We put on our welly boots, gathered our clipboards and headed out for a walk around the school grounds. The children listened carefully to the beautiful bird songs and spotted lots of exciting signs of spring, including new flowers, seedlings just starting to sprout and lots of green and red buds on the trees. They were intrigued by these, so we explored how buds turn into new leaves and flowers by looking at lots of different photographs.

After our investigation we had lots of fun climbing, swinging and balancing on the adventure trail. Transition are really beginning to build their strength and confidence!

In the classroom, we learnt about the different seasons and the children sorted some pictures into the correct season, telling me all about the different changes they could see. They were fantastic at explaining how they knew which season their picture belonged in and they sorted all of the pictures without any help! Great work Transition.

The younger children then got creative as they collaged their own petal, leaf or snowflake to join our class birthday tree, which now all look fantastic on our wall. Some of the children also chose to have a go at using the pipettes and coloured water to colour different cotton pad leaves to fill in the season tree. We had lots of fun mixing the colours together to create new colours and learnt lots of new combinations!

Our maths focus this week has been on shapes. We first recapped the names and properties of some 2D shapes and the children were able to tell me lots of great facts including the name of a hexagon, the number of corners on a triangle and the length of the sides in a rectangle. I then used some of my shapes to design a flower, but it was a bit tricky... some of my shapes were the wrong size and didn't fit in the gaps. The children were very helpful and helped to rotate my shapes to fit in different spaces and combine them together to make new shapes.

They each then had a go at designing some fantastic shape pictures including a rainbow, the Queen and a monster. We practised our drawing skills in Literacy this week as we followed the instructions to draw a baby chick. We had to watch and listen carefully to help us find out which shapes to use and the children worked really hard on their drawings, taking their time and showing great concentration. We continued exploring chicks as we developed our fine motor skills using the clay. The children enjoyed exploring the texture of the clay and experimenting with different tools and methods to attach the clay together. We worked out that a little bit of water can be very helpful when adding two pieces of clay together and the children came up with some fantastic spring creations.

As part of our phonics lesson this week, we listened to lots of different sounds in the environment, trying to recognise what each sound was and where it was coming from. We enjoyed listening to loud and quiet noises and seeing if we could copy them. We also learnt our new single letter sound o this week. The children came up with lots of interesting words beginning with o including octopus, orange and olive. We had a go at using the playdough to make our o sound and practised forming it in the sand. We realised our o sound was like a circle and had a go at making some tiny and some huge circles.

This week we have also loved creating cakes in the sandpit, cooking flower pie in the mud kitchen, singing with Miss Norford and exploring colour mixing as we made our own playdough. It has certainly been a busy week, but we have had lots of fun exploring our environment and enjoying the sunshine before we begin Book Week next week.