EYFS

Learning about New Zealand - During the Geography focus week, we traveled to New Zealand via the internet.  We learnt a lot about the culture, the food, the flag and all about Kiwi birds and wonderful waterfalls.  We even learnt some Maori language like Etu, E noho and counted to 10….Tahi, Rua, Toru, Wha, Rima, Ono, Whitu, Waru, Iwa, Tekau.

Swimming - 'Miss Burch, this is the best day ever!’  said the children after being in the pool.  

Lots of fun bouncing and splashing around made us laugh a lot.  We were extra lucky that lots of our parents came too. Some of us were a little bit nervous, but once we saw all our friends having fun, we relaxed too.Can't wait to do it again!   

We hope you're ready to dive deep into the magical world we've been exploring this week, because our nursery class took an incredible journey through the realms of mythical creatures as part of our fantastic Arts Focus!

Every day was a bubbling pot of creativity, where imaginations soared and the impossible became possible. Our little artists truly immersed themselves in the world of myths and legends, adding their own magical touches to their work.

We started our journey under the sea with the Rainbow Fish. Our children brought to life their own shimmering versions of this beautiful character. The result was an enchanting school of rainbow fish, each one unique, each one radiant.

Our oceanic adventure didn't stop there! Tentacles writhed and roiled as our brave little artists tackled the painting of a fearsome kraken.  The children loved creating dazzling patterns on their marine monsters.

From marine depths to ground level, our explorers swapped their paintbrushes for their own tiny feet to create some monstrously fun tracks! Watch out for the big, bad (but rather cute) monster footprints. Who knew monsters had such colorful and patterned feet?

We have been looking at the country we live in, with RB & RY’s focus being England. We have been learning about the country's famous landmarks and people. We even tried some different English food staples that some of us have not tried before; like crumpets with butter and jam or marmalade sandwiches. We all enjoyed trying something new, as most of us thought all the treats were yummy. 

Our classmates took a trip to Iceland to buy some learning resources to help with our maths lessons,  as we are learning about sharing. Miss Cascayan asked Mrs Harvey and Miss James to accompany our friends in getting some edible treats to help us understand the learning behind sharing better and encourage them to experience a life skill in going to the shops to buy things. 

Our friends in year 3 were learning about shadows. They had made shadow puppets and invited us to watch a show they performed with them. It was amazing! They even taught us how it all worked too. Thank you 3B for teaching us about shadow puppets.

We were very lucky to go swimming with our swim teachers at St.Helen’s. They looked after us as we went swimming in a deep pool where we couldn’t even touch the floor.  It was so much fun and we were all so good at it that we wanted to go again. So we wrote letters to Miss Doherty requesting RB to go for another swimming session. She said yes, and made all of RB very happy. We love swimming! Thank you Miss Doherty.

We have practiced using our imaginations using NowPressPlay and we went on an adventure under the sea to find a pirates treasure. 

Our butterflies hatched out of their cocoons and were ready to be released into the outside world. We waited until their wings were strong enough and Miss Cascayan took us all outside to watch them take flight and fly to freedom in the wide open world. 

In RB we have a hamster. His name is Arby and he lives in our classroom. We have been working together to design and make cages and mazes for him to run around and sleep in. This has been lots of fun as we like looking after everyone of God’s family, including all the animals. 

Mrs Venn and Mr Downer enrich our learning with other creative areas like music and dance. We always enjoy our lessons as they are so interactive and fun for everyone to take part in. We love performing for others and now have a stage in our classroom where we can do this everyday. We also get to use a karaoke machine to help us practise reading words and encourage us to be brave and perform in front of others. 

Banji Alexander came to visit St. Helen’s and talk to us about his new book. He answered some of our questions and shared with us what inspired him to write. He said that when he was in school he loved reading and because of this he has become an author. We love reading too and maybe one day we will write a book as awesome as his. Thank you Banji!