The week began with a circle time discussing the seasons, where we watched a video of a tree changing throughout the year. We realised it must be autumn now, because the leaves are turning brown and falling off the trees. We then used colourful collage materials to create our own leaf to match the season we were born in, which now look fantastic on our birthday tree! The children loved exploring the different textures and thought carefully about how to attach each material to their collage using either a glue stick, PVA or sellotape.

On Tuesday, we explored the weather, first discussing our favourite types of weather, then setting off to search for signs of different weather in the Paddock. The children blew me away with their fantastic detective skills, noticing that there were leaves on the floor which had been blown off of the trees. They knew this meant that it had been windy, but the trees were still when we looked, so it wasn’t windy any more. They then realised that’s why the clouds in the sky were moving so slowly! We spotted the sunshine behind the trees, but there was no water anywhere, so we knew it hadn’t been raining, and there wasn’t going to be a rainbow because we need rain and sun to make one. We then developed our gross motor skills as we climbed aboard the pirate ship for an adventure-filled play. Some of the children were very brave, using the pole for the first time, and it was lovely to watch their confidence grow as they kept practising on their own. 

In the classroom, the children have been very busy doing lots of different activities during their play, including; matching clothing items to the different weather types, cutting and sticking to create a colourful rainbow, creating rainbow sticks by wrapping wool, placing coloured counters to create a rainbow, using pipettes to create cotton wool rainbows, and creating wind and rain art using straws! Transition have also continued to practise careful counting by threading the correct number of raindrops onto our pipe cleaner rain clouds. I feel tired just thinking about how much fun and creativity has been had in Transition this week! 

In maths, we have continued to practise recognising shapes, and have begun to explore repeating patterns. During carpet time, the children helped me to create some shape patterns and even spotted when I tried to trick them! They then worked together to create their own colourful repeating pattern, helping each other to check they’d used the right colours. We also had lots of fun printing our shapes to make our own colourful repeating patterns.

In literacy, we loved reading The Gruffalo. The children made great predictions about what might happen next, and discussed their favourite characters, before we all had a go at drawing our own Gruffalo. In phonics this week, the older children have continued to attend their lessons with Mrs Cooper in Form 1 and we have become experts at spotting rhyming patterns. 

Once again, I look forward to another fantastic week as we begin to focus on autumn and the Harvest Festival.