Class News

Summer Term

23/05/25

We began the week with a further think about climate zones and environments. We wondered if Calamity the Camel might have visited the Sahara Desert and found an oasis there. We spent some time looking at Google Earth and it was easy to see where the hot desert areas of the world are. Then we created a desert environment in a big tray and added some animals that might be found there. 

 

In addition to thinking about deserts and polar regions, we thought about jungles too and had a visit from a really fun man called Jungle Jack who played games with us in the hall with excellent jungle music as a soundtrack to our jungle adventures. The children were BRILLIANTLY behaved and completely captivated by the sheer joy of it. 

 

In green finger news, we have harvested some of our carrots! One of them was really funny and looked like it had two running legs 😁. Mrs Hann washed them and chopped them up for us. They were very flavourful and incredibly carroty! What a success. 

 

The caterpillars have been very hungry and eaten their way through most of the food provided. Our Year 5 buddies helped us vote on the names so Tiny Tim, Teeny Tiny, Crawly, Legs and Furry are enormous! They will spend half term living with Mrs Hann so please keep an eye on Tapestry for any chrysalis updates!

You will find new phonics word cards in the book bags, they contain all the digraphs and trigraphs we have learned. Please use them for practice. There are also new yellow words stick into the reading diaries which the children need to learn to read, then spell. Read, read, read and read over the holiday please!

 

16/05/25

We have enjoyed the story of Camel's Don't Ski in drawing club this week, and the children all agree that Calamity the Camel is not very resilient! We now have some great new vocabulary up our sleeves such as 'slog', 'sweltering', 'relief' and 'collaborate'. Ask the children to explain what they mean and show you the actions. Calamity has also helped us focus on hot and cold areas of the world, the names of some of these areas and the animals that might be found there. Our Year 1 children are genuinely excited about writing a story based on Calamity's adventures and to publishing them in pen. Watch this space!

On Tuesday, Mr Stangroom came to see us to talk about the NSPCC's Speak Out Stay Safe campaign. We learned about the ways that people can hurt us, who to talk to if it happens or if we feel unsafe, as well as the Childline phone number. Please access this website with your children to support this learning: Buddy Zone | Childline As the children progress with writing, we are now picking up the capital letters and their formation so that we can begin to punctuate our sentences correctly. Many children freely use their writing skills in play but I am now also increasing my expectation for the children to develop their own ideas for writing in directed learning time so that the level of challenge gently increases in preparation for Year 1. So far so good!

In Maths, we are busy representing objects and representing addition number stories on a ten frame. The year 1, again, have taken this to another level as we were making arrays today. They spotted that some are squares and some are rectangles and hey presto! they can now explain square numbers and can probably name a few off the top of their heads. Year R have REALLY impressed me with their knowledge of number bonds for 10. See if they can tell you what they remember.

Snowy Owl Class have five new pets! Our little caterpillars arrived earlier in the week and we are going to look after them until they become monarch butterflies and need to be released into the wild. At the moment they are only as big as our thumb nails but we know they'll grow pretty big quite quickly!

Finally, in green finger news, we have planted turnips and have acquired three runner bean plants! Show and Share on Tuesday will be our lovely Ekaterina! Please keep up the reading practice everyone, it will make untold difference to your child's progress and success moving forwards. If you are having problems with this, please let me know so that I can find ways to support you. Have a super weekend!

09/05/25

It's been a very short week with a lot packed in!

 

The biggest event in our minds has been an outing on the mini buses to Hanover House to visit the elderly residents there. They were a very attentive audience and supported the children really well by clapping their singing, chatting and listening to them read their stories. I was extremely proud of our children who behaved brilliantly and enthusiastically, charming the socks off everyone! They spoke up really well when they introduced themselves too and shared their biscuits without any shyness.

 

We spent some time on Tuesday morning preparing our goodies to bring with us including ginger biscuits, cinnamon swirls and fairy cakes. All the children contributed and supported the process. Thanks a million to Mrs Ewings who helped by cooking everything for us in her big ovens.

 

Mrs Hann has been out with our little green fingered helpers too, clearing out the old daffodils to make space for some new seeds to go in. We've planted more sunflowers to enjoy later in the summer. Many things are thriving in the pots, and in the other tyres and the children are excellent at remembering to water everything. Thanks, Mrs Hann, for being such a great motivator!

 

We are very close to the end of our list of graphemes in phase 3 and the progress in reading is clear to see. This is a perfect time to crack on with putting this new learning to good use. Please practise at home - there are gaps in many diaries so fill them in to let us know how much you are doing.

 

Happy VE day! We very much enjoyed our day, especially the picnic with the families. Thank you for coming to see us in school.

Have a super weekend all.

 

02/05/25

What a hot week we have had! We have discussed how important it is to keep hydrated and to keep your sunhat on when outdoors. If possible, please apply all-day sun protection before school to avoid too many children gathering in the cloakroom with sticky liquids!

The children learned about St George's Day on 28th April and celebrated by making little St George's Day cakes. They made the cross of St George using a white icing background and red strawberry stripes to make the red cross. The Year 1 children measured the ingredients accurately in grams using weighing scales. I hope they can all remember the recipe.

Also this week, we have learned about the artist Pablo Picasso and have had a very good giggle creating portraits with facial features in new and interesting places! We will create a gallery of our portraits linking to our aspiration. They have been very creative with their designs, with eyes on chins, eyebrows on noses and upside own ears!

We have thought carefully about where our food comes from too, I asked the children, and surprisingly, nobody mentioned the farm. There were a lot of responses about various supermarkets and fast food chains, but many misconceptions. We played a little game to make the learning fun, but this is definitely an area that needs further focus. Please make time at home to tell the children the origin of the food they are eating, especially if it is very processed.

The biggest event of the week, however, was the exciting delivery of a minute letter from the Fairy Queen of Furzey. After waiting so long for news, the letter has answered all our questions! We have had various interesting discussions following this such as, 'What colour is Oslo?', and 'Where did Prince Nut go on his travels?' They were fascinated to discover that the Fairy Queen has never heard of Tinkerbel and has never seen a human. We will encourage the children to respond again to the Furzey fairies and let her know the answers to her questions about Tinkerbell.

Finally, thank you to those who have volunteered for our trip to Hanover House, we will need about three more adults, so please let the office know if you can come.

Have a fantastic bank holiday weekend, see you on Tuesday!

 

Spring Term

04/04/25

The children have been introduced to a couple of famous names this week. To begin with, we looked at the story of Grace Darling who rowed out in a storm and rescued people from the sea. The children were captivated by the idea of her bravery and asked many excellent questions about shipwrecks, lighthouses and the clothes people used to wear in 200 years ago. The Year 1 children worked together on a lighthouse model using cardboard boxes and coloured card. Here is a link to the video the children saw:

BBC Two - True Stories, Episode 2, The life and work of Grace Darling

 

We also looked at artwork by the famous artist Andy Warhol and especially enjoyed how interesting a repeated print of a banana in many colours could look! We recreated this idea using handprints and the effect is very eye-catching.

We were treated on Monday to a special visitor to the school who came with Seb's mum, Kate. Some of our Snowies remembered Coco from last year. She is a herbivore, has four legs, and a long swishing tail. Can you guess what kind of animal she is? Kate showed us a horses tooth too, it was sooo big! She told us all the ways that Coco is looked after and the medicine she needs for her health.

We are learning about Easter and have practised our cutting skills making palm branches to wave in the church. We hope you enjoy your Easter card from the children. We gave them an idea and left them to it, the results are very cute and I hope you agree, the cutting skills are improving no end!

 

Still no news from the Fairy Queen; I'm keeping my fingers crossed that something will turn up over the holidays. If you visit Furzey over Easter, perhaps you could write her a little reminder to post in her letter box.

On Friday, we also enjoyed an Easter trail using the orienteering markers around the school grounds. Following the clues and using our decoding skills, they led us to a prize at the end!

 

Year 1 - please look out for any bits and bobs of home learning on Purple Mash over the holiday to catch up with and any new ones going on. Keep up the reading everyone, little and often is the key to success (5 a day!) Enjoy the sunshine and keep safe. Happy Easter everyone! 

 

28/03/25

We have been focussed on preparations for some exciting events coming up. Friday is Exhibition day!! We've been organising plant sales, tidying the classroom like we've never tidied before and putting up fresh displays of our learning. The aquariums look absolutely amazing! Thank you so much for your contributions. Other aspects have been building more slowly, such as the blooms in the outside area, the carefully crafted written work and the wonderful learning behaviours the children show in class. We hope you enjoy your visit, and thank you for your plant purchases.

 

Another upcoming event is the Easter service at the church and the Snowy Owls will present their learning of Palm Sunday and how people praised Jesus. Please let us know if you are free to accompany us to the church. We have also made lovely treats for our mums for Mothers Day; I've been very impressed with the children's writing. 

We have also been learning some new songs in preparation for an event planned for later in May. We are hoping to share our delicious bakes and lovely singing voices (with Mr Martin accompanying us on guitar) at Hanover House retirement home in Andover for all the senior citizens there. More information will follow soon.

 

And finally, we LOVED our trip to Furzey! What a fantastic day out it was. We found so many of the fairy doors and had bags of active fun, searching in all the bushes and clambering around the play areas. Let's all keep our fingers crossed that the Fairy Queen replies to our letters soon. 

 

Have a lovely weekend!

 

21/03/25

This week we have celebrated Beep! Beep! Day and learned about how to keep ourselves safe out and about.  We played various games and joined in with activities that reminded us what is important. For example, the children saw teddy fall out of the vehicle he was driving because he wasn't wearing a seatbelt. The main lessons were to hold your adult's hand near roads, wear your seatbelt in the car and cross roads safely using the Green Cross Code. The Year 1 children were very responsible drivers and stopped at our zebra crossing to allow pedestrians across the road when we practised on the playground.

 

In preparation for our visit to Furzey Gardens, the children have been busy writing letters to the Fairy Queen. We have been wondering whether fairies live in mushrooms, how high they can fly and whether they drink nectar. We hope all our questions will be answered soon. We decided it was very important to make sure the letters are not too big for tiny hands, Mrs West shrank them for us. Now they are miniature!

 

In Maths, Year 1 have been counting money and Year R have been learning their number bonds for 10! We're getting better at remembering them all but if we forget, we're also good at knowing how to work them out with resources. Keep practising  everyone!

 

We're very much looking forward to sharing our learning with you at the exhibitions on Friday 28th next week. We would like to invite you to bring some pound coins to purchase some of the plants we have been nurturing in our environment. Our Snowies have very green fingers and we're running out of space!

Have a super weekend!

 

14/03/25

It has been Science Week and the children have been involved with measuring their height with the help of the Eagle Owls and their buddies. We have learned that the shortest person in our class is 101cm tall and the tallest is 118cm. As expert mathematicians, the Eagle Owls then told us that Lily is the same height as the average year R, so we drew around her! Lily's outline was then painted by some willing helpers and presented in the hall on Friday alongside the average heights of all the other year groups. We noticed that children grow about 8cm per year! Wow! 

We thoroughly enjoyed dressing up for World Book Day - thank you for your help with costumes! We went orienteering around the school grounds and discovered some amazing new stories that we learned more about in class. There was a multicoloured elephant called Elmer and a Tiger who drank all the water in the tap! We took some fantastic pictures of the children dressed up.

We have been getting into the nitty-gritty in maths, helping the children with calculating number bonds and helping them to remember the bonds off by heart. I wonder if you know the number bonds song? Have a practice at home:

Let's all do the 10 dance (number bonds to 10 song) - YouTube

We have been using all kinds of resources to help us. Fingers are brilliant for helping with bonds to ten. If you curl up two fingers, how many are standing up straight? Show the number bonds with pieces of pasta, Lego bricks, blueberries, whatever you have to hand! Year 1 should be able to work out the bonds for 20 by using the bonds for 10 as clues. We will keep practising to get as familiar as we can.

We have been exploring maps too, looking closely and hunting for different features on an OS map of North Wales. There is so much detail to explore! In Year 1, we've used our understanding of symbols and a key to draw a treasure map and mark where the treasure is buried. The Year R children enjoyed looking at the treasure maps too, and pretending to hide some treasure in the outside area.

It has been fantastic to catch up at parents evening, I was pleased to be able to share so many successes and look forward to the months ahead. Read, read, and read was the main theme across both days and all appointments. This is such a crucial time to build those skills as much as you possibly can. We're very happy to change books as often as you need, just let us know at the door in the morning.

Don't forget Friday 21st is the day of our exciting trip to Furzey Gardens! I'll send out a reminder about appropriate clothing and footwear closer to the event.

Show and Share on Tuesday will be our lovely Isla!

 

07/03/25

The children have been making fruit salad! The Year 1 had to read and carefully follow a recipe and we have to say a big thank you to #TeamHawks for calculating the quantities for us to ensure that we had the correct amount of ingredients for one person. They had to divide by four for us, thanks! The rest of the class used their knife skills to peel, cut and prepare each ingredient. We enjoyed gobbling them up. I wonder what you would change or improve next time? We also enjoyed this fun little sing-along! You could enjoy this at home too!

Fruit Salad Yummy Yummy! 🍎🍌🍇🍉 Sing-along with ‪@SesameStreet and The Wiggles 🎵 Kids Songs - YouTube

We have also enjoyed some outdoor fun in all this sunshine, the children learned about Shrove Tuesday and we made pretend pancakes with the playdough. Then we had pancake flipping races down to the tree and back, lots of fun! Mrs Hann inspired everyone to set up a beach with a sand and a shore where they could paddle. Some of the children put on their sunnies and relaxed on the beach with a book, while others played beach ball or went rummaging in the rockpools.

In Maths, Year R have been learning about 1 more or 1 less than a number within 10, using the ten frames to help them calculate, while Year 1 are learning to count in 5s using 5p coins to help them. They are getting much quicker! Keep practising going forwards and backwards and check out your home learning in the red books and on Purple Mash to support with this. We have also been estimating using a number line. We discovered it's easier if you find what the number in the middle should be using the clues at each end. Year R have learned what the 'oa' grapheme looks like and have been reading it in in words like 'boat and 'coat' while Year 1 have now found four different ways of spelling the /oo/ sound!

I'm looking forward to catching up with everyone next week for parent consultations and to join with you in sharing successes and targets as we move forwards.

Have a lovely weekend and keep your fingers crossed for more sunshine to come. Show and Share on Tuesday will be the brilliant Gianmarco!

 

28/2/25

We are so pleased to let you know that the sweet peas have grown so much that they're ready to leave their little nursery and go into big pots! They have been very carefully transplanted with Ms Hann's help and have been given canes to climb up as they get taller and taller. We have looked carefully at the weather forecast and have noticed that the weather might get below freezing during the night so we will bring them indoors to avoid frost bite. We talked about how the clouds are like a warm blanket for the earth and without clouds, the nights can get much colder. We have been looking forward to the next round of planting and now we have primroses in the nursery pots where the sweet peas used to be. Ms Hann has a plan to plant some old odd welly boots too and attach them to a pallet so that we can have even more seeds going in soon. It is exciting to imagine how colourful our environment will be when everything has grown.  Early Years in Bloom here we come! Lily's Grandad has earned himself a special thank you once again for providing various planting resources to help all of this happen.

In other news, we have been thinking about one of the learning powers. Ruby represents resilience and how hard we try to achieve our goals. The adults in Snowies see resilience everyday in lots of ways. We have a picture of resilient Ruby on the wall to remind us that it's ok when something goes wrong or if it feels hard, it doesn't stop us giving it another go!

Year 1 have been working on some pretty challenging maths and have been able to demonstrate their understanding of jumping in tens in various ways, forwards and backwards starting from any number, using a range of resources such as money, dienes, number lines and addition and subtraction calculations. We noticed that when were adding or subtracting ten, the tens change but the ones stay the same. Year R have been busy using ten frames to count accurately and write the digits accurately with a pencil. Next we'll move onto adding or taking one away.

On Friday, we celebrated St David's day, and the children made daffodils, coloured a Welsh flag and tasted steamed leeks. I wonder if any of the children can remember what creature is represented on the Welsh flag? Maybe some children can help you find Wales on a map of the United Kingdom. Dydd Gwyl Dewi Hapus! (Happy St David's Day!)

Show and Share on Tuesday will be our lovely Amelia!

 

13/2/25

We're half way! What a difference a few months makes. The children are growing and changing rapidly and it's an interesting moment to cast our minds back to the wide-eyed bunch of Snowies I met at transition, to the confident, thriving young learners they are becoming. 

We've been treated today by a presentation by the Year 6 e-Cadets who talked about keeping safe online and avoiding scams. They showed us an activity in class which helped the children reflect on different online scenarios and how they might make us feel if they happened to us. We talked about how important it is to stay safe online. A huge thank you to Thomas O'Mara and Avery James from year 6 who were very supportive.

We had a wonderful treat earlier in the week when Snowies were invited to the BOC dance performance of 'Candy Man' in the hall. After their fantastic show, they spent time teaching the Snowy owls the moves which was so much fun! You can have a go at home too! Learn at home: The Candy Man (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) - YouTube

Our classroom is awash with love. There are love hearts everywhere! We have all been treated to messages of affection and gestures of kindness as we think ahead to Valentines Day. Love is one of our Christian Values, and there is a lot of love in Snowy Owl Class! 💗

The Year 1 children have been publishing their stories and can't wait to put them up on the wall for everyone to see. We have worked hard on editing them to make them as polished as possible and then taking the plunge and writing them neatly with a pen! They will be available for all to see at the exhibition. I am SO very proud of the effort they all put in. For the rest of Snowy Owls, there are a few things to focus on over the holidays. Firstly, a new list of yellow words stuck into the reading diaries. Once the children can read these words, they also need to learn to spell them. I have been teaching them in class so they should be at least familiar. Many children can read them already and have begun to learn to spell them. As well as this, I have provided some decodable words on orange card. These are for reading practice, supporting the children to use the graphemes, j, v, w, y, x, z, zz, sh, th, ch, ng. Please cut them into individual word cards at home. Finally, all children have a couple of books to keep them going over the holiday. Read little and aften, 5-10 minutes of concentration will make much more difference than you think! 5-a-day!

The Snowy Team would like to wish you all a happy holiday!

 

07/2/25

We have had a some lovely donations again this week including potatoes for the Grow Your Own Potatoes (GYOP) scheme, one of the first ever primary school based growing projects. Since 2005, it has become the largest of its kind with over 6 million children taking part in learning where potatoes come from, how they grow and the health benefits. The straightforward and hands-on nature of the GYOP project makes it perfect for young children. They come as 'chitted' or seed potatoes which have slightly begun to sprout. They went into our empty tyres which the children dug over and prepared by removing stones and weeds. We'll let you know how they go!

In the meantime, Ms Hann has also planted the sweet pea seeds which are sprouting beautifully and are now almost as tall as a water bottle! Lily's Grandad has given us some planting troughs which are perfect for decorating the fenced perimeter of our outside area. We'll do some research to find out what will suit best, as we have lots of seeds waiting to go in.

The children have also been learning about animal diets. We have thought about carnivores, herbivores and omnivores and have sorted some animals into the three groups. We looked them up on the internet to find out what they eat. Then we made pretend poo! The herbivores had evidence of seeds, nuts and grass in their poo, but the carnivores had bones and feathers. The omnivores had a mixture of everything. It was fun following our recipe and mixing the ingredients together, but I don't recommend tasting it!

In drawing club, the children have continued to learn more about the type of behaviour that helps us look after our friends and keep everyone happily playing together. 'Bossy Bethany' was not polite enough and was remorseful about her actions afterwards. She even fell in a stagnant puddle and a herd of cows nearly ate her picnic! The children have drawn a map to show where she went when she got lost.

Please continue to focus on reading and spellings at home, we are seeing such a surge in enthusiasm for reading and writing in school and there's a really opportunity to jump on board the energy train at the moment! It is excellent to see such a shift in progress from the beginning of the year till now. What a difference a few months makes. Your 5-a-day nursery rhymes can blend into a focussed 5 minutes a day of practising reading. It is such an important part of what the children need to succeed. Keep it up! Next week I'll dish out rewards for the children if you have commented in the diaries.

Enjoy the weekend.

 

31/1/25

It was a pleasure to be in invited in to Snowy Owl Class this week to see their wonderful learning in action and to see again the warm relationships the Snowy Owl team have with the children. During the lesson, the Year 1 children were supported by Ms Hann to experience Grandpa’s blindness in the book they are learning about; the children were very keen to wear a blindfold to feel their artwork and then discussed some wonderful language to support their writing.  Mrs West then supported the Year 1 children to formulate sentences using these modelled and shared ideas.  A huge well done to Finn who recognised when he needed to edit his writing and collected a green pencil to edit in the moment.

 

Mrs Edvardsson also spent further time with Year R children to rehearse sentence writing. Sounds mats were used to support the group, who also had the sentence to cut up into individual words to reinforce and aid sentence building.  The Year R children were very much engaged in their phonics/handwriting and demonstrated excellent learning behaviours.

In the outdoors environment, the children were engaged with the aspiration ‘to care for a living thing’ and were actively discussing the growth they could see in the flowers.

 

In other news this week, the class were thrilled to experience the sudden downpour of rather large hailstones and excitedly headed outside to collect specimens.

 

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend, Mr Stangroom.

 

24/1/25

We have been very focused on using our senses this week and have created some experiments to help us learn about them. To support us with our sense of smell, Grace's mum has very kindly given us various garden herbs to sniff and learn about. We've had chives, rosemary, thyme, mint and basil and the children came up with some excellent words to describe the aromas. Some children were able to identify the smell from dishes they have eaten such as the basil in pesto or pizza toppings. We will use these herbs in our kitchens this week, indoors and out. Thank you very much for providing them, Grace (and mum!). We also had fun with a blind smell test using cups with strong smelling items hidden inside. The onion was quite an unpopular smell, but the hand cream and lemon were very popular. The coffee really divided the room.

It was also interesting taking part in a blind taste test, to find out if the children could tell the flavour of a fruit pastille, even if they couldn't see the colour. But the funniest of all was the blind drawing test! We had to use our sense of touch to find our pencil and paper so that we didn't draw on the table by accident. Mrs West had a go at drawing George, the results show how important our eyes are! We had a feely bag full of objects for the touch test, and everyone was able to say what the item was by the shape, texture and temperature. The fork felt cold, smooth and hard, whereas the Little Friend was soft, warm and squashy.

I'm very pleased with my Year 1 mathematicians who are able to link their bonds for 10 with their bonds for twenty, by finding the extra ten and adding it on. They are becoming very fluent with 2-digit numbers, recognising that if you add ten, the ones stay the same. They were also very scientific in response to their senses tests and were able to name the senses they use for different activities and write a report on our taste experiment.

In Drawing Club this week, I told the traditional tale of The Frog Prince and the language we have learned is fantastic! Ask the children about these words: pleadingly, hurled, precious, wallow, sloppy, revolting. I have heard the children using the words in their play which is excellent. Thanks for all your contributions on Tapestry so far, its all lovely to see. Each child will have a   lovely moment to share what's there which is an opportunity to use all the new vocabulary they are picking up every day.

Show and share on Tuesday will be super Sam! I hope you all have a great weekend.

 

17/1/25

This week we have been very impressed with children's improvement in reading and phonics. In Year R, we have focussed more closely in phonics lessons on building short captions and phrases as well as beginning the next set of graphemes (j, v, w, x, y). We are also supporting the children with word spaces and formation of letters, starting in the right place and following the correct sequence of movements. We're very impressed with the progress! Year 1 have been learning to understand the use of question marks and have completed a book review of the story of Lucy's Picture. They have written and answered questions about the story and gave it a star rating.

Ms Hann has been busy outdoors planting sweet peas, continuing with our dream to be the inspiration of a new 'Early Years in Bloom' trend! They shouldn't take too long to grow and hopefully we'll see the results soon. We continue to be hopeful for donations of large planting troughs to embellish our outside area. Soon we'll receive some chitted potatoes ready to go in the ground. Wouldn't it be fabulous if we could make our own chips in Mrs West's air fryer! We have also grown our own parsley and have given it a taste test, we decided it tasted savoury not sweet and fresh like salad. I wonder who thinks it would taste nice on our potatoes. See if you can spot foods in the supermarket that contain parsley. We have also been thinking about our other senses, we had a go at drawing with our eyes closed, and we tried to identify sounds in a listening game.

The children have been very thoughtful about our anti-bullying follow up. We listened and responded to the story of 'Carrot Club'. The carrots were very mean and only invited cool, fun carrots to their club. Other veggies weren't welcome. We discussed how important it is to include everyone because we are all welcome. We focussed on kindness and inclusion. In the end the carrots saw the error of their ways and apologised to the other veggies. 

I am very proud of the comments I have heard about our Snowy Owls from various adults this week. Mr T our Sports coach was commenting on how good at listening and how well the children remember their learning from one lesson to the next. They have been really good at problem solving and team working. They are also a very active class. He said "They're an excellent class, every week, they're excellent."

As I type, a group of Snowy Owls are browsing the library books and choosing one to take home. Please share the stories they choose at home and remember to put it back in the book bag every day (no water bottles!). Finally, I would like you to try really hard to make it a mission to add something to Tapestry this week, if you haven't for a while, so that every child has the joy of sharing something. If you need your log in details again let me know.

Show and share on Tuesday will be awesome Arthur! Have a super weekend.

 

10/1/25

Welcome back to school everyone! We hope you had a super Christmas holiday. The children are buzzing with news, and are full of language and communication which is lovely. Please add your updates to Tapestry, it would be lovely for every child have something to share with the class.

This week I shared a couple of the new books we will be using to support aspects of our learning this term. To begin with, we looked at 'Lucy's Picture', a wonderful story about a girl who creates a collage for her blind grandpa to 'see' with his fingers. It was full of textures and shapes which helped him to imagine a beautiful scene. We had a think as a class, and made a list of the sorts of material we could use to make collages. The children were very creative and had some brilliant ideas, such as lentils to make pebble paths or wadding to make clouds. They used excellent words to describe the textures of the various materials. We had to become experts at using the correct kind of fixings to make things stick properly. Glue sticks are good for paper or sand, but PVA glue is best for sticking twigs and beech nuts, as long as it has time to dry. The story links nicely to the learning we will continue next week about our 5 senses. Year 1 are using this story to write a book review, and understanding how we write questions, including words beginning with 'wh'.

In worship, we had a think about new year's resolutions and goals. I told the children the story of 'Emmanuel's Dream', a true story about a boy from Ghana with only one strong leg. He knew what he wanted to achieve in life and never gave up, despite his disability. Now, he is an inspiration to others. We will try and try and keeping trying, just like Emmanuel, whose name means 'God is with us'. 

In Maths, all of the children have been looking at repeating patterns, recognising the number of repeats, continuing the patterns and creating their own using shapes and colours. Many of the children can name the common 2D shapes. Year 1 have been learning the names of common 3D shapes too, such as cube, cuboid, cylinder, cone, sphere and pyramid.

Out and about we looked for signs of life and found all sorts! There are buds, bulbs and many birds as well as all kinds of little crawlies. We found tiny baby slugs and snails hiding in their shells. We even found some fragrant chives and a centipede.

Next Thursday , the children will begin bringing a library book home. Year 1 will have a library slot on Tuesday afternoons and Year R on Thursday afternoons. All children will browse the books and have an opportunity to borrow one to take home. We would ask, please, that the library books are kept in the book bags and don't get lost under beds or behind sofas! We also ask that water bottles are kept out of book bags as leaks can damage the books.

Wrap up warm and have a lovely weekend!

 

Autumn Term

 

20/12/24

There has been a lot of festive fun in Snowy Owls this week! Our highlight on Monday was a   visit from our Year 5 buddies who joined us for some shared reading. It was wonderful to see the older children helping our Year R's decode and read their books. They were also able to read the Christmas picture books to snuggled little groups of wide-eyed Snowies. There was a lovely atmosphere and I was proud of the support they showed each other. Look out on Tapestry for a lovely rendition of 'Sleeping Bunnies' from Izzy when we were dressed in our pyjamas. Such fun!! 

We worked so hard to perfect out scissor skills on Christmas fun day. We cut out five circles of white card, folded them into semi circles, and then stick them together to form a bauble. We then punched a hole in, tied a piece of string and decorated them with paint. The children did so much of it themselves as the adults to a back seat to allow their skills to shine. Well done Snowies, every time you practise on your own, your skills get better. Mr Stangoom read a candlelit story in the hall, we enjoyed visits to other classrooms, and we also were given a hot chocolate and Christmas biscuits. It was a lovely day.

Luckily for us, Mrs Hann had a rummage in our magic shed (who knows what delights are concealed within!) and discovered the bag of dressing up clothes! It's been a really good giggle getting dressed up. The imagination, rich conversations and vocabulary that resulted has been brilliant for our reluctant communicators. We had skeletons, superheroes, kings, dancers and even a burger!

The end of the week was the highlight, our Christmas service at the church was truly magical. Didn't the children do well! Not only in the church but also in the Nativity performances.  We've been treated to some amazing singing and excellent behaviour from the children.

Finally, as I type, the children's excitement is building for the final end of term treat which is a movie and popcorn earned by doing so well with tidying the classroom. They deserve it!

Thank you for all your excellent support of the children's learning. Have a wonderful Christmas and see you in 2025!!!

 

13/12/24

WE ARE SO PROUD of our amazing nativity performers. They have absolutely smashed it. Mr Stangroom said it was the best Nativity he's seen for a long time and that's saying something. The children sang every word, remembered every cue and tried their absolute best to make the show perfect. The stars twinkled to perfect time with the song and the animals nailed the actions to Hey Ewe. And, to our delight, they didn't forget the bit they always forget!! (they'll know what I'm talking about 😁).

Thank you to everyone who made it into school for our exhibition, it was fantastic to see the children's happy little faces, showing you their class and obviously all very proud of it, just as I am. I hope you enjoyed it too. It is so important to provide rich opportunities like this for the children to engage socially in different ways and expand their conversational skills and vocabulary. In class, we have been hearing so many stories of cheeky elves at home; these are ideal moments to allow the children's voices to shine. If you don't have an 'elf on the shelf', don't worry because the children are very happy to make a story up, inspired by the others! I was impressed with how well our littlest children coped when you said goodbye too. This is often a moment when we see emotions flare, but not this time! I just goes to show how settled they are in school.

 

We have reached an excellent point in the children's learning and spring is always a time of year when we see the children's progress accelerate. This would be even better if you help keep the momentum up over the holiday and read, read, read! I will provide an extra book in the book bags and some more simple word cards. If you haven't written in the diary, please make sure you do as I need to see who needs more of a boost and who is ticking over well. Some diaries haven't been written in for many weeks and these children will begin to drop back without the extra practice that only you can provide. In addition, if you hear errors in their pronunciation of certain words when talking at home, please gently correct them and model how it should sound for them. For example, you might hear 'maded' instead of 'made', or 'I gone..' instead of 'I went..'. There may be other syllables, words or phrases that are mispronounced or missed, and these are all things you can support with at home. 

One more week to go! Show and share on Tuesday will be gorgeous Grace. I hope you all have a fantastic weekend.

 

06/12/24

Here is the end of another busy week, packed full of exciting learning. We have been outdoors as much as we can again, this time focussed on creating artistic designs using natural objects we find out and about linked with our aspiration 'To create a piece of art for a gallery. Andy Goldsworthy has been our inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6i5cxbm6ac

The children looked carefully for the things they needed and worked in pairs and groups to create patterns and pictures based on circles. We used leaves of all colours, grass, stones, sticks. The results were lovely!

You may have heard the children talking about our new pet too. We have set up a cage with straw and soft bedding for Fluffy the guinea pig to stay safe and warm. Even though Fluffy is a teddy guinea pig, the children have shown great care and attention, making sure her bowl has food and she is given fresh water. She also has toys and tunnels to play with as well as a brush so the children can keep her clean. They have learned to hold her properly so that she doesn't drop on the floor and break her teeth.  This links beautifully with our aspiration 'To look after living things'.

We have raised the game a little bit in writing as the children have responded so well in phonics lessons, I felt they were ready for another layer of challenge. I have given everyone a writing book so that we can start supporting the children to write simple sentences, guided by the teacher. Some children are beginning to want to write more independently too, which is lovely. Hopefully the children will be able to explain to you what the pink and green pens mean. We will build this into our routine and see the progress build over the year.

The tree is up! And advent is well underway. We have been taking turns to have a treat from our class advent calendar and have been decorating the class with paper chains, wreaths and home made baubles. We have also been pretending to be elves! We have been practising present wrapping skills and having fun dressing up - so have the teachers! We can't wait to see you at the Nativity next week and hope that you enjoy the show. The children are AWESOME! Thank you very much for their costumes.

Show and share on Tuesday is.. Ava-Jean! Have a super weekend.

 

29/11/24

We have had a very interesting week! There have been many highlights to share, starting with the energy and enthusiasm the children have shown for the performance! There was a magical moment a couple of days ago when the children spontaneously began a word-perfect rendition of our most complicated song 'Hustle Bustle' without the music. There wasn't a single child who wasn't involved. Miss Bryant walked in the door too, and couldn't believe her luck.

We have also been considering healthy and unhealthy food and have discussed the idea that 'fresh is best'. The children have been buying and selling healthy food in our class shop and have even made a delicious baked risotto from scratch using perfectly fresh and natural ingredients with no extra salt. I hope all the children can talk about the recipe and the processes we used to prepare the ingredients.

Alongside this we have also been looking at the story of the Bear and the Piano and have been focussed on our aspiration 'To perform a play, story or song'. As a special treat, Isabel from Eagle Owl class pretended to be our bear and performed on the piano beautifully! As the bear performed on the piano, we listened to the beautiful melody and showed our appreciation with a well-deserved applause.

To top the week off, as the frosty weather took an even frostier turn, we decided to put up our Christmas tree and get in the mood for advent! We have three sizes, one for Kindness Church, one for the classroom and one for the elves (elves are very small, we think)! With the icy weather, the Christmas decorations and the songs of the Nativity, we are definitely feeling the excitement build!

 

22/11/24

This week we have launched into our Christmas Nativity practices and we are singing are hearts out, trying to get the words of the songs learned, ready to perform for all of you. We hope you have received your costume letters and are beginning to put outfits together for the children to wear. Please let us know if you have any questions about this.

As well as this, it's never to early to begin thinking about Christmas in Early Years (eeeek!) and Mrs Hann is drawing on her creative talents, finding Christmassy themed crafts for the children to enjoy. I'm sure the excitement will build nicely once we put our class tree up next week. If there are any families who have a pre-loved spare Christmas tree, we would love to replace the tiny spindly white one we currently have, donations would be very welcome!

The Year 1 children have pulled it out the bag at exactly the right moment and have written amazing poems, based on 'Crayon Poem' by James Carter. These are on display for you to see at exhibition, surrounded by SOC crayon art.. James Carter - The Children’s Poetry Archive

We have been out and about around the school grounds this week, in the crisp autumn air, playing with all the beech leaves that have fallen. Many of the children have been busy creating a huge leaf wall around the corner of the playground and pretending it's a fort. They reinforced it with sticks and collaborated so sensibly with the design and the work. This activity has continued into playtimes too. It's amazing what learning can be gained from a pile of autumn leaves. Other children have enjoyed rolling on the slopes or discovering a 'secret path' in the woods so we clambered through it together to see if we could find evidence of winter fairies. We've also had the bikes and trikes out on the big playground which is much more fun with plenty of space. All of this fantastic fun stuff, supports the development of the children's fundamental movement skills and proprioception. Proprioception (body awareness and body position) | Children Young People and Families Online Resource

You may hear the children talking about popcorn points. This is a brilliant strategy for helping the children to tidy up thoroughly. We play adults versus children and if the children earn the most tidy points, then they win the prize at the end of term. We have high expectations in Snowies and everyone is rising to the challenge!

 

15/11/24

Following on from the 'Splatter art' theme and thinking about Jackson Pollock the artist, we have experimented with other ways of creating a splatter effect and have had a go at using primary colours in spray bottles to see what new colours we can create. This has been a good activity for our little fingers which had to work quite hard to use the lever on the bottles. The finished result reminded us of the fireworks we saw on 5th November. Now we just need to figure out how we can display such a huge piece of paper!
This week has been anti-bullying week and Mr Stangroom has given us some good ideas about how we can support the 'choose respect' motto. Each week from now on, we will be voting for two 'play buddies' to support us in class. The play buddies wear the high-viz jackets so we can find them easily if we need them. They nominated themselves for the vote because they feel like they would be good at supporting children who might feel lonely, who don't know what to play or who need help sorting out a problem. Next Wednesday we will vote for two new buddies. Voting is a nice way to start teaching the children in a simple way about Democracy and British Values.
Outside we have been measuring! We went to the woods with a ruler and searched for sticks. We were able to find sticks that were shorter than a ruler and sticks that were exactly the same length. We talked about why some sticks were easier to snap than others and had fun making two sticks from one, enjoying the 'snap' sound they made.
In Drawing Club, another routine that happens every day in Snowy Owl Class, we have been enjoying the story of Mr Gumpy's Outing. The children experience a story through simple 'mark making' where I can begin to introduce some writing and number work in a fun and easy way that the children enjoy. It supports vocabulary building and rich conversation as well as very strong comprehension of the stories we choose. I think it would be very beneficial for the children's language development if I advertise the Drawing Club vocabulary on a display board at home time on a Friday. Ask your children what the words mean and what the action is for each one. They will be very happy to show you! Please look out for them!
Finally, it has been very beneficial for me to be able to chat at parents evening and have your support from home. All of this will directly impact what we can achieve in class and I'm very pleased with how things are going, so thank you.

8/11/24

Welcome back to school! We hope you have all had a super half term. We have welcomed a new member of staff to our Snowy Owl team, Ms Edvardsson will be with us everyday, supporting the children with their learning as well as working 1-1 and with small groups. Please say hello to her if you see her around.

We have been thinking about bonfire night and Mrs Hann has supported the children to create some amazing artwork with black paper, shiny crafts, colours and shapes and lines with chalk. The gallery looks lovely and the work will be available to view when you come in for exhibition towards the end of the term. I wonder if any of the children can remember why we celebrate bonfire night? We have talked about the plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament hundreds of years ago.

Outside, we have been supporting the children to engage in collaborative games and Ms Edvardsson was thrilled with the children who worked together to build a submarine under the 'deep dark ocean'. There was a periscope, and somewhere for everyone to sit, sea monsters, sharks and storms as well as some very professional captains who were excellent in a crisis. We also told the story of 'Blanket' in Drawing Club. It is a lovely story, please enjoy it at home and allow the children to teach you some of the vocabulary we learned. Blanket (5-Minute Cartoon for Kids!) - YouTube

We have begun to look at the story of The Colour Monster and thinking about how he feels and why. Perhaps it is possible to feel lots of different ways all at the same time just like the colour monster did. We have created some colour splatter art that shows just how much the colour can mix and what new colours can be created. Year 1 have compared our splatter art with work of the artist Jackson Pollock. It also reminded us of the fireworks we saw in a video!

Outside, we had great fun using our orienteering skills to find markers and using them to support number recognition and number formation. We have being making and writing numbers in various ways using digits to 10. Year 1 are beginning to learn subtraction and are getting lots of help learning to use the subtraction symbol in a 'number sentence'. Please see your Purple Mash notifications.

 

 

25/10/24

We have been lucky enough this week to see a little bit of lovely Autumn weather which has             encouraged us to get outdoors as much as we can. The grass is very wet with dew and wellies have been essential, even in the sunshine! We have been enjoying playing games such as ‘duck duck goose’ as well as some excellent new ones the children made up! One of the games was so good, I wish I could say I thought of it myself! 

We have all been given an opportunity to use the laptops this week and have created our own avatars! Some of them are hilarious! We have a new online platform called Purple Mash, which has some     excellent activities to help us learn how to use a computer and enjoy some educational games. We will be using Purple Mash to teach Year 1 Computing. They will be able to use their login to complete   challenges linked to their learning.

All the Snowy Owl children have now been trained how to use the painting equipment by themselves and have been extremely responsible with the palettes, mixing trays and water. They understand how to select the right type of brush for the job they want to do and wash it before they change colour. They also use the bristles with great care, stroking gently rather than scrubbing. I taught everyone about primary       colours and the Year 1 children were able to create a colour wheel with their mixing skills. The painting area is permanently open now everyone knows how to help themselves.

 

We have also begun to complete some orienteering challenges using the new markers that are set up around the environment. It is great fun and needs to be completed at high speed! We used the markers to complete our scavenger hunt. There were several different trails to follow so we all needed to run off in all directions. Some of the markers were very    difficult to find. We will continue to go out and build our skills with orienteering. Thank you to everyone who sponsors us!!

 

18/10/24

This week, the children have been getting geared up with seasonal celebrations and talking about what happens in autumn. We have discussed how some trees are losing their leaves and others stay green all through the Winter. We have learned the names of some of the trees we have growing in our environment. We also talked about deciduous and evergreen as well as the types of fruit and veg we see in the shops at this time of year.    Perhaps you have seen piles of pumpkins in the supermarkets? The children have all had the opportunity to taste a little bit of cooked pumpkin which we learned is good roasted or made into soup.

Our artists and crafters have been busy with the pumpkin theme, decorating, colouring and designing some wonderful pictures which we have displayed in a gallery so that everyone can admire them.

As well as this, we have also become geographers! I hope our year 1 children can name and locate 5 of the worlds oceans? We noticed that India looks like the shape of a shark tooth which helps us remember where the Indian ocean is. We have all had a chance to explore Google earth and search for them all on the globe. In play, you might hear your child talk about our pirate adventures. Everyone got very excited climbing aboard and sailing the oceans in a ship made of crates and planks. Some of our pirates are featured in today's photo. You may also hear them talking about the pedometers which we have been using to count our steps. The year R children have been running up and down the field determined to get their number as high as they can. It's brilliant to see them challenging themselves so actively!

 

11/10/24

This week we have delved further into the world of horticulture! There is a classroom industry of planting, nurturing, labelling and organising. We have been thrilled with the donations of seeds, bulbs and compost and we can't wait till they all grow and bloom. Grandad Barry (Lily's grandad) has helped us out with some scientific names for some of the plants and explained the best environments for them to flourish. Perhaps we'll be the most colourful and cared for Early Years environment in Hampshire! Let's aim for that. We will keep you informed when we start to see them peeping up through the soil.

We have continued to think about the story of the Bear Hunt, and Year 1 have re-enacted the story by setting up an obstacle course for the Year R to follow. It was great fun when they went through the swirling whirling snowstorm, we threw beach balls at each other to recreate it! We had a very realistic bear hiding in the cave...

Many children in year R have worked hard to learn to read their first set of key words and our next step will be to learn to spell them. Look out in the reading diaries for the next set of words coming soon. Don't forget there is a section on the website to support with this: 10_fun_ways_to_help_your_children_learn_to_rread_key_words.pdf (bartonstacey.hants.sch.uk)

I'm incredibly impressed with our young performers who did us proud at the church. It was a big moment in their little lives. Not only did they head out on their first school trip but they stood in front of a huge congregation and everybody joined in very well. It says a lot about how well and how quickly they have settled and gelled as a class. We continue to focus on singing and performing nursery rhymes, noticing the rhyming patterns, alliterations and word play. I hope you are continuing to focus on your 5-a-day! In general terms, it has become clear over the last few weeks that we need to focus on supporting and developing oral skills, speech and language as well as phonological awareness. If you would like some advice about what to sing, please look at Nursery Rhymes and Songs - A to Z - BBC Teach

 

04/10/24

We have been absolutely overwhelmed by the generosity of the parents and grandparents who have provided us with some fantastic resources for helping us learn about how to look after living things. We are thrilled - a huge heartfelt thank you. We can now say we no longer need any more bulbs. All the children have been involved in the planting (which is still ongoing!) and we are looking forward to seeing (and eating!) the results!

Alongside our planting, we have been very aware of the changing season, and Y1 have completed a scientific exploration of the grounds, collecting signs and clues to help us know which one we're now in. The trees are beginning to take on a brownish tinge and many leaves have dropped already. The weather has also become cooler and the sun is lower in the sky. Although there have been some sunny moments, we can see our shadows are very long so we know it can't be summer. Our new story is 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt'. The children have set up a little environment that helps us retell the story. The book is now in high demand at reading time as the children all want a go at the retelling. We're gathering new vocabulary to describe each section of the story and  asking questions, such as 'Why did the family tip-toe through the cave?'

 

We're all so excited to sing in the church. It is our first big moment to shine in front of an audience and I know how much you are all longing to see the children together. We have the talented Mr    Martin to keep us going with his guitar and we would like to say a big thank you for his support with this. The children may be a little shy, but I can guarantee that in the classroom, they sing their hearts out!

If you haven't posted on Tapestry yet, let it be your challenge this week. It makes the children very happy to see themselves on the big screen. And keep up the five a day (nursery rhymes, that is!). 

 

27/09/24

We have been getting stuck into our recipe for porridge this week! All the children had the opportunity to try some porridge toppings and think about what they would prefer. The Year 1 children then looked closely at the recipe and were able to follow it themselves so that the adults didn't need to do much at all, apart from help them when the porridge was steaming hot. Everyone enjoyed the responsibility of measuring and combining the ingredients and controlling the microwave. The classroom filled with the delicious smell of warm porridge. Luckily it didn't flood the classroom and wash away the town mayor as it did in the story. We knew how to get just the right amount because we measured carefully.

 

Alongside this, we have begun to prepare for Harvest and all our children are learning a sweet little song to share with you at the church. Year 1 are getting the props ready and Year R are learning the actions. We hope to see you there on Friday 4th. Harvest has reminded us of the changing season; I wonder if we could build a conker collection over the next couple weeks? If you go out on an autumn walk and pick up a few conkers, we'd love to have them. Any parents who can help us out with bulbs, autumn vegetable seeds such as carrots, long planting troughs and a couple of matching wooden palettes, donations would be very gratefully received. Thank you! 

 

Year 1 have almost completed their learning about place value and will begin a unit on addition and subtraction calculations next week. Please have a look at the information in the home learning book so that you have an overview of the skills learned so far. We aim to keep revisiting aspects of this as we move on, to keep it fresh. They have also learned to make a lift the flap picture of a castle. For the year R, there is a set of CVC word cards to practise sounding and blending (s, a, t, i, p, n, m, d). A few of the children are beginning to hear blends, but for many, this will need this repeated many times, alongside plenty of phonological awareness (please ask if you need this information again). Sing nursery rhymes (perhaps aim for five a day!) and have a lovely weekend.

 

20/09/24

This week we have been inspired by the story of King Rollo and the New Shoes and have been dressing up as kings queens and wizards. This has now evolved into something much more and we have all kinds of witches, superheroes and pirates solving problems around the classroom. I have enjoyed the imaginative dialogue between one superhero and another as they work hard to save the world! Here is the link to the story: King Rollo E05. The New Shoes (youtube.com)

 

Meanwhile, there has been a bit of a focus on phonics as we reach the end of the first set of graphemes. The children will need some time to consolidate these (s, a, t, p, i, n). I will send some sets of words home in the book bags to practise blending as the children need as much support as we can with this. I'm impressed with their efforts to form letters too, there is a lot to celebrate! I would like the children to use the correct sequence of movements to get into good habits from the start. I will send home information on our school script so that you can see what we are expecting the children to do. I am so happy with the support you're all providing with home reading, thank you for filling up the reading diaries with lovely evidence of the power of reading.

Year 1 have been learning about mechanisms including, levers, axles and pulleys. We have begin to see how a simple split pin can be used to make a lever. This new skill will be put to good use when they design and create a moving picture!

 

As well as some very exciting extra playtimes and visits to the woods, Mrs Hann has been helping the children get busy planting some of the tyres with bulbs and propagating the spider plants and money plants. She has had groups of children getting very industrious with this and all the children have had a turn seeing what to do. We will be learning about how to keep these new little baby plants healthy. We have also begun to discuss healthy eating habits at lunchtime and snack time. It would be very helpful if you could please limit what the children bring in to either fruit or vegetables and the water bottle to contain just water. Please leave cereal bars, squash, fruit juice and yoghurt at home. Many thanks and have a super weekend!

 

13/09/24

We are now in full swing! The children are now becoming very familiar with routines, even reminding me of what's next on the timetable! They are showing that they are very good at asking sensible questions when they need something or are not sure what to do. The Year 1 children are incredibly mature and supportive, helping the Year R find their way. They are also very willing to complete their learning tasks to a high standard and are doing so well, I can trust them to complete their work independently, once they know what to do. What a change one year can bring. All the Snowy Owls have been looking at repeating patterns, following and continuing a pattern using colours and shapes. Help your children look for patterns in the environment and around your home. In phonics, we have now completed s, a and t and have begun to have a go at writing the letters as well as recognise and write our names, we will continue with this until everyone is confident. Year 1 are using adjacent consonants, I'm so impressed they have already learned to spell the first set of key words, keep up the good (amazing!) work!! In the photos you will see the children getting busy outdoors, which has been much easier this week. Some amazing obstacle courses have been built collaboratively and the mud kitchen is very popular too. Thank you for ensuring your children have the correct clothing for outdoor play.

Next week, we will share Tapestry posts on a Monday, and begin Show and Share on a Tuesday. Please help your children to prepare something to say about an object from home. First, we will invite George to take centre stage. Have a lovely weekend.

 

06/09/24

I am so proud of all of our new Snowy Owls who are settling brilliantly and learning new routines quickly. What a successful week we have had! So far, the children have shown us how well they make new friends, tidy up, share equipment and explore the resources in the environment. They have learned the '5 Speckled Frogs' song. This fits nicely with our book this week called 'Oi Frog!' which has helped us learn about rhyming words. A lot of our learning has been Frog themed. There has been some lovely creativity with the playdough where we have made frogs to sit on logs, we have been counting the delicious bugs that the frogs eat and making frog hats to wear. We have also worked hard to learn every weather themed nursery rhyme there is as we've watched the heavy downpours out the windows. However, our favourite song of all was the colour bubblies song: The Colorbubblies Song - YouTube

 

The Year R children have also met their new Year 5 buddy who will support them at various times, and they enjoyed sharing some play time with them. Thank you for your Bart the Bear diaries, what a lot of exciting summer adventures you have all had. Year 1 children have made a great start with their Maths and have been solving problems linked to sorting colours and sizes. We have also been using a sound mat to spell words with adjacent consonants. Thank you very much to the three of them for their help with routines as the YR settle in. Next week, we will all begin (or continue!) learning phonics and the YR children will begin to bring phonics reading books home. Please practise as often as you can with your children.

 

Year R parents, please attend the information session 2-3pm on Tuesday 10^th if you can. Have a super restful weekend.

 

19/07/24

Here is Tommy the tortoise! He came to school with Tori and Nate's Nanny. We found out a lot of information about Tommy, he's very old but nobody knows exactly when his birthday is because he was already an adult when he was found and rescued. He loves eating lettuce and gets a lot of water from the leaves. He was also surprisingly speedy! I tried to get a close up of him but it's ended up slightly blurred 😉

 

This week we have been treated to the 'Greatest Show' and it was incredible! The Eagle owls have worked so hard to pull it off and they definitely peaked this week! The Snowies were a fantastic audience and gave a huge applause. In addition, this week the children have been involved in transition into their new classes and I am so proud of the comments from Mrs Evans (who has been grinning from ear to ear!) about their lovely personalities and helpful attitudes. They have already begun thinking about their project for the Autumn term and are buzzing with excitement.

 

We have been preparing for the end of year and helping the children to organise themselves for the change ahead. We are collecting in reading books, if you have any at home please return them as soon as possible. If your child is moving to Barn Owl class, we would also like to encourage you to open your Tapestry account over the weekend and download anything you would like to keep before your it closes.

 

I would like to take this opportunity to say a huge thank you for the amazing support you have given us which has had an enormous positive impact on the children's wellbeing and education. Miss Bryant and I have had such a joyful year and have very much valued the relationships we have forged with families. All the other teachers in school are looking forward to having our children in their classes! We feel extremely proud and lucky that we have been part of their first chapter and will remember them very fondly as our little Snowy Owls.

 

Have a wonderful and safe summer holiday!

 

12/07/24

The children have been inspired by 'Little Creatures' animation and have made their own little creatures out of clay, following in the footsteps of the Year 1 children who used similar skills to create a Henry Moore sculpture. They were very excited to share these with parents at the exhibition along with the variety of bridges that have been expertly assembled. I have heard stories from some parents about the dedication the children have shown in their home learning, showing resilience and effort to produce an outcome they are proud of. 

 

I have been busy preparing the end of year slide show which has been a labour of love trying to ensure that the best photos and the most inspiring music has been selected to accompany them. What struck me was the huge number of animals the children have encountered throughout the year, including Tommy the tortoise who visited too late to make it into the show. However, the children have enjoyed meeting him, in human years he would be a very old man!

 

In other news, we have begun looking at the story of God's creation through the book, 'Wonderful Earth'. It has helped us to understand how precious our world is and how many aspects are important to celebrate and protect, as well as show off with pride! For this reason, the Year 1 children have been making information leaflets for visiting alien tourists who may like to spend holiday time in our galaxy. What would attract them to our planet? Perhaps a red admiral butterfly, which happily fluttered into our play area yesterday.

 

We have been spending time building our writing skills too, the children have used their imaginations to think of their own sentences relating to the Drawing club stimulus, recently we have had the 'Three Little Pigs' and 'You're Not So Scary, Sid!' We've also had the 'SuperTed' animation. We have looked at ensuring ALL the phonemes within a word are represented with graphemes, such as 'sandwich' instead of 'sadwich' and learning to end a sentence with a full-stop.

 

As we approach the end of the year, please ensure you have placed all school reading books into the book bag ready to be collected in next week. We will also be starting to send things home so please provide your child with a large carrier bag on Monday. Have a wonderful weekend.

 

05/07/24

This was the week of all weeks! We have... drum roll... Completed our Great Snowy Owl Dragon Bakeoff!! All of the children have baked and decorated their scrumptious showstoppers and have excelled themselves with their creativity and effort. All the cakes are unique in design, flavour combinations carefully selected, and decorations added with a special flourish only the Snowies could achieve. The rest of the school will judge their efforts anonymously and we will announce the winner next week. Please come to school for our exhibition laden with donations in exchange for the very special limited edition copies of the recipe book. Minimum £1 please. The writing is excellent, all the Year R children have been able to write a sequence of sentences that explains how to make a showstopper, mostly without any help.

In Maths we have been counting well beyond 20! Does your child know what comes after 29, 39, 49, etc? Does your child remember what each digit represents in a 2-digit number? I.e. in 39 there are 3 tens (30) and 9 more ones. 

In addition, the children have been learning about the sculptor Henry Moore and have begun creating 3D clay sculptures inspired by his designs based on the human form. We have used sculpting and blending techniques to ensure there are no cracks or vulnerable thin areas. His art ended up lumpy and bumpy with various holes through it, but also smooth and flowing so we worked hard to do the same. The year R have been inspired by Morph and the 'Very Small Creatures' to create a smooth result for their clay creature, which is a lot of fun! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE0JEDHZVTY

We can't wait to show you on exhibition day!

If you haven't already done so, please make sure that your school library book is in the book bag as they will be collected in for the holidays.

Two weeks and two days to go. Our last day together is 23^rd July. Have a super weekend! 

 

28/06/24

In Maths this week, we have all been focussing on counting backwards! Everyone is very proficient counting up but a real expert can also count down from 20, and then from any number, without looking at a number line. The faster the better! Practise loads and you'll soon nail it. How quickly can you sequence number cards from 10-20? See if you can do it within a minute, or even half a minute. Some children are muddling 13 and 15, 12 and 20. Watch out!

Every week, Wednesday is polling day in our class and this week we chatted about election day and how adults vote at a polling station by standing in a private cubicle and placing a cross on a ballot paper before posting it in a ballot box. The Presiding Officer makes sure everything runs smoothly. We also talked about Emmeline Pankhurst and the Suffragettes and decided that things are a lot fairer now, thanks to her. We normally vote for our play buddies; children who we think are best at the job get voted for more, because that's how democracy works.

 

The definite highlight of the week has been sports day and what a hot one it was! I am extremely proud of the 100% effort demonstrated on the day and encouragement the children showed for each other. It really is a very public way to challenge yourself and not easy at all, so a HUGE well done. 

There has been a focus on bridges this week too. If you haven't made one for home learning there is still time, and if you have, they're amazing!! We will display them proudly at exhibition either as a picture from tapestry or in the classroom. In class, we have come up with a variety of designs wide enough to cross an imaginary river and strong enough to take the weight of a toy car.

At the end of the week we celebrated armed forces day when we showed our support for everyone who makes up the Armed Forces community. We met the RAF safety team from Middle wallop and completed activities in class to help us understand what the armed forces do.

We will be making our showstoppers soon!! We can't wait to get busy in the Snowy Owl kitchen and begin our Bake Off. I think we'll have to have a Barton Stacey Primary celebrity in to class to choose the winner!

Have a super weekend everyone!

 

21/06/24

There are so many photos to share this week, it's been a struggle to choose! I am looking forward to sharing many more at the class exhibition on Friday 12^th July at 9am. 

The biggest highlight of our week has been Coco the pony who visited the Snowy Owl children on Tuesday. She was absolutely beautiful and stood calmly and patiently while all the children had an opportunity to stroke her. We have learned a lot about keeping a pony as a pet and they certainly do need a lot of care. Coca has an allergy to flies and midges so she has to have special medicine and a fly rug to keep them from bothering her too much. Otherwise she's pretty resilient because she's a New Forest pony who usually live wild. A hug thank you to Seb, his mum and Godmother, Claire who kindly shared Coco with us.

In other learning, we went to the woodland area for an extra playtime earned for excellent behaviour and discovered the beech leaves still haven't rotten down into the soil and were perfect for playing with! The children had a lovely time burying each other and building leaf mountains. We also made a huge clock out of sticks and every single child contributed to the team effort. We had to work together because 'team work makes the dream work'! Afterwards we made sure we had no reversed numbers and that they were all in the correct sequence in a 'clockwise' direction. Can you tell what time our clock says? The children in Snowy Owl class have all learned how to read o'clock times. Please reinforce this at home, the long hand is the hour hand, the short one is the minute hand.

Thank you very much to those parents who have already sent in some cake decorations. Please provide these before the end of next week (28th). We will begin to plan our recipes and designs soon. We have already had a think about our favourite flavours and tasted some samples.

A HUGE well done to those children who have amazed me in drawing club with their amazing passwords. Mr Stangroom might need to go sticker shopping soon!

 

14/06/24

This week we are getting into our new story 'The Great Dragon Bakeoff'! The children have designed and made dragon themed hats for the planned events we have in store over the next couple of weeks. The first stage is tasting the various flavours and deciding on our favourites. What is your favourite cake flavour? The Year 1 children have come up with a variety of flavours and embellishments and have even drawn a design for the most amazing celebration cake they can imagine. Please let us know if you have any objections to us tasting various cake related ingredients (no nuts). In maths we have begun to learn about fractions. We understand that a half is one of two equal parts of 1 whole and a quarter is one of four equal parts of 1 whole. We can split shapes and quantities into fractions but we have to make sure the groups are equal. This will be important if we are sharing cakes! The children have proved their tidying up skills are as brushed up as ever and definitely deserve these exciting treats.

 

In other news, we have said goodbye to Mr Davis who, due to personal reasons, has unfortunately had to leave us. We would like to wish him well, it was a pleasure to meet him.

 

Next week, we will be paying a visit to Revd. Smart in the church for a special Snowy Owl outing. Is there anyone available to walk us there and back? We will leave school at 1.30pm and be back before 3pm. Thank you very much in anticipation.

A little plea from our librarian Mrs Sherwood. Please try and avoid placing water bottles in book bags. We have unfortunately had to say goodbye to a few lovely but sodden picture books.

 

07/06/2024

This week, we have welcomed a new child to our class! Rosie has no shortage of new friendships on offer and I'm so proud of the effort everyone made to welcome her with gifts and cards. Welcome to Snowy owls, Rosie! 

The children have been focussed on a new area of learning in Maths. We are now looking at fractions, and the children now understand that a half is one of two equal parts that make one whole. We've been very focussed on ensuring that each part is exactly the same by measuring very carefully. We will continue to look carefully at fractions, moving from halves to quarters and from shapes to numbers.

Mr Davis has helped the children in their performance skills, making up stories with them and helping the children to perform them on stage. Many of the children relished this and enjoyed developing their ideas and acting them out with an audience. In phonics news, we have come to the end of our current unit on building longer, multisyllabic words with adjacent consonants. The children have developed their chunking skills and we hope that they will be able to apply these skills at home too. We have spent time with each child individually to check that they have retained all the graphemes we have taught and there are a few gaps for some children which we will be going back over. These, as well as new yellow words (year R only), will be sent home - please help your children practise them for reading and spelling.

Finally, we are noticing that there are many children within the class consistently forgetting their coat. We have reminded the children they need one and would be grateful if you could please support us with this. Thank you! Have a lovely weekend and keep up the Tapestry posts, we have created plenty of opportunities to share them.

 

17/05/2024

I would like to share updates about the children's creativity! There have been various moments this week, where I have looked up and noticed the depth of creativity that was on show around the environment. Some of this has been independent, others have learned collaboratively but everyone has been involved in something! We have had some lovely written notes, amazing ideas with paint and incredible structures in the outdoors area where children have been transported in their imaginations to other places and times. It is excellent to see children enjoy experimenting with colours, textures and design.

In Maths, we are continuing our theme of two-digit numbers up to 20, how many of you have managed to make two-digit numbers at home using a group of ten and some more ones? Pop your learning on Tapestry, we would love to see this.

We also have begun to discus what materials different objects are made from and their various properties. For example, glass is a good material for windows because we can see-through the glass. I wonder why it is a good idea to make pencils out of wood rather than glass?

 

We have planted some more seeds and we now have carrots, radishes and spring onions to take care of. Interestingly, we have planted them in a narrow, clear plastic box so we can see how they grow and develop under the soil. We planted the remaining seeds outside so that we can have a good harvest when the time comes. On Tuesday, next week, we will be going on our trip to Hilliers and observing plants in all their glory, I wonder what species we will find and what kinds of animals will live there? There will be further advice about clothing coming home on Monday once we have a better idea of the weather. This will be an outdoors day, no matter what the weather does! We only have three days in class next week, so we won't do drawing club or show and share, we will focus on your amazing Tapestry contributions instead. Have a lovely weekend!

 

10/05/24

Despite being a short week we have packed in lots of lovely learning! The Year R children have been getting stuck into some very focussed maths as we start to engage with numbers beyond ten. We have shown the children that teen numbers are made from two digits. There is one ten and some more ones. We have been making teen numbers using various resources such as a bundle of 10 lolly sticks and some more ones. Perhaps you have some objects at home that could support with this. Some children might be able to count on from 10 rather than counting from one every time. 

 

Look how our froglets have grown! We feed them every couple of days with dried meal worms crushed and sprinkled into the water. They are nearly ready to re-join their froggy family in the pond as they begin to outgrow their tank. We will be sorry to see them go!

 

In English, we have looked at the story of 'Fairy Tale Pets' and have looked closely at the main character, 'Bob,' who has some emotional ups and downs through the story! We looked at what he was feeling and why, and the Year 1 children showed this as a graph. 

The weather has been gorgeous and the children have been very active out and about. Please continue to consider the most appropriate clothing for our active curriculum and so that the children are safe, ready and appropriately dressed. Thank you to everyone making a big effort with this. Talking of out and about, is there anyone available to support our trip to Hilliers on the 21st? Please contact the office if you are willing and available. So far I have one volunteer and would like at least one more.

Show and share next week will be awesome Anna

 

03/05/24

In between the various visitors who have been to-ing and fro-ing through our classroom, the children have been learning about all sorts, from spoonbills in the Ngorongoro crater, to where flour comes from! Mrs West showed us some of the photos she took in Tanzania, Africa, to help the children understand more about hot parts of the world and the people and animals that live there. We also looked at photos of a Masai village and of the school children in the school there. We decided that we are VERY lucky to have our classroom and all the resources in it. The children made hot and cold environments outside using all kinds of creative resources. Our polar environment even had real ice in it. If you have a globe at home, let the children show you what they have learned. If not, explore Google Earth with them. Outside, the children have also been building some quite complicated         obstacle courses using design tools to support them to sequence the equipment in creative ways. It has helped them to work together well collaboratively and enjoy shared success as well as having a huge amount of fun. We have been reliving stories out there too, thinking about how we can build bridges to help the Billy Goats cross the river and how Rosie the Hen sees flour being made at the mill.

In froggy news, our little class pets are very long-legged! They are becoming very active, swimming around the tank with a very efficient breast-stroke! We feed them meal worms because since they went through metamorphosis, they are now carnivorous.

The children showed enormous maturity in chatting with our visitors and were able to demonstrate very clearly how we care for each other in our Barton Stacey family. Some children were chosen to carry out particular tasks and did so with fantastic learning attitudes and listening skills. I am constantly proud of our children.

Show and share next Tuesday will be excellent Edie!

 

26/04/24

Earlier in the week, the children enjoyed a fairy-tale themed drama session in the hall with 'Perform'; hopefully you have seen their leaflet with details about the extracurricular club if your children would like to take part. They are huge fun and very active. Our imaginations have also been running wild in the kitchen with the children concocting some interesting potions using some very carefully measured magical ingredients. It was great to observe the children coming up with wonderful ideas for recipes.

 

The combine tyre has continued to provide enormous scope for learning. Alfie noticed his trainers made very clear footprints when the ground was a little bit damp which inspired us to get the paintbrushes out and write messages using water as ink. They dried quickly because the tyre felt warm after the sun had been shining on it. We noticed that some different materials around the environment felt warmer than others and we talked about my this might be.

 

In Maths we have been looking at equal and unequal groups and the children are really good at explaining their reasoning. They were able to discuss which image was the odd one out and why. They then focussed really hard at sharing food fairly in a lunchbox game, as well as counting accurately and comparing amounts. Year 1's were able to dip their toe into some repeated addition and arrays in multiplication!

 

Mrs Sherwood comes to see us on a Thursday afternoon to help us change our library books; please remember to share the stories and return them to the book bag in preparation for this each week. Show and share on Tuesday will be super Stanley!

 

19/04/24

The children have come back from holidays full of stories about their adventures. As ever, we have had to ask children to wait for a turn to share as the number of Tapestry posts is rather large at the moment. Thank you to everyone who has shared and I'm delighted that we have a class of such willing and able conversationalists!

The term has begun with more focus on animals. To begin with, the children were excited to discover that Timmy is now a teeny, weeny frog, no bigger than your thumbnail. He is spending most of the time out of the water, breathing air and enjoying the freedom of legs! Needless to say, we have now taped down the lid of the tank to avoid escaping froglets bouncing around the classroom.

In addition to this, the children have been inspired by my safari videos of hippos and are engaging well with one of our new key texts, 'The Hot Hippo' by Mwenye Hadithi. I'm sure there will be more conversation from the children about the hippos' habits coming home to entertain you!

Anna has been very kind and provided us with some new pets for our class so we now have aqua dragons! They require careful feeding and attention every couple of days and we will look after them as carefully as we can and enjoy watching them grow.

To top the week, we have had kittens in class! Mrs Mann-Rae was kind enough to provide for our latest 'pets in school' event and they were utterly adorable! All the children had a chance to hold one and enjoy watching their playful antics. We have learned all about how to look after a kitten, although they soon grow into cats. 

We were surprised to discover that there are a significant number of children who have never been to a zoo. I would like to recommend a trip to Marwell if you've not been. Now the weather is warmer, you might enjoy a lovely day out one weekend. Having said that, please ensue your children have their wellies in school.  We are regularly up to all sorts and we need to have suitable active clothing as well as footwear. Lately, the mud kitchen is particularly muddy!

Show and share on Tuesday will be excellent Esme!

 

28/03/24

 

This week, we have been lucky enough to enjoy another 'pets in school' event! Hold on to your hats because some of you might be surprised to hear that we welcomed three enormous tarantulas into Snowy Owl class. Each spider had its own little habitat where they sat happily while we peered in through the sides. Tori's grandad Bill came along and gave us a wealth of information about spiders. Did you know that there is a spider called a goliath bird eating spider that is the size of a dinner plate? Did you know that tarantulas can live as long as 20 years? Did you know that they have skeletons on the outside of their bodies? Did you know that they have three pairs of eyes? We have learned so much. Along with the spiders, we also met Loki the rabbit who was happy to be cuddled by the children. He was extremely soft and didn't make any noises at all. And in our final bit of animal related news, Timmy, Tommy and Indiana are starting to look very much like they have the tiniest little buds that may turn into legs beginning to show. It's possible that the tadpoles will metamorphose over the Easter holiday! Watch this space. They're eating everything in sight, ravenous little beasts! 

We have been focussing on the story 'What the ladybird heard' and the children have drawn maps of the route the robbers took around the farm. They have also thought of ways for the farmer to keep an eye on the gate, perhaps by installing security cameras. In drawing club, we enjoyed drawing a picture of a deep trap, disguised with leaves so that the robbers would fall in and land on brambles!

We have been busy preparing for the Easter service, learning about how Jesus arrived in Jerusalem on a donkey while people waved palm leaves. The children have written some thoughtful prayers to share at the service and have enjoyed learning a song to perform for you. Have a fabulous Easter break and we will look forward to seeing you again in the summer term. Where did that time go?!

 

22/03/24

 

This week I have many thank yous. Our trip to Cholderton on Friday was a HUGE success. There were big smiles from beginning to end, with many of our children experiencing the delights of a hands on farm for the first time. We particularly enjoyed the pig racing and animal feeding. We also spent a lot of time in the soft play barn, developing our movement skills, and giggling our heads off! Everyone's behaviour was impeccable. Thank you to the children, what a wonderful day out. Back in class, we have been spending time talking, chatting and remembering what happened and what we saw. 

On Science day we explored the theme of 'Time' with various activities set up around the environment, such as 'Metamorphosis mayhem', 'wheels of time', seed planting and sand timer making. It was very interesting filling up the sand timers with sand and estimating how much we would need for a 'one minute' timer. We also enjoyed a scientific assembly and shared what we had learned. Well done to the children who earned a special certificate for their engagement and learning. Thank you to Ms Hardy for helping us organise this.

One of the biggest event of our week was the official opening of The Kindness Church! Reverend Smart (who is also one of our Federation governors) came along to join us and cut the ribbon. He blessed our church and led us in a prayer. After that we sang 'Lord of the Dance' for him. As a treat for the children, I have provided them with some batteries to put in the candles so that they glow up warmly while they spend calm time in Kindness Church. Thank you Revd. Smart.

With thanks to Lilly, we have enjoyed fruit kebabs which were scrumptious! We have also tasted mango and pomegranate and we're hoping to try a but of coconut and the milk inside it once Mrs West figures out how to get in it! We would also like to say a very grateful thank you to Mrs Mann-Rae for providing it for us, as well as other treats such as a new globe for our class. Thank you. It is Mrs Mann-Rae's last day with us on Monday and we will miss her greatly, her presence has been a big bonus for everyone. Thank you to Mrs Sherwood who has provided us each with a library book! Please enjoy these at home and keep them in the bookbag when you're not looking at them. They will be changed every Thursday.

Finally, as you will see in our prayer book, thank you to God for helping us look after the tadpoles! They are now huge! We're expecting legs any day. Show and share on Tuesday will be amazing Aurelia.

 

15/03/24

This week has been bursting with exciting events and learning to share with you. We have our new combine tyre! It is 6ft across and took a good deal of manoeuvring to get it from the truck, through the gate and on its side in the right place. Some children have tried to move it, but it weighs about the same as a polar bear so it didn't shift! It's wonderful to see the children challenging themselves to climb up, balance and jump off. It has also been a den, a cave and a boat (so far!). Outside, we have also developed a water wall puzzle maze and a church! We have named it Welcome Church and next week, Rev. Smart, one of our school governors, will come into class to officially open it with us. Our tadpoles are thriving! They are obviously very hungry and have grown so much already. They are herbivores at the moment and they nibble on the aqua plants. We saw one doing a poo today, which we found very interesting! There is no sign of their legs yet, but we will keep you updated! 

On Monday, we were very surprised and dismayed to discover an unbelievable, unacceptable, untidy mess in our classroom! The children were amazing at tidying, George H even helped me with the hoover while all the children picked it up. We're not sure who was responsible but we think it might be naughty fairies. Henry has suggested hiding a camera in the class and the Year 1 children have written to Mr Stangroom for help. Their letters were excellent.

For snack time, we have been lucky enough to learn about some fruits from around the world. We tasted a mango which grows in warm, wet tropical areas such as the Caribbean and a pomegranate which grows very happily in warm dry areas of the world such as the Mediterranean. They were delicious! We are very much looking forward to seeing you in class for our exhibition and at church for Easter. Show and share on Tuesday will be marvellous Mabel! Enjoy this beautiful clip with your children over the weekend. 

 

08/03/24

We have tadpoles! The children helped to set up our aquarium with aquatic plants, some rain water and a couple of logs so the froglets can crawl out when they're ready. We didn't manage to collect much frogspawn from the pond but we are delighted that we now definitely have 'Timmy', 'Indiana' and a slightly unknown number of others (they're very good at hiding!). The children have learned a lot about the life cycle of a frog. Our word of the week is 'metamorphosis'. Continuing with the 'living things' theme, we have welcomed Feathers, Fangs and Furries to the class and it was a HUGE success! Paul and Kerry Smith were very knowledgeable about the various creatures they introduced and again, the children asked excellent questions. We had a monitor lizard, a bearded dragon, a barn owl, a tortoise, a guinea pig, a scorpion (it glowed blue under a UV torch!!), and a python! The session was very hands-on so we all had a chance to touch and look closely. Thanks for your generosity with donations.

This week has been so packed full of special events; yesterday, for World Book Day, we searched for evidence of fairies! We read 'Once Upon a Fairytale' by Natalie and Lauren O'Hara which was so good it made my skin tingle when I read it to the children. When we went outside, the children were brilliant at spotting magical signs, clues and finding little hidey holes where fairies might be. Magnifying glasses really helped with this. We decided that when the flowers start to blossom, we might have a better chance of seeing them.  I've never actually spotted one, have you? To encourage them to come out, we have each made a little fairy door and when they're dry, we will place them around our environment inside and out. We had some excellent outfits too, including Johnny Appleseed, Steve Irwin and Amelia Earhart! Thank you everyone for supporting this. Please consider taking the children to see the magical fairy doors at Furzey Gardens in the New Forest this weekend and pop some pics of your adventures on Tapestry. Here is a link for you:

Fairy doors at Furzey Gardens - Minstead Trust

In other news (it's really happening...!) we have a combine harvester tyre arriving on Saturday! I will share the exciting news with the children so that they might anticipate it over the weekend and imagine all the ways they might want to play with it. 

Show and share on Tuesday will be lovely Lilly. Have a super Mothers' Day everyone.

 

01/03/24

On Friday last week we were delighted to welcome Natalie from the Fire Service who came to talk to us about the work they do and what it's like to be a fire fighter. It was an excellent session and what I'm incredibly proud of is the quality of the questions the children asked. They were inspired to know more detail about what they had heard and were able to articulate themselves impressively well. They were complimented on their maturity and excellent communication skills for such young children. This week we have been treated to some more pet visits! We have had Mrs Hann's springer puppy, Zizi who had already learned to sit, even though he's only 9 weeks old. Then we had Mrs Anson's Cavachon, Rhodey, who had a soft curly coat, just like a sheep. We were surprised to discover that Rhodey likes eating roast dinners! Unfortunately, we had to rearrange our zoo visit till next Tuesday but luckily, we still have that to look forward to! Thank you for your donations.

We also have some new animals coming to stay in Snowy owl Class. Last year we had butterflies in a netted habitat, this year we will need a tank filled with water and some aquatic plants. I wonder what they might be?

In other news, Peter the tyre man has been in touch to say there may be hope on the horizon! He gave me the dimensions of a whopper of a tyre that we might want. We drew the dimensions on the floor and it really will make an excellent climbing frame. Watch this space...

Please dress as 'adventurers' on Thursday 7^th March for World Book Day.

In show and share on Tuesday 5^th March will be fantastic Finn!

 

23/02/24

We have been overwhelmed (in a good way!) by the enthusiasm for home learning! Thank you very much for your fabulous engagement with school that allows the children to share their joy on Tapestry with us. Lots of children have had a go at presenting their activities to the whole class but our timetable has become a little bit squashed. We apologise if some children are still waiting for their turn. This week the children have been really inspired by some of your posts! George H shared the shop he had made selling friendship bracelets, so we also made some and sold them at our shop too! Jenson shared his board game which was brilliant, so we have all had a go at making our own board games, with tunnels and slides. Thank you to Alfie who has been skiing in Austria which inspired us to enjoy the line rider while listening to The Mountain King, as well as learning to spell the 'ure' grapheme so that we could write 'pure white snow' on our pictures.

Line Rider - Mountain King (youtube.com)

 

There have been woodland walks, valentines day baking, pancake fun and litter picking! Not to mention skinks, trampolining and Army Club!

 

I have provided every Year R with a new set of sight words stuck into the reading diaries. Please spend some time learning to read them and let me know when your child recognises them (not using phonics). Some children may feel ready to move on to learn to spell them too.

 

Show and Share next Tuesday will be terrific Tori!

 

08/02/24

As promised here are some doggy updates to share with you. First we met Romeo who was a beautiful miniature dachshund! It was a real treat to invite him into the classroom and hear about his life at home with Aurelia. Romeo is a bit fussy - he only likes to drink rainwater! He was very interested in meeting everyone and loved the treats he was given. Hank was gorgeous too! He's a young English bulldog who usually lives at home with Stanley. He was so well behaved. He has lovely shiny fur and because of his breed, needs special cleaning inside the rolls of skin around his face. The snowy owl children behaved very well and showed a lot of care for the animals. Thank you very much to the kind parents who let us share this opportunity. There are more to come! Hopefully, a couple more dogs, a tortoise and even a pony if we're lucky!

The children have earned their popcorn and have enjoyed a compilation of Morph favourites. To enjoy this again and again, please go to Morph - Ultimate Fun Compilation for Kids! 🎉The King! - YouTube

There are two books in your children's bags for the holiday, please make the most of small frequent opportunities to practise, these moments will be hugely beneficial. Any Tapestry updates will be a lovely treat for us all when we get back after the break. Show and share on Tuesday 20^th February will be lovely Lyla! Have a restful half term.

 

02/02/24

We were very lucky to have a special visit from a real author this week, Simon Murray who wrote and illustrated the story Icky Doo Dah. He showed us his books and even taught how to draw an Icky Doo Dah! The results are amazing and the pictures will go up on the wall in our class gallery. He brought a lot of joy to our learning which is what it's all about.

We have been looking closely at the story of Chicken Licken in drawing club. Can you think of something even BIGGER than a chandelier that could fall on Foxy Loxy's head? The children's imaginations ran wild. We had a house, a car. a piano, a dinosaur, a spaceship and even a whole planet! Using crocodiles, we also learned about comparing quantities. The children understand that the crocodile always eats the biggest dinner. So if it had a choice between a group of 6 fish or a group of 10, it would definitely go for the group of 10 and the group of 6 little fish can swim quickly away.

All of this fantastic learning is wonderful to see, but what has blown my socks off this week is the writing produced by the Year 1 children. They have retold the story of the badger in Disgusting Sandwich in their own way and they truly are very entertaining to read. Year 1 parents, you are welcome into class to have a sneaky peek! Be prepared to feel extremely proud. Using our new felt tips, Year R have drawn a giant sized map of the park where badger lives!

We've a miniature dachshund and an old English bulldog coming to meet us tomorrow! Doggy updates in next week's news. Show and share on Tuesday will be awesome Alfie!

26/01/24

The children have been making pairs! Pairs of socks, pairs of gloves and pairs of shoes. We have investigated pairs outside in the woods and discovered that some numbers can make pairs and others can't because there's always an 'odd' one left over. To help with this, we've been doing a lot of practice with counting, helping the children move each object as they go so that they don't count the same object twice. This was tricky (and funny!) when the leaves blew away in the wind. We decided beech nuts were easier because they were heavier.

Earlier in the week, we learned about 'patience' in worship with Mrs Cobb. The children have considered this very deeply and have been able to give excellent examples of times when their patience is tested. They now have some good strategies to help and have been able to share some lovely prayers about patience.

We are hoping for some more volunteers for our 'pets in school' events, so far we only have one pet lined up for later in the year (although it will be well worth the wait!). Are any more parents able to support with this? Hopefully less than an hour of your time will be enough to let us have a good look and learn how you look after it.

There are some exciting plans afoot, you may have heard the children talk at home about a tractor tyre. We're being very      patient while we wait for news about when it will be delivered. This will add so much scope to our play area in so many ways, mostly to provide a support for various construction projects and obstacle courses as well as being a great den and roundabout! It will make a super climbing frame. The children have been researching tractors to see how big their tyres are, and we think it might be wider than our arms can stretch! Happy days.. Show and share on Tuesday will be our brilliant Jenson!

 

19/01/24

There's such a lot to tell you about this week I hardly know how to start!

The story of Stone Soup has captured the children's imaginations and lends itself beautifully to some mud kitchen role play! However, this week's Drawing Club has probably been one of the most successful ever and I have to share the link with you to allow your children to extend their joy into your homes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSpQAXjjwjE

We have also been out and about a lot this week in the bright winter weather to carry out our 'iceperiments'. We have learned so much about water and temperature. The children have made some ice art by placing objects in trays, covering them with water and leaving them overnight to freeze. We have also frozen some water balloons and created our very own mini ice rink! The Science investigations haven't stopped there. We have also been learning about our senses and have carried out our first taste test which was very funny! I was impressed how well the children could taste the difference between banana and pineapple jelly beans 🙂As we move on to another great story, 'The Disgusting Sandwich', we have created sandwich recipes and had a go at making our own sandwiches. Look how carefully we have learned to cut cucumber and tomato with a knife. The year 1 children have been using contractions. 'We can't eat it now, it's disgusting!' 

In a whistle-stop tour of the rest of the week, we have used the laptops to create art work based on the work of artist Mondrian, been counting objects and representing numbers in a variety of ways and have written some absolutely amazing phrases and sentences in our new 5-minute challenges. We really are ahead of the game!! Show and share next Tuesday will be super Seb!

 

12/01/24

This week we have begun to look more closely at signs of Winter and have noticed lots of clues around our school environment. The weather is very chilly and we have found ice! There are also deciduous trees with no leaves, lots of rotting leaves on the ground and our shadows are very long in the sunshine. Some children have set up an ice experiment with Miss Bryant to find out if there is any ice where the sun is shining or if it only forms in shadowy areas. Year 1 have gone one step further and have looked for physical and human features in our environment and in Africa. What is created by people and what occurs naturally? Another group of children have been busy at the craft table learning about colours. Red, blue and yellow can be mixed in    different ways to create orange, purple and green. We have painted colour wheels to show the primary and secondary colours. I am mega-impressed with how sensibly the children use the paint. They only take two squirts from the paint bottle and always remember to wash their brush before changing colours. I saw all of the children remember that they stroke their brush gently on the   paper. "It's not a toothbrush, it's a paintbrush!" said Phoebe. In other news, the children have been very active outside, building towers and dens with cardboard boxes, as well as a super obstacle course in the hall. Our Drawing Club story was 'Stone Soup' which has inspired the children to get busy with their culinary skills in the kitchen. Jenson made a delicious bacon sandwich! 😉 Show and share next week will be the amazing George H. Enjoy a lovely weekend.

 

05/01/24

Happy New Year!

We have started the new term with some learning about goals and ambitions, and thinking about setting new challenges. Mr Stangroom introduced us all to the idea of new years resolutions so the children have been thinking about things they would like to improve about their own lives. In class, we looked at how we feel when we learn something new, its not always easy but we have to persevere (drawing club word!). We set them some tricky challenges to test their perseverance and they didn't quit! One of the hardest was building a tower of more than 5 bricks end to end, another was finding sequins with a blindfold on! The Year 1 children have also been experiencing some challenges, learning to spell the days of the week using the SOS method. Ask them to tell you more about this. The Year R children will also be expected to learn some simple spellings. The first set of these, and a bit more information about them, will be stuck into their reading diaries at the end of this week.

Before Christmas, I asked for some help to source a few items, please spread the word far and wide and we might get lucky! I would also like to invite you to take part in 'Pets in School' events (excited!). If you have a pet at home and would be happy to bring it/them to meet the children and chat with us about how you look after them, please let me know by 12^th January (email to: snowy.owl@bartonstacey.hants.sch.uk) and I can begin to make arrangements.

This week's highlight - playing with balloons on the school field which was enormous fun in the wind! We'll definitely play that again, it really helped the children's agility and awareness of space around them. Show and Share next Tuesday will be the wonderful Isobel!

 

15/12/23

We have finally come to the end of a long and busy term. For our Year R children, I would like to say congratulations and well done for completing your first ever term at school! You are growing up so quickly and have become fully fledged members of our Barton Stacey school community. Our 5 amazing Year 1 children are becoming super motivated and impress me every day with how much home learning they get done! The whole of Snowy Owl class have rightly earned themselves a very positive reputation amongst other staff and children, there were so many lovely comments and compliments on Christmas activities day on Wednesday. We celebrated with a special Christmas lunch, Christmas crafts, stories, hot chocolates and much more. We also enjoyed a wet, wonderful wellie walk with worms in the wain!!

​**Help needed*​*I wonder if any parents could help with the following by rummaging in the back of dusty cupboards, sheds or even as you browse free or second hand sites! - Pestles and mortars, plastic wall mirror, decking planks, cable reels, funnels, kids pull/push along cart, clean cushions, kids broom, skateboard ramp, woven baskets, wooden crates, nuts and bolts. It is also my dream to put a tractor tyre in the EYFS outdoor area!! Please chat with me if you think you could help with this. Many thanks in anticipation.

Have a restful and safe Christmas break and I am very much looking forward to finding out what these amazing children will achieve in the Spring. Please ask your children to practise their reading with you every day to keep up the pace for the new year, there are two books to keep you going. As well as this, I would like all year 1 children to know the names of the 2D and 3D shapes in their book bags and practise all their number bonds for 10 as much as you can. Best Christmas wishes all!!

 

08/12/23

The children have been busy with a variety of exciting activities this week, including the amazing 'Runaway Pea' obstacle course! Aurelia inspired us by bringing a small green ball to school so we set about recreating the pea's journey. The pea bounced off various obstacles, the red bucket (ketchup), Boris the dog (the trike), the fish tank (an upturned crate), it rolled along various sloping channels and ended up under the 'fridge'. This was another excellent example of sharing, teamwork and creativity from our Snowies. We have embellished our shoes with jewels and sequins, they now look beautiful enough to sell in the Shoemakers shop. Some wonderful descriptive vocabulary has emerged, the shoes look exquisite and elaborate! Some children have enjoyed wearing them while we play! Year 1 have written some fantastic stories retelling this classic tale. It's wonderful to see how quickly they are progressing with their writing skills. Year R parents, please look out for the children coming home with a fresh bundle of graphemes and words. Please practise to 'sound out and say' using the words and ensure the children remember all the graphemes. I recommend a little and often, perhaps 5 at a time. The week's highlight was definitely the Nativity which was stunningly good. I can honestly say, I have never seen a better one!! The children are absolute gems. Show and share next Tuesday will be the Brilliant Betty!

 

01/12/23

Earlier this week, we were very lucky to welcome our Year 5 buddies into Snowy Owl Class for a rare opportunity to work together. It gave everyone a fantastic chance to demonstrate the wonderful kindness and care that has developed between the classes since the beginning of term. Ms Hardy talked about the Christian value of Love in worship on Monday, and there was certainly a lot of love in the room that day. A huge thank you to Year 5 and the Eagle Owls for setting such a mature example.

 

Year 1 have been focussing this week on counting money using a mix of 1p and 2p coins. They have become very good at selecting resources to help calculations and will be bringing home some money problems this weekend to practise and show off their new skills.

We worked as hard as the elves to complete the stitches for our shoes ready to share for the Exhibition. We have also developed a good understanding of healthy balanced diets and what 'fresh' food means. The children have created healthy food plates and talked about what they have chosen to place on them. Please look for information coming home soon about the types of snacks that the children are able to eat in school.

It was brilliant to welcome so many adults into the classroom at the exhibition, and lovely to see you sharing the children's enthusiasm for their learning. We're very excited to be seeing you again soon at the Nativity performances (which is mega exciting!). Thanks very much for providing costumes. If you haven't sent one in yet, we will need these as soon as possible.

24/11/23

This week, we have really noticed the weather turning and have enjoyed watching the trees losing their leaves, especially when the wind blows them across the playground and we can catch them from the air! We have been out collecting leaves of different colours which we sorted to create a picture. In the classroom, we have been building our understanding of different shapes and used them to build 2D shape pictures including rockets, a house with a chimney, a sunrise, and some wonderful pattern art. The Year 1 have been helping some of the year R learn the names of the shapes. They have also been developing some skills counting money and using words such as coin, penny, pence and value. We have begun to look at some of the designs the elves have used to create shoes and have been drawing around our feet to create some templates. We're wondering if we leave our designs out overnight, elves might visit us too! At the end of last week, we decided to enhance our outdoor shop with art materials, real coins, shopping bags, shopping lists and price labels so that we could buy the things we needed for our repeating patterns. It has been a great success! (If you find any pennies in pockets, they might be ours!)

Thank you so much for continuing to support us with leaving your children at the railings to walk across to the door on their own, as well as ensuring your girls are wearing appropriate clothing for being active both indoors and outdoors. Show and share on Tuesday will be our fantastic George G! See you on Thursday 30^th for our SOC Exhibition!

 

17/11/23

This week we have been having fun creating the graphemes we have learned using our bodies! The children worked brilliantly in cooperative teams and thought carefully about the shapes of the letters. It was a good giggle! We are excited to try this again when we begin to learn digraphs and have decided we will need larger groups and larger mats!

Snowy Owls are looking forward to joining up with Barn Owl Class to practise our Nativity performance. The children have already picked up the words for a few of our songs and it is clear to see how many fantastic singers we will have. There will be more information about this in due course.

This week is anti-bullying week and we have supported our children to explain what bullying is, describe some of the effects of bullying, and talk about people who can help if there is a problem. On Monday, Revd. Smart talked about Forgiveness in Worship which linked very well with our Drawing Club Story 'Little Rabbit FooFoo' about a scallywag who tormented the creatures in the forest with his mallet.

It was wonderful to see everyone at parents evenings, thank you very much for the discussions, and your support of the children's home learning. Show and Share on Tuesday will be the amazing Harrison!

 

10/11/23

This week, the children have been very creative and have made firework pictures for a new class gallery. They have used chalks on black paper and embellished their pictures with stars. We talked about straight, curved and zig-zag lines as well as shapes and swirls. These will be on display when you come to school on Thursday 30 November for our Snowy owl Exhibition. Alongside this, we have been lacing, weaving and stitching, building our skills in preparation for our next exciting story, The Elves and the Shoemaker, beginning next week. Some children have worked incredibly carefully on this and are really getting the hang of it. In PE, we're learning to work as a team, so we played 'The Floor is Lava!' The children needed to cooperate and communicate to get across the lava field safely. Loads of children are putting their writing skills to the test and have been preparing prayers for Remembrance. These are great evidence of learning in our aspiration and will be available to view in the exhibition. I continue to be incredibly impressed with the way Snowy Owls are settling to learning and following routines.

3/11/23

We have some new snack time routines! On Mondays, we will enjoy Tapestry time. This is an opportunity for us to share all your adventures and home learning in front of the class. On Tuesdays, we will have 'Show and Share' where one lucky child will prepare and share a simple presentation about an object they have brought from home. I will communicate who will Show and Share via this newsletter each week. On Wednesdays, we will vote for two class play buddies who will support positive play and wear the esteemed hi viz jackets. Thursdays will be our amazing drawing club (we LOVE drawing club). On a Friday, we will complete our class planning book - I will share a photo of a particular activity I have noticed during the week. The child in the photo will explain what they were doing and, as a class, we will then suggest ways of building on this activity the following week, and what resources we might need. This will help the children set challenging goals, expand their imaginations and skills and take ownership of their learning. All of these changes are focussed mainly on building Communication and Language which is a key area of our Curriculum. We have also been shown how to 'self-register' which has given us more time in the mornings before worship to engage in a juicy bit of learning. This week, we have been making patterns! Finally, in the attached photo you will see our 'compliments web' we made where everyone in the class gave and received a lovely compliment as they passed the ball of string around the circle. This was inspired by the story Jesus told of the Mustard Seed and how something so small can mean so much. Our first Show and Share on Tuesday will be hosted by our brilliant Henry!

 

 

20/10/23

Having been the teacher of our delightful bunch of Snowies for seven important weeks I can officially say it's going really rather well thank you very much! We have now established a really good routine and all are familiar with rules and expectations.

This week, one highlight has definitely been digging a huge hole and filling it with water to provide much needed mud for our swamp kitchen. We have also looked closely at the heads of our sunflowers and discovered all the little seeds inside. We are pinching them out with our finger-tips and making a collection. I wonder what we could do with them all, any ideas, children? In addition, we have been practising some sewing skills in preparation for a project after half term linked to a wonderful Christmassy story, The Elves and the Shoemaker! In Maths, all the year 1s are so close to nailing fact-families! Henry told me he felt like a mega-brain! Weekend Maths will be a bit more substantial so that they can practise this new skill over half term. Thank you for your support with uniform, please continue to avoid dresses and skirts where possible, we will begin to use more of our outdoor gear as the weather turns. I would also like to gently remind you to say goodbye to your children at the door after half term and try to avoid coming into the cloakroom so that the children have the space they need to get organised safely. I am really looking forward to sharing details at parents evenings where we can celebrate successes, discuss next steps and raise expectations another notch.

 

13/10/23

There are several highlights to share this week, the first is the fantastic job the children did in the church at our Harvest Festival. I was so pleased with their wonderful confidence! Thank you all for singing up in support! I am hoping a kind parent has a photo of them all in full chorus that I could print for our performance aspiration display board. Please email me: snowy.owl@bartonstacey.hants.sch.uk

In other big news, we have continued to think about the story of the Gingerbread Man and have made delicious biscuits (I am sure you will agree!). Thanks very much to the Year 1 children for paying so much attention to the ingredients and process because they will be writing the recipe for the rest of the class to have another go at home. On Thursday morning, we had a very special visit from Luke Delahunty and Nerys Pearce who are both Invictus games athletes. Their stories are inspirational, and we were certainly in awe of their adventurous spirit and resilience, they gave us a pretty good work out too! I wonder whether the children could challenge you at home to some of the activities that left us so out of breath!

We had great fun in the school grounds this week, learning to find our way with a map. The children were set simple locations to find and trails to follow which they did in pairs at great speed and with enormous enthusiasm! They loved the challenge and activity and came back to me again and again for another one to find. We soon had the children loop-the-looping all over the field and playground.

A reminder that our school open morning is on Tuesday next week and it would be incredibly helpful if you could all please ensure that your children are in trousers, jogging bottoms, leggings or shorts and plain black trainers for this event, as described on the uniform information on the website. This will help any prospective parents understand the huge importance of active learning and physical development that we are trying hard to promote in Early Years. Many thanks for your continued support.

06/10/23

This week has flown by and has been dominated by talk of the weather and the autumn season that is now upon us. We have noticed the leaves starting to change colour and our conker collection is absolutely awesome! We have been able to play fun games such as 'buried treasure' and have had lots of lovely mathematical conversations about them. We have compared sizes and quantities, as well as weighing them to see how heavy they are. The children have continued to sing up as we practise our Harvest songs ready for church. We have moved on to our new text, 'The Gingerbread Man' and are enjoying picking up a new set of vocabulary to share with you on Friday. We will be enjoying some more ginger themed activities next week which is VERY exciting! The children have been learning about the Geography of our school grounds using aerial photos and have been naming some of the features they have found. Thank you very much for your support with the phonology activities that were sent home, please continue to refer to the booklet you were given and practise as much as you can. At school, we have now learned s a t p I n m d g and are using these graphemes to read and spell CVC words.

29/09/23

Another busy week has rushed by! I have been spending time with children individually to complete the Reception Baseline Assessment (RBA) which has been a lovely opportunity for a chat and a bit of fun. Following this, there are a few tips that I would like to give that are relevant to the vast majority of our Year R children. Firstly, help your children to count up to 20 objects consistently accurately by using 1-1 correspondence, moving the objects into rows as they go. Secondly, help your children to orally blend sounds in simple words. As well as the Phonology leaflet handed out at the information evening, I have put some further ideas into bookbags. Please practise whenever you can, sounding out then saying the word (just orally, nothing written down).

Drawing Club is now part of our timetable every day and has been a roaring success! I am thrilled with the enthusiasm for the new vocabulary and the effort made in their mark-making. The new words will be displayed on our 'Ask me about...' board on Fridays. Each word has an action associated with it.

We are talking a lot at the moment about the changing season and have been making collections of natural objects while learning outside. We are disappointed that we don't have a chestnut tree in our grounds because we would love to have a conker collection. Please bring in conkers next week for a bit of autumnal maths!

 

22/09/23

We have had another excellent week exploring our new class text 'If you're happy and you know it!' There have been lots of children willing and confident to have a go at performing in front of the class and including what we have learned about dynamics (loud and quiet) in a music lesson! Some children have even made up their own versions of the song. In Maths, we have been learning to sort objects in different ways and describing the groups we made. Some children already know the names of simple shapes, perhaps you could play 'spot the squares, circles, rectangles and triangles' around your home over the weekend. It was wonderful to see all the Year R parents at the Phonics evening and hope you have fun putting your skills into practice! The children are surging ahead and have been playing very active word building games with s a t p i n. Year 1 are also making me feel very proud with the effort they are putting into their home learning. I'll keep trying to keep up with them!! We've been continuing plenty of active learning, keeping a close eye on weather updates on BBC news too. Children will be earning 'popcorn points' for effort with tidying up as we teach them the importance of looking after our classroom. It's grown-ups versus children! I wonder who will win the popcorn...

 

15/09/23

This has been a fantastic week of progress! I'm so pleased with the all the children's willingness to soak up so much new information and show me their best selves. We have continued to focus on the story of the 'Slug who Needs a Hug' and have learned some fascinating facts about real slugs. Did you know they can live for up to 6 years! The children have been busy practising their modelling skills and have made slugs by rolling playdough. Next week we will try to dress up our slugs like the one in the story! A very well done to my Year 1s who are preparing to write their funny sluggy rhyming poems. I am also very pleased with the children in phonics lessons, they have been merrily using this new learning in a variety of ways and have concentrated on forming clear letter shapes. Books with words will now begin to come home so the children can consolidate what they have been taught so far. Ask them to tell you the action for each of the sounds - s  a  t  p  i  n. Nearly everyone has signed up for the Phonics event on Tuesday 19^th at 3.30pm, which is fantastic. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone there. If you haven't had the chance yet, please pop into the office or phone us. In the afternoons, we have been really active, either in the woods, climbing on the play equipment or in the hall commando crawling or duck duck goosing! I have tried hard to encourage the children to challenge themselves and stretch their capabilities. It is excellent to see many sporty children in appropriate clothing for this. Please try very hard to ensure your girls are always prepared for an active day so they are not outdone by the boys! On that note, we will need each child to have a pair of wellies in school as well as a raincoat. And finally, please look out for the 'Ask me about...' board on the doorstep after school and encourage the children to talk to you about what they have been doing each day.

08/09/23

A huge well done to all of our new Snowy Owls who have officially started school! And what a successful week we have had. The children have settled brilliantly, learning new routines quickly. So far, the children have shown us how well they make new friends, tidy up resources, share equipment and explore the resources in the environment. They have learned the 'Stand up Sit Down song' which is a fantastic funny action song which made us all giggle!  Our book this week is called 'Slug Needs a Hug' which has helped us learn about rhyming words as well as helping us understand some of the emotions we might be feeling. Next week, we will think about how the baby slug tries to look like other animals. Year 1 children have made a great start with their writing, showing us that they have remembered a lot over the holidays about forming letters and using phonics to spell words. The weather has been really interesting too, so we have been spending time in the shade of the trees in the forest area which was a popular activity. The weather might turn soon so please provide some wellies if you haven't already and make sure EVERYTHING is named. The Year R children have met their new Year 5 buddy who will support them at various times, and they enjoyed sharing their Bart the Bear diaries with them. What a lot of exciting summer adventures you have all had.

 

 

21/07/23

This week we have mainly been making preparations for the end of the year; the highlights have been harvesting the turnips and watching Eagle Owls perform. It is a shame the turnips didn't grow very big; we think it's probably because they were a bit squashed. Two or three of them looked pretty good, but not record breakers. This is probably not a bad thing though, because if they were enormous, we might never have been able to pull them out! The sunflowers haven't bloomed yet either, but they are now taller than the teachers and flower buds are starting to form. They might be just right by the time we come back in September.

The children have written amazing letters to our absent friend, Arthur Boulter. These letters are now on their way by post to Scotland. Alongside this we have cleverly made lamp shades using weaving skills with little tea lights inside. We tested them in the dark. We all think they will give a lovely warm glow and help remind us of happy times in Snowy Owl Class while we are drifting off to sleep at night.

We have come to the end of our final week and saying goodbye is going to be hard! Thank you to everyone, children and parents, for making this year such a pleasure. We're looking forward to seeing you all in the new term and hearing about your summer holidays. Stay safe and have fun!

 

14/07/23

We have continued to think about bread and have been able to bake some very impressive and creative bread products using a recipe that I hope the children will remember and share with you - 500g of bread flour, 300ml warm water, 10g dried yeast, 5g salt and a splash of oil. We all had a go at writing it down. This made great dough that we could shape into whatever we wanted (after we had left it in a warm place to rise first). We had butterflies, plaits and submarines and swirls - imaginations ran wild. We talked about adding some pumpkin seeds to make the bread taste even more interesting. 

Sports day was lovely - I thought the children put loads of effort in and it was brilliant to hear so many cheers of encouragement. Thank you to everyone who took part and tried their best. It has inspired us to look at some sporty videos of previous Olympic games on YouTube, such as artistic swimming, pole vaulting and downhill skiing (85mph!!). Aubrey has also told us how to play french cricket so we'll have a go at that as soon as we can. 

Year 1 children have written sentences about Isatou Ceesay and the Recycling Women of the Gambia. We have learned how to choose better, more interesting vocabulary to describe scenes from the story. In maths, we have been counting coins.

One week to go! Please ensure any school property such as reading books are in your children's book bags ready to return and I need everyone to bring a carrier bag on Monday please.

07/07/23

The children have been learning about bread! Firstly, we have been analysing the results of our Science experiment, 'What happens to bread if you don't eat it?'. The bread that changed the most over the 2 weeks was the wet bread. It became extremely smelly, very runny and turned a greenish yellow. YUCK! The bread that had no air remained soft and turned a very dark, blackish grey colour. We also discovered that it didn't make any difference whether the bread was kept in the fridge or in the dark or even on a very high shelf. All these breads just went hard, like bricks and remained the same colour. We have also learned about the ingredients that make bread. Mrs Ewens the cook from the kitchen came to tell us what she uses to make the bread for our lunch. The children have had a go at grinding grains of wheat to make flour. We know about the work of a combine harvester and what a water mill does. It is extremely difficult to grind grain to make flour by hand! We are hoping to have a chance to make our own bread before the holiday. If you haven't yet been to Winchester City Mill, I would highly recommend a visit!

 

30/06/23

This week, our Year R children enjoyed balance bike training sessions where a lovely coach called Harry came and taught them some fantastic fun games. The games helped the children with control, use of space, braking and steering. All the children made it through the freeze field! Some children were also able to show off their skills on their own pedal bikes which was lovely to see.

As I think back through the week, one of the highlights for me is the fascination the children have developed with birds of prey. Having spotted a red kite a few times circling low over our field, we then discovered evidence of its lunch in the outside classroom. We have been researching wing spans and comparing different species and were interested to discover that a griffon vulture has a wingspan of nearly three metres! Following this, the Year 1 children have been producing information leaflets on Planet Earth for any alien tourists that might visit from galaxies far away. The children have chosen to focus on wonderful examples of the world at its best including the puzzle solving abilities of squirrels and the amazing languages spoken in Africa.

A couple of reminders, please return all your library books if you haven't already and make time in your diaries to join your children for the Exhibition on 7^th July next week. Show and Share on Monday will be excellent Esme!

23/06/23

There is so much to share this week! It all began when the Year 1 children wrote letters to Mr Stangroom to let him know all about the unbelievable, unsafe, unacceptable, unhealthy mess in our classroom! I was so proud of how the children immediately put it all away tidily. What wonderful letters they wrote! Later in the week we were thrilled to meet a little hoglet called Summer who visited our classroom with Edie's mum. We learned so much about what she needs to be healthy and happy. Here are a couple of links to websites to find out more about helping wild hedgehogs in trouble:

Hedgehog Bottom - Hospital & Rescue (hedgehog-rescue.org.uk)

Help a hedgehog | The Wildlife Trusts

We were then able to explore more hedgehog related learning. Marnie kindly brought a lovely hedgehog rescue story to school and then we made our own clay hedgehogs and habitats for them to live in. In other news, we have set up a new Science experiment. We are continuing to think of our enquiry question: What happens to our food if we don't eat it? This time we are looking closely at bread under different conditions - wet/dry/warm/cold/air/no air/light/dark. Aubrey is our main researcher and will take photos every day for 2 weeks to help us see what changes. Next week we will find out more about bread ingredients. Show and Share on Monday will be marvellous Maksim!

16/06/23

This week we said goodbye to Hope, Love and Strawberry as they left for their new home on the pond. We were amazed how quickly they grew, how hungry they were (and how often they needed cleaning!). They were very sweet, and we will miss them. However, we are now looking forward to another animal visitor to our class next week so watch this space! In other news, the children have been busily working on developing their own performances on our new stage. The Snowy Owl theatre has now been decorated with curtains and the backdrop painted with blackboard paint so the children can design some scenery. There have been singers, dancers and actors honing their performances. We plan to continue to develop this space over the next few weeks. In Maths, the children have been learning about pairs and how pairs relate to odd and even numbers. Year 1 have learned to tell the time using o'clock and half past. They will continue to need plenty of practice with problem solving, E.g. 'If Mrs West starts reading her book at 4 o'clock and finishes at half past 5, how long was she reading for?' Finally, we have recreated a page from our amazing book 'Here We Are' by Oliver Jeffers. It will be for sale at the village fete so please pop along and purchase an original limited edition print! Show and share on Monday will be wonderful William!

09/06/23

We have extremely exciting news! Hold on to your hats....... three tiny DUCKLINGS have arrived!! Their names are Hope, Love and Strawberry and they are fascinating to watch! The children have come up with some fantastic adjectives to describe them, such as 'adorable', 'cute', 'perfect', 'beautiful', 'wonderful'. We have given them a little bowl of food called 'chick crumb' and a tray of water. They like to dabble in the water and have been drinking it, swimming in it and pooing in it! They children are very good at spotting when the water needs changing. At night, they have kept warm under the heat lamp where they hide their little bills in their fluffy feathers and fall asleep. Everyone has had a chance to hold one, there are some super photos showing how gentle the children are which I will share via Tapestry. The weather has been fantastic, allowing us all to spend a lot of time learning outdoors. We are also nurturing our sunflowers and turnips which are growing vigorously now. Last time we measured the sunflowers they were taller than a ruler. The turnips will be ready to harvest when the leaves begin to wilt, and the roots are as big as a child's fist.

25/05/23

We have reached the end of another half term and are astonished at how the time flies! We are noticing the changing season and lush, leafy growth around us as the weather warms up. Our seedlings are thriving and enjoying the careful watering that the children are providing. We are wondering how tall our sunflowers will grow over the half term holiday. Unfortunately, our duck eggs have not produced any ducklings, it seems we have been incubating empty eggs for a while. This disappointing news has tested the children's resilience, but they have all shown they are able to moderate their feelings very well and I am extremely impressed with their maturity. We are still hoping to meet some ducklings at some point soon. We will keep everything crossed. Thursday, our last day before the holidays, has been dubbed 'Arthur Day' and we look forward to celebrating our wonderful friend who is leaving Snowy Owl Class and embarking on new adventures up in Scotland. Have a fantastic holiday everyone and farewell Arthur! Please keep in touch!

Dear Arthur, This year has been so special, We’ve watched you learn and grow. But now the time has come for you, To spread your wings and go. So hold your head up proudly, We know that you’ll go far. You’ll be a shining beacon, Just being who you are!

19/05/23

What a day we had at Foot farm!! The children got in touch with nature and the beauty of their surroundings in a memorable day of fun and freedom. We went from Oak Class on a short stroll through the churchyard and along the lane in the morning sunshine, listening to the blackbirds whistling and the wind rustling in the trees. There were sheep and cows grazing lazily in the fields. After we arrived we had a wonderful time getting to know Oak Class a bit better, playing games, building bug homes, making daisy chains, and enjoying the warm sunshine. We looked for creatures with magnifying glasses and had long grass races and giggled when we fell over! Later on, we followed the path down to the stream and dabbled in the water, looking for tadpoles with the fishing nets and getting our wellies wet inside. We were very lucky to find some tadpoles because they hid in the water weed! The picnic was very sociable again, the children started to make new friends. Although we were disappointed we didn't have a tractor ride after all (Mrs West has a couple of ideas up her sleeve!) we did have a truly magnificent day. Show and share on Monday will be our fantastic Noah!

12/05/23

The children have been learning about the concept of 'Specialness' in RE. A couple of weeks ago we looked at special food and made St George's cakes. This week we looked at special clothes and linked this with the coronation. The Year 1 children recreated this with the dressing up voiles and hats! We looked at the special clothes a mountain rescuer might wear and then looked at special clothes in Christianity. We talked about the mitre on the head of the Archbishop of Canterbury as well as his long golden robes for such an important occasion. In other news, our turnips have already started to grow! We can see tiny shoots and leaves peeping through the soil. There are still none in the supermarkets so we will have to harvest our own before we can have a taste! The rain has watered them well but when the sun comes out, we will need to remember to keep the soil moist. We need a watering can with a sprinkler if there are any kind parents who would like to donate one. The Year R children are getting creative with the instruments, telling a musical story of the enormous turnip using sound effects. Ask the children what voice sound they made for a growing turnip! Show and share on Monday will be the amazing Arthur Boulter and don't forget our trip to Micheldever on Tuesday 16th. Have a lovely weekend!

05/05/23

During this short week, we've squeezed in a lot of activity! The tyres in the outside area are all planted now, so we look forward to our seeds beginning to sprout. Several children have been busy making signs, so everyone knows to take care of them. We will have Titan Sunflowers ( the tallest of all!) and turnips, as well as various flowers. Mrs West is very surprised that there are no turnips in the supermarkets - see if you can find any. Many children have leapt forward in their reading and are practising so hard at home. Well done, it's really paying off. We have been busy in Maths, grouping and sharing quantities and Year 1 have been making arrays. Year 1 have also answered questions in their book reviews of 'The Enormous Turnip'. In writing, Year R have taken inspiration from the story of 'Ketchup on your Cornflakes' and the coronation, so everyone has written the question, 'Do you like a crown on your head?' Next week we will have Show and Share on Tuesday 9th of May with marvellous Mia, who is visiting London for the coronation. Have a wonderful and special long weekend everyone!

28/04/23

At the end of last week, we learned about St George, the Patron Saint of England and to celebrate St George's Day on 23rd April, we made cakes with the English flag on top. All the children were able to tell me the recipe for fairy cakes. I hope you will have a go at home too. At the beginning of this week, we welcomed the arrival of our duck eggs which are keeping warm at a temperature of 37.5 degrees in their incubator. They will take 28 days to grow and hopefully they will hatch during the final week before the holidays. We are extremely excited and we tell all visitors to our class all about it! Mrs Waters came into class to show and share all about ducks because she has pet ducks at home. We loved looking at her photos. (Parents- for your information, our pet ducks are definitely not destined for the shoot but will be sold as layers or pets). The children have been busy clearing stones out of our planters and nourishing the soil with compost in preparation for planting. We will be able to tell you more about that soon. We will plant sunflowers, turnips and other flower seeds to make our outside area look beautiful. Finally, we've measured volume and capacity using jugs and our amazing year 1 children are now learning multiplication and division! Look out for your postcards, which the children wrote and posted this week. Thanks for the stamps. Show and share next week will be on Wednesday 3rd May and will be the fantastic Henry!

21/04/23

This week, we released our butterflies into the wild! Nine of the butterflies hatched (see Tapestry) and one of them had deformed wings and couldn't fly at all. So we released eight butterflies on Tuesday. It was an amazing event, the awe and wonder from the children was wonderful to witness. A couple of the children were lucky enough to have a butterfly land on them before they flew away. The little butterfly with deformed wings we kept in the habitat, named her Poppy, and fed her grapes and sugar water. We were determined to look after her. Sadly today, we discovered that Poppy had passed away over night and we felt sad. We will give Poppy a little funeral and say some 'Happily ever after' prayers for her. The experience has taught our children a valuable lesson about emotions and loss. It is ok to feel sad when sad things happen. We moved our names to the blue colour monster and took care of each other. In other news, we have focussed on measuring mass using the balance scales and looked at the story of the 'Enormous Turnip'. We are preparing for planting our turnip seeds, removing rocks and stones from our planters. Thanks to those who have provided a 2nd class stamp. Please remember to bring one in as soon as possible so that we can send our postcards home. The children have had a fantastic first week back, well done Snowy Owls

31/03/23

This week we have continued to learn about the Easter story and how Jesus rose again after the crucifixion. We have linked this to a celebration of new life, thinking about our caterpillars changing into butterflies and about our buds and bulbs blooming around the school grounds. We have been singing like angels in preparation for the Easter service and we are looking forward sharing this with you. Our chrysalides have now been transferred carefully into the butterfly habitat where they will hatch over the next few days. Mrs West will post pictures and information on Tapestry as things develop, so please log on to find out what's happening over the holiday. In Maths, the children have been measuring body parts! The Year R have been finding out what size shoes they have and using cubes to compare length and height. The Year 1 have been measuring in cm using rulers. We have also learned some new vocabulary such as shin and thigh. Our Year 1 children have continued to produce some very creative (and amusing!) stories linked to our text, Rosie's Walk, about the fox's bad day. They are learning split digraphs. Please look for the home learning in their red books over the holiday. We hope you all have a happy and safe Easter break and I'm looking forward to seeing you on Monday 17 April when we will have excellent Edie's show and share!

 

24/03/23

We have had a very interesting visit to Pizza Express in Winchester! The children rode on a coach (spotting evergreen and deciduous trees along the way!) singing happily along to 'Wheels on the Bus'. We saw sheep in a field, a police car with blue lights flashing and even a building getting a new thatch. At the restaurant we enjoyed making our pizzas and learning about some of the ingredients. Can the children tell you what 'passata' or 'basil' is? Well done to the Snowy Owl children for being such good company and for trying so hard to follow all the instructions they were given. I'm delighted with some of the writing it has inspired. We have all written lists of ingredients using our phonics including difficult words like pineapple, pepperoni and tomato. We are looking forward to showing off our learning when you come in for the Exhibition on Friday. We will be able to show you how to make a palm leaf similar to the ones that people waved on Palm Sunday when Jesus rode into Jerusalem after 40 days in the wilderness. Finally, in caterpillar news, our caterpillars are enormous but still caterpillars. We have moved them into a warmer room to encourage them to grow and make chrysalides. We're keeping our fingers crossed that we will have butterflies before the end of next week. Show and share on Monday 27th March will be marvellous Marnie!

17/03/23

This week the children have begun learning about the story of Rosie's Walk. We have drawn a map of her route around the farm and all the obstacles she passes along the way. The hungry fox tries to catch her but keeps getting stuck! We took this theme into our PE lesson on Tuesday, the children recreated the obstacles and followed Rosie's route. In Maths, we have been thinking about repeating patterns and have been counting how many repeats we can find in each string of shapes. We recognised lots of patterns in nature too. Outside, we found a variety of deciduous trees as well as evergreens growing in our environment. Ask your children if they can spot any more whilst out and about this weekend. As part of Science day, we ended the week with an interesting look at the work of hospital doctors and a think about how our bodies work, including our muscles, our lungs and blood flow. Dr Frost gave an amazing presentation about the work she does as an Army doctor. We also listened to paediatric cardiologist Dr Sharpe and learned about how our hearts and lungs work. I wonder how many children would like to be Scientists when they grow up? Show and share on Monday will be the one and only, Olivia!

10/03/23

What an exciting day we had on Wednesday! We woke up to a beautiful white blanket of snow and the children couldn't wait to get outside. We built some snowmen and enjoyed making footprint pathways. We were able to guess who the footprints belonged to by looking at the pattern on their wellies. Printing was a theme in class too as the children have been creating their own block prints just like Andy Warhol. They used printing inks and rollers to print repeating shapes in different colours. Our caterpillars have grown so much - one of them had managed to crawl right to the top of the pot and hid under the lid! We have learned that they are called 'Painted Lady' butterflies and they will make their chrysalides soon. The children have made some beautiful butterflies to decorate our classroom too. Thank you to Stanley for telling us all about Lamborghinis in show and share. Next Monday, we are looking forward to listening to Reuben! Have a fantastic weekend.

 

03/03/23

The Snowy Owl children have been in search of signs of Spring, supported each day by the Green Ambassadors (lovely Lilia from Eagle Owl class has been caught up in our chats about wildlife every day!). We have sprung into action, searching our environment for buds and bulbs. There are lots to be found in the outside classroom where we planted them during the autumn. It will be interesting to see how the trees and bushes will blossom over the coming weeks. We are also delighted to announce the arrival of our new butterfly family! We will take great care of our little eggs and watch carefully to see how they change. We have been inspired to create beautiful butterfly designs in the craft area and the children have found interesting ways to make the butterflies seem as if they are flying. We have also been learning the days of the week alongside the Very Hungry Caterpillar and the Year 1s are making great efforts with learning to spell them too. Home learning is gathering new momentum which is fantastic, thank you very much for everything you're doing to support your children's progress at home. The difference is clear to see. I look forward to catching up in our meetings next week.

 

24/02/23

Welcome back to school after the half term break, the children have returned eager to learn and excited to find out about our new book, 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar'. We have been discovering information about the life cycle of a butterfly and have had interesting discussions about whether a real caterpillar should actually eat cake or pickles. Some children have chosen to complete a food diary for the caterpillar and we were all delighted when they shared their writing, they were given a standing ovation by the SOC audience! Ask your children what the caterpillar ate and see if they can remember. We also have exciting news that we are looking forward to caring for our own little SOC eggs that will eventually become beautiful butterflies. I think the children have shown a lot of thoughtfulness about how we might care for them. More on this soon! Can your children recite the days of the week in order? Year 1 children have been learning to spell them, perhaps they can talk to you about which parts of the words they find trickiest. On Monday, our Show and Share star will be the fantastic Arthur Broad! We are very much looking forward to his presentation.

10/02/23

The children have been busy creating Africa-inspired musical instruments that can be plucked or shaken. We have filled a variety of containers with dried lentils, peas, quinoa, rice, pasta, beans, flax seeds and beads to see if we can alter the way the shakers sound. We have also used elastic bands to make plucking instruments and have found a way to change the pitch of the note. It was fun when we went outside to test if our instruments could be heard from one end of the field to the other. We finished off by creating a fruit salad rhythm band and were able to compose and perform our own rhythms. Well done, Snowies! As well as this, the Year 1 children have absolutely blown my socks off with the standard of their writing. I am thrilled with their amazing effort and progress. Well done! We look forward to sending home our lovely Valentine's messages for half term as the Year R children also put pencil to paper. Over half term, please can I make two requests - 1. Read, read, read with your children and give them the opportunity to practise their phonics as much as possible. 2. Check your children for lice. Little visitors have returned and many children are scratching. I have informed individual parents where I have actually seen the evidence. Have a lovely holiday, folks

03/02/23

The children in Snowies have been doing exciting writing! During Planning Book time, the children came up with some interesting ideas to try out including writing on biscuits! It was wonderful to see the children's enthusiasm with the 'clicky' pens and various types of writing paper. Lots of children have been putting their phonics to good use. Storytelling has been a theme this week as the children enjoyed acting out a retelling of our 'Peace at Last' story on the stage in the outside classroom. Our actors were excellent, and Daddy Bear definitely needed a nice cup of tea at the end! We have also been fascinated by Farmer Ian and his yellow tractor which has been coming right up to the fence to plough the field. The children have learned a little bit about why he needs to plough and what needs to happen to help the seeds grow. We have had a peep at the places where we planted our bulbs and some of them are starting to peep through. On Monday next week, we are looking forward to show and share with the brilliant Olivia!

27/01/23

We have been working on our weaving skills this week and have found many interesting ways to develop our artwork. We have used sticks and ribbons, cardboard strips, chicken wire, pipe cleaners and even the fence posts with skipping ropes! In the story of Handa's Surprise, the fruit she carried was in a woven basket. We have also found lots of woven items around the classroom too. The Year 1 children have continued their work on algorithms and have been solving problems with the Beebot, trying to guess the algorithm for the route he followed. We are all getting stuck into numbers to 20 now, learning to count and recognise teen numbers. Many of the children are muddling 12/20 and 13/15. It would help enormously to reinforce counting at home if you can (forwards and backwards). Thank you for your continued support of reading at home, please remember to write notes in the yellow diaries so that we know how much practice the children are getting with each book. And finally... our Show and Share celebrity next week will be the awesome Anna!

20/01/23

We have been very focussed on our aspiration about creating obstacle courses this week and have been learning to control a Beebot! The Year 1 children have been developing algorithms and debugging their codes and the Year R children have been having fun building bridges and tunnels for him to travel along. There is also a free online version of this game called Terrapin Logo if you would like to have a go at home. With obstacles in mind, the children have also been having great fun creating the biggest board game ever! The piece of paper we had was as big as our outside area and we have been setting up the course and creating different rules. We've had venomous snakes and spiders, lions and lots of ladders to fall down. Please support the children at home with recognising numbers above 5 and counting confidently forwards AND backwards. In the outside area, children have been thinking about looking after a living thing and have built little nests for a pompom pet using natural materials. Finally, thank you to those families who are already stuck into the home learning projects. Next week's Show and Share will be presented by the lovely Elsie.

13/01/23

Show and share was a roaring success at the start of the week and Teddy shone as our star performer, informing us of a visit to a farm in Cornwall where he witnessed a vet trimming a cow's hooves. Our next show and share will be hosted by Aubrey who is very keen and already has an idea. We look forward to hearing your presentation on Monday, Aubrey.

Another big highlight this week has been our work on the 5 senses. We had a good giggle drawing pictures with our eyes closed! We have also taken the sniff test (ginger, lemon and soap), the taste test (fruit pastilles) and the hearing test (everyday sounds recordings). We finished off with the touch test using a feely bag of objects. I am glad to say all the children's senses are tuned in. We have also been thinking about the British value of democracy and have voted for this week's 'Play buddies' as well as working hard on improving our animal homes which are very creative and have combined a lot of making skills.

Please remember to add photos and comments to Tapestry, this is also an excellent tool for 'Show and Share'. Have a lovely weekend.

 

06/01/23

Welcome back Snowy Owls! We have kicked of the term with some Science and have looked closely at different fruits, naming them, comparing their colours, shapes and weights. Then we cut them open to see what's inside. The children sorted the seeds from the stones and described the textures of the flesh and the way they smelled. Our Year 1 children have begun an investigation to find out what happens to fruit if we don't eat it. Alongside this, we are looking at the story of 'The Lighthouse Keeper's Lunch' and 'Handa's Surprise'. As we are thinking about the texture of different materials, we are also thinking about how we look after living things and have made a cosy home for some little creatures we have made.

The children have explored the Jewish festival of Hannuakah and have thought about the meaning of each of the eight candles of the Menora and how it links to the concept of light. Have a look out for the 'Ask me about...' board outside the cloakroom door and hopefully this will prompt a conversation with your child about what they have learned. We will also be picking up some new vocabulary to support our reading and spelling through our 'word of the week' as the term goes on.

There will be a new routine in class this Spring. 'Show and Share' will take place on Mondays and will involve one chosen child to present something to the class, perhaps a photo memory or a favourite object. The child chosen for Monday 9^th is Teddy. 

Finally, I am hoping a kind wishlist helper will be able to source a fish tank, some fake grass and some wooden pallets in good repair for our class environment. Thank you!

 

16/12/22

We are full of the spirit of Christmas and have spent the week in various Christmas related activities and fun. Stories with Santa was a lovely afternoon of delights. We had a special message from Santa's elves who told us they loved our Nativity which was a big surprise. We hope the children are pleased with the book they were given. As well as this we have been busy creating crowns and decorations for our big Christmas dinner event which was very successful. The hall was transformed into a winter wonderland with the 3D snow dusted Christmas trees decorating our tables. The children looked fantastic in their jumpers! In the classroom, we have also been wrapping presents, writing cards, creating sparkly stars, printing wrapping paper and dancing to Christmas music. We have also been looking at 3D shapes and learning about how they have 2D shapes on their faces. Over Christmas, perhaps you could begin to chat with your YR children about our aspirations and how the children feel about their progress towards them. If you are not sure what they are, here's a reminder: To be able to perform a play, story or song, to look after a living thing, to create a piece of art for a gallery, to design and complete an obstacle course and to follow a recipe. Year 1 have completed their porridge instructions, and I hope they know how to make the pot stop! We hope you enjoy a fantastic Christmas and see you in the NEW YEAR!!! Stay safe.

 

09/12/22

I am sure you will agree, the children were fantastic in their Nativity on Thursday afternoon. For many, this was their first opportunity to be in the limelight and perform a story in front of an audience, which shows just how well the children in Year R have come along with their learning. We have had a focus on 2D shape, learning the names of them and finding them around our environment. Year 1 have taken this even further, describing their simple properties and using mathematical vocabulary such as 'vertices', 'straight and curved lines' and 'dimensions'. Please can you help us by reinforcing this at home, particularly with naming the shapes. As Father Christmas is busy in his workshop,  many children have written Christmas lists and letters to him, as well as showing us their amazing writing inside their Christmas cards. We have been busy creating the most colourful and sparkly designs for the cards. The children have thought carefully about patterns and colours, and we can't wait to show you the results. We have also been sharing our delight in the frosty weather we are seeing, especially in the mornings as the sunrise and sunsets are so beautiful. Did you see the moon and the sun in the sky at the same time? We have been finding ice on the surface of the water tray, shattering it on the ground, then counting the triangles! It's the final week of our first term next week, oh how the time flies!

 

01/12/22

A lot of excellent and exciting things have been happening in the build up to Christmas. We have been singing our heads off in practices for the Nativity performance. We can't wait to sing our hearts out for you and show off how fabulous and festive we all look in our costumes. As well as this, the classroom is also beginning to look very twinkly and glittery. Our advent calendars have been opened and our trees (yes, treeS!) have been decorated. Linked with our key text 'The Magic Porridge Pot', the children have been getting to grips with porridge making, sampling various flavours and toppings, measuring, mixing and heating their porridge like chefs. It has been lovely to see how many are willing to sample new flavours such as pomegranate, pumpkin seeds and cinnamon. Another key text, 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt' has inspired the Year 1 children to design and map out a 'bear hunt' themed obstacle course which we all had fun completing. It was quite challenging, especially when the bear woke up! We're very glad to welcome you into Snowy Owl Class for Exhibition day and hope you have enjoyed seeing some of what we have been learning.

 

 

25/11/22

We have continued to expand our vocabulary throughout our learning and the buzz word of the moment is 'hugelkultur'! This is about creating a nutrient rich planter using layers of rotting wood, leaves, straw and compost on a layer of cardboard. The children have been very busy collecting bucketfuls of these items from around the school environment and have filled two of our new tyres with our hugelkultur. We will plant some more spring bulbs in them. What great gardeners the Snowy Owls are becoming! We also have another new word which is becoming well used within the classroom and that is 'immaculate'. The children's tidying skills are excellent and I have found that the cloakroom, classroom and outside area are all immaculate. Well done Snowies! We have learned the names of several species of tree growing around the playground and have been looking closely at the autumn leaves to see if we can guess which trees they fell from. Some of them were pretty 'shrivelled' (another buzz word!) but Mrs H showed us how to rehydrate them using a bowl of water so we could tell what shape they were. What a good idea! The Year 1 children have also shown me some very impressive work with bar models and subtraction as well as building up their sentence skills with very well-chosen adjectives describing the warm, magical woodland where our bear pianist lives.

18/11/22

We all have green fingers this week and we have learned a lot of interesting new vocabulary. Some related to our aspiration 'To be able to care for a living thing'. On Tuesday, we planted bulbs in the outdoor classroom and on Thursday we propagated our baby spider plants. Each one has a name, and the children are learning about what they need to do to care for them. Our fabulous year 1 children drew maps of the outdoor area to show where the bulbs are planted, and we look forward to seeing the results of our hard work in the Spring. We have also picked up some new words in our aspiration 'To perform a play, story or song'. The Grizzly bear performed on the piano, and we listened to the beautiful melodies which earned a well-deserved applause and even a standing ovation! We are beginning to think about the Nativity performance too, which is VERY exciting. The children have picked up the words for the first song very quickly. Well done Snowy owls!

 

 

11/11/22

The headline this week is POO!! The children have been categorising animals again, this time according to their diets. Which animals only like eating meat, which prefer vegetation, and which animals like eating both? One of the best ways to discover what an animal ate is to look closely at its poo, so we have brought this alive in class by making fake poo using salt dough and adding clues to what it might be, for example, a carnivore might leave bones and feathers behind. More importantly, the children are beginning to learn how to follow a recipe. If you would like to try this simple (but hugely fun!) activity at home, the children have requested copies of our poo recipe.

In Maths, we have been matching quantities; the Year R children enjoyed playing the memory game to reinforce this and were very good at it. They are also excellent at phonics Bingo! The Year 1's have been focussing on fact families. I wonder if any, can show you how they flip their addition number sentences around? We also love the Bear and the Piano, it is such a gorgeous story of love and fits beautifully with our Worship next week about the Parable of the Mustard Seed. 

 

04/11/22

Over half term, the Snowy fairies have been busy reorganising the classroom and have provided new and exciting role play for the children to get stuck into. We now have a cosy living room as well as a refurbished kitchen and garden centre to play in. The children have really improved their tidying up skills and shown that they take pride in their learning environment and enjoy the new layout. As well as this, we're getting stuck into phonics and have enjoyed playing a variety of games to reinforce what we have learned so far. Many of the children are even starting to write simple words. Year 1 have progressed with their understanding of addition in Maths. Ask them about whole-part models and see if they can draw one for you. They have also shown excellent mouse skills in their computing lessons, which they very much enjoyed. Our focus story for the next couple of weeks is 'The Bear and the Piano'. I wonder if the children can retell it for you.

 

21/10/22

The children in Snowy Owls have been spending time thinking about animals this week and looking at their different features. We were excited to learn that we are human and that we are also mammals because we have hairy bodies, we breathe air, and we don't lay eggs! We talked about many different animals, counted their legs and sorted them into groups. The children searched for animals around our school environment, and we found loads of tiny ones! As well as this, we have begun to think about what we do to keep our bodies healthy, and we have discussed healthy choices for snack and lunch. We have ended the week with an exciting look at the types of food people eat around the world and we have all had the opportunity to taste dolmades from Greece, samosas from India and sushi from Japan. The children have continued learning about patterns, grouping and sorting using gems and they have proved very popular. We have also used them at our prayer table. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

14/10/22

This week, the children have developed their work on moving pictures by creating sliders for their tractors and now we have come up with all kinds of ideas to use with sliders. First, we made a scarecrow that can dance, and now that we're looking at the story 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt', perhaps we could make the bear come out of the cave, or the family walk through the grass, 'Swishy swashy swishy swashy...'. We have also recreated the story in the outside area and the children have had great fun running as fast as they can away from the bear. We discussed what the family might have felt when they saw the bear, and what the bear might have felt when he saw the family. We also had fun changing the words, so the children went on a guinea pig hunt and a snowy owl hunt! Our work in maths has developed into looking at 'more than', 'less than' and 'the same as'. The children in year 1 have learned the mathematical symbols and have been comparing quantities and recording these in their books. We are progressing through the phonics scheme and the children are picking up the new graphemes well. This has led to a huge engagement with reading at home and I'm delighted. I can't wait to be part of the children's progress as they pick up the pace.

07/10/22

This week, the children have focussed on preparations for our Harvest performance of 'Farmer Ben' and have made tractors with wheels that can actually turn as well as refine their actions and voices for the song. They have also improved their use of tools in the craft area, enjoyed painting their tractors in a range of colours and practised cutting skills with great focus and resilience. The year 1 children have extended this even further by developing design ideas for moving pictures that have levers, sliders or wheels. In maths, we have been developing counting skills, learning to count carefully by moving or touching each object. Some Snowy Owl children can count forwards AND backwards within 10 and have demonstrated their understanding of 1 more and 1 less in a variety of ways. We have enjoyed building repetitive patterns too. In our written work using Mr Gumpy's Outing, the Y1 children have written factual sentences about farm animals and have shown an increasing grasp of word spaces in their writing. The children in Year R have begun to learn single letter sounds.

30/09/22

It felt like Christmas came early this week as we unboxed four amazing new ride-ons for our outdoor play area! There is a bike with pedals, a trike with pedals and two balance bikes so that the children can build skills, learning pedalling and balancing before managing both together. The empty cardboard boxes have provided great scope for cooperative, imaginative and creative play too. Year 1 children have been working hard and I'm so proud of their listening skills as expectations for focussed learning are increasing. This week, we began to look closely at the geography of our school grounds and the children will be creating maps using observational fieldwork and aerial photos. We also began looking at the book, Mr Gumpy's Outing. Ask your children to tell you the story!

Finally, I'd like to draw your attention to what's on at the Arc in Winchester: Check out this website What's on | The Arc Winchester – arts, reading and community There are some wonderful live performances for children coming up that you might be interested in. It would benefit our Snowy Owl children enormously to begin to understand what it means to perform for others as part of our new curriculum.

  

 

23/09/22

Year 1 have been particularly creative this week following our introduction to the artist Jackson Pollock and his technique of flicking, dribbling and splattering the paint in colourful layers. The Year R children had a go too - it was so much fun! Other children have explored joining and fixing techniques using various textiles and materials. It will be useful for Year 1 to know which of these work best when they design their moving picture soon. In continuing the 'colours' theme, we have also heard a lot of poems this week including 'The Crayon Poem'. With my crayons I could draw... a crazy purple dinosaur! We have continued our work on careful listening and have been to the outside classroom to play a drumming game, listening to how the sounds change when we drum on different surfaces. In maths, we have been looking at simple repeating patterns in the outside areas, e.g., feather, stick, stone, feather, stick stone, and so on. 

   

 

16/09/22

Following Snowy Owl Class's first collective worship on Monday, it has been a thoughtful week as we have considered how our actions reflect our feelings. It was very heart-warming to see so many children busily making flowers for our class memorial of Queen Elizabeth II to show their respect and love. We have been looking at pictures of the royal family, trying to work out who is who and talking about how they are related to each other. In addition to this, we have continued to think about the Colour Monster's emotions, and we are now using these images on a classroom display to help the children understand how their behaviours link to how they feel. The children have also been busy making listening hats using their scissor skills to cut out enormous ears. We wore our new hats on a listening walk around the school grounds, finding areas we haven't visited before such as the woods and willow dome. We heard a lot more sounds than we expected, we were even able to recognise the various calls of different bird species. Thank you to my fabulous Year 1 bunch for their efforts in their Writing books, I am also very pleased with their amazing listening skills, their hats have definitely done the trick! Their sentences about The Colour Monster were very carefully written.

Please look out for important information coming home about reading and phonics books and remember to read a story to your child at least once per day. 

 

09/09/22

What an awesome start to the school year! Snowy Owls have settled brilliantly, learning new routines quickly, and we are all feeling very proud of ourselves. So far, the children have shown us how well they make new friends, tidy up resources, share equipment and explore the resources in the environment. They have learned some fantastic funny action songs which made us all giggle! Thank you to Mrs Tellet for helping us with the music. Our book this week is called 'The Colour Monster' which has helped us learn about naming, matching and sorting colours as well as making patterns. Next week, we will think about how the Colour Monster is a different colour depending on how he is feeling. Year 1 children have made a great start with their writing, showing us that they have remembered a lot over the holidays about forming sentences. The weather has been really interesting too, so we have been on our very first welly walk through the puddles and enjoyed watching torrential downpours and searching for rainbows. Well done everyone! Please provide some wellies if you haven't already and make sure EVERYTHING is named. 

Finally, a HUGE thank you to the Snowy Owl parents of 21-22 who were incredibly generous with their gifts to staff at the end of last year!

 

15/07/22

Unfortunately, Mrs West has been poorly this week so the Snowy Owls have been taught by Mrs White and Mrs Evans. At the start of the week the children had great fun on their beach day! It was wonderful to see them in their bright and colourful summer clothes and when they all arrived with their towels and sun cream it really did feel like we were ready to enjoy a day at the seaside! The children were able to explain lots of ways that we can stay safe in the sun and knew the importance of wearing sun screen in this hot weather. Together we learnt how to apply this sun lotion and understood how important it is to choose one with a high SPF. As well as this, the children enjoyed partaking in lots of special beach games - it really was a super day and thank you for providing the children with all they needed. 

 

On Wednesday, the class greatly enjoyed watching the Oliver performance. They were all mesmerised by the incredible acting, singing, and dancing on show and all sat beautifully throughout the performance. 

 

Throughout the week we've enjoyed reading a range of books linked to our seaside topic. A particular favourite was 'The Singing Mermaid'. We enjoyed it so much that we decided to make some necklaces for the mermaid which helped to develop our fine motor skills too! 

 

07/07/22

The children in Snowy Owl Class have been practising their races ready for sports day! We can boast some fantastic fitness and speedy running, as well as impressive agility, coordination, and spatial skills. I was especially impressed with one group who created an excellent obstacle course that finished with a wide leap across a pool of lava - luckily no-one got their toes burned. I was guided around some pretty tricky sections which were very creatively designed. We have also talked about transition and moving on to our new year groups and answered the children's questions about what they might expect. This was a really useful chance for the children to begin to adjust to the change coming up and explore our feelings about it. Everyone is definitely feeling very grown up! What are you looking forward to next year? We have also been playing a new memory game, 'I went on holiday and in my suitcase, I packed a beach ball, a body board, an ice cream, some toys, a pair of wellies, a thousand cheese pizzas.....'. Next week, we are looking forward to our beach themed day, please make sure the children come to school in their summer holiday clothes, bring a beach towel and a bottle of sun cream on Tuesday 12th July. Return your library books if you haven't already, please!

 

01/07/22

We thoroughly enjoyed Armed Forces Day last week, which gave all of us in Snowy Owl Class a chance to understand a bit more about the roles the military carry out and to show our support for them. We were excited to meet members of the Royal British Legion and carry out activities in our worship families. With Tomtom's help, we all had the opportunity to write a 'bluey' which is an armed forces airletter to his mum who is somewhere in the world serving in her role as an Army doctor. This week, the children have been busy learning about yellow fin tuna, and we watched Steve Backshall as he swam in the ocean with a shoal who were hunting sardines. We were surprised to learn how big and fast they are. We also talked about how tasty they are on a baked potato! Many of the children have been given a house point for their efforts to make a moving picture of a jelly fish in the ocean using a pop-up design and a paper plate. We hope to show you more of these in our exhibition. We've also been busy creating musical instruments and the children enjoyed performing in the 'Elastic Band' band to I'm Still Standing by Elton John. Alongside his we've had some excellent sand sculptures, junk modelling robots and mermaid themed role play. What a week! 

 

24/06/22

This week we have been thinking about the types of words we use when we're talking about 'time' and we ended up creating an enormous list! We came up with vocabulary such as before, after, now, later, yesterday, tomorrow, next, then, first, as well as the words we use for days of the week, months of the year and clock times. Year 1 have begun to learn about the hands of the clock. I wonder if you could support the children at home by discussing routines and using some of these time related words. We have come up with some new ideas for making jelly fish with the help of Oak Class in Micheldever that include some creative ideas for making them appear as if they are swimming. As promised, Mrs West shared a picture of one of her favourite sand sculptures made with the help of her daughter Evie about ten years ago. Can you guess what it is? Year 1 are busy preparing instructions for how to create a perfect sandcastle which will be very useful if we head to the beach this summer.

   

17/06/22

What a scorcher! This week we have enjoyed the fine weather and spent plenty of time exploring the shady woodland area, naming species of plants growing wild. We discussed the plants that we need to be careful of, including brambles and nettles, and the differences between them. It was surprising to for some children to learn where blackberries come from. We have also spent time outside expanding our mathematical understanding of capacity, looking at buckets of different sizes, learning about litres and half litres, and experimenting by pouring water from one container to another. Snowy Owls have also listened with interest to the story of 'The Sand Children' and talked about how to make sand sculptures. This is one of Mrs West's favourite hobbies and she has promised to show us photos of some of the sculptures she has made next week. Year 1 children have taken this a step further and have begun to break down the process into steps of instructions. 

10/06/22

Welcome back to school everyone! We are very excited to announce the arrival of our amazing new classroom kitchen and home corner which has brought the children's role play alive this week. We have been baking bread, putting the washing on and warming the baby's milk. Our new pram has inspired all the children to look after the babies and take them for outings around the play area. We have enjoyed the story of 'The Little Boat' by Kathy Henderson which has taught us a lot about floating and sinking. We have carried out some experiments in the classroom to see if we can understand more about what floats and what sinks. Some children have made interesting boat designs and have thought about waterproofing as well. The Year 1 children have also been writing poetry and have really understood how carefully chosen words can add value to their poems. I'm really pleased with the results so far, watch this space, Year 1 parents! We're developing a very interesting 'under the sea scene' too as more and more jellyfish creations are added to our display. Some of them have tentacles that can move to and fro, and some of them have googly eyes! We have been discussing the story of 'The Lost Sheep' in worship and have discussed how the story fits with our Christian value of 'love'. We decided that we are like the flock of sheep and Jesus is like the shepherd. We have made a picture and shared it with Oak class at Micheldever. Thank you for all the amazing aquariums! Keep them coming!  

27/05/22

This week, we have continued to engage in creative arts and use and apply techniques that they have been taught. As well as having open access to all the painting equipment, embellishments and paper and card of various sizes, the children have also been provided with some ideas to express other artistic talents. For example, we have been inspired by the Queen's Jubilee and made crowns, created farm maps, made flags, danced to music and to top it all, the most incredible aquariums!  Thanks also to those families who have provided so many items for our junk modelling box, we couldn't do it without these contributions! Year 1 have blown my socks off with their understanding of grouping and sharing and arrays in maths. Next, we will look at fractions - halves and quarters of whole shapes and quantities. We are very much looking forward to celebrating the Queen's Platinum Jubilee and wearing red, white and blue at school. Enjoy your half term and KEEP READING!!!

20/05/22

Last week ended with an exciting opportunity to test some farm products and even find out how butter is made. The children proved how strong their muscles are as they shook and shook our jars of cream until their arms fell off! Eventually their efforts paid off and after the butter milk was poured away, we ended up with delicious creamy butter which the children enjoyed on a cracker. And what better way  to enjoy a buttery cracker than with some tasty cheese? Sheep's cheese and goats cheese were tasted and voted on. The goat cheese won the prize, it was absolutely delicious! We also learned what Mrs Muffet was eating on her tuffet. This week the children have been encouraged to express their creativity through crafts and we have attempted some recently learned paper rolling techniques to create 3D animals. They have also been practising their written skills and are building and building their use of phonics for spelling and all children are now attempting sentence writing with some pretty impressive results. We've been doubling and halving numbers, working out 'more and less' problems and singing the number bond rap with Jack Hartman. In our worship this week we heard the story of how Saul became St Paul and have been  thinking about God's Grace. We discussed how we can also show good grace towards others and we agreed that a kind smile goes such a long way!

13/05/22

 The children have continued to impress me this week with their understanding of numbers. We headed to the outside classroom for some of our maths and used natural objects to continue learning about comparing numbers and looking at equal quantities, more and less using two-digit numbers. The children are becoming more familiar with the 'Guess my number' game and have been playing with each other. Year 1s are also looking at making equal groups and repeated addition. As well as this, we have been getting busy with writing and all the children in the class have had a go at writing a sentence using their phonics skills. I am really pleased with the effort the children put into this. Year 1s are preparing to write us a funny story about a farm character. We're going to keep up the momentum and try writing sentences more often to give us loads of practice. Tomorrow, we will be tasting our own butter and spreading it on some bread to taste with a little bit of sheep and goat cheeses. I wonder which one we will like best. 

06/05/22

The children in Snowy Owl Class have been learning about life on the farm. They now know why farmers keep sheep and how their milk gets from a cow to their cornflakes! Unfortunately, we don't have a toy farm in school - but not to worry! We have a team of imaginative Snowy Owl experts who have fantastic ideas about what we could use instead. The children have been busy creating milking sheds, a mucky pig sty and a garage for the tractor. We even have a duck pond with three little ducks swimming around. In outside learning, we have been focussed on odd and even numbers by making pairs and seeing if there is one left over. We also played the 'Guess my Number' game using numbers up to 20. The adult thinks of a number and the children try and guess it. The adult says 'more' or 'less' until the children get it right. It would be great if you could practise this at home to support understanding of value - more and less, including 'teen' numbers. Next week, we will be making our own butter as well as tasting goats' cheese and different types of bread. If you do not want your child to take part, please let me know.

08/04/22

We have reached the end of another term and how the time has flown by! Thank you for coming to see us on Exhibition Day, it was lovely to see the children so keen to show you their learning environment and a variety of the interesting activities we have been engaged in. This week, we have worked hard on creating Easter cards and Palm leaves for our part in the Easter celebrations. The children have written thoughtful Easter messages on the leaves using their fantastic phonics skills. We have also sharpened all the colouring pencils and challenged ourselves to colour incredibly neatly and accurately. The children have shown such control and effort, staying carefully inside the lines. We have learned about the importance of Palm Sunday from the perspective of Dan the Donkey who carried Jesus on his back through the streets of Jerusalem.

We hope you all have a hop, hop, hoppy Easter! 

04/02/22

The children in Snowy Owl Class were lucky enough to meet Farmer Ian driving his big yellow tractor through the field next to school. We were able to get a really close view of the plough and how it worked. We watched as it turned the soil over and got the field ready for planting. It was quite exciting to get a wave and a thumbs up from Ian too! At the beginning of the week, Mrs West gave us a variety of building materials to have a go at making houses. We were not surprised when the wolf was able to blow down the straw house and the stick house, even though we tried a variety of methods to strengthen them. On Tuesday, we learned about Chinese New Year and we celebrated by dancing to some traditional Chinese music and hanging lanterns around the classroom. In the outside area, we retold the story of The Angry Bee who needed help to learn the value of forgiveness. The children understand that sometimes people make mistakes or cause accidents, but it is very good to be able to forgive them and not feel angry like the bee in the story.

28/01/22

This week, the children discovered three chairs in the classroom and one of them was covered in masking tape! We realised that Goldilocks must have been in the classroom, but luckily the three bears were out on their walk. The children have been using the language of size as well as words we use to compare size such as 'taller' and 'shorter'. We've compared each other's heights and looked at the meter stick to measure each other. The children have also had a go at using different resources to build chairs of different sizes. We have put our phonics to excellent use and have written letters of apology to the bears. It is exciting to see how confident the children are to have a go. We have looked at our key text, 'Fairy Tale Pets' where all the fairy tales are muddled up and poor Bob the pet sitter has a terrible time trying to stop the goats making a racket and cheer the littlest bear up. In worship this week, we have considered the value 'trust' and have discussed who our trusted adults are and how they support us to understand friendly and unfriendly behaviour. We know who we can trust to help us if things go wrong. 

21/01/22

Our classroom is full of story characters! We have Red Riding Hood meeting the Gingerbread Man and we're all wondering if it's the same wolf in the story of The Three Little Pigs. The children have taken part in some active role play in the outdoor classroom; that Gingerbread Man is VERY hard to catch! I was impressed with how well they have absorbed the sequence of events and played their parts brilliantly. Unfortunately, it was an unhappy ending for the poor gingerbread Man. Red Riding Hood had a much happier ending which the children were pleased to note. She has been given some very helpful maps and stranger danger advice to help her get to Grandma's house safely. We discussed our Christian value 'Love' and how it binds us together and the children thought about how Little Red Riding Hood showed love for her Grandma. 

14/01/22

Snowy Owl Class have continued to get stuck in to their learning! Quite literally - golden syrup, soft brown sugar, eggs, butter, flour and most importantly... ginger! We have learned all about the ingredients for making gingerbread and looked closely at ginger root. We also tasted other ginger flavoured products including ginger loaf and ginger ale! The children were able to express their likes, dislikes and preferences. We loved rolling out the dough and creating our little gingerbread men. At playtime, while they baked in the oven, the children were on the lookout in case the little gingerbread men were seen dashing across the playground or running through the field. We all think we could catch him if he ran past; we are very good at running. We also carried out some experiments to find out what might happen if the gingerbread man falls in the river. Some children designed a bridge for the gingerbread man to cross the river safely. I wonder which fairy tale characters will appear in our classroom next...

Earlier in the week, we met up online with Oak Class from Micheldever. We have chatted about our Federation Vision and created some artwork inspired by our Christian values and the words 'Dever river', 'family' and 'life'. The children have learned about trout, otters and swans as well as some similarities between our two schools. I hope you're all enjoying the exciting home learning opportunities emailed to you, especially joining the local library.

     

 07/01/22

Welcome back everyone! We have got stuck straight in with a focus on traditional tales, beginning with the Gingerbread Man. We really enjoyed the story, especially the tension building at the end, wondering how he would get across the river or if the fox would gobble him up! The children have had a go at making their own Gingerbread men, attaching the arms and legs in different ways exploring fixings such as tape and split pins. Some of them looked very fancy after they had been decorated! We have begun to explore what things are made of, grouping and sorting everyday objects and thinking about their properties. Why isn't a chair made of paper? Why isn't a cushion made of stone? Why isn't a ball made of glass? The children have also impressed me with their calculation skills and have looked at subtraction and the concept of 'zero' using the counting rhyme, 'Ten Currant Buns'.  We are building our knowledge of digraphs and have focussed on 'ng', 'ai' and 'ee' over the last few days. 

               

17/12/21

We have finally come to the end of a long and busy term. For our Year R children, I would like to say congratulations and well done for completing your first ever term at school! You are growing up so quickly and have become fully fledged members of our Barton Stacey school community. Our 3 amazing Year 1 children are becoming truly fantastic learners and impress me every day with how mature you are. There has been so much focus and concentration, my favourite quote this week is, 'I love Maths because I can do it!' Well, yes you can do it and I can't wait to find out what else you can learn. We have celebrated this week with a special Christmas lunch, Christmas crafts, a visit from Santa, stories, hot chocolates and much more. Have a restful and safe Christmas break and I am very much looking forward to finding out what these amazing children will achieve in the Spring. 

10/12/21

Last week, we wondered whether St Nicholas would visit our class and... he did! We were very excited to find our beautiful boots bulging with gifts on Monday morning. How lucky we are! The Snowy Owl elves have been getting well into the Christmas spirit, making decorations for the Christmas tree and working hard in the workshop, making and wrapping presents for Father Christmas. We have learned all about the story of the Nativity in our collective Worship this week and the children have been carefully writing about how they think Mary might have felt. Their writing skills are coming on so well! The highlight of the week was the Nativity play where the children excelled themselves and sang their hearts out for their audience. It was wonderful to see the children grow and grow in confidence. Well done!

                   

03/12/21

Our Nativity practice is nearing perfection as we prepare to perform in our sheep costumes next week. Thank you very much for providing these, the children will be Baaa-rilliant! The weather on Monday was a lovely surprise so we dashed outside to explore the snow and ice. What a lot we have learned about the weather and seasons. We also looked carefully at the patterns our wellies left in the snow and looked for signs of animal prints. We created some wonderful wintery pictures and carried out an ice experiment in the classroom. Our big snowball took over 5 hours to melt! Mrs Van Dyke was kind enough to visit our class to tell us about a festive tradition from Slovakia. The children have decorated boots in the hope that St Nicholas will visit and leave a treat inside. Let's find out next week! We have also learned to say 'Happy Christmas' in Slovak. Veselé vianoce!

 

26/11/21

The children in Snowy Owl Class have been looking at planet Earth and learning about the continents and oceans, different countries and finding places we have heard of or been to. We have looked at Google Earth and zoomed in from outer space onto Barton Stacey. We have also found forests and deserts as well as snow and ice, we think we even found where Santa lives! We have also looked at all kinds of maps and talked about the features we recognise. In worship this week, the children have learned about Noah and have learned what patience means. God sent a rainbow after the floods and rewarded Noah's patience. I think the children in Snowy Owl Class show a lot of patience when they have to wait for something to happen. We were inspired to create our own rainbows in different ways. Unfortunately, due to continued bubbling, we have been unable to change library books this week. Please continue to keep them in the book bags. Nativity costumes on Monday please! 

 

19/11/21

The children have been busy learning the songs for our nativity performance. There are a lot of words to learn, and I am very pleased with how it is improving. There are definitely some budding performers in our class!  We have been very aware of the changing season and Snowy Owls have been out hunting for signs of autumn in the outdoor areas. We are lucky that there are so many species of tree to find, and we have been looking at the different shapes and colours of the leaves to try and identify which trees the leaves came from. We've also focussed on making autumn art and patterns. The children have thought deeply about friendship as part of 'anti-bullying week' and we now have many volunteers for the responsible role of 'play buddy' within the class.  

  

12/11/21

This week we have been thinking about growing up. What a lot we have learned since we were born! It has been fun guessing who is who. The children have been engaged in wonderful discussions, developing their language and communication skills as they enjoying sharing their photos. Alongside this, we have continued to enjoy as much learning time as we can outdoors. We have played phonics games and maths games in the woods. I was also incredibly impressed with Snowy Owls calm reflection during our Remembrance service. Look out for some more information coming soon about the Nativity service. Here's a little clue what Snowy Owls will be.... Baaa 

05/11/21

This week Snowy Owls have been busy doing all sorts of things! We have practised our Maths skills in the forest, collecting sticks of different lengths, using language such as longer and shorter and ordering sticks by length. We have enjoyed the wonderful story of the Elves and the Shoemaker and discussed the concept of kindness. The children have practised their stitching skills just like the Elves. We have made puppets of the characters and performed the story for an audience within the class which was very entertaining! We continue to pick up new phonic sounds, we now know 'u' and 'r' and have been using these to read simple words. Some children have even written a sentence. 

 15/10/21

In Snowy Owls this week we have been reading ‘The Naughty Bus’ and we have been on lots of exciting bus adventures ourselves! In maths we hopped on board the ‘Snowy Bus’ and practised our number sentences by adding passengers and taking them away at various stops around the classroom! We have also enjoyed singing ‘The Wheels on the Bus’ with lots of actions and sequenced pictures from the story in English. We have also been busy in Phonics learning ‘o’ ‘c’ ‘k’ ‘ck’ and playing lots of interactive phonics games. The Snowy Owls have continued to show great resilience and coped with all the changes this week very well. We are very proud of you all!

 08/10/21

This week in Snowy Owls we have been making friendship bracelets for each other and showing resilience in everything we do – including tidying up! We have also been making art from natural materials, drawing still life vegetable pictures and practising our phonics. This week we have learnt ‘g’. The Snowy Owls have had a great week and we are very proud of all the resilience and perseverance they have shown! 

 

01/10/21

Snowy Owls have had a very interesting week of learning! We are progressing well with phonics, with the help of the Gruffalo in the woods. The children have begun to put together simple words using the sounds we have learned so far. Please look out for some new sounds coming home in the home learning book. We have also looked at how the weather is changing, noticing the sunshine and showers, and finding we need to put our coats on a bit more often. The children have planted cress seeds and we're looking forward to seeing how quickly they sprout. Finally, we have enjoyed some musical afternoons with Mr Martin and have had a lovely singalong with his guitar.

24/09/21

This week we have enjoyed the story of the Disgusting Sandwich and have had fun creating playdough sandwiches, serving up sandwiches in the role play kitchen and learning instructions for how to make a sandwich. It was especially exciting when we collected items from our forest learning session to help us make disgusting sandwiches to serve up for the monsters in the mud kitchen! We have learned the names of some new vegetables and cut them open to see what's inside including an aubergine and an autumnal squash! We used them to print repeating patterns in the creative area; the savoy cabbage leaves made very interesting patterns. The week has ended with the children making their own sandwich. 

 17/09/21

I'm so impressed with how well the children have settled into full-time school! There have been more 'firsts' for our Year R children this week including 'Forest Learning', an afternoon in the 'outside learning zone' and PE which have all been very exciting. The Year 1 children are really helping us learn what to do. It would be very helpful if you could provide a named pair of wellies and ensure that the children have a coat and water bottle in school every day, no matter what the weather is doing. Thank you to everyone who has spent time looking at reading and phonics at home. The children will benefit enormously with all your help. We will aim to read and change books at least once per week (days will vary) so please keep everything in the book bag ready.

10/09/21

What an awesome start to the school year! Snowy Owls have settled brilliantly into new routines and we are all feeling very proud of ourselves. So far, the children have shown us how well they can tidy up resources and share equipment. We have had some lovely discussions about what makes us special and unique, talking about friends and family and things we enjoy. They have also begun to learn some phonic sounds. Well done every-one!

 

Summer Term Learning Project

11 June 2021

This week, we have been exploring the seaside! We have been learning about subtraction in Maths and in Music we created a soundscape for a short film using untuned percussion. In English, we have been planning a trip to the seaside by writing lists and writing postcards. In Phonics, we have been learning about CCVC words and in Geography, the Y1s have been naming the 7 continents of the world.

28 May 2021

This week, we have learnt about turtles. We made our own clay turtles and wrote information posters. We have also been learning about addition in Maths and in Science we measured the strength of different materials to make a new shell for the turtle.

21 May 2021

This week, we have been learning with the Rainbow Fish! We have been continuing our time unit in Maths and in English we have been writing fact files about a sea animal as well as thinking about and writing thought bubbles for the characters in our focus story. In Science we explored properties of materials and completed an investigation where we had to find about how Rainbow Fish sparkles!

14 May 2021

This week, we have been exploring books from under the sea, including; 'Tiddler' and 'Sharing a shell'. In Maths, we made our own clocks to help Tiddler make sure he's not late for school and the Y1s have even learnt about hour times and half past times. In English, we sequenced and retold the story of 'Tiddler' using puppets and pictures and we have also been doing lots of research in Science using laptops and books, with the Y1s turning the information into mind maps.

7 May 2021

This week, we have been continuing our learning with Nemo and Dory. In Art, we made our own aquariums using shoe boxes and included a range of ocean animals we have learnt about. In Maths, we have been learning our number bonds to 20 and we enjoyed helping Dory learn about belonging and what makes us unique in PSHE and RE. We also had lots of fun completing a range of Nemo and Dory themed 'Rainbow Challenges'!

30 April 2021

This week, we have been learning with Nemo from Disney's 'Finding Nemo'. In English, we learnt about writing diaries by looking at Nemo's diary entry from his first day of fish school and we even helped Nemo count backwards in Maths. We have also been experimenting with the different sounds that water can make in Music and made octopus paper chains in Art.

23 April 2021

We launched our new project in Snowy Owls this week! We had lots of fun exploring some of the new things in the classroom and outside area. We created questions and made predictions based on what we want to find out about our pro-ject in English and even made under the sea landscapes by mixing colours together in Art. In Maths, we have been looking at repeating patterns and we also learnt about a famous explorer of the sea! We can't wait to continue learning more throughout our new project - 'What wonders do the waters hold?'.

1 April 2021

This week, we have been learning about Easter! We made Easter bonnets and sequenced The Easter Story. We had lots of fun finding Easter eggs with sounds on them in our Easter egg hunt! We hope everyone has a lovely Easter!

26 March 2021

This week, we enjoyed making our toy adventure stories into short films using our 'film studio'. We also bought some toys by counting and using money in the 'Snowy Owl Toy Shop'! We have also been working really hard on our fine motor skills this week.

19 March 2021

This week, we have been exploring and learning about money in Maths and have even got a toy shop in our classroom! In English, we have planned our toy adventure stories ready to turn into short films next week. We enjoyed playing listening games with the parachute and learnt all about Walt Disney this week too, with the Y1s making fact files about him.

12 March 2021

This week, we have been settling back into our school environment and exploring some new things in the classroom, including our new investigation area. We had lots of fun on Science day with Professor Brewster and looked at lots of fun experiments!  We even got to make our own rain clouds and made a ball float in the air! We also enjoyed making up our own experiments and writing words and sentences about our favourite ones. 

5 March 2021

This week, we have been continuing our learning with the Toy Soldiers. We wrote our new missions for the Toy Soldiers using our Phonics and we can't wait for them to go on all of our missions! In Maths, we have been learning about sharing and in Art we have been learning about camouflage and even making our own camouflaged animals!

26 February 2021

This week, we have been learning with the Toy Soldiers from Toy Story. We created text maps in English explaining a new mission for them and even made marching rhythms in Music and parachutes in D&T. In Maths, the YRs have been learning about doubling and the Y1s have been making and adding equal groups.

12 February 2021

This week in Snowy Owl Class, the YRs have been working on their blending and segmenting in Phonics and the Y1s have been looking at the properties of materials in Science. We made thank you cards in English and have enjoyed completing wellbeing activities this week too. We look forward to finding out which toy we will be learning with after half-term!

5 February 2021

This week, we have been learning with Forky! We have been writing instructions in English and learning about 2D and 3D shapes in Maths. We even made our own toys out of recycled materials!

29 January 2021

This week, the YRs have been continuing to learn their numbers to 20 in Maths and the Y1s have been counting in 5’s. In English, Buzz Lightyear asked us to make video letters and written letters as well as adverts addressed to Andy asking for a new toy to join the family. We also learnt about old and new toys and the differences between them.