed with how quickly they are learning new routines and facing all of the challenges we have thrown at them with determination!  The children have started the week with a focus on handwriting and in Maths we have introduced our Place Value topic. in Year 2 children have learnt how to use a Place Value Chart and we have seen some lovley practical learning using the Base 10 manipulatives.

The children have also officially kicked off their brand-new Design & Technology topic, Stable Structures, and the excitement in the classrooms has been contagious! The children started their journey by using their own bodies to explore balance, discovering first hand how essential a solid base is to a successful structure. This wonderful curiosity quickly spilled over into their own learning time, where they put their new knowledge straight to work using all kinds of different materials to build, experiment, and create. What made us proudest, though, was seeing their kindness, brilliant communication, and team spirit when things didn't go quite to plan. Whenever a structure wobbled or collapsed, nobody gave up. Instead, they put their heads together to problem-solve, sharing brilliant ideas like, "The base is narrow, it needs to be wider!" and "It needs extra supports to make it more stable."

Watching our young engineers encourage one another and work together so brilliantly has been a joy. We can't wait to see what fantastic creations they build next!

Year 3 & 4

The children have returned to school after the summer break ready to learn and full of enthusiasm! It has been wonderful to see them settle so quickly into Year 3/4 and make such a positive start to the new school year.

In History, the children became historians as we began our new topic, How Have Children’s Lives Changed? The children explored and compared a range of primary and secondary sources to investigate the lives of children during the Roman, Tudor and Victorian periods. They looked carefully for examples of continuity and change and were fascinated to discover that, although children’s lives have changed greatly over time, some things have remained the same, including children going to school!

In Science, we started our new topic, Animals, Including Humans. We began by recapping the seven life processes that tell us something is living before moving on to explore the human skeleton. The children had great fun identifying and labelling the different bones in the human body!

In English, we have been incredibly impressed with how hard the children have been working on their handwriting. Everyone is learning to sit in the correct handwriting position, hold their pencil correctly, make sure their letters sit neatly on the line and form beautiful joins. The children are already making fantastic progress, so hopefully they can show off some of their wonderful new handwriting skills at home!

Year 5 & 6

While the Year 6 children were working hard on their transition tests, we in Year 5 (along with a few Year 6 pupils) were able to flex our historical enquiry muscles and learn all about life for children in Victorian Britain. We investigated the life of a child working down a mine and decided we would not have liked getting up to be at work by 5.00 am, only to finish at 5.30 pm after a full day in the dark. They even had to eat their small packed lunches down in the dark, dusty mine! Unsurprisingly, we all agreed we would have preferred to be rich Victorian children—spending our days eating delicious food, being educated at home by a governess, and having servants to wait on us.

On Thursday, we further explored Victorian life, this time looking at the work of the great reformer Dr Barnardo. He worked tirelessly to help London's poor children by establishing 96 homes for them and caring for over 8,500 children at a time. He fought hard to change people's perceptions of the poor, working to ensure children could go to school rather than being forced to work in unsafe environments.

Finally, we looked at paintings created by L. S. Lowry, which were inspired by the industrial cities of Northern England, and even had a go at creating our own artwork. We have all had lots of fun!

In science, we were given some rather challenging mixtures - and then told to separate them into their component parts.  We were told that we couldn't touch any part of the mixtures with our hands, therefore we had to try a range of different tools, in our groups, to complete the task.  We then logged our investigations in our science books - and cleaned everything up!