Our Yr and Y1 class is called Hedgehogs Class

Our class teachers are Mrs Moore and Mrs Jordan and our TA is Mrs Richardson.

We’ve all had great fun exploring, with lots of hands on activities to help us develop new skills and ideas with our enhanced provision.

The wet and windy weather so far this week hasn’t stopped us getting outside and learning. We have been acting out the story of Jack and the Beanstalk with our own giant beanstalk, nailing leaves on a beanstalk and making a speaking tool.

We’ve been busy exploring our continuous provision this morning based around our story of the week ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’.

 

Today we have made Gingerbread Men! Our Year 1s had to carefully follow the instructions, making sure they looked out for the verbs, and then we all decorated them! They were yummy! We alosn carried on with our Gingerbread Man enhanced provision.

We’ve had lots of fun using our outdoor classroom. We’ve been busy counting, creating and getting muddy!

What an amazing day we had celebrating the centenary of the end of World War 1. We split into different groups and had fun making poppies, a trench cake, and experiencing what life would have been like in the trenches. We also got to dress up and listen to a real soldier talk to us!

Look at just a few things we’ve been up to!

 

This afternoon we continued our Geograohy learning on our local area by going for a walk. We were looking for important buildings and found the school, village hall, post office, park, pub and Church, as well as a few physical features such as the green and the river.

Today (Tuesday 6th November) the children have been using their phonetic skills to build CVC words based on our Gingerbread Man story. The Year 1’s also looked in the story to find capital letters.

We have also been drawing our self portaits, practising our letters by playing I spy, and matching numbers

Look at our fabulous number representation! We have been thinking about the numbers 1-10 all term and this morning we made displays showing each number.

This morning some of the Hedgehogs have been looking at partitoning numbers using the part, part, whole method.

This morning we have had a maths morning. EYFS have been looking at the number 8, and how we can make it in different ways, while our Year 1s have been working on greater than and less than using the symbols <, > and =

We’ve continued with our Hansel and Gretel provision this week, but it has taken an Autumnal twist as we have been thinking about the changes that happen to the trees and some of the vegetables we harvest in this season too.

What a lovely week we have had so far! The children have thoroughly enjoyed our Hansel and Gretel inspired provision and have thrown themselves into it whole-heartedly. Our boys have enjoyed choosing to mark make their own stories in our writing area, we’ve made revolting potions and decorated sweets with spirals, zig-zags and circles-all helping us develop that all important fine motor control.

We’ve even had time for a little visit from two of the most adorable puppies in Newton Tony! Thank you Mr and Mrs Walker for bringing them in!

The children were greeted with a wicked witch this morning feeling rather sorry for herself! After a run in with an oven and two children in her delicious gingerbread house, she has decided to try and be kind. The children agreed to help her make a revolting soup, rather than roasted children and went on a hunt to find some revolting ingredients: crunchy caterpillars, slimy slugs and bumpy woodlice were just a few of them!

The children have enjoyed decorating their own sweet-covered house using a variety of sweets, hammers and nails!

 

So far this week the children have practised handwrtiing patterns, looked at representing numbers in different ways, used their fine motor skills to make shapes and pick up objects, practised their spellings and investigated the effects of water in the sand tray! And it’s only Tuesday!

Today we had a rather special surprise! After reading an intriguing letter,we went to search for a hidden gift left to us by a secret book character. After searching high and low we eventually found a shiny scale. We realised it must have been left by the ever so kind Rainbow Fish!

Our continuous provision has been based around the book The Rainbow Fish. We have been busy investigating the parts of a real fish, using our fine motor skills to decorate our own ranbow fsh and creating submarines to go and visit out little colourful friend.

We are doing lots of acivities at the moment that involve strengthening our fingers. This afternoon we used Playdough for finger exercises, threaded the string through the boards, and cut out spiral patterns after drawing patterns on them!

This afternoon we have continued our learning on our wonderful bodies! We focused on the senses and went on a senses walk to see what we could see, hear, touch, taste and smell.

This morning (Tuesday 11th September) we have been learning about sounds and numbers, as well as thinking of our own learning through play!

The children in Reception had to go on a number hunt and write down the number they had found, they also had to listen to a sound and identify which instrument was making it.

Some of the children practised their fine motor skills by using cotton buds to paint, tweezers to pick up beads, and scissors to cut out shapes. All in all, a busy morning!

To find out more about what we will be exploring this term, please look at the link below

Overview Autumn 1

What a lot of fun we have had this week! We have made new friends, explored the classroom resources and equipment, learnt our way around the school and even had our very first PE lesson!

 

Welcome back to our new starters! We have been busy learning our new friends’ names, class rules and routines and how to use all of the lovely resources in our classroom. We have had a great first few days with lots of experimenting, exploring and getting messy!

 

Previous Year: 2017-2018

This morning (Tuesday 26th June) the Yr R children had their literacy learning outside. They had to go on a sound and key word hunt and then record what they found in their books.

This afternoon we carried on our learning with some Science – we have started a new topic on plants and were searching the school grounds for the most common wild plant. We had a tally chart of dandelions, daisies, buttercups, dog roses, nettles, ivy and a few more. When we found the plants we had to tick them off.

Today we did some very exciting maths! We are looking at capacity this week and this morning the children got the chance to make their own fruit cocktail! They had to carefully measure out the apple juice, pomegranate juice and lemonade so that there was 100ml of each, and then mix them together. There were some mixed reviews but most of the children thought it was delicious – some even asked for seconds!

Welcome to the class Goldie, Rosie, Chicken-Licken and Cheep-Cheep! The children are in love and have been checking on our new arrivals all day!

 

We have started a new topic for Art this week. We are looking at mixing colours and creating hues and tints by adding white and black. We have also looked at David Hockney’s painting of ‘A Bigger Splash’ where he created different shades of blue by using tints. We used the picture to make a jigsaw and put it together again,

We finished our Geography topic today by going to the river. We wanted to look at the shape of the river, how it effected the banks, and what plants and animals we could find.

When we got there we found it had dried up! We could still see the river bed though and looked at how the river became narrower and wider at certain points. We think that the river bank had been eroded by the river where it was wider.

When we walked on the river bed it was soft and springy where it was still a bit damp.

We found baby frog, newts, spiders and snails in the river bed. There were lots of different plants growing along the bank. We thought they grew better here because they absorbed the water from the river which helped them grow tall.

Hedgehogs have continued their Geography topic today by looking at the effects of coastal erosion! They made their own coast and then experiemented creating waves to see how the water effected the sand.

We have been getting into the spirit of our topic ‘Water, Water Everywhere’ by putting water, water everywhere! We’ve had a messy but fun day exploring!

 

We have come back to school refreshed and feeling excited about our learning for the new term. We have been exploring our continuous provision both indoors and outdoors, and have started our new topic on Rivers and Seas for Geography.

We hope you all have a lovely half term – the children have been working super hard and will hopefully have a lovely rest! Please remember to do some reading and spellings over the holiday (even 5 minutes a day helps immensely!).

After the holiday our topic will be Water Water Everywhere. Please find the topic link below.

overview

This afternoon we have been having a Science lesson and thinking about what evidence we can find of Spring turning into Summer. We went on a walk to find signs in nature.

This morning (Tuesday 22nd May) we have had a maths morning where the year 1s have been focusing on repeated addition and multiplication of 2’s, 5’s and 10’s, and the EYFS have been ordering numbers to 20 and matching them to the numicon pieces.

We have been busy focusing on numbers, words and letters this morning. Making number sentences, practising our high frequency words and using the magnetic letters to make our own words.

 

Aliens in our Outdoor Area

We’ve had fun with aliens in the outdoor area today: creating our own ‘splat aliens’ using our fine motor skills to squeeze pipettes and observing as the colours mixed and blended, counting out eyes for aliens as well as creating a lunar scene in the water tray with sand, water and tin foil boulders! We have also begun to plant seeds for our raised bed-fingers crossed for more sunshine!

Woodwork Shed

We have been busy designing and making in our new woodwork shed using tools such as hammers, drills, saws and screwdrivers. We have discussed safety rules and precautions and are enjoying using our real life tools.

 

Today we have been continuing our DT project on moving pictures by looking at making a lever mechanism with a pivot.

We have also been enjoying our continuous provision outside – working on our numbers, making bendy aliens and digging on the moon!

This afternoon we had some team games with the parachute

We’ve landed on the moon for the start of our DT project involving moving space pictures.

 

After our trip to Marwell yesterday, the children wrote some amazing recounts. Enjoy finding our about our trip from Rex’s and Flynn’s writing!

This afternoon the children have been using Mathletics to help their maths skills. If you have lost your childs user name, please come and see us for a new one.

The children have had great fun using the continuous provision today. Indoors is based on our trip to Marwell, and outside is centred around our Literacy book of Aliens Love Underpants.

What an amzing trip to Marwell Zoo we had today! Most of the animals came out to play and the children were on their best behaviour. Below is just a snapshot of the fun we had.

 

We’re awaiting some ‘egg-cellent’ guests!

We’re full of ‘egg-citement’ here in Hedgehog Class as we watch and wait for the arrival of 7 little chicks, being hatched in our incubator!

 

Heavy rain may have stopped play today but we have had some fantastic learning in class. We have used the numicon to build numicon rockets and then written a number sentence to match the picture. The children challenged themselves to see how many tricky words they could write in 3 minutes, as well as worked as a team to build structures using multilink. They have also been practising their phonics!

We have been continuing our Space theme in our continuous provision this week. The children have been writing in moon dust, creating planets, painting moons, making moon buggies and space rockets, and retelling the story of Whatever Next, which the children are learning about in literacy – and it’s only Tuesday!

This week we have been learning about money. The Year 1’s have been making amounts up to 20p, and some of the children have been learning how to give change as well – it’s very hard work!

Spring has Sprung!

Along with the glorious weather this past week, we have been blessed with the colours and smells of the spring bulbs we planted last year in science.

 

Term 5!

We have had lots of fun in our outside area this week, enjoying the beautiful sunshine! We have been investigating materials, digging in the sand, riding our bikes and playing in our space station to name but a few of the activities! Let’s hope this amazing weather continues.

Our new topic this term is To Infinity and Beyond! We will be looking at explorers including Christopher Columbus and Neil Armstrong.

Please click on the link below to see our Topic Overview

To infinity overview

Although it is only the second day back, we have had fun thinking about Space, and have been building our own rockets from shapes and junk modelling, as well as having fun in our own rocket in the role play area!

We had a Maths day today and we have been learning all about positional language. We looked at keft and right, up and down, in and out, as well as some tricky 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 and whole turns!

Sport’s Relief

Today we took part in raising money for Sports Relief by running a mile around our field and then bringing money in to buy some delicious cakes!

After our fun in the snow we came in and wrote a recount of all the fun we had.

We made the most of the last of the snow this morning! We had our phonics lesson outside, painting the sounds we were learning in the snow! Then we made some snow soup, went on a snow safari, investigated the ice in the water tray, threw snowballs at the sounds and wrote our names – all before playtime!

Fun in the snow

We like to go outside in all weathers and today was no exception! We put on our hats, scarves and gloves and embraced ‘ The Beast from the East: Part 2’ in all its glory. We worked together to make a snowman, which we will write about in our English work tomorrow, made snow angels and used the snow indoors too.

We are continuing our learning all about Africa. Today, Dominic and Evan grouped the animals and wrote a list of their names during their free time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have also been learning about Kenya and the way of life there. We have made African jewellery, masks, looked at the Kenyan flag and wrote some facts about Kenya.

World Book Day

For World Book Day we have come dressed up as characters from The Twits: Mr and Mrs Twit, Muggle-Wump, the Roly Roly Bird and a black bird from the dead tree. Have a look at our amazing costumes.

Africa

Our topic this term is all about Africa and we are really enjoying finding out about Kenya and the different animals. This week we are learning about the features of non-fiction books in preparation for writing our own non-chronological reports. We have also been watching live African web cams to see the animals in their natural habitat, as well as making junk models of our favourite African animals!

Outdoors

We’ve had some extreme weather recently and we’ve had some extreme themes outdoors too! We’ve been painting with extremely long paint brushes, exploring the mud pit with our extremely large vehicles and washing our extremely dirty animals. We’ve also been busy in the mud kitchen making some extremely ‘unique’ food.

 

Today in Maths we have been looking at counting in 2s, and odd and even numbers. Our EYFS children have been looking at recognising numbers up to 20.

Digging Area

We’ve had great fun in our new digging area! We’ve had competitions to see who can dig the deepest hole, investigated what bugs we can find and made a worm hotel for at least 30 worms we found during exploration.

Handa’s Hen

Our Continuous Provision has been centred around the book Handa’s Hen, which we have been exploring this week. We have  enjoyed making silhouette pictures of African animals and the beautiful colours of sunset, helping Handa’s hens find their eggs using our knowledge of the 2, 5 and 10 times tables, as well as showing our knowledge of 2d shapes in the construction area.

Developing our gross motor skills

We have been outside developing our physical skills and having fun with the parachute too.

 

 

 

We have also been learning about money and have been making amounts using different coins.

We have some exciting role play areas in the classroom this term! A safari jeep, an African landscape and an outdoors safari camp! The children have had great fun today pretending to be on Safari!

After half term we will be starting a new topic called Into Africa. Please look at the topic link below to find out what your child will be learning. We will also be planning a visit to Marwell Zoo for the end of the term!

Into Africa overview

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A fairy Tale Village

In DT we have planned and created some houses for fairy-tale characters including Snow White, the Three Little Pigs and Rapunzel. Have a look at out final products.

We used our final pieces in Geography to create our very own fairy tale village, complete with roads, a river and bridge, forest and farm.

 

INTRUDER! INTRUDER!

Unfortunately, there has been an incident in Hedgehog Class! We arrived into class on Monday morning to find that there had been an intruder that had caused quite a ruckus! We looked at the clues and discussed what we thought may have happened and who the culprit could be! Have a look and see what you think…

 

 

After much deliberation we decided it must have been Goldilocks. We have spent the week looking at the book Goldilocks and the Three Bears and also  have been working on place value in Maths.

Friday 2nd February has been National Number day where we have been raising money for the NSPCC by learning about numbers. We have had lots of fun playing board games, adding dominoes, making hopscotch, and counting objects!

Playing snakes and ladders

We made our own hopscotch and found out how many bricks tall we were.

We had fun playing games and counting the spots

This afternoon we have been practising our fine motor skills and have had lots of fun with these activities!

Today we have been learning to retell the story of Little Red Riding Hood. We acted the story out and made up our own story maps to help us remember the story.

Little Red Riding Hood-outdoors

The children have been busy building a new house for Grandma, role playing the story and making yummy food for Little Red Riding Hood to take over to Grandma’s house. We’ve also had fun in our red-themed water tray and investigating woodland creatures’ paw-prints and also practising our cursive writing too.

 

Can you guess which traditional tale we are looking at next week (15th January)? Which activity do you think your child will like doing the most?

This afternoon (Friday 12th January) we have been outside practising our gross motor skills. We have been riding bikes, skipping and throwing and catching.

Happy New Year everybody! We hope you had a lovely relaxing Christmas break.

We have come back and got straight to work. Our theme this term is Traditional Tales and the children have been looking at the story of the Elves and the Shoemaker.

Outside, they have been making Elf hats, threading laces, and building the shoemaker’s cottage – even on such a dreary day as today we like to get the children outside!

Christmas Nativity

Well done everyone for a great performance of our Christmas Nativity ‘The Landlord’s Cat’.

Christmas

The children have been busy getting into the Christmas spirit in Hedgehog Class.

 

Perfect Pizzas!

In DT we have planned, made and evaluated pizzas. We began by learning new skills such as grating, slicing and chopping food safely. After learning about the Eatwell plate, we planned a healthy pizza then we had great fun using our new skills to make the pizza and even more fun eating them!

Evan: ‘I liked the flavours.’

Esme: ‘I grated just the right amount of cheese onto mine.’

Nathan: ‘I liked all of mine, I wouldn’t change a bit!’

 

Happy Birthday Nillah!

This week there has been plenty of fun and cheer as we have been celebrating our class friend Nillah’s sixth birthday!

We put our glad-rags on and surprised Nillah with her very own birthday party, complete with a jam sponge cake that we made by following a set of instructions.

The children have enjoyed writing invitations, making cards, wrapping presents and counting out candles for their playdough cupcakes. Have a look at just a small selection of the amazing learning we have been involved in this week:

 

Fun with Elmer!

This term, the children are focusing on the topic of ‘Celebrations’. So far, we have looked at Diwali, Guy Fawkes and Bonfire Night, and celebrating everybody being different through the story of Elmer. Soon, Christmas will be upon us and the children are already very excited to be learning the songs for their Nativity! Here are some photos of what we have been up to over the last few weeks.

Celebrations Topic link

Today we have been having fun exploring all of the learning activities inside and outside the classroom. We have been involved in building Batman’s car, writing superhero captions, building a numicon city, measuring conker rolls, weaving a super web and painting autumn leaves for our tree!

What an amazing trip to Manor Farm! The children looked wonderful in their Victorian costumes. We had great fun milking a cow, doing our chores in the Victorian house and going to the Victorian School. This week we will be writing recounts about our visit.

 Outdoor Learning

We have taken full advantage of the lovely weather today and so have been busy learning through play in our outdoor area! Children have been creating concoctions in our mud kitchen, looking for bugs in our nature area, phoning superheroes in our cosy tent and creating superhero capes in our tuft tray.

 

A Super Inventor!

This afternoon we have looked at another Victorian Inventor – George Stephenson. He is very famous for inventing The Rocket – the first steam powered locomotive! We had great fun bulding train tracks, making models, drawing a picture of The Rocket and making an electric cirucit to make a motor work!

 What a hero!

 

Today we have learned about a hero of the Victorian period- Isambard Kingdom Brunel! The children were fascinated by his work, particularly that on bridges and tunnels!

Oliver said ‘He invented some amazing bridges’

Esme found out ‘Isambard Kingdom Brunel made a tunnel that was 2 miles long’.

Cassidy said ‘People were scared of his idea for a passenger railway, they thought their brains would boil as it went fast’.

We were even inspired to make our own bridges and challenged ourselves to make one that was 15 unifix long, using only 2 cups and paper!

 

Splish, Splash, Splosh on a rainy day!

What better way to spend a rainy day than being outdoors in our all-in-ones, splashing in puddles and exploring colour mixing!

 

 

Continuous Provision is an important part in the Early Years curriculum as it lets the children explore new ideas and concepts through play. These are the indoor activities we have planned for next week (25th September). Which do you think your child will enjoy?

OnFriday afternoon we have been practising our fine motor skills. These are very important in helping us learn how to do things like hold a pencil correctly, and write our letters properly.

Another terrible incident has occurred overnight in Hedgehogs class! The Evil Pea has escaped and has taken the vegetable hostage! Is there a Super Vegetable brave enough to rescue them…

To help Supertato, we designed our own Super Vegetables

We even did some Supertato Maths!

       Calling all superheroes!

Hedgehog class were thrown into chaos today as we received note of a terrible incident. Over the weekend our class friend Nillah was kidnapped. We were left with a set of clues to follow where we learned more about the villain that took her. Watch below as Kalley and Oliver tell you more…

                                          Awaiting video

 

Take a look at all of the fantastic learning we have been doing the first week back – no wonder we are all a bit tired!

 

Autumn Term

We are very excited to be back at school. Our topic this term is all about Superheroes and the children will be busy creating their own superheroes, making comic strips and learning about our super bodies! For a more detailed coverage of this term please see the overview below. This is what your child will be getting up to in the new Hedgehogs class!

 

Tricky Word List

Superheroes Overview

  Learning Through Play

 

Our trip to Bournemouth!

 

Useful websites

www.phonicsplay.co.uk

www.ictgames.com

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/laac/

http://www.kenttrustweb.org.uk/kentict/content/games/index.htm