The week started with a visit to the Old Hall to collect our weekly groceries. It really is wonderful to stand back and observe the children pick the items and pack them inside the reusable bags. The Robins gain so much from this activity, as it supports their communication and language, personal social and emotional development, physical development, mathematics, and understanding the world. Not only does it cover these areas of the early years curriculum, but it also provides the children with very useful life skills. It builds their confidence whilst also working together as a team. 

Once back in class, we discovered that we needed some extra flour for our cooking. Therefore, we visited Mrs Chris and Mr Julian in the kitchen and they kindly gave us some flour. It’s little visits like this that support the children’s confidence as they get used to visiting other adults around the school.

A short while later, Mrs Tickner telephoned and asked us to collect a special package from her office. The package was moving around and as we started to open it, our Halloween friend popped his head out. It was our spooky friend, Mr FunnyBones. The children were super excited to play with him and they have taken turns to share. 

Our Talk for Learning activity this week consisted of a discussion about harvest and vegetables. We looked at the pictures and as an extension activity to support listening and understanding, we matched some vegetables by placing them onto the picture. 

The children sang beautifully and remembered the actions during our whole school Harvest Assembly. It was lovely to see such a big audience and the solo performances were beautiful. 

Something crashed outside our front garden and it included five little men. I wonder if the Robins shared that it was the five little men from our Coffee Morning song. The children worked super hard and they used their great detective skills to find the missing aliens. This activity ignited the children’s imagination and it was wonderful to see them so excited and eager to participate in imaginative play!

As an alternative to scrimbling with crayons, we took part in a space painting activity. The Robins enjoyed listening to Gustav Holst, The Planets (Jupiter) as they made patterns with their paintbrushes and mixed all the colours. For extra fun and a touch of magic, the children added some sparkles. The end result was beautiful and the children were able to articulate which colours made a new colour. 

Our cooking activities consisted of; sandwiches, wholemeal rolls, sun biscuits (linked to our topic of harvest as the crops needed sun to grow), cheesy space biscuits and pumpkin cake. The children enjoyed using rolling pins to roll the biscuit dough and they chose which cutters they wanted to use. 

The Robins love zooming around on their trikes and ride-on bikes. Therefore, they thoroughly enjoyed driving them to the Paddock. They parked their transport vehicles sensibly, before venturing to the Outdoor Classroom for a picnic. The Main School children also popped in to say hello and it was nice for some of the Robins to see their older siblings. 

FunnyBones has been very popular and he was very impressed with the children’s kindness, especially as they gave him lots of cuddles. To further explore this, we read stories by Allan Ahlberg as the stories were based on our spooky friend. These stories are great for promoting early language development as they contain rhythmic structure and repetitive phrasing. FunnyBones has certainly had an action-packed week with us and he is looking forward to more adventures next week. It is not long until our Pre-Prep Coffee Morning so the children have been busy learning about shapes and singing songs. 

Next week, our topic will be Nature and Hibernation, followed by Halloweeeeeeen. We have lots of fun activities planned to support the children’s learning. The children are encouraged to bring in something from home (just not too big please) related to our weekly topic or anything else they would like to share or celebrate with us. The Robins enjoy sharing their objects from home during carpet time and it is a fantastic way to build effective communication and listening skills.  

Have a lovely weekend!