Classes
Explorers
Hello and welcome to the Explorers Unit at our school!
We have two bases called Giraffe and Zebra Base and a great outdoor space. We can use all of these areas throughout the day. This really helps us with our learning as we get to explore a range of activities that are based around our interests.
The grown-ups work in all of the areas which is great because it means that we get to spend time with all of them.
The Foundation Stage teachers are Miss Beth Holmes (Zebra Base) Mrs Lisa Warren and Ms Lucy Fletcher.(Giraffe Base.)
Our teaching assistants are Mrs Lisa Pearce, Mrs Tracey Laraway and Mrs Jo Beresford.
You will also meet Mrs Bettesworth and Mrs Woodhams on a Friday afternoon.
PE / Forest Skills day is on a Wednesday.
We have lots of different things that we need to learn about. We learn phonics to help us to become amazing readers and writers using a Read, Write Inc. scheme. Parents and carers you will learn more about this during our workshop sessions. Our teachers are always there at the end of the day if you have any queries.
When we learn mathematics skills we have lots of fun exploring different objects, learning new vocabulary and finding ways to record. Again, our teachers will run a workshop to help parents and carers to understand the way we learn.
We have lots of exciting new themes this year and you can find out more by clicking on the curriculm tab. We have also planned some days for grown-ups to come and join us for some fun activities and to experience our amazing time at school.
2019-20
Diwali
This week the Explorers have been learning about Diwali. During Diwali people give each other sweets so we made our own and shared them in our classes.
Houses are decorated with Rangoli patterns and lights. We mixed salt dough by ourselves to make our own Diva Lamps and used paint, shapes, chalks and salt to make our own Rangoli patterns. During Diwali and other special occasions people decorate their hands with mehndi so we drew our own designs.
Pumpkin and Planting Fascination
The Explorers wanted to draw faces onto our pumpkins, however the faces kept wiping off. The children then decided to use scissors to push holes into the pumpkins and try to carve faces. One child was fascinated that there were seeds inside and decided they wanted to plant them. We watched some videos about how seeds grow into plants and, once the children had fully explored the pumpkins, we used the shell of a pumpkin to plant some seeds and left the rest in the forest for the wildlife.
We also spent time looking at conkers and decided we would like to plant some too. We found out that conkers that could be planted in water were the conkers that sank in water. We tested the conkers and sorted them into two piles, conkers we could plant and conkers that we could not.
We then planted conkers in pots and made labels for our pots writing c for conker.
Our First Week
We have had a lovely first week at school and been very busy! We have enjoyed lots of new things including yoga for PE and also exploring our woods!
We took part in a scavenger hunt and also played hide and seek!
