Spring and Growth

This week we have been busy planting seeds and thinking about what plants need to grow.

We read the story of Titch, who planted a seed that grew very tall.

We decorated some pots to plant our own seeds.

Then we put compost in and planted some seeds.

We gave them a drink of water and put them onto the windowsill to see how long they took to grow.

We watched the story of Jack and the Beanstalk.

We read a book about Jasper's Beanstalk.

Painting beanstalks

Women's Day and Maslenitsa

This has been a very busy week for us.  After the holiday we only had two days to prepare for International Women's Day!

We made cards and bath bombs to give to a special woman at home.  We decided on the colours and special oils to scent them.  They smelled delightful.  Here are some pictures of us making them.

 On Friday, we celebrated Maslenitsa, at school. We wrote our wishes for the coming Spring onto flower shapes and had a special assembly, where each class sang their special Spring songs.  After assembly, we gathered outside for the rest of our festival.

We helped Spring to wake up the bear.

Winter and Spring were arguing about which of them should stay.

We put the tree holding our Spring wishes in the highest place we could.

We burned the Lady Maslenitsa.

The festivities ended with a pancake snack and dancing to traditional music outside!  

Friendship Week

This week we have focused on the theme of friendship, to tie in with Valentine's Day on 14th February.

We read stories about love and friendship.

We made heart shaped baskets to hold a surprise for a special person.  When they were finished, we put two sweets inside each basket and took them home to share.

We drew pictures of our friends and wrote messages to them, to let them know what we liked about them.

 We made some delicious biscuits.  We mixed the ingredients together, rolled out the dough and cut heart shapes out.  When they had been baked we decorated them and took them home to eat!

 A Friendship Song to Sing

Red Riding Hood

This week we have been learning the story of Little Red Riding Hood.  Here is a video of the story.

We acted out the story - here is Little Red Riding Hood talking to the wolf!

We cut out the characters and made scenes from the story.

We painted characters from the story.  Here is a picture of Red Riding Hood.

We learned the story and made our own books, sorting the pictures into the right order and saying what we could remember about what was happening.

Art Week

This week the whole school has been very busy with art week.

On Monday Nursery worked together with Reception Class and Year 1 to create three different pieces of large scale art. 

On Tuesday we looked at pictures painted by Vassily Kandinsky.  

 We thought about the shapes and colours that he used.  Then we tried different ways to make our own versions of his work.

We tried cutting out circles and sticking them on top of each other.

                                               

We printed different sized circles of different colours

We practised pencil control, drawing lines and shapes with crayons and felt-tipped pens.

                                        

We made some very messy paintings, using string dipped in paint, to create interesting lines and shapes.

We used collage to try to recreate the circle patterns that we had seen.

Some children tried to copy Kandinsky's style, using brushes and paint.

Here is a picture of the finished wall display for our work.  We hope you like it!

Chinese New Year

This week we have found out about Chinese New Year.

This year it will be the Year of the Rooster.  We watched the Chinese dragon dancing and made some of our own dragon puppets.

We learned a song about dragons.

Dragon, dragon, dance around.

Dragon, dragon, touch the ground.

Dragon, dragon, shake your head.

Dragon, dragon, tongue so red.

Dragon, dragon, stamp your feet.

Dragon, dragon, coming down the street.

We also made some paper lanterns and sang about them!

Paper lanterns all around, all around, all around.

Paper lanterns all around.

Chinese New Year!

Paper lanterns red and gold, red and gold, red and gold.

Paper lanterns red and gold.

Lucky colours!

We made special fans and decorated them with bright colours and gold for luck.

Space 1

This week's theme has been space.  

We started our space theme by reading the story "Whatever Next!"  

The children enjoyed the story and began our space related activities very enthusiastically.

We made rockets from shapes

We started a space display for the corridor

We used moon-sand to make craters

We made cosmonaut pictures

We made models of space craft using recycled materials

We also read a story called "Aliens Love Underpants".  

We decorated some paper pants, but we haven't seen any aliens yet!

Our song this week was "Five Little Men in a Flying Saucer".  You can listen to it here.