We are starting this school year with the topic, Once Upon a Time.

Children will be welcoming their new Barn Owl friends and helping them to settle as we remind the class of our routines and rules.

During this topic we explore traditional tales and have fun retelling and recreating the stories.

 Goldilocks and the Three Bears

We have had a wonderful start to this term. It has been lovely to see the children return and meet our new Barn Owl friends, who have settled really well.

We are enjoying the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. We have used puppets and masks to retell the story. 

The Little Red Hen and Harvest

This week we have been reading the story of The Little Red Hen. She had to do all the jobs on the farm by herself as her friends were too lazy! The Barn Owls were busy outside in the garden that we turned into a farm. There was the tractor we built, the horses to feed and the cow to milk. Luckily the Barn Owls were all ready to help and take turns.

We made red hen handprints that we put on our harvest crowns. We wore these when we sang our harvest song, Big Red Combine Harvester.

The Three Billy Goats Gruff

This week we have been reading the story The Three Billy Goats Gruff.

This has inspired us to build bridges in the garden with crates and planks as we acted out the story. We have also been building bridges with Duplo, blocks and small parts, testing them to see if the goats could get across.

Using playdough we created our own troll that was hiding under the bridge. As always the large empty boxes provided inspirations and lots of laughter as the children explored how to move them and how many Barn Owls could fit them!

This week we have been reading The Colour Monster. We have been talking about our feelings and linking them to different colours.

We thought about how we move when we are feeling happy, calm, sad and angry. 

The Barn Owls have also been investigating with colours using the Lightbox and  different colour water to create new colours.

There was lots of fun when we went on a colour hunt around our garden.

We went on a walk around the school grounds looking for signs of Autumn and collected different coloured leaves. We then added shapes and eyes to our leaves to create leaf creatures!

This week we have been learning about Diwali, the Hindu festival of Light. We made bright Rangoli patterns, using the lightbox and shapes, we also used pencils and glitter to decorate Rangoli patterns. Using clay we shaped and created our own Diya lamps. 

This week's book is 'Have You Filled a Bucket Today?' By Carol McCloud. In this story we imagine everyone having an imaginary bucket that is filled up when we do or say something kind, or when someone says or does something kind to us. If we say or do something that is unkind, then we dip into the buckets, and this will make us and other person feel sad. The Barn Owls decorated their buckets and thought about what they could do to make sure it was always full!

The home corner became the Doctor's Practice and the children were fantastic at showing how we can care and look after each other.

We hope you all enjoy a restful half term.