Time has flown so quickly. I can’t believe we are at the end of the year already! Your children have all made so much progress, it has been amazing to watch them develop. Thank you for all the fun times we have had….trips out, party days, ice cream, bouncy castle and lots of fun and laughter. It has been a pleasure working with all of the children this year and building up relationships with the whole your family. Thank you for the love and support you show your child and I can’t wait to see what wonderful things you all get up to in the future. Thank you to the most beautiful butterflies ever! Have an amazing holiday and see you in September….lots of love from Claire, Catherine, Lou, Cathy and Mia x

To end the year we have done lots of fun things this week. We had popcorn and a movie, a pizza party and ice lollies ‘at the beach’ in music today.

Over this half term we have been learning about how animations are made. We used an app (called stop motion) to create our own animations. They are created by taking a photo then moving the characters along and taking another photo. Once many photos have been taken they are then played back at a fast speed. This speed makes it look like it was a movie animation.

Look what came to school yesterday…an ice cream van! The children (and the adults) enjoyed a lovely treat. Thank you very much, they were delicious!

For our geography and science sessions we have been looking at the water cycle and what each part is called. We learnt the vocabulary evaporation and precipitation and matched it with the different parts. Then we created our own water cycle in the craft sessions.

We watched a video clip about the journey that water droplets go on around our water cycle. Here is the video if you would like to watch it.

Over the past few weeks we have been looking at art by Claude Monet. We have been learning about the life of Monet and the style that he uses in his paintings. We used his pictures showing the lilies to create our own artwork.

We used paint to create the wash background of the water. Then tissue paper was used to scrunch up and place on the card lilies.

Over the past few weeks we have been investigating shapes and their properties. We have built towers and other creations out of the 3d shapes and this week used paint to create 2d shapes. We focussed on being able to name the shapes and recognise them. We then used shapes to create patterns.

The artwork we have been looking at this week is watercolour art by Claude Monet. Linked with our under the sea topic, we looked at paintings that had a water theme. We used a wash technique for the background and then used thicker paint to add in the detail. If you want to learn more about Monet, click the link below.

We went down to the forest this week. It was so lovely and cool in there so we had a great time outside away from the heat! There are lots of things to explore down in the forest. We look for minibeasts and also like digging. This week we also played hide and seek and found the hidden ball! We liked using our imagination again this week and used sticks as brooms and horses.

We also had fun bouncing around on the bouncy castle this week. The children were better at bouncing around than the adults. It was exhausting! It was nice to have fun with our friends, take turns with others and to enjoy some fun exercise.

This week we have been looking at 3d shapes in maths. We practised saying the name of the shape and then compared this to what the shape looks like in real life. We described the shape by its properties and used mathematical vocabulary, faces and vertices. We played bingo games and built towers in different ways.

We also made some playdough so that we could make our own shapes. It was good fun trying to make challenging shapes like pyramids out of the playdough! Have a look around your homes…can you find any shapes? Which shapes did you find?

Not only have we looked at 3d shapes this week but we have continued with number work. Using manipulatives (resources like numicon) is a good way to learn different maths strategies.

This term we are continuing with our Under the Sea topic. We made starfish out of salt dough. We had to make the dough and mould it in to a starfish shape. Then they had to dry out and then baked in the oven. Once they had cooled and hardened we were able to paint them and add decorations.

During our music session we had a calming time where we are able to relax. For this session we experienced sat under the blue fabric as if it was under the sea. The fabric moved and floated above us. We also used the ocean drum. This is a special drum that sounds like the waves as you gently move it.