The children have all had a brilliant first day in Birch Class!

The children have had an amazing time settling in. They have all been superstars. I am so proud of how confident they have been when making new friends, becoming familiar with our new routines and embracing new challenges and learning opportunities!

Our first P.E lesson in the hall was so exciting! The children did so well at listening to and following the given instructions. We learnt how to warm our bodies up and how to find a space. This led on to developing their spacial awareness when travelling during ambulance and firefighter games.

Today out adventure began! We started by looking at a lovely text called Who Are You?

This led us into discussions about our features and what makes us unique. We talked about the similarities and differences that we had to our friends. We know we all have 2 eyes but they can be different colours. We know we have hair but it can be curly or straight, short or long, brown or blonde. We know we have skin of all different shades and some people have glasses and some do not. 

We then drew and painted what we look like with our individual and unique features.

We have been continuing to develop our spacial awareness and thinking about different ways to travel around safely when finding a space. The game today involved us becoming a train with a partner. 

We continued our discussions about what makes us unique and looked more closely as spotting similarities and differences between ourselves and our friends. We then had a go at drawing ourselves and our chosen friend and being able to speak about what features we have that are similar and different to them. We tried very hard to use the vocabulary unique in our sentences.

We started this week with a new book! It was called My Magic Family.

We then began discussing out families and who is in our families. We looked at different family members and how some families have a mum and dad, some families have a mum and a mum, some families have a dad and a dad and some families have step parents. We decided that all families are unique but all filled with love. 

We then had a look at some family photos, thank you to the grown up that were able to share these on tapestry. The children loved seeing themselves with their families on the big screen. Some of these photos included pets, grandparents and aunties and uncles too!

We then had a go at drawing our family in our writing books.

We then began to look at changes throughout time and how we grow. We looked at pictures of babies, children and adults.

What happens to them? What happens to us?

We looked at the body parts and features and tried to describe the changes using vocabulary such as change, grow, taller and older.

In PE we are continuing to develop our spacial awareness but are now beginning to develop our ball skills. We all had a go at controlling the ball by throwing and catching it in the air, rolling in along the ground so that it stayed close to our bodies and then bouncing and catching it. We then played a game where we had to travel around the hall, finding a space and then going to call for our neighbours by bouncing and catching the ball within the hoop. We had lots of fun!

We showed the children a basket of Autumn foods, reminding them of the harvest festival assembly from yesterday. We then sorted the foods into the categories savoury and sweet. This led onto discussions of which foods we like and dislike. We also talked about why it is important to be healthy and why we need to keep our bodies healthy. We then sorted some foods into the categories which food we should eat often and which foods we should eat less of.

We have been doing lots of learning about Autumn and being healthy this week that we decided to combine the two and design and create an Autumnal Dessert!  We decided our options would be chocolate dipped apples, apple crumble or apple and blackberry upside down cake.

We then looked at which choice was the most popular and decided that we would all have a go at making chocolate apples. We understood about going with the majority as we have been learning about the British Value Democracy. 

The chocolate apples were a huge success!

This week in PE we were practising more ball skills. This time were were developing our control and co-ordination in the way in which we were able to roll, bounce and catch it working in partners.

This week we are learning about houses and homes. We looked at different types of building that you may call home including houses, flats and bungalows. We then went out into our local area and had a look at the types of houses around us. We looked what made up a lot of the homes in Middleton. Most houses had pointy roofs and a fence surrounding their garden. We then looked at aerial maps of the Westwood estate. We located our school, the shop and the tree's on it. It was very interesting to see it like the birds do.

We then thought more about our own individual homes and had a go at drawing them. This created lots of discussions about what colour our house doors were and what number we live at!

Today we did lots of talking our different feelings and we introduced the Zones of Regulation. We thought  about the importance of feeling happy and knowing how to make yourself happy, this is called the green zone. We then thought about how we feel when we are sad and this is called the blue zone. The children shared triggers that make them feel happy and sad and what we can do to get ourselves back in the green zone when we feel like we are in the blue zone. An importance message the children received was that no emotions are bad emotions, we shouldn’t feel embarrassed are ashamed of how we feel.

We then drew pictures to illustrate some of the things that make us feel happy!

This week in PE, we utilised the ball skills we have developed to play games and work more closely with a partner.