Outstanding news...

We are very pleased to let you know that as an Early Years setting we have received the grading of Outstanding in our recent review inspection.


We are incredibly proud and feel very happy that our hard work has been recognised and valued.


Please follow the link below to read the full inspection report.


Mrs Gill, Miss Sullivan. Mrs Lewis, Mrs Sturrock and Mrs Balmer.








http://www.lister.sceschools.com/_files/B6FF1470302229CD214FD0BC6418E1C6.pdf

Harvest Assembly

Today we went to our first school assembly. All of the teachers are very proud of us. Lots of the teachers from the rest of the school told us that we were fabulous! We contributed to the whole school Harvest assembly just like all of the other children. Some classes sang wonderful songs, some recited a poem beautifully and others danced fantastically. 

We impressed everyone with our choral speaking. Using Pie Corbett actions we retold the whole story of 'The Little Red Hen' word for word from beginning to end. We used loud voices and clear actions. We thought carefully about how each character would speak and had lots of fun practising making each characters voice sound different. 

We have now learnt two stories in this style. It would be fun to make up our own actions for our favourite bedtime stories and then share them in school. Miss Sullivan and Mrs Lewis are going to make actions for their favourite story, 'The Gruffalo''.

Please leave a comment, we have loved hearing what everyone thought of our awesome performance today. 

Bike fever...

(This video can only be seen on a computer- sorry)

Today we continued with our exciting, adventurous bike video from yesterday. Miss Sullivan found a playmobile bike video. It was interesting to watch and then talk about, Maisey asked "is it real?" Austin told us "no it cant be real its playmobile". We decided that it was either magic or lots of photos turned into a video. All of the children loved the video and found the music very exciting. There was lots of fantastic dancing in Foxes class. Look at Emmanuel and Nischal showing their best dance moves.

Maisey and Emmanuel wanted to find out more, they had a go using my camera to take their own photos. It was really funny to watch the photos quickly. Watch their video to see the photos they took. Does it look like they are moving?

Please let us know if you know any exciting videos we can use as a talk focus.

Dashain

Today we were very lucky, some of our Nepalese parents came into school to share one of their celebrations, Dashain. Mrs Thapa's parents in law are visiting from Nepal. They explained how Dashain is a very special festival and is important to them that they are with their family. Family gathering is the most loved part of this festival. Mrs Thapa showed us how she received a tika from her mother and father in law. We remembered getting tikas on our Nepalese day last Summer. This time the tika was made from rice and yoghurt. 

Incense was burned and fruit was offered to the Hindu Gods Lakshmi and Ganesh for good luck and prosperity. 


For our snack Mrs Thapa had prepared us a tasty treat of Aloo Dam and Sel-roti rice doughnuts with a spicy tomato chutney. We talked about the celebrations we have in our own families and the special food that we like to eat.

The Ridge

Foxes and Otters would like to say a big thank you to Mrs Savage who found a very exciting video for us to watch this afternoon. Miss Sullivan and Mrs Lewis couldn't wait to play it to us...they knew we would be amazed and have lots to talk about.


Before we pressed play we talked about the first still shot and what we thought was happening. ''Did a helicopter drop him up there?'' wondered Faye.''no'' said Mateo, ''He carried his bike up but on his back not in his hands.'' Paige agreed with Mateo but worried that he was going to fall off. ''If he falls off he will damage his brain'' agreed Lucas.


As the video started there was a mass intake of breath and then a whispered ''Wow!''
''That's awesome, I've never seen a man do that before'' said Lucas. Reese was flabbergasted... ''He rowed all the way to the mountain for that awesome ride.'' Zack couldn't believe his eyes. ''it's like bike dancing.''
Lots of us told Miss Sullivan and Mrs Lewis that our Dads could do the same tricks! ''It's super cool'' said Mia whispering excitedly to Kerron. ''Yes, he is brave, like a knight''


Samuel told us that, ''My Daddy can't do that but he can climb up very big hills.'' Cameron couldn't take his eyes off the screen and when Danny jumped over the water he said ''I wish I could do those things.''

(This video can only be seen on a computer)

We asked to watch the video lots of times today and every time we spotted something new and exciting. We asked Miss Sullivan and Mrs Lewis to put the video on our blog so that we could share it with our families. Please leave a comment. We love to read your comments at snack time. Maybe you have some recommendations for other videos we could use a talk prompt?

The Three Little Pigs are still in FS2...

We've had another busy day in FS2. Today it was fantastic to see lots of the children using the skills they learnt last week and applying them independently.

 We have been asked for blue tack and then seen lots of wanted posters appearing in the corridor.

 We have heard lots of brilliant story telling. In Foxes class this morning Maisey and Megan were reading different versions of the story to their friends. They used the repetitive phrase 'no, no, no, I will not let you in'. They then used the puppets and showed some different friends how well they can speak in a loud, clear voice.



We have continued to use our imaginations to help us build new houses. Outside the deconstructed role play was full of children working together and problem solving. Finlay made an excellent project manager and helped his team to make a strong house that the wolf will not be able to blow down.

Inside the clay house building was still going strong. Different resources were added to the clay and Archie and Kerron had a fantastic discussion about which would make a stronger house, sticks or straw. They decided that actually bricks or metal would be best!

It was also fantastic to see children ordering numbers to 20 today in our maths lesson. Keep practising number recognition at home. :)

What a busy day!

Funky Fingers

Look at the perseverance and determination on these two boys faces. They were building a tower of sugar cubes. Instead of using their fingers they had to choose from a range of different sized tweezers and tongs...some of them were very stiff and difficult to open, some of them were very tiny and some were very big with long cumbersome handles. Watch and listen as they decide which tool is the best for the job and explain to their friend why this is.

The Big Good Wolf

This week has been incredibly busy for the little foxes and Otters. We have been adventurers, builders, scientists, authors, artists and much, much more.





We were very excited to receive two letters this week. They were addressed to us and we had to help Miss Sullivan and Mrs Lewis read them...they kept forgetting how to sound out words and even started reading at the bottom of the page!! It was a good job we were there to help them.  

We had to help the three little pigs make disguises so that they could go and visit Mummy pig without being seen by the Big Bad Wolf. We even disguised our voices. Can you tell who we are in
our video? Zack really made us all laugh with his funny voice, look at our laughing faces in the photo.

We found out that the Big Bad Wolf wasn't really Big and Bad. He was Big and Good. He didn't really want to eat the little pigs at all he just wanted to be their friend but didn't know how to use kind words and hands like us. We thought about how we would let other children know we wanted to play with them. We followed the wolves footprints to find him hiding happily in our friendly school.






We were very busy being scientists this week, we continued to build houses in our investigation area and experimented with different blowing implements to see if they would blow down. We even recorded our results like real scientists. Our safety conscious builders and architects were busy designing and constructing stick houses whilst wearing the appropriate safety wear. Lucas persevered with a variety of joining techniques and finally mastered double sided sticky tape. The favoured
treasury tags and split pins that we used last week for making books didn't work so well for this job. Our funky fingers were tying knots in string and ribbon.

Outside there was a lot of excitement when the real bricks were found. The construction workers made cement by mixing sand and water and built a very sturdy and strong brick house. They troweled the cement on very skilfully. A house of sticks was made with our willow tunnels and a rainproof roof attached with the pegs. Lots of our FS1 friends were interested to see what we were building. We attached our bamboo windows with elastic bands.

We have been wonderful writers this week and have made WANTED posters and written our own story maps. Our wanted posters have been put up all around the school. We thought about where best to place them. We decided that busy places where lots of children and parents walk through would be the best.

Some of us used the app puppet pals to narrate the story of 'The Three Little Pigs.' Mrs Lewis will put some of these onto the blog next week....we used very descriptive language and remembered all of the story. Mr Scarisbrick helped us with how to move the characters on the ipads.

On Miss Sullivan's funky fingers table we could build a sugar cube house...we weren't allowed to use our fingers only the Victorian sugar nippers. They were very tricky for little fingers.

We can't wait for all of the fun learning next week. We have so much to share with you...we are looking forward to telling you about 'Strictly Come Learning'....watch this space.