We have had a lady from skipping school in today. What fun we had! We were learning how to respond to instructions and judge the space around the rope so we ran under the 'rainbow.' As we got good, we did it with a partner and then in fours. 

Over the last couple of weeks we have been continuing to learn about dinosaurs and we have been learning about the ocean and whales from stories we have been reading. The Big Bears have been learning that the ocean has plastic in it from rubbish left on the beach and it causes damage to sea creatures.

We have been continuing our learning about dinosaurs this week and there's been a lot of stomping dinosaur feet... in the playdough, in the paint and even on the top of our cake!!!!! The children had to work out which dinosaur had left footprints on the cake by comparing the shapes and sizes of dinosaur feet. In the sand area, children were acting like archaeologists and were finding hidden dinosaur bones using brushes and magnifying glasses.
The Big Bears learnt what a pier is (there's a pier in 'The Girl and the Dinosaur' story). I've included a couple of photos of some boys making piers in the construction area and a girl had the idea to draw and cut out a pier.
I've also included a few photos of the Big Bears using the new fruit infused water cooler at dinnertime.

It's been a warmer week and we have loved enjoying the sunshine and the blossom from our fabulous tree. 
We have been learning about the changes that animals go through and learning that some animals don't change completely like a caterpillar; they just grow and change with that. The children enjoyed guessing which staff were who from our childhood pictures - can you????
In baking, we made banana cake where the children enjoyed mashing the bananas.

Our focus story has been The Tiger who came to tea. We found out strange how the tiger drank tea from the teapot spout! Today, we drank tea from a teacup and we made fresh hot cross buns. We loved the experience but many children didn't like the hot cross buns (but some had two halves!).
​

Thankyou for your patience whilst we have been dealing with changes to IT systems and new equipment. This has meant I haven't been able to blog for a few weeks so here are some photos to catch up on. 

We celebrated by having a great day yesterday - the children looked amazing so thankyou parents! We had a Julia Donaldson themed day so our activities centred around her lovely stories. In the afternoon, the Year 4s popped in to read us their own versions of Zog.

It's important that children begin to learn about other cultures and we do this in EYFS by learning about celebrations. This year, Chinese New Year is between 17th February and 3rd March so this week we have been learning about it. 
We have had a Chinese restaurant in the home corner; practising how to use chopsticks. We also learnt about the Great Wall of China and then the children built their own wall across EYFS!!! We used a trundle wheel to measure how long it was... about 16 metres!!!! A group of boys built a Chinese Restaurant (after a story we read set in Hong Kong harbour) and then built another Great Wall from it.
​

This week we have continued to learn about pirates - what they look like and what they do. On Wednesday, the children baked heart biscuits as a celebration of Valentine's day; I wonder if they gave their heart away??????? 
Have a fabulous half-term everyone - let's hope for some sunnier skies!

Last week, our new focus story 'The treasure of Pirate Frank' focused on pirates and treasure maps. We loved talking about treasure and drawing maps with volcanoes, swamps and forests! There was some creative building going on in the construction and small world areas - pirate ships and pirate places to live.
We made rocky road; it was filled with lots of treasure for us - marshmallows, jellybeans, crunchy bits, maltesers, sprinkles... 
​In Maths, we were learning to record number in different ways and learnt that 6 and 7 are made from 5 and a bit more.