Mrs Baines is the class teacher for Foundation One.  Mrs Baines works closely with Mrs Kelsall and Mrs Bossingham to support all the children.  Mrs Horan, Miss Simpson and Miss Richardson also help some of the children in our classroom.

All the children in the Foundation Unit are encouraged to be independent and to learn through play. 

29th March

This week we have been learning all about spring.  We enjoyed a spring walk around the school grounds looking for buds, blossom and daffodils. 

On the last day of term we invited our grown ups into school to help us make some Easter and Spring crafts.  

22nd March 

We have had a busy two weeks learning lots of new words with the help of stories.  We began by learning words to describe position.  After we had shared the story of Rosie's walk we used our new words to describe where Rosie and the fox were.

The next week we answered why questions when sharing the story of We're going on a picnic.  Finally we recalled lots of rhymes and stories from this term when we found the characters hiding in Each Peach Pear Plum.  

Also we enjoyed finding all the rhyming words in Each Peach Pear Plum.  Additionally we have been thinking about initial sounds and finding objects that begin with the same sound.

7th March

Today is world book day and we have had a fantastic week thinking about stories and rhymes.  We have enjoyed the story of Goldilocks and the 3 bears this week.  We began by sharing the story, the children enjoyed joining in and using their best bear voices.  Then we developed our language by answering questions as if we were Goldilocks.  We have learnt many words related to size to describe the things in the bears house.  Finally we have learnt the song "When Goldilocks went to the house of the bears".  The children have retold this and many other stories and rhymes as part of world book day. 

Earlier in the week we planted our potatoes.  We can't wait for them to grow so we can find out which variety tastes the best.

1st March

We have used the story of Cinderella this week to improve our vocabulary.  We began the week by sharing the story recalling much of what happened.  Secondly, the children used partner talk to answer questions as if they were the character of Cinderella.  We used my turn, your turn to put the answers into interesting sentences.  

We continued to develop our vocabulary by learning this weeks rhyme: Little Bo Peep.

At the end of the week we revisited 2D shapes and practiced drawing triangles, circles, squares and rectangles.  The children were then introduced to solid 3D shapes including; cone, cylinder, cube and sphere. 

23rd February

This week we have done a lot of new learning and have learnt many new words.  We began the week by sharing the story of "The gingerbread Man".  The children enjoyed using the repeated phrases and have been practicing them in their independent reading.  Following on from this the children orally composed their own gingerbread man stories. 

The children used their talking and memory skills in learning this week's rhyme: Old Mother  Hubbard.

Finally the children sorted a range of toys into groups, including; soft toys, board games, wind up toys and pulley toys.  We also began chitting our potatoes ready for planting them next week.

10th February 

We continued our learning about numerals this week by thinking about how many Aliens were in the flying saucer in our new song "5 little men in a flying saucer".  We also used our counting skills when we discovered how many sides and how many corners were on the shapes; circle, triangle. square and rectangle. 

The second half of the week was spent learning about Chinese New Year.  The children enjoyed many dragons and creating a dragon dance.

2nd February

Over the past two weeks we have continued to think about the coldest places in the world.  We shared the story of Blue Penguin and compared the concepts of loneliness and friendship.  We discovered that Polar Bears live in the Arctic when we read the story of Iris and Issac. 

We are making lots of progress in our Read Write Inc journey.  The children are beginning to blend and segment words using Fred talk.  We have also used the my turn, your turn approach to develop the following stories about the dog image below. 

Story1:  Fred the huge fierce dog is grumpy. The hairy dog lives with a witch in a shed on a farm. The Witch is cross with Fred because he ran away. The witch said " No dinner for you and go to bed". Fred was hungry.

Story 2: George the enormous friendly dog is grumpy. The hairy dog lives with nanan in a cottage. Nanan is cross with George because he dug a hole in the garden.

Story 3: Fluffy the enormous friendly dog is grumpy. The hairy dog lives with grandad in a bungalow on a farm. Grandad is cross with Fluffy because he pooed on the kitchen floor. Grandad said "naughty Fluffy go in the living room". Fluffy was lonely.

Also we have practiced our rules for counting using the song 10 fat sausages and have started looking at the numerals to represent the frogs in 5 little speckled frogs.

22nd January 

Last week we thought about different places in the world. We recalled that we live in England.  When we looked at a map of the world we noticed that England was small compered to some other countries.  We discovered that is is hot in the middle of the world and cold at the top and bottom.

We continued learning about Antarctica and discovered that some Penguins live there.  We shared the story of "Lost and Found" by Oliver Jeffer's.  After listening to the story we decided that we would change the title, as the penguin was lonely not lost. 

12th January 2024

We have had a busy first week back at school. We began the week by sharing the story "Ridiculous", and thought about winter. 

We began an exciting part of our learning journey when we had our first scrimbling lesson.  This is part of the "Write dance" program and helps to prepare us for writing by developing Gross Motor skills. 

This week we also went on an adventure for after sharing the story "We're going on a bear hunt" we went on a bear hunt of our own.

Finally this week we learnt the rhyme "2 little dicky birds".  The children managed to remember three verses and identified the rhyming words.

8th December

We began the week by thinking about people of the Christian faith.  We learnt that they go to church where they sing and enjoy Bible stories.  On Wednesday we visited our local Church where Reverend Karen talked to us about some of the features before telling us the story of the first Christmas. 

1st December 

This week has been enterprise week in school in preparation for the Christmas fair.  The children have been learning about different occupations whilst becoming bakers themselves.

The children have made shortbread biscuits and created Christmas shapes ready to sell for a profit.

We also enjoyed a walk to the local shops where we saw many people working in our community.  The children learn the names of many occupations and are beginning to think about a job they may like in the future. 

24th November

At the beginning of the week we revisited our learning about Rotherham.  The children learnt that Rotherham is in England. We looked at a map of the UK and saw that England was at the bottom, Scotland was at the top and Wales was at the side.

The rest of the week was spent learning about numbers 1 to 5 with the help of number blocks.  The children learn that 1 is the smallest number.  They discovered that 2 is one and another one.  They learnt that to make the other numbers you always started with one, and got another one until you had made, 3, 4 or 5.

17th November

We have had an interesting week learning about houses.  We began by sharing the story of the three little pigs, where we learnt that brick houses are the strongest. We realised that our homes were made of brick.  We learnt that all our homes are in town called Rotherham.  Finally we went on a walk in the local area and discovered that there are four types of home near our school.  The children can now identify detatched house, semi-detatched, bungalows, and flats.

10th November

This week we continued learning about celebrations.  We learnt that Hindu and Sikh people are celebrating Diwali.  This is a festival of light.  Diva lamps and Rangoli patterns are put outside the home to welcome good things, just like the light guided Rama and Sita home after they had defeated Ravanna.  We drew Rangoli patterns outside our classroom.

3rd November

We have enjoyed a busy first week back.  We began the week by sharing the story "I am a girl" by Yasmeen Ismail.  The children all agreed that it doesn't matter if you are a boy or a girl. We can all play together with any toys we choose. 

We remembered a lot about celebrations from before the holiday's and thought about people who were Hindu's as they are having a celebration soon.  We learnt that Hindu people believe the goddess Lakshmi can help them to be kind, something that is important to us all.

On Thursday we invited our parents into school to make some Autumn crafts with us.  It was lots of fun.

Finally we learnt about Bonfire Night.  We thought about the colours, shapes and sounds and made them using scarfs.  We also performed some firework poems.

29th October 

During our last week of term we learn about the Jewish festival of Sukkot.  We began by thinking about Jewish people and discovered they were like us in many ways.  The next day we learnt about Sukkot and finished our week by making our own Sukkah. 

13th October

This week we have been learning about Autumn.  We began the week by looking at images and discussed the different colours the leaves were changing.  Then we looked at Autumn objects that Mrs. Baines had collected including leaves, conkers, conker shells, acorns and acorn cups.  We used our senses to explore the collection and described what we could see, hear, smell and feel.  Finally we went on our own Autumn walk in the school grounds.  We found many plants that were going to sleep because it is too cold.

To close the week we shared the story "The best Gift of All".  We thought about how the animals were busy preparing for winter during Autumn and discovered that friendship is the best gift of all.

6th October 2023

This week began with the children learning to name parts of their body.  We used the song head, shoulders, knees and toes to help us. 

For the second half of the week we learnt about harvest.  We talked about farmers, cutting, digging, and picking their crops.  Then we shared the story of Farmer of Duck.

29th September 2023

Another exciting week draws to a close.  The children are really settled into school life now and our starting to fully participate in their teacher led learning as well as continuing to explore and experiment for themselves.

This week we have continued to thinks about how we are all the same, yet different.  We began the week by sharing the book above  We talked about the ways people can look different to each other.  All the children decided that it doesn't matter what a person looks like we can all still be friends.

By focusing on the book happy the children learnt new words to describe how they were feeing.  We talked about the difference between words such as glad and delighted.  The children enjoyed the words we could express with feeling such as furious and proud.

The final teaching point of the week was for the children to learn that they were once babies and now they have grown.  To illustrate this point we looked at photographs of the children and Mrs Baines when they were babies and discussed how we had all changed.  

24th September 2023

Wow! What a busy start to our new term.  The children have settled in well and come into school each day with a smile.  They have enjoyed  exploring their new environment.

We have also been busy during our carpet times.  The children have learnt 2 verses of Incy Wincy Spider, 3 verses of Hickory Dickory Dock, The Grand Old Duke of York and LIttle Bo Peep.  We have talked about the different ways we can use our voice and I have enjoyed listening to them sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.  

We have also shared several stories.  The first was Harry and the dinosuars go to school, where Harry started school just like us.  We have also talked about the importance of sharing and making friends.  Meesha, in Meesha makes friends finds this hard, so we discussed how we could invite someone who looked sad to join in with us.

We have also been getting lots of exercise in PE, outside and doing our bean bag rap.

I am really looking forward to the next few weeks as the children continue grow in confidence and learn many new things.

7th July 2023

We have had a busy few weeks learning about all things related to the seaside.  We began by sharing pirate stories, and enjoyed learning pirate words and practicing our pirate voices.  We decided that we did not want to be pirates as they have green teeth, do not wash, and have bad manners.

On Wednesday we had a lovely day playing on Cleethorpes beach.  The children learnt that you have to dig down to find wet sand to make sand castles.  Many children enjoyed collecting shells and we explored the way they felt and the patterns they had.

Yesterday we invited our parents in to school and we practised our cutting and sticking skills making jelly fish, crabs, rainbow fish, and fish puppets.

26th June 2023

Another busy couple of week is drawing to a close.  We have reached an exciting part of our Read Write Inc journey and this week the children have taken home reading books that they can read independently using their blending skills.  I am very proud of all their hard work.

We have been thinking about Africa and comparing some of the animals that live their to animals in England. As well as some of the fruit that grows.  We talked learnt that it is very hot in Africa and this effects the fruit.  We enjoyed sharing the stories of 'Rain' and 'Handa's surprise'. 

Today we harvested our own produce.  We dug up the potato seeds we had planted.  We discovered that the Shannon potatoes were red and big, where as the Casablanca potatoes were white and small.  We counted them and discovered that we had more Casablanca potatoes (46) and less Shannon (39).  Tomorrow we will find out if they taste the same or different, and if we have a favourite. 

9th June 2023

A busy first week back at school for our final term this year!

In phonics we have been learning how to recognise and write r, j, and v.  The children have impressed me by how many letter sounds they can remember.

This week we shared the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.

We recalled how our chicks hatched and learnt that caterpillars are unusual as they turn into butterflies which means the babies look different to their parents.

We thought about all the food the caterpillar ate and ordered some numbered food tins using the words, first, second, third and last.

Finally we went on a visit to the wildlife area where we saw pond snails, frogs, tadpoles, ants, slugs, woodlice and spiders!

19th May 2023

Wow! What an exciting week we have had.

In phonics we have learnt how to recognise and write f, e, l, and h.

Mrs Baines and Teddy set us an enterprise challenge.  Teddy wanted to have a crown like king Charles and it was our job to make it for him.  We began by measuring his head to make sure the crown would fit.  We had to use a tape measure as the rulers would not bend around his head.  Then we had to choose a material to make the crown from.  Paper was not strong enough, wood was too hard and string and straws were too thin.  Eventually we decided on card.  Then we had to decide how to join the card.  Glue was too sticky, staples were not strong enough so we used sellotape.  When teddy tried on his crown it did not look much like King Charles's as it had no Jewels.

So we used our cutting and sticking skills to make it look more like the crown jewels.

Now Teddy has a crown for every day of the week!

This week we also learnt how chicks grow inside eggs.  We kept some eggs in an incubator and now they have hatched.  We have moved them into their brooder box and we are looking forward to watching them grow next week.

12th May 2023

In phonics this week we have learnt to recognise and write the sounds k, u, and b.  I am really pleased with how many sounds the children can recognise and we are getting better at holding our pencils and forming the letters correctly.

This week we continued investing shapes by thinking about 3D shapes.  These are shapes we can hold, and we can not draw.  We thought about how many faces they had and what shapes they were made up of.  We investigated; spheres, cylinders, cones, prisms, cubes and cuboids.

We have also enjoyed listening listening to music this week.  The children listened to a drum, violin, guitar and flute and showed how the music made them feel using an emotions fan.  Some people also expressed themselves using instruments on the music trolley.

5th May 2023

The end of another exciting week.  We have continued to learn more about sounds in words and have practiced writing g,  o and c.  We have also learnt about the new king and what will happen at his coronation.  Today we enjoyed wearing red, white and blue and celebrating the coronation. 

2nd May 2023

I can not believe all the learning we did last week!

We continued our read write inc journey by learning all about t, i, n, and p.  Thinking about how to make and write the sounds.

We also continued to think about 2D shapes and how we could combine them to make new ones.

Finally we learnt some more about Islam and even enjoyed an Eid party.

24th April 2023

We are very excited about the next part of our read write inc journey that we have begun this term.  Last week the children learnt how to recognise, pronounce and write the sounds m, s, a, d.  

We have also been looking at patterns.  We looked at patterns on animals and our own clothing and discussed spots, stripes and checks.  Then we looked at repeated patterns using colours.   The children can now practice completing and making repeated patterns in the classroom.

24th March 2023

This week we have been thinking about positional language.  We started by revisiting "5 big hippo's on a slippery rock", whilst practicing showing amounts on our fingers.  Then we answered the question: Where is teddy?  Sometimes he was on the table, sometimes under the table, sometimes behind the table, sometimes in the box, or beside the box, in front of the box, and even between the box and the table.  May be you could play this game with your toys.  Finally we shared the story of " Rosie's Walk" by Pat Hutchins and thought about where Rosie the hen and the fox were.

20th March 2023

We have planted two different types of potatoes.  We have planted them in soil so they can get some food using their roots.  We are hoping that with lots of sun and some water they will grow some leaves which we can see and some potatoes under the ground.  Eventually we are hoping to harvest our potatoes so we can compare the two different crops.

17th March 2023

This week we have been sharing stories.  We shared two stories where the characters went on picnics.

We thought about the events in "We're going on a picnic" and answered why questions.  Before reading "Each Peach Pear Plum" we identified the different characters.  After sharing the story we identified the rhyming words.

13th March 2023

Last week we were thinking about the story of Goldilocks and the three bears.  We enjoyed sharing the story and retelling it.  The children imagined that they were Goldilocks and answered questions about the things she did.  We also learn the song "When Goldilocks went to the house of the bears".  The children thought of lots of words to describe the size of each of the bears and their things just like in the book and the song. 

6th March 2023

Last week we thought about lots of stories and enjoyed sharing our love of books on World book day.  The children enjoyed joining in with the repeated phrases when reading the enormous turnip.  We were able to revisit the words push and pull and decided that the man had to pull the turnip to towards him not push it away.

The children also enjoyed listening to and retelling the story of Cinderella.  The children took on the role of Cinderella and thought about the things she did and how she might feel.

24th February 2023

This week we have been thinking about the story of the Gingerbread man.  The children enjoyed listening to, the story and joining in with the repeated phrases.  They were able to retell the story the next day and used the story structure to create their own story using different characters. 

10th February 2023

This week we have continued to think about the world.  We learnt some Polar bear facts that we are now able to recall.  We shared the Story of Iris and Issac by Catherine Rayner, and thought about the words, Arctic, squashed, nudge, wriggle, shove and stomped.

The children were also introduced to numerals this week.  They discovered that the numeral one was one stick, the numeral two was like a coat hanger because it was curly at the top and straight at the bottom.  The numeral three was curly at the top and curly at the bottom where as the numeral four had a straight line down, a straight line across and a straight line through.  Mrs Baines' favourite was the numeral five because she thinks it has a hat, a body and a big tummy.  May be you could practice writing numerals or see if you can spot any when you are out and about. 

6th February 2023

Last week we continued to think about Penguins.  We shared the story Blue Penguin by Petr Horacek and discussed how it doesn't matter how penguins or people look we can all be friends.

31st January 2023

We have been learning the rhyme two little dicky birds.  Watch it below and join in.  We tried to listen for rhyming words, how many can you find?

27th February 2023

We have been learning about the world this week.  We began by looking at a map of the UK and learnt that we live in England.  We discovered that England was at the bottom of the map, Scotland at the top and Wales at the side.  Then we looked at a map of the world where we realised that England was a small country compared to Russia, Canada and America.  The children learnt that it is cold at the top and bottom of the world and hot in the middle.  To end the week we shared the story "Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers about a Penguin who came from the Antarctic at the bottom of the world.

16th January 2023

We have been very busy over the last couple of weeks.  The children enjoyed their visit to the pantomime and joined in enthusiastically.  Last week we thought about another traditional tale.

The children loved joining in with the magic words. "Cook little pot, cook", and unlike the mother in the story they did not forget to say "Stop little pot, stop".

We have also been reading and retelling Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? 

This is an excellent story to develop confidence in the children so they begin to see themselves as readers, and begin to understood how books work.  We even went a hunt to find all the characters and to ask them what they could see.

Finally we have been thinking about applying our counting rules to things other than number blocks.  Using the songs "5 fat sausages sizzling in a pan" and "5 little men in a flying saucer" 

we discovered that we can count anything as long as we follow these steps.

1. Put everything in a line.

2. Touch them (the things) and say the number in the right order.

3.  Whichever number we say last is how many there are.

We are now using these rules to count various animals on our counting table.  Please encourage your child to count accurately at home using these rules.   

9th December 2022

This week we have been thinking about the story Stickman by Julia Donaldson.

The children have enjoyed joining in with the repeated phrases and using puppets to say

"I'm Stickman, I'm Stickman, I'm Stickman that's me and I want to go home to the family tree".

We have also found all the rhyming words in the story and decided that these make the story much better.

We have been thinking about why words rhyme and have learnt that rhyming words sound the same at the end.  We took rhyming pictures out of a magic pot using our magic rhyming spell "Hubble Bubble, Hubble Bubble what's in the pot, Hubble Bubble, Hubble Bubble what have we got".  We then checked to see if the pictures rhymed by saying the words and listening to see if they sounded the same at the end.  May be you could find some things that rhyme like a bed and a head, or a mug and a jug.

5th December 2022

Last week the children were busy practicing for their upcoming Christmas Performance.  They listened to the story of the first Christmas and are enjoying retelling the story using puppets.  On Thursday we were visited by Reverend Karen who is the vicar at St Cuthbert's Church.  She told the children how to recognise a Church by looking for a cross. She also told them how Christians were counting down to Christmas using an advent wreath.

The children have also been enjoying counting using the multilink and unifix in the classroom.  We watched episode 10 of the first series of number blocks and learnt some important rules for counting.

1.  Put everything in a line

2.  Touch everything once and say the numbers in the right order.

3.   The last number you say is how many there are.

If you could help us to use these rules when we count at home it would help to make sure that we got the right answer.

25th November 2022

This week we have been very enterprising making biscuits for the school Christmas fair.  We began the week by learning that a Christmas fair is where people buy things.  The next day we talked about how we had made the biscuits so we could become more productive.  The children could recall the ingredients of butter, flour and sugar.  The knew the equipment they had used; naming bowl, oven, snowman cutter, star cutter, tree cutter, stocking cutter.  The children learnt that a stocking is a big sock where Santa sometimes puts his gifts.  The children could also talk about the methods they had used.  Rubbing the ingredients together until it was sticky, then squashing it ready for the cutters.  Later in the week we reviewed how many biscuits we had made so far and decided we needed to make more so we could make more money to buy new things for school.  

18th November 2022

This week we have been thinking about numbers with the help of the number blocks which you can find on the BBC i player.

We began by watching  series 1 episode 1 where we met number 1. We learnt  that 1 means only 1 thing eg 1 sun, 1 boat, 1 tree, 1 box, 1 rocket, 1 clock.  After watching the next episode we discovered that 1 and another 1 makes 2.  We counted lots of things on our bodies this way.  1 arm and another 1 arm makes 2, 1 leg and another 1 leg makes 2.  What things can you find 2 of?

The next day we watched the fourth episode in the series where we met number 3.  By watching the next episode entitled 1, 2,3: we found out 3 is bigger than 1 and 2.  2 is bigger than 1 but smaller than 3 and 1 is the smallest number.

On the next day we met number 4.  Number 3 was not too happy to see number 4 as number 4 was bigger.  Luckily number 4 likes to be square this made him shorter.  The children were then introduced to the words more and less.  3 appearing bigger had less blocks and 4 was more. 

Finally we met number 5.  We practiced counting to 5 on one hand, starting with 1 thumb, and adding a finger each time.  Please practice these skills at home, counting slowly and accurately.  

11th November 

We began the week by reflecting on the celebrations  many of us had attended or seen over the weekend.  We watched a short film all about bonfire night before looking at some images of fireworks. 

We talked about the different colours we could see and made shapes using scarves.  Then we listened to individual fireworks and made different sounds.

The following day we listened to several firework poems and identified the rhyming words.  We have been playing some listening games to find words that rhyme (words that sound the same at end).  Can you think of any things that rhyme?  Then we performed some firework rhymes.     

5 pretty fireworks zooming way up high

1 went bang and lit up the sky

4 pretty fireworks zooming way up high

1 went bang and lit up the sky

3 pretty fireworks zooming way up high

1 went bang and lit up the sky

2 pretty fireworks zooming way up high

1 went bang and lit up the sky

1 pretty firework zooming way up high 

1 went bang and lit up the sky

This week we have also read one of our reading spine books.

The children enjoyed using their voices to support the reading.  Then we discussed how boys and girls can do anything! We can all be fast, make a mess, play with dolls, play with cars and be noisy.

We ended the week joining in with the remembrance day celebrations.  

Thinking about how lucky we are to have beds, homes, clothes, food to eat and toys to play with.

We listened to the story of "Poppy's day" on Cbeebies radio to help us understand how the country marks this day.

4th November 2022

We have had a great first week back.  All the children have returned to school ready to learn and have remembered so many new words and lots of information.

This week we have continued our learning about celebrations.  We have been thinking about Diwali which happened last week when we were not at school. We began the week by finding out about Hindu and Sikh people who celebrate Diwali.  We discovered that they lived in similar places to us with their families but did special things and went to special places. 

We then found out how Diwali was celebrated.  As Diwali is the festival of lights we learnt how homes were cleaned and lights put out side to guide good things into the home.  We listened to a retelling of the Rama and Sita story where lights guided them home after they had defeated the evil Ravana. Finally we copied the tradition of creating welcoming Rangoli patterns outside. 

17th October 2022

We began the week by thinking about out own life stories and that of our family members. 

We looked at different images of celebrations. Lots of us were able to remember our birthday.

Some of us had been to a wedding.  We thought about the Christian celebration of Christmas and the Muslim celebration of Eid.  We discovered that gifts were given at many celebrations and food played an important part. Many of us had eaten Chocolate eggs at Easter.

We continued our learning by thinking about the Jewish Celebration of Sukkot.  We learnt that Jewish people are just like us but have their own celebrations and some special things in their homes to help them think about God.  During Sukkot Jewish people remember a time when they Jews had no one to live and no food. They give thanks for the harvest and build shelters called Sukkah.

We enjoyed working as a team and building our own Sukkah outside, where we ate our snack.

We have been learning a new harvest rhyme all about a Cherry tree.

10th October 2022

We have been learning all about harvest.  We found out that farmers were busy cutting down the wheat, digging up vegetables and picking fruits before it gets too cold.

We shared the story of Farmer Duck and enjoyed joining in when the farmer called "how goes the work" and the duck replied "quack".

Our new rhyme was all about peas and how they needed to be picked before they grew too big for the pod. Why not ask your child to perform it for you?

3rd October 2002

We have been trying to learn lots of new words at school. We looked at pictures of different people and tried to decide how they were feeling.  We discovered that there were lots of words for happy such as content, glad and delighted. We found out that sometimes people were angry or furious.  In our play we are sometimes, curious, surprised or confused but never bored.  Mrs Baines said she was proud of how confident and brave we are. We then looked at a book where fish had all these feelings too.  

We then shared a story about a little boy who had parents who were not very kind and thought about how he felt.  We also thought about our own families. 

We have been practicing our listening skills with the help of a song that encouraged us to listen to the sounds all around us, every where.  We heard the rain, wind and sea in the song. 

We also heard the wind outside, the rain on the roof and the children next door.

After thinking about the weather we listened to the story of the Weather Monster.

In the story the villagers did not like the weather monster (who was called Ron) as he looked different but they soon learnt that it did not matter what he looked like.  All Ron wanted was a friend! The children agreed we can be friends with anyone no matter what they look like. 

Finally this week we have learnt a new rhyme with actions.

26th September 2022

Over the last week we have been thinking about how we are all different. 

We shared the story of Elmer and discovered that even though he was patchwork all the other elephants liked him and played with him.

We looked at the information book "All kinds of People" and discovered that there are lot of things that make us different.  The children decided that it did not matter what sort of hair a person had, what colour their skin was or even if they had glasses: We could all be friends.

We enjoyed making faces on the workshop area.  Where we have been learning how to select materials and how to use glue carefully.

Finally we learnt some news to the rhyme "Incy Wincy Spider". 

Incy Wincy Spider climbing up the spout,

Down came the rain and washed the spider out.

Out came the sunshine and dried up all the rain. 

So Incy Wincy Spider climbed up the Spout again.

Incy Wincy Spider climbing up the trees.

Down came the snow and made poor Incy freeze.

Out came the sunshine and melted all the snow.

So Incy Wincy Spider had another go.

What a busy week!

19th September 2022

In Foundation One we love to learn new songs and rhymes as this is a good way to improve our language skills.  We have enjoyed singing and performing Hickory Dickory Dock and we are starting to notice that some words sound the same.

A new rhyme that we have learnt is called about Grandma's Spectacles.  We have learnt the meaning of the word spectacles.  As well as lap and nap, which are of course rhyming words.  So much learning from one rhyme!

15th September 2022

We are coming towards the end of our second week in school and all the children have settled well into their new environment.  We have enjoyed exploring the little classroom, the big classroom and the outside area.

Since starting school we have been thinking about how to be good friends.  We have shared the stories of Harry and the Dinosaurs go to school and Meesha makes friends.

The children agreed that to make friends it was not a good idea to push or snatch.  They decided that sharing was best!  Through circle time activities the children have shared their names and information about their families and favourite toys.  Now the children know that some children like the same things as them and that talking is another good way to make new friends.