As usual, the week started with visiting the pop-up shop in the Old Hall. Repetitive activities provide the children with familiarity and this supports their foundations of learning. Whilst on our way to the Old Hall, Mrs Tickner informed us of a special delivery. There was a rather large sack with an envelope attached. On the envelope were spooky ghosts and pumpkins. We carefully opened the envelope and inside was a special pumpkin-shaped letter. There were lots of excitable faces when they realised we had a visitor for the week ahead. This wasn’t just any visitor but instead, our Halloween friend Funnybones. The letter explained that he had joined us for a week of spook-tacular and fang-tastic fun! After arriving in the Hall, everyone worked as a team to pack the reusable bags (including Funnybones) and once back in class, the Robins helped to unload the groceries. 

This week’s activities followed a sensory theme which provided the children with lots of exciting opportunities to explore a variety of activities that promoted rich communication and language. One tray consisted of spooky pasta and lots of fun was had exploring the different Halloween-themed shapes. As an extension activity, the children used tweezers to collect and sort pasta shapes into a variety of boxes. The other sensory tray consisted of shredded paper, pom-poms and shakers. 

Continuing with the spooky theme, we all enjoyed a Halloween tea party. The children enjoyed their pasta snack on spooky plates. We’ve had two main stories this week which were Funnybones and Leafman. Some children are more visual learners, so as an alternative, we also watched the stories on the CTouch, along with the story of Diwali. There were some beautiful Rangoli patterns and the children used chalk outside to make their own colourful patterns.

The Robins have thoroughly enjoyed our daily dance activity of the Cha Cha Slide. Even Form 6 joined in with their dance moves. This is a great whole body workout and most importantly, it’s great fun!

Some spooky pumpkins escaped from our classroom on Tuesday so we ventured around the school grounds to recapture them. Continuing with the Halloween theme, we spent some time counting spooky plates during carpet time. The Robins also spotted pumpkins on our Talk for Learning poster. It was great to hear them make connections with picking pumpkins at home, too. 

Connecting with the natural world is one of our favourite activities and on our adventures this week, we observed many autumnal changes which connected to Leafman. The children chose one of their favourite leaves on our walk and took it home. Using our senses, we spotted some lovely flowers so we stopped to have a quick sniff. Funnybones also joined us for a visit to see the sheep. Funnybones certainly enjoyed spending time with us all and he liked our many activities. His favourite activity was a hot chocolate treat on the semi-circle bench. 

This week’s cooking activities consisted of bread rolls, spooky cupcakes, pumpkin biscuits and savoury tarts. There was lots of persevering, spreading, decorating and mixing.

The children enjoyed decorating a pumpkin with a variety of stickers. Making good use of the pumpkin, I will remove the stickers during half term and take it to an animal charity so they can enjoy a yummy treat.

We finished the week with our Pre-Prep Coffee Morning and we hope you all had a lovely time watching the Robins bop away to Rockin' Robin.

When we return after half term, our topic will be fireworks and exploring colour.

Your child is welcome to bring in something from home linked to our topic or one of their favourite things (just not too big!) Have a lovely break.