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.