A Little Bird Told Me....

A huge thank you to all parents and au pairs, for your involvement and creative help with our Christmas performance. I think you will agree that it went brilliantly. The children are so proud of their beautiful costumes and scenery. They made all the difference to our Christmas play and provided a stunning backdrop to act against. We are very proud of your children and their hard work learning lines and speaking in clear, loud voices. Thank you again…

Miss Sullivan, Mrs Lewis, Mrs Gent and Mrs Moran.

A sneaky peek...

We are looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow morning at 9:30am. Otto and Basil are guarding the stage- we hope they don’t eat the robin!

St Andrew's Day

Today was St Andrew’s day. Rowan, Malindi and Tully came dressed in their own national dress…plus a very big and very furry Highland cow hat! During snack time we talked about the girls’ kilts and why they were dressed differently today. Rowan bought in some Scottish themed tea towels which we enjoyed looking at this morning. Mrs Gent surprised us all after lunch by turning up with her own traditional tartan on!

She told us all that she is from Scotland too just like the girls. Mrs Gent spoke to us about Scotland and we were all laughing at the funny Scottish words she taught us. Especially the Scottish word for ‘little’! Hearing about the Loch Ness Monster made us all creep closer and closer to Mrs Gent as we were hanging onto her every word. We asked some very interesting questions….does the Loch Ness Monster eat haggis?

We were all very excited about what we had learned and spent the afternoon looking through atlases to find Scotland and drawing pictures of Scottish mountains. We remembered that Mrs Gent said heather covered the mountains and that at a certain time of the year it was purple. There was definitely a purple theme running through our artwork this afternoon.

Mrs Gent told us about the special sword dance that Scottish boys learn…we didn’t have any swords so light sabers had to do! Lots of us danced the sword dance with Mrs Gent. It was very tricky, we had to jump over the ‘swords’ and turn around.

Mrs Gent also taught us the Scottish national anthem. We were all mesmerised as she sang ‘Flower of Scotland’ to us and many of us were to found humming it as the afternoon went on.

What a fabulous afternoon in Otter’s class.

Thank you for your continuing support

FS2 Stay and Play

Wow what a turn out!

Thank you to all of the parents…and au pairs who made it to this morning’s Christmas Play themed Stay and Play.

We hope you have got the glitter out of your hair and paint off your clothes. We are thrilled with the fabulous costumes, scenery and props made by you all and can’t wait to decorate the stage ready for our Christmas Extravaganza! We must say a big thank you to Mrs Luke and Jake for their efforts with the backdrop…Mrs Gent feels that you would have made excellent Blue Peter Presenters. We especially like the little frog!

Our cupboards are now filled with an array of wings, beaks, sheep, angels, stars, shepherds and camel humps. The birds, stars and Bethlehem paintings will really make the difference on our stage.

The children feel very proud that they have been involved in the whole process of putting on a show. Next week they will be creating posters to put up in the entrance to hall.

Before…

…After

And then there was a sailing otter....

Thanks to Thomas' Mum Otter class now have a song to rival the foxes.

http://youtu.be/uhN9eLsn4gw

It is very catchy and has been stuck in Miss Sullivan's head all day. 

A plea to all parents

Please don’t forget the PALs Christmas hampers. Foxes class are collecting party items and Otter class are collecting girl superhero items. We only have about 5 items each and would love to see our hampers over flowing. There is a prize for the class whose hamper raises the most money. Will it be Foxes or Otters?

Don’t forget it is our Christmas performance on Tuesday 10^th December. We will be making costumes and scenery on Thursday 28^th November at our stay and play. We look forward to seeing lots of you there.

Mrs Lewis and Miss Sullivan

What does the fox say?

Today Kyra and Brogan started singing a song called ‘what does the fox say?’ Mrs Moran loves this song. The girls were teaching other children the words.

Daniel really enjoyed this and soon was making up his own lyrics. He asked me ‘what does the car say’, I thought I was being clever and replied ‘vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom’ he shook his head, told me no and sang ‘beep, beep, beep beepty beep, beep, beep’.

What noise does a fox make? What noise does an otter make?

Does any one know a song about otters? Miss Sullivan and Otter class are disappointed because they don’t have a theme tune!

 Have a listen to the song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jofNR_WkoCE

Mrs Lewis and Miss Sullivan

The little red hen

Listen to the foxes retelling the story of ‘The Little Red Hen.’ Miss Sullivan and Mrs Lewis taught us the story actions and we all joined in with the repetitive phrases. Listen to how we change our voices for all of the characters.

Tuesday morning was very exciting. When we got to school we had received a letter from the Lister hen…

We were able to read lots of the key words; we recognised them from our phonics learning.

We decided that we should write story maps to read to our Lister hen. Miss Sullivan and Mrs Lewis wanted to see some labels and speech bubbles. We worked every hard to sound out the character’s names and used our sound mats to remind us of the graphemes we needed.

Some children used an ipad app called puppet pals to narrate their own puppet show of ‘ The little red hen.’ They played their stories for the Lister chickens. Can you hear their clear voices? Did they include everything from the story? Some of the children worked hard to include extra detail into their version of the story. We thought about adjectives...listen out for any descriptive words.

When we had finished writing our story maps we wrapped up warm and took them outside, into the garden, to the chicken coop! The hens were excited to see us. Mrs Scarisbrick fed them some grass and they came close to the fence so that they could hear the story. We all told our stories using loud, clear voices. The chickens made a lot of clucking noises; we thought that perhaps they wanted to bake some bread as well.

We then stood on the garden stage and performed the story chorally for the Lister chickens to enjoy. ….

After our busy morning we went back inside and enjoyed a tasty snack of home baked bread, we kneaded the dough on Monday afternoon just like the little red hen. We didn’t have to grow our own grain or cut, thresh and grind the wheat though! Mrs Lewis bought a bag of flour from the shops. We all worked together. No-one had to ‘Do it themselves.’

The Gingerbread Man

Well, what a busy few weeks we have had in FS2!

Ask your child to retell the story of ‘The Gingerbread Man’! We have been working very hard on our speaking skills and have rehearsed telling the story in a clear voice using actions to help us remember the sequence. We have been acting out the story using masks, puppets and small world characters. The fox at the end of the story prompted much discussion! Should he have eaten the poor Gingerbread man?

We wrote story maps to help us retell the story. Ask your child to show you how to do this! They are a fantastic way to encourage story telling language and work for any stories you may share at home.

We cooked our own delicious gingerbread men, and decorated them with an icing tube (tricky for little fingers). We ate them up before they ran away too!! Some of us didn’t like the taste of ginger; we discussed our own likes and dislikes. The root ginger confused some of us! It looked very different to the powdered ginger we used when cooking. There were lots of interesting ideas of what it could be.

Mixing powdered ginger into paint created some very fragrant artwork.

Next week we will be exploring the story of ‘The Little Red Hen’. Watch this space for more exciting story maps and retellings.

Have a nice half term...

Today we performed in our very first assembly. The children were outstanding in their rendition of Hakuna Matata. Here is a small clip showing their hard work. We are very proud of all the children and the work they have done this half term.

Enjoy the break. See you all in a week!

Mrs Lewis and Miss Sullivan

Expressive Art and Design

We have been busy transforming our creative area into an inviting, enclosed woodland to link our wildlife themed classrooms. The children have been painting foxes, otters, hedgehogs and squirrels. They are full of ideas of what our woodland needs. All of the FS children, teachers and practitioners have been working hard to enhance this learning environment. We will upload photos soon so that you can see it develop. For now here is a video of the children in FS2 as they created their own Andy Goldsworthy inspired art with natural materials. I think you will agree that the children produced some beautiful art!



Miss Sullivan and Mrs Lewis

Number hunt

The children in FS2 became number hunters today.....we discovered that numbers really are everywhere!

We explored the whole school and had fun hunting for numbers, we also learnt where all of our older brothers and sisters did their learning. The staff photo board provided many laughs, who knew our photographs could be so funny!?

Can you find any numbers in your house? Let us know by writing in the diary, sending in photographs or commenting on our blog.

Miss Sullivan and Mrs Lewis.

Camo Day

Today we wrote a letter thanking some of the helicopter pilots who came to visit us on 'Camo day'. We had great fun looking at some of the photos and talking about what we had seen. We found it very funny that the pilots were called Sgt Lewis and Sgt Sullivan just like our teachers. Some of us drew a picture of the helicopter to send them. We have sent them a link to the blog- will Sgt Lewis and Sgt Sullivan reply to us???

Don't forget this week we have asked you to go on a number hunt- we would really like to see what you have found. (Thank you William G for your fantastic photos).

Using our camo 'mini me' in small world play. We are still enjoying our camo day memories.

Blog and roll!

Welcome to FS2. Now you have all met with us we can start blogging again! Please share the blog with your friends and family it is a great tool for sharing our learning experiences.

We are having some technical issues and can't always upload photos at the moment. Please be patient whilst we try to resolve these!

Otter class

Fox class

Please check our blog regularly as we update it showing our learning.

We love to see your thoughts and questions so please use the comment boxes to communicate with us. But please remember we like to share these with the children at school.

Welcome to Foxes and Otters

This morning we met the new FS2 children. We had lots of fun exploring the classroom and getting to know each other. We read stories about otters and foxes and talked about our favourite thing to do at school.

Please don't hesitate to speak to us next week if you have any questions about September. It was lovely to see so many happy, smiley children! We are really looking forward to getting to know the children better.

Goodbye Mrs Cordy

On Friday Otter class said a very sad goodbye to their LSA Mrs Cordy. Mrs Cordy is going back to the UK and is very excited about Marks and Spencer food! We will miss her very much, she has been a fabulous LSA and has helped the children with all of their learning. Yesterday we thought back over our memories of Mrs Cordy....Miss Sullivan's memory involved wasps and hair!

Mason - ''I will miss Mrs Cordy because she is very funny and she is very helpful.''

Logan - ''I remember all of the funny things that she said like tiddlywoo.''

Jessica B- ''I liked it when she gave us some sweets and i liked it when she read us stories. I liked it when she told us what to do.''

Ellie - '' I like it when she read all of the stoires to me at snacktime and lunchtimes sometimes.''

Jeden - ''I remember when she said funny words to me.''

Antonia- ''I liked it when Mrs Cordy changed my books and when she did afternoon phonics with me. I liked it when she played games with us at snacktime.''

Cameron - '' I am sad you didn't see sports day Mrs Cordy.''

Grace E - ''I miss Mrs Cordy because she read funny stories and she laughed funny!''

Freddie- ''Mrs Cordy read funny stories and she handed out the snack for us.''

Clara - ''I will Mrs Cordy very much because she is very kind.''

Grace D - ''I miss Mrs Cordy. I hope she comes back soon, I loved you helping me on the bus.I think you wont come back but have fun in England, I hope you like it there.''

Lydia - ''I miss Mrs Cordy because she thinks we are so nice to her.''

Robert - ''I remember that Mrs Cordy is thirtythree. She tells us funny stories, her laugh makes me laugh.''

Joshua - ''I really miss you Mrs Cordy because I miss all of the fun phonics and it is fun to play with you but I can't play with you anymore.''

Garden party

The sun came out! We hope you all enjoyed yourselves this afternoon, it was lovely to see so many parents. The children really enjoyed sharing their work with you and playing lots of games. It was really nice to see parents and children finding their old t-shirts in the rugs we made. We had lots of fun making a caterpillar out of salad- and of course eating it!
Did you make it onto our hall of fame?