This week we have been reading The Stickman by Julia Donaldson. We have made our own stickman family from natural materials that we collected from our walk around the school grounds.

We have made our own story map to retell the story. Using our maths skills we could order different sticks from the shortest to the longest.

The Barn Owls were given a large empty box which created lots of fun as we used our imagination and made a house and then an arch to walk under. We have also learnt about Saint Valentine and why we celebrate love on 14th February. We made cards using fingerprints to create a heart.

This week we have been reading the story The Magical Snow Garden by Tracy Corderoy. Wellington the penguin wants to grow a garden, but of course living in Antarctica, that is not easy! Wellington decides to make a garden, instead of growing it. 

The Barn Owls used crates and white sheets to make their own igloo and snow garden. The Wendy House became the Garden Centre this week and the children have been great at taking turns to be the customers and staff. On Friday we had a penguin obstacle course in the garden and when we walked on the bucket stilts we could waddle like a penguin!

Inside the classroom we have been painting and making flowers, even adding a scent to them!

The Barn Owls were given the challenge of building an igloo from sugar cubes, using plastic tweezers. There were some fantastic creations.

We have also been using our digital skills to create a snowflake on the iPad.

The book corner has been very busy this week, with children sharing stories and using puppets to retell stories.

This week we have been learning how Chinese New Year is celebrated.

We have made paperchain dragons and paper lanterns to decorate the classroom and the Chinese restaurant in our role play area. There was lots of fun as we worked together to make ourselves into a dragon as we danced to the drumming music the Barn Owls created.

We have been painting, chalking and writing Mandarin numbers. 

The story we have been reading this week is Charlie Crow in the Snow. Charlie is confused by the changes happening around him, until his friend Bear explains that it is the season of Winter, so that is why the pond has frozen! 

This week we have been reading the book 'Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?'.

We have identified the different types of sounds by the different animals in the book, and learning lots of interesting facts about Polar Bears too.

The children made Polar Bear masks and we turned our brick pit into a bear den and they were also busy diving into the sea looking for fish and seals. On a map of the world we found where Polar Bears live in the Arctic.

Our role play area became a vets and the Barn Owls have been fantastic and looking after the different pets that visited.

This week when some of our class enjoyed exploring Forest School, the others took part in Write Dance activities making patterns with foam. 

You will have seen that the talented Mr Greenough has been busy making a car port for our cars behind the sheds. Thank you Mr Greenough!

This week we have been reading the story Whatever Next! by Jill Murphy. Bear Bear uses a cardboard box as his rocket and a colander for his space helmet to travel to the moon for a picnic. We have had lots of fun retelling the story by making our own rockets from boxes and wearing colander space helmets too!

As part of our topic, 'How can We Travel to the Moon?' we have been exploring different types of air transport. We created our own Barn Owls airline in the nursery garden, taking turns to be the pilot and flying to different destinations. We used ribbons and chalk to make contrails patterns. Using paper mache we created hot air balloons to try and fly to the moon. The Barn Owls made different sized paper aeroplanes and predicted which they thought would fly the furthest. They were surprised by the results!

On Thursday afternoon we had a wonderful time exploring at Forest School.

It has been a lovely first week back. Our older Barn Owls have been fantastic at welcoming our new Barn Owl friends who started this week. We have been reading The Gruffalo’s Child by Julia Donaldson.  To retell the story we used shadow puppets. We also made our own Gruffalo child, and practised our cutting skills by creating the snake from the story.

The cold weather has not stopped us from exploring and learning outside. We made a Gruffalo cave and used our garden kitchen to make Gruffalo tea, cake and pie!