This week the children have continued to enjoy thinking creatively and working collaboratively to design and build structures on our field. Here you can see a den built by the children in play and lunch time and a fire pit and circle created by children in Forest School sessions.

Today class 3 planted a range of fruit trees on a section of our field: plum, cherry, pear and apple. The children have also created laminated signs to identify the different fruit trees which will form our own mini orchard. The children found the digging quite challenging due to the soil containing roots and rocks. It made us all think about the characters in our class novel Holes, however, the children in the book had to dig holes 5m deep by 5m wide! Quite a bit larger than the ones they dug today.

In each class the children are in the process of growing potatoes along with other seedlings. Classes are at varying stages from chitting the potatoes to planting and gradually covering with layers of compost.

Today two structures have begun to be constructed on our field, both will allow open ended creative play. The structures which are a pair of mini wigwams and a raised platform, could be the top of a rocket ship; the bow of a boat; Rapunzel’s tower; or any other creative idea which the children have.

In English this week…

Class One  have been developing their knowledge of instructions. Little Red Hen muddled her instructions up, so Class One helped her to reorder them. They they went on to write their own ‘how to make magic bread’ instructions.

Class Two have been using the Pie Corbett blogging lessons as their stimulus for their week’s writing. They have been thinking creatively to create their own dragon and describe it to the reader selecting appropriate language.

Class Three have been developing their knowledge of a biographies, identifying the audience, purpose, layout and language features. Next week they will be researching famous figures to write their own biography.

At last! We’re all back to school. There was great excitement for the children seeing their friends again, with lots of catching up to do.  We are all delighted to be teaching face to face again with a full school of happy faces.  It is like the children have never been away … I think we will all sleep very well on Friday night!

Nursery have been busy looking for signs of spring and have created some beautiful flower pictures and Mother’s Day cards.  They have all been thinking about their special mums.

Humpty Dumpty Fun.

During the last two weeks of lockdown, Class One focused on the Nursery Rhyme Humpty Dumpty. At home and in school, the children explored the rhyme and engaged in a range of cross curricular activities. They used drama to retell the rhyme; went through the magic mirror to interview Humpty Dumpty; identified the rhyming words; created rhyming strings; changed the main character and wrote their own rhyme; wrote a letter to Humpty Dumpty with a solution to his problem of always falling off walls; investigated how to stop Humpty Dumpty from cracking and also created cracked egg patterns.

In school, Class Two have been studying swimming pool Pop Art by David Hockney.  Before doing their own David Hockney swimming pool artwork, the children thought about what actions a swimmer might make; how their hair might fan out in the water and the patterns the water makes in a swimming pool.  They used oil pastels to create a swimmer and water patterns, then washed over it all with blue watercolour.  They found that the oil pastels resisted the watercolours.  Class Two have also enjoyed dissecting a daffodil to examine the parts of a flower.

Class Three began their return to school by celebrating all the amazing learning that was carried out both at home and in school during the lockdown. They have been working on collaborative skills.  In maths they have been working collaboratively to solve tricky problems which has involved looking for patterns; working systematically and using trial and error – lots of thinking involved! Their class novel this half term is Holes by Louis Sachar, the children have enjoyed making connections between the characters past and present in the story and making their own predictions on the plot.

It is great to start Forest School again, which continues to be on the school field as we are unable to go to Walcot Hall at the moment.  The children have been growing sunflowers and chitting potatoes as well as planting up and tending our raised vegetable beds.  They have been instrumental in developing our woodland area on the field by building a fire circle and wormery.  The saw and saw horse have been in action!  Due to a large poplar tree being felled we now had a long tree trunk, which has been a crocodile, jumping tree, adventure playground to name just a few of the creative play that has stemmed from this trunk along with a carved story chair. There are also plenty of stick bundles and logs around for the children to make dens and bug hotels.

And lastly thank you! We’d like to say a huge thank you to all the families for their sterling work during home schooling, to all the staff who continued to provide a wide range of learning opportunities online, in school and also from their homes and to all the children, both in school and at home, for their hard work.

We are all looking forward to our second week back in school, we hope you all have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Manning and the St. George’s staff team.