Burrsville Infant Academy

Topic: Do you want to be friends?

Sparkling start: Tour of the school

We had great fun settling into school and exploring our new environment. We spend part of the day in our own classes and use the rest of the time to explore the other classroom and outside area. Our teachers have been supporting us to make new friends, learn how to share and to follow our class and school rules. Some of our favourite areas to explore are the mud kitchen, creative activities, role play and construction areas. During our first few weeks of school we work hard to get into a routine and manage our emotions. We went on a tour of the school for our sparking start and we visited the hall, kitchen, library, big playground and the forest. Here are some photographs of us exploring our new environment.

One of our daily lessons is Read, Write, Inc. We learn a new sound and then practise reading and writing this sound. Once we have learnt enough sounds we begin to read and write words. The sounds in our reading book are linked to what we are learning in these lessons. 

We used stories to help us with our learning this half term. These were 'Elmer', 'The Colour Monster' and 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt'. We used these stories to help us with our counting skills, to discuss feelings, to practise our speaking and listening and to inpsire our art creations. 

Things that my grown ups can do to support me at home:

• Teach me to write my name independently. This may start with tracing or copying to begin with. If I can write my name, help me form letters correctly and use capital letters in the correct place.
• Practise my number recognition by hunting for numbers in the environment. Play lots of games that involve number recognition. I need to recognise numbers up to 20 and beyond by the end of the year. 
• Encourage me to dress myself independently and manage my own personal needs, particularly when using the toilet. 
• Explain that letters have a name and a sound. Introduce me to letter sounds first, but if I know letter names too this is great! Use 'Mr Thorne Does Phonics' on YouTube to ensure correct pronunciation. Begin with the 'Alphabet Series' to teach single letter sounds. 
• Encourage me to use my words to communicate with other children and adults, including saying please and thank you.
• Share my reading book and sight words regularly, daily if possible or at least three times a week.

For further suggestions about how to support my learning, please talk to the class teachers. 

Topic: Will you read me a story?

Fab Finish: Fairytale Party 

This term our learning was focused on traditional tales and stories. We learnt about how some stories are retold orally and changed over time. We began by learning the traditional tales, 'The Gingerbread Man' and 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears'. The children enjoyed making and decorating their own gingerbread people and enjoyed eating them even more! Our role play areas were linked closely to the stories we had been learning so we could practise retelling these stories and using vocabulary in our play. The children enjoyed taking part in 'Crazy Hair Day' to help raise money for the school, they all looked amazing! We also discussed and learned about 'Pantosaurus' who is the pant-wearing-dino created by the NSPCC who wants every child to be safe and strong. The children enjoyed learning about Diwali and creating their own 'Rangoli' patterns out of chalk. 

Over half term the children were set the home learning challenge of creating their own poppy for 'Remembrance Day', they used their imaginations and a variety of artistic resources to make their unique poppies. When they returned to school they created a whole class poppy using handprints, we took our class poppies outside during our remembrance service where we all remained silent to pay our respects. The children created their own bonfire and firework pictures using brightly coloured paint to make them as realistic as possible, they used the method of flicking paint off a brush to create the fireworks in the sky. 

To celebrate the end of our topic we had our 'Fab Finish' which was a fairytale party, we invited our grown ups into the classroom for our 'Family Fun Time' where we were able to share our learning with them. We had the opportunity to create hedgehogs out of leaves, practise our phonics skills and explore the outside environment together. We were invited to wear our Christmas jumpers to raise money for 'Shelter' and enjoyed tucking into our Christmas dinner with our friends and members of staff at lunch time. At the end of term we celebrated by inviting our grown ups to watch our Christmas performance, we all sang beautifully and enjoyed getting into the festive spirit.  

Things that my grown ups can do to support me at home:

• Continue to encourage me to practise my letter formation and write my first and last name, if I cannot already do so. Practise number recognition regularly, working to and beyond 10.
• Talk to me about my school day and share my Tapestry learning journey with me at home. Contribute to my learning journey and share my home achievements and celebrations.
• Share my reading book and sight words regularly, daily if possible or at least three times a week.
• Ask me to retell stories that I have been learning at school.

For further suggestions about how to support my learning, please talk to the class teachers. 

Topic: What happens when I fall asleep?

Sparkling start: Night time cinema experience 

To start our new topic we had our 'Sparkling Start' which was a night time cinema experience watching short videos on space and night time events. We enjoyed this experience with our friends whilst we tucked into popcorn and hot chocolate. When we returned to school we shared our New Year's Eve experiences and discussed our New Year's wishes that we are going to work towards this year, we made wishes such as improving our writing and learning to ride a bike. We explored our new role play areas which linked to our topic, we had a space station outside with a jet pack and an airport inside where we could become a pilot! We got creative with our space themed crafts of creating rockets and stars using different artistic effects and making our own astronauts and fireworks. 

We have been working hard this half term practising our next steps, we have been writing in the different areas of the provision and spotting and ordering numbers in our environment. We have been reading stories by Jill Murphy who is our author of the term, we especially enjoyed 'Whatever Next!' and 'Peace at Last'. As we have been working so hard in school we thoroughly enjoyed inviting our grown ups into the classroom and outside area for our Family Fun Time which had a phonics focus. We were introduced to nocturnal and diurnal animals and learnt that different animals sleep during the day and different animals sleep during the night, we sorted pictures of animals into the two categories. 

In PE we have been exploring and developing our gross motor skills of travelling using different movements and moving to how we feel. In the forest we have been spotting signs of seasonal change by going on a seasons hunt, we also took part in The RSPB bird watch and used binoculars to see what birds we could find. We celebrated 'Chinese New Year' by taking part in a Chinese dance workshop and by trying a selection of Chinese food, we especially enjoyed the noodles and prawn crackers! At the end of half term it was 'Numbers Day' which raised money for the NSPCC. We wore clothes to school that had numbers on them and took part in a large selection of number themed activities during the day. We were set the home learning challenge this half term on learning about the importance of oral hygiene, we demonstrated how we brush our teeth regularly at home and our grown ups put this on Tapestry so we could share our knowledge with our friends and teachers at school. 

Topic: Why do ladybirds have spots?

Fab Finish: Family Fun Time EAD activities

This half term we have been getting engrossed in our topic all about minibeasts, over the holidays we created 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' using a variety of resources and materials and enjoyed showing them to our friends. In school we continued to get creative by making ladybirds, bumble bees and spiders using paper plates, paint and pipe cleaners. We celebrated 'British Science Week' in Early Years by having our very own caterpillars to watch turn into butterflies, we enjoyed wearing our science lab coats and using science equipment to observe them change. To continue our learning we created our own butterfly lifecycles, we carefully placed the pictures in the correct order using our knowledge of watching our own caterpillars. 

To continue our minibeast learning we wrote about the different minibeasts and had a go at describing them, we used our phonics knowledge and our 'Fred Fingers' to segment each word and wrote them down using our letter formation rhymes. In maths we enjoyed spotting 2D and 3D shapes in our environment, we were introduced to using the terms faces, vertices and edges to describe 3D shapes. We also enjoyed learning about pairs in maths, we were able to identify that you can have a pair of socks, a pair of gloves and a pair of shoes, we even created pairs of socks on the computers. In the outside area we enjoyed exploring the mud kitchen where we also spotted different shapes and creating our own pattern butterflies in the creative area. 

To celebrate 'World Book Day' we started off by going on a trip to visit the local library, we were warmly welcomed by the staff who read us a selection of stories before we explored the library and participated in a number of different activities. We then used our library cards to choose a book of our choice that we could take home and share with our families, we had fun using the machine to check out our books. On 'World Book Day' we came to school dressed as our favourite character from a book, we took part in different reading and book activities during the day where the teachers moved around the school to share stories with a different class. We were set the challenge to be caught outside of school reading in unusual places, we took this challenge on and shared photos with our class. We had a special visit this half term from Mr Massey who came into school to teach us how to skip, we had a session with him during the day where we all practised our skipping skills and then attended a whole school assembly where we demonstrated what we had learnt during the day. We also recognised and celebrated 'Red Nose Day' by dressing up as superheroes, we all looked amazing and raised money as a whole school for Comic Relief.