Beech 2021-2022
Summer Term 2022
Our Topic in Summer Term is 'Journeys'
To start off this terms topic of journeys we have been reading ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’. This morning we discovered that all the bears from nursery were missing so we had to go on our own bear hunt! We talked about what we might need, the children said, wipes for our muddy feet, carrots for a snack, magnifying glasses to search and a rope to catch the bear! We packed our bag and set off, through the forest, the long grass, and over the river and found our four bears, we even stopped for a snack after all the bear hunting then returned safely to classroom and shut the door to keep us safe, just like in the story!
We have had a brilliant day in EYFS! The children have enjoyed bringing their bikes and scooters in and going on journeys around the school. We drove round some “roads” on the playground, including a bumpy road, a bendy road and some traffic lights! We also took our cars to the car wash for a quick freshen up! We even went on a really long trip all around the field and the bottom playground. Everyone has had a super day and is really inspired to go on more journeys! Watch this space for more EYFS journeys!
Spring Term 2022
Today we had a brilliant topic afternoon! We made chocolate play dough Easter eggs, junk model bridges to help the 3 Billy Goats Gruff over the river, story telling puppets and yummy fruit skewers! We also looked at how to log in and use Purple Mash at home .Everyone had a great time together and it was lovely to be back as an EYFS group after all the covid restrictions! Big thank you to FOAS for organising and serving the refreshments and to all the parents for coming and being really enthusiastic about joining in with their children's learning. Look forward to the next one!
Making Cress Sandwiches
Today we cut our cress and with some other salad ingredients we made sandwiches. The children cut and washed the cress, chopped the salad , buttered and cut the bread and chose what to add to their cress sandwich. Afterwards they had the remaining salad on the tuff tray to explore and practice cutting.
Jack and the Beanstalk
This week in Beech we have been finishing off our work on Jack and The Beanstalk by measuring each other on our giant beanstalk to see who is the tallest and building models of hot air balloons, trampolines, climbing frames and lifts to show how we think Jack could get up the beanstalk ! We have begun to look at the story The Enormous Turnip and we used some real turnips and other vegetables to print a class wall hanging, and we have grown some cress seeds which we are hoping to turn into salad sandwiches!
Chinese New Year
On Tuesday we looked at the celebration Chinese New year. We watched videos of children preparing for their celebration ,eating special food and cleaning the house. We made Chinese lanterns, tiger masks and dragon blowers. We listened to Chinese music and did our own Dragon Dance.
This Term our topic is Traditional tales.
During Topic day Early Years made salt dough bread shapes to use in role play, tasted different breads, made puppets and masks, read The Little Red Hen and Zeds Bread and talked about all their costumes ,who they came as and which story it was from.
Today we made gingerbread men after recapping the story and looking at what the little old lady did. We looked at a recipe sheet to see if we had the correct ingredients and equipment. We washed our hands and put on clean aprons before we started. We took turns to measure and pour using the scales. We talked about what the different ingredients looked like and smelt like and felt like. We each mixed the mixture till it was a dough and we talked about how it looked different now it was all mixed together. We then rolled and cut out our gingerbread men . After they were baked we tried some with our milk at snack time , they were yummy!
Autumn Term 2021
Thank you to all the parents for attending our Early Years Nativity and for all the lovely costumes you provided. The production went extremely well and we were so proud of all the children.
Thank you for our surprise visitor after the performance it was a lovely treat for the children.
Our trip today was a great success! We started off with a story, "One Snowy Night" about all the animals and Percy the park keeper and then Ed the ranger took us on a hunt for animal homes. We found all sorts of bugs under leaves and logs and we saw lots of mole hills in the meadow. We also looked at some of the bird houses at the park. After a quick snack we made wooden bird houses to decorate back at school and clay hedgehogs using sticks we found. Everyone was ready for lunch then so we had our picnic then a play on the playground. After lunch we went back to the woods to make our own animal homes using leaves and sticks. James the ranger talked to us all about the different animals and bugs which might like to live in our homes we made. We also thought about where different animals live at the park- up trees, underground, in holes etc. We finished the day with a scavenger hunt, great fun! A big thankyou to all the Country Park staff for making us so welcome and all the parents who came along on the day to help and were so enthusiastic with all the activities! But most of all thankyou to all the children who were absolute superstars all day! Ed said you were some of the most knowledgeable children he'd had! Well done!
In Reception we looked at the American celebration of Thanksgiving. We learnt about why Americans celebrate it and then we used some pumpkins to make pumpkin soup! We explored the texture, shape, colour and smell of pumpkins first then we watched the story 'Pumpkin Soup' and made our own. We chopped , sliced, mixed, cooked and then ate our soup. We thought it was delicious!
Parents to Lunch
We were delighted to welcome Parents and Carers to lunch with us! We enjoyed a tasty roast dinner from the lunch menu. It was great to have so many grown ups to join us, we were really proud to show them how familiar we now are with the lunchtime routine and enjoyed eating lunch together. We can’t wait for the next time we can invite our grown-ups … it will be for our upcoming school trip to the Country Park!
EYFS Class Assembly
We really enjoyed sharing our class assembly with our grown-ups. Our assembly linked to our Autumn Term topic of Families.We started by sharing some pictures of our families, then we shared the story of The Monkey Puzzle. We all wore the masks we had made and acted out the story, helping the baby monkey to find her Mummy! To finish our assembly, we sang our family song, which we had learnt to sing and sign.
We have had a brilliant time in EYFS today learning all about Diwali and having a Diwali party! We learnt that people wear their best clothes and dance at Diwali celebrations so we dressed up in 'party' clothes to do some bhangra dancing to special dance music and we joined in with the drumming with our own instruments and made lots of noise! We learnt that people have fireworks to celebrate Diwali so we went outside and had a go a making an enormous firework picture with spray painting and splatter painting, it really looks like fireworks! We watched how people prepare and share lovely party food at Diwali and we were very lucky to be given some food by the restaurant 'Chutneys' in Alveley, vegetarian samosas and bhajis ,poppadum's and naan bread, it was very yummy! Many thanks to the kind people who made it for us!! To finish our day we lit the beautiful diva lamps we had made and decorated and then we listened to the traditional Diwali story of Rama and Sita. We all loved sitting quietly and looking at the pretty candles. We had such a busy day and so much fun!
Reception have been very busy ! We have used playdough to make spooky pumpkin faces on some baby pumpkins. We have read the story “pumpkin soup” then made some puppets of the characters to use to retell the story in the puppet theatre we made. We went on an autumn walk and used what we found to make animal pictures in the tuff tray. In our maths work we have sorted a box of ribbons by looking at their lengths, explored repeating patterns with teddies and cotton reels and investigated ordering numbers and 1 more and 1 less on our number table.
Nursery have had a great time collecting blackberries from around the school site and then making pastry and baking blackberry pies! They were really yummy!
They have also been using their senses to explore some pumpkins- cutting them open to look at the insides, smell them, feel them and count the seeds. A basket of conkers has provided opportunities for counting, sorting, weighing and printing!
Topic Day
We had a lovely day today learning all about families on our topic day! The children each talked about family members , who they had dressed up as and special times with family. We drew and painted pictures of special people in our families and talked about what they look like. Thank you for all the lovely costumes and photos which were sent in!
EYFS
First Day in Reception
All of the children had a fantastic first day in Reception. They enjoyed exploring the classroom environment and developing relationships, playing together with the new resources. We are really proud of how well of all the children have settled.
Forest School
EYFS enjoyed their first forest school session of the year in the sunshine. The children enjoyed exploring and discovering in the forest, interacting and playing together.
