​We hope you have all had an enjoyable half term week and are ready for returning to school on Tuesday.
Before the holidays we had fun with our theme of ‘spooky surprises!’ We read Meg and Mog stories, using our Fred talk to read phonetically regular words within the stories. We learned some Spooky Halloween songs, Such as Five Little Pumpkins and Halloween’s Coming! We have created spells and used our fine motor skills to collect spiders and letters from the spaghetti worms, created lanterns, spiders and spooky paintings
 
We have continued with our learning about what it means to be independent. The children have been working in small teams with an adult to set up the outdoor play equipment for the Nursery and Reception classes. Throughout the day they have to keep checking their area to make sure that it is being played with responsibly and help to tidy away at the end of the morning and afternoon. We have also talked about the importance of helping each other to learn new skills. If you are someone that can put your coat on then try and help someone else to learn to do this. We listened to a story called Cleversticks and talked about how the children in the story were all good at different things and used their skills to help their friends.
 
In maths we have been learning about ‘more’ and comparing amounts and carefully counting to check which amount is more
 
On Tuesday, before reading together, we had a special visitor who came to school to talk to us about her work at the Children’s Hospital. The children were really interested in looking at the photos about the hospital and the model helicopter and ambulance that were left with the Rainbows for them to play with. Our visitor, who just happens to be Ruby’s Grandma, also gave us a gorgeous soft Children’s hospital bear for our class. This bear is so cuddly that we decided he would help us feel better if we have a bump. 
If any parents, grandparents or family have any travel experiences, jobs, hobbies or cultural experiences, such as weddings, then we would be delighted if you could spare 10 minutes of your time to share with the children. All you would need is a photo or object that you could talk about. It all helps to enrich the children’s knowledge and understanding of the world.  Alternatively, you could share a photo on Seesaw, with just a bit of background information, so that adults in class can discuss with the children. 

Our topics this week have been Harvest Time and Jobs. Our first story was “When I Grow Up” and we discussed different jobs in the community. We have been learning about people who help us and have enjoyed being doctors, nurses and patients and making our friends feel well again! We made some amazing scarecrows in our creative area and completed some “What I want to be…” sheets.
 
We have also been reading The Little Red Hen and learning how hard she worked to harvest the corn and bake the bread without any help. We know that teamwork is very important and have been practising this all week during learning and tidy up time. We read different versions of the story and compared how they were different. We made collages of The Little Red Hen, cut out shapes to create pictures of her, practised developing our motor skills by opening plastic eggs and placing chicks inside and mark making what we think characters in the story might say.
 
We have been learning what the word “independent” means this week and are learning two new things we can do independently! The first is how to out our coat on by turning the sleeves the right way around if they are inside out, putting our arms in and trying to do it up! We have also been learning how to collect powder paint in the creative area ourselves, mix it with water, create different colours and to wash up the palettes and brushes independently! We are going to continue this over the next few weeks so we get really confident with it!
 
In maths we have been learning about number five. We have also been learning the words “more” and “fewer” and can describe amounts. We are able to look at two groups and say which group has fewer objects and how we know that.
 
On Welly Walk we were learning about Autumn. We collected lots of Autumn leaves and seeds including sweet chestnuts and sycamore seeds and were learning to describe them.

Our topic this week has been “My Day” We have enjoyed listening to the story of The Tiger who came to Tea, and the unusual events that happened on the day in the story. The children thought about what would happen if a different animal came for tea, such as a Kangaroo jumping all over the house. Later in the week we also shared the story of The Bad Tempered Ladybird and looked at the events that happened over the day and how the time changes.  We have also ordered events in our school day and referred to our class timetable to show how the activities we do happen at certain times of the day as part of our daily routines.
We asked the children about days that they have enjoyed. If you have photos of a special day that your child could talk about it would greatly help with our topic if you could share one on Seesaw or bring into school. This is that we can encourage talk about special places and develop vocabulary around this.
Our activities have included making tiger patterns and ladybirds, linked to our stories. As using the small clocks to show changes in o’clock times.
This week we have been having a push on ensuring that we are using manners when asking for our dinners in the dining hall. We have to say that by the end of the week we were very impressed with the number of children who were ensuring they said thank you when receiving their lunches.
In maths we have been focussing on subertising. This is the ability to be able to say how many is in a small arrangement of pictures or objects up to 5, without the need to count them. This is something we will practise throughout the year so that the children have mastered this by the end of the summer term. Our number this week has been number 4.
 
In phonics, we have continued to learn new sounds and the corresponding handwriting phrase. Some of us have continued to blend to read words and used magnetic letters and boards to write words.
Next week our learning is about “When I grow up.” It  is also Diversity week next week so there will be lots of stories and  talk about diversity, inclusion and accepting others.
 

The Rainbows have had so much fun taking part in an investigation today to look for a pattern. We were learning about sycamore seeds and wondered if they all spin when they fall or if some do not. We guessed before the investigation so we could see if we were right! We looked carefully at them and noticed that they were different colours and sizes and some were different shapes because they had parts missing. We threw them one by one in the air and marked with a cross if they didn't spin or a tick if they did spin. Most of the seeds spun as they fell but we realised that not all seeds do spin to the ground! We were very surprised!