During our first Circle Time of 2025, we all shared our Christmas break news and chatted about the things we had been up to during their time away from school. The children have also enjoyed sharing their Home/School Journals, which further supported them to tell us all about the special times shared with family and friends during the holidays.

This week, the children have been reflecting on our class promises and routines as we support the new children to settle into Form 1. This was a great opportunity to take another look at our class rules and consider why we have them and why they are important. The children learnt that some rules are for safety and some rules are to ensure everyone is happy and able to learn. The children all decided on some classroom rules/ promises and then wrote their names on a big piece of paper to show they agreed with them. We have displayed this in the classroom.

In maths, the children have been revisiting number recognition to 20 and remembering that every teen number has one 10 in it. They had fun working in pairs to make various teen numbers by showing me the amount on their fingers. One person always had to be the ten and the other made the ones. We have been focusing on making different groups within ten this week and have explored this through sorting and matching. Using 10 shells, buttons or coloured shapes, the children have been thinking of ways to sort or group these items. The children decided to group by colour, shape and type. Once they had made their groups they carefully counted how many were in each group and labelled them. This introduced the concept of number composition and talking about the whole number and the various parts within it.

The children have loved exploring outside and this week have set up a coffee shop! We added some real coffee granules into the provision and the children set about making frothy coffees for everyone. They carefully spooned the coffee into the cups and added water from the kettles, stirring carefully. Signs were written to tell people if the shop was open or closed and they had lots of fun filling as many containers as possible with delicious coffee. The children were excited to return the following day to find their coffee full of ice which led to more exploration and imaginative play.

The children have also been recording their Christmas holiday experiences by drawing the things they have eaten, watched, gifts they received, people they visited and presents they gave. It was a good opportunity to encourage the children's speaking skills and to support them to share their experiences outside of school life.

The children enjoyed their first gymnastics lesson of 2025 as well as music with Miss Norford and French with Madam Boff. Of course, they have also loved playing outside in the snow and visiting the Pirate Ship! It has certainly been a wonderful start to 2025 and the Spring Term.