This week Chestnut Class have been getting ready for the Summer Fayre on the field. We have made bunting, decorated coins and helped decide on how much our stall enterprise items will be sold for. We have made tie dye hair scrunchies and lolly stick photograph frames.
Our community visit this week was walking around some of the reservoir at Chasewater Country Park. We then had a little treat in the cafe of a mini milk or Milky Way.
Personal care – teeth cleaning and washing our face – we love mirrors!
Rainforest snakes – feeling the snakes and joints and then painting bubble wrap to create a scaly picture.
Prepping for our Enterprise Stall.
Scooping ice cream and enjoying our treat
Enjoying a splash swimming session.
Our weekly music session with Bev. We liked playing our instruments and singing along to a song…supporting England to win on Sunday!
Wow where are the weeks going?…July already! Warm weather, sun shade and humid heat. We cannot believe it time is zooming by. Here is a collection of photographs of things we have been doing this week.
Delivering a thank you card to Kylie in Morrisons for showing us different areas of the store over the last two weeks. We then carried on getting things we needed for our cooking session tomorrow. Afterwards we visited WHS in Aldridge town centre to get craft items for our Enterprise Stall.
Fine motor cutting skills for our fragrant rainforest style tuff trays. Our room had a fresh aroma all day afterwards 🌿
During our music session this week we enjoyed being part of the class band and playing a choice of instruments.
Marvellous maths – continuing to develop our counting skills.
Enjoying our weekly swimming session – developing our swimming skills and having lots of fun.
On Thursday we had the opportunity to take part in this term’s enrichment activity which was a pizza picnic. We had a wonderful time playing games in the sunshine and sharing delicious pizza.
This week Chestnuts have been enjoying the breeze of the fan in the classroom during this warmer week.
A group from the class visited Morrisons and had a tour with Kylie from the supermarket. We heard about the fish and were asked what animal park, beef and lamb came from. We then looked at the salad bar, pizza counter and bakery – learning that they start baking at 4am! We absolutely loved having a go at scanning the barcodes on food items and in using the till. Afterwards we had a treat in Morrisons cafe with some juice and had fun decorating a cupcake with icing and sprinkles. Thank you Kylie and Morrisons – the last two weeks have been wonderful 🌟
Midland Metro Alliance are doing lots of construction work in our area. They are building new lines for the Midland Metro. They asked for our help to build bug hotels so that insects and bugs have a safe place to live. Our entries were entered into a competition with other schools and we were invited to attend Wolverhampton Football Stadium.
What an amazing celebration for our pupils involved in a Midlands Metro Bug Hotel Competition…
Yay we won two trophies and each received a medal for our contributions.
Also this week our Year 8 pupils have had the opportunity to a Careers Event visit Wolverhampton Racecourse.
As part of our Understanding of the World topic based on the rainforest, we enjoyed using our different senses to explore and chop fruit this week.
We also learned some Makaton signs to help us talk about our fruit.
Practising our swimming skills in the pool was a great way to cool down this week.
Marvellous Maths – developing our number formation and counting skills.
Making cupcakes as a midweek treat.
Music with Bev – developing our knowledge of pitch and beat and having fun investigating the instruments.
Fine motor skills – colouring pictures of fruit – can you keep between the lines? We also started to create some decorations for the Summer Fair – keep your eyes peeled for more information.
This week Chestnut Class have continued to work on the Amazon Rainforest as part of their Understanding the World topic work. Here we are enjoying the cocoa bean.
Using the cookery room to make sandwiches with Beth.
We had a focused tour with Kylie a Morrisons employee this week for our community visit. We listened about the deliveries and took time to see what exotic fruits they sold. We also listened to the produce available in the Fishmongers, hot counter, pizza station, cheese counter and the bakery. We saw the vats of doughnut fillings and were treated to one to take back to school. We then visited the cafe where we were treated to juice and decorated a cupcake to take home. Thank you Morrisons for hosting us and showing you around. It was really good fun.
ooo this week has been full of smiles and laughter 😆
Chestnut class have had a week of excitement and enjoyment bringing delight, cheerfulness and pleasure to all of us. Below is a collection of classroom and community events we have been joining in with.
A trip to Morrisons in Aldridge to get a few treats for our trip on Wednesday.
Opening a can, pouring black beans into a tray and then adding or retrieving worms from the imitation soil.
Making a newspaper report with our bug facts 🐞 🦟 🐜
Below are a collection of photos we captured from our amazing school trip – everyone had the freedom to move around as they wished and interact with all the resources in all the rooms.
We have also found time this week for some time on our bikes and trikes
Our bucket time this week was filled with all things minibeast and rainforest – from wiggly shaving foam and realistic jelly like worms to fluttering butterfly or jumping spider. We ended the session flicking frogs onto their lily pads.
More photographs from our trip on Wednesday. The centre offers a wide range of activities and events that are open to families as well as schools. The contact details are included on the flyer above.
On Thursday we enjoyed our first swimming session session of the term. We continued to develop the skills on our Rockhoppers swimming programme and enjoyed some fun and games in the water too.
During our Friday cooking session we made a special treat for some of the men in our lives. No peeking until Sunday though please!
Midlands Metro Alliance are building new lines for the Midland Metro. We have been asked to build bug hotels so that insects and bugs have a safe space to live.
We have spent the week exploring all things bug 🐛 🐞 🐜 and insect 🦟 related. Please take a look at some of the things we have been getting up to …
We had a look at many bug hotels and names such as The Woodlouse Lodge, Bee at home, Bugingham Palace and the Ladybird Lodge on the big screen. Afterwards we handled resources such as twine, canes, leaves, stones, soil and hay and some of us made our bug hotels to help insects and bugs in our surroundings.
Community time at Chasewater Country Park.
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Reading symbols to construct our own sentences using colourful semantics.
We really enjoyed reading together The Colour Monster and exploring the resources matched to each feeling …
Marvellous maths – practising our number and shape recognition skills.
Continuing to focus on planting and growing. We planted more seeds to grow a surprise and then ordered the steps we had to take to grow a plant. Watch this space to see our wonderful plants growing!
During our music session this week we investigated pitch. We played the notes and tried to identify notes that were the same and different.
On Thursday we invited our families in to take part in our Sports Showcase. We had the opportunity to take part in running races, the egg and spoon race and throwing activities. Some of us chose to sit, relax and cheer on our friends. We also enjoyed an orienteering route in the woods. A huge THANK YOU to everyone that came and supported us.
This week Chestnuts have been hanging🐒 🐍 🦥 around in the Rainforest having lots of fun. Below you will see a collection of activities we have been involved with …
Using a cloud to make it rain under our classroom rainforest canopy umbrella and ceiling net …
😆 Do you think you know more parrot jokes than me? Toucan play that game!
😆 What happens when you annoy a monkey? They go bananas!
😆 How can you learn more about spiders that live in the rainforest? Check out their web site!
Having fun with a disco dancing, giggling, boogie jigging rainforest Orangutan
Making insects we might find out of dough in the Amazonian rainforest, adding hoops onto a giggling moving monkey and exploring light up butterflies on leaves.
We are beginning to create a rainforest picture using a blue wash sky and corrugated card rainforest trees.
Here we are using fruits of the forest to peel, slice and make a rainforest tree out of our cut slices …
Our time in the community was spent at Chasewater Country Park. We looked in the visitors centre, spent time in the park and cooled down with a treat in the cafe.
Our Secondary red carpet new school uniform showcase … here we are showcasing the new navy fleece…
National number day – great outfits – we saw lots of numbers and shapes in lots of ways.
For our fun number day we also counted how many people wanted to play musical chairs, how many chairs we needed and how many of us were left in the game in each round. It created lots of giggles. Afterwards we sang 5 little monkeys jumping on the bed … I think we had a few more than 5!
Dough disco…waking our fingers up and working our muscles ready for writing.
Creating tree frogs as part of our rainforest topic.
Planting cress seeds as part of our learning about how plants grow.
Our weekly music session – using different instruments to keep the beat and enjoying some action songs.
A letter has come home about a class trip to Star Light Multi Care Centre – please check diary bags for details.
The Chestnuts Team would like to wish you a wonderful half term. We hope you enjoy less rushed mornings and time enjoying the sunny outdoors.
This week we are continuing to enjoy being immersed in our Amazon rainforest. We used our fine motor skills to help construct foam parrot gliders. We then learned how to hold them and fly them around our green space.
After our fantastic flying we had fun in the sun with bubbles and time on the grass.
Despite covering only 7% of the world’s land surface, rainforests are home to more than half of all the world’s animals and plants species – wow that’s amazing!
Here we are enjoying shared reading of ‘The Colour Monster’ story. We talked about the feelings of each character and explored resources to match and describe each emotion.
Our community visit this week was to Brownhills high street – we found ourselves in a charity shop and coming home with an extra member of the class!
Attention Autism – focusing on our maths concept of one more and one less this week.
Marvellous maths activities – we are continuing to practise our counting and representing skills.
Pencil control skills.
In music this week we celebrated Switzerland’s Eurovision win by enjoying some alphorn music and attempting to produce our own.
This week we have started to think about how plants grow. We planted peas and will watch to see how develop. We watched a video showing how a pea grows and we expect to see our roots start to grow, followed by green shoots.
This week Chestnuts have been looking at the fruits of the forest. We have explored the weight, texture , preparation, smell and taste of coconuts, mangoes, avocados, grapefruits, pineapples, oranges and bananas.
Threading tissue paper for our fine motor skills development to create colourful rainforest butterflies.
Matching bingo pairs – using scissors to cut out and then finding the same rainforest animal picture – snap!
Feeling the coconut skin, listening to the milk inside and then the fun bit – cracking the coconut or find the flesh inside – yummy or yuck?
Here we are trying on uniform that has the Oakwood logo on – what do you think?
During our music sessions since September we have been working on a project with the English National Opera called Finish This… We have worked hard on our composing and playing skills to produce a piece based on our colourful emotions, linked to ‘The Colour Monster’ story. The finished piece is on the ENO website along with compositions from other Oakwood classes and other schools from around the country.
Attention autism and marvellous maths. This week we have been developing our understanding of 0 and thinking about 1 more and 1 less.
Fine motor skills.
A wonderful sunny morning exploring the Forest School and field area.
Developing our cutting and handwriting skills. We created some rainforest leaves for our display.
During our music session this week we enjoyed using the boomwhackers to keep the beat as we danced to the maypole dance.
Our vocabulary and signing session this week was all about fruit.
This week Chestnut Class have been continuing with their Communication and Language, Problem Solving, PSHE, Physical and Creative sessions throughout the week alongside exploring The Rainforest.
Our bucket session this week was all about The Rainforest. Inside we had a surprise spider, scuttle bug, fluttering butterfly and colourful parrot tree to look at. Afterwards we made it rain using water, blue food colouring and cornflour. On the metal trays it made a great drip drop sound.
We used our Communication and Language skills to interact with a couple of rainforest
Our community visit this week was to Brownhills High Street. We are doing really well at travelling, doing our seatbelt, staying with the group and interacting with the community. We can find a basket, collect what we need from the shelves, load the items onto the belt at the till and pay for our products before we pack them in a carrier bag.
We have continued to think about some signs of spring that we may see and enjoyed investigating flowers inside and out.
The weather was lovely midweek and we made the most of the opportunity to play games, explore and sunbathe during our visit to the forest area.
We had a great time during our maths sessions this week. Some people enjoyed sharing the song ‘5 little men in a flying saucer’ while others began to think about 0.
During our fine motor skills session, we practised the movements needed to help us form m correctly. We also had a go at a painting activity to practise pressing more gently with our writing tool.
During our music session we continued to work on keeping the beat as the music got faster and slower. We also enjoyed dancing the hokey-cokey.
