It’s always such a fantastic book to read with the children with them joining in with so many of the words and phrases as well as anticipating which animal the mouse will meet next! The children loved making their Gruffalo hats and choosing each part by looking at a picture of the Gruffalo and talking about his orange eyes, terrible tusks and teeth and, of course, the poisonous wart on the end of his nose. They had such fun wearing them during the morning session and also at the coffee morning on Friday.

There was a big jug of blackberries on the table and the children were curious to know what we were going to do with them. Using spoons, the children squished and squashed them in the colander and watched the juice coming through into the bowl. They then used paint brushes to make blackberry juice paintings on white fabric. It was such a lovely activity for the children to explore.

Outside in the garden, the children loved making pumpkin potions! They explored the seeds which they found inside the pumpkins and added water and flowers to make flower arrangements and pumpkin potions. The children loved snipping the petals from the flowers and, to make them extra spooky, they added spiders to the potions too! We have also loved listening to the story about The Dinosaur who Pooped at Halloween which has got us all thinking about the school Halloween party and what everyone is going to wear for Halloween. We’re sure everyone will have the best spooky experience. The children used the Halloween cutters to make their own spooky sandwich with butter and jam. We had pumpkins, ghosts and bats!

The children enjoyed manipulating the clay into Gruffalo shapes to create their very own Gruffalo! Using a variety of materials, they added orange eyes, purple prickles, tusks and teeth. I am sure you agree that they look fantastic. After we had made the Gruffalos, we headed to the paddock to go on a Gruffalo hunt where we all had lots of fun hiding the Gruffalos in different places such as bushes, tree stumps and in the tree.

Our special leaf for our Growing and Learning tree this week was given for being such a kind friend to the Robins and helping Mrs Nelson in Waiting Group in the mornings. This was another proud moment for us and it is lovely to hear about being kind and helpful at other times during the school day too.

As I write this, we are all really looking forward to our Pre-Prep Coffee Morning on Friday! The children have worked incredibly hard to learn all about the different seasons and what we might see at different times of the year. Each day we talk about the name of the day and what the weather is like. Often the UK weather is very unpredictable, so although we have warm sunny days in summer time, we may also get warm days in other seasons too!

We wish you all a very happy half term and we are looking forward to the big countdown to Christmas when we return in November.