Our key question this term is:

And so our new year has begun...

We are so excited to be at school, and our teachers are very proud of how we have started to settle already.  The first priority is to make sure we are all happy, and settled and then later in the term we will start looking at our key question.

There is so much to see and do in our new classroom... 

'Welcome to Amethyst Class'

Every term each year group sends a REAL Project Newsletter home, which outlines what we will be learning, our key question and project outcome. This is our Autumn Term newsletter...

We have had a great start to the school year, exploring our classroom and meeting new friends.

Our first week at school is already over and we have been super busy!

Every morning when we come into school there are a range of activities set out for us, helping us to learn so many different things.

We are able to enjoy books, role play, use small world, be creative, write, choose maths activities, construct, use the computers and so much more - either independently or with our friends or an adult.

Each week new activities are put out for us to explore and challenge ourselves - we are encouraged to use the:

Finger Gym: to help with our fine motor control Literacy Challenge: which helps us develop our language and writing skills

Maths Challenge: which helps consolidate our learning from the previous week and covers everything from shape and pattern to adding numbers!  

Phonics Challenge: this helps us to pratise our sounds and key words

Our teachers learn so much about us when they watch us play this way.

Every morning we have to complete the self-register.  

We have to find our named train and put it on the train track.  Our names are written in cursive writing and stay on the wall all day so that we can use them to help us when we are practising writing and spelling our names.

This week more of our hand prints have appeared...

This time on our class 'Skills for Learning & Life' tree.  Our hand prints are the leaves and our faces are on the apples!

We have also been thinking about our schools 'Golden Rules', learning what they are, what happens when we follow them or break them, and why they are so very important.  

Such a busy week in Amethyst Class...

We particularly enjoyed sharing and retelling traditional stories such as Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

This week we received a letter and some bread from The Little Red Hen - it was so exciting!

She asked us to make something yummy to eat with the vegetables we had harvested from the school garden.  We had lots of ideas. 

We enjoyed practising our knife skills to safely and carefully chop the onions, potatoes and carrots.  Then Mrs Jones cooked them. We talked about how the vegetables had changed from dirty to clean, raw to cooked, and then predicted what would happen after they had been blended.

We had two special chefs who helped blend our soup, and then we all tasted it and ate some of the bread that the Little Red Hen had brought us. Yum yum!

We have enjoyed reading the story of the Little Red Hen, retelling it in our own words and using masks to help act it out. 

We have watched and read lots of different versions of the story, learning that the same story can be written in slightly different ways.

In groups we retold the story of The Little Red Hen using masks, and we enjoyed making our own puppets to take home, so we could share our story telling with our families too.

Our teachers have put lots of photos and videos on Tapestry of our brilliant story telling.

Such exciting news!  The Little Red Hen heard how yummy we thought her bread was, and so she called Mrs Jones to share her recipe with us. 

We had great fun making the dough, learning about yeast, forming our rolls, taking them to our chef to have them baked, and of course - eating them. Yum, yum, yum!

On Monday we arrived to this delicious basket of fruit from Handa. 

We decided we wanted to name it, touch it, smell it and of course try it and it was delicious! 

We also read her story and really enjoyed it.
 

The next day we came in to find a net hanging from the ceiling.  We were so excited to find out what it was! 

It had a message attached and it was from Handa.  She had dropped her basket and had mixed up her fruit and vegetables, she asked us to sort them.  We had to work out what she was asking us to do.  We realised we needed to identify each one, and decide if they went in the vegetable basket or fruit basket.  We did a great job in our teams.

With an adult we used puppets or masks to retell the story of Handa.

We have a new role play area this week! 

We have loved sorting, identifying and looking at all the different fruits and vegetables that we now have a 'Fruit & Veg Shop'.  

The following day another bowl of fruit arrived, and again it was from Handa!  This time she wanted to thank us for all our help yesterday - but told us we had to share it as there wasn't enough for one piece of fruit each. 

Our teacher asked us what we should do.  We decided to chop it up, so that we could all try a little of each one.  It was yummy to try more different fruits - thank you Handa!

Our project journey continues...

(Haven't we been busy!)

What a very exciting start to the week!  Look at what we found on our classroom floor on Monday.

We had so many questions to ask - what animal made the footprint, where did it come from, where did it go...?

We realised the footprints were made by a tiger and the empty boxes were from our kitchen - The Tiger that came for tea!  We then decided to read the story, and think about if we could invite any animal to tea, which animal that might be. 

Which animal would you invite to tea?

We drew the animal we would choose, and tried hard to label it.

We have enjoyed using 'Dough Disco' this week.  It helps us to exercise and strengthen our fingers, encouraging them to move in lots of different ways. 

We have thought about all the different things we need our fingers for: holding our pencil, doing up buttons and zips, holding our cutlery, holding our cup, using the play dough, holding a paint brush, cleaning our teeth - our list went on and on and on!  It made us think about how important it is to help our fingers to be strong and move in lots of different ways.

We are loving Dough Disco, and are now using this several times a week - it's great fun!

Our Class worship this week was all about friendship, and what makes a good friend.  

We enjoyed acting out the story of 'A miracle in Capernaum', and thought carefully about what we would do for our friends.

What a way to end our first term - by winning Ted the Attendance Bear again - what a team!

Say cheeeeeeeese!

What team we have become in just one term at school, and what a term it has been.  Our teachers are so proud of us, of how we have settled and the class that we are.

Did you see our class photograph

in the Grantham Journal - didn't we all look so very smart!