Autumn Term

Autumn Term

Week beginning 2nd December 

This week we made Christingles, before walking to Hertford Baptist Church for a special Christingle service. We learnt that the orange represents the world, and the red ribbon represents God’s love. We found out that the candle represents Jesus being the light of the world and the four cocktail sticks of sweets represent God’s creations in the four seasons.

Week beginning 25th November

We continued thinking about where we live this week. We explored different maps and photos of Hertford before working in groups to make our own maps. We named lots of different landmarks and shared what we enjoy doing with our families in Hertford. 

Week beginning 18th November

This week was a very exciting week as we went on our first school trip of the year! We caught the train to Stevenage and visited the cinema to watch Migration. We were all amazing and made our teachers very proud! 
 

This week we also began thinking about our next question, ‘What kind of place is this?’. We thought about what planet, country and town we live in and explored lots of different maps, atlases and globes. We shared the story Martha Maps it Out, and made maps of our own. 

Week beginning 11th November 

This week was World Nursery Rhyme week. We had a busy week learning some nursery rhymes ready to perform to our grown ups later in the week. We did a fantastic job performing to our parents. Thank you to everyone who came along and joined in with us! 
 

On Friday we came to school dressed in non-uniform to raise money for Children in Need. We learnt about why Children in Need is important and drew some fantastic pictures of Pudsey Bear! 

Week beginning 4th November 

This week we were very busy learning about different celebrations that happen at this time of year. We began our week thinking about Bonfire Night. We learnt about why people celebrate Bonfire Night and shared our own experiences of seeing fireworks. We created different firework pictures using paint, chalk and loose parts. In Drawing Club we read the story Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November. We learnt that a setting is where a story takes place. We drew our our setting from the story, a firework display, and used our sounds we know to write labels to describe the sounds fireworks make. 
 

We then moved on to learning about Diwali. We shared the story Binny’s Diwali and watched some videos together to find about how Diwali is celebrated by lots of people around the world. We explored some symbols of Diwali, including rangoli patterns and diya lamps. We used clay to create diya lamps of our own and decorated them with sequins. 
 

On Friday we thought about Remembrance Day. We learnt about why people wear poppies. We shared a special video together to help us remember. 

Week beginning 21st October

This week was all about HALLOWEEN! We had lots of fun exploring all things pumpkins and more! We improved our fine motor skills by tapping golf tees into pumpkins using small wooden hammers. The next day we got messy scooped out the pumpkins before chopping them up. We got creative and made spiders and skeletons of our own. We practised our writing by writing some spooky CVC words such as rat, cat, and hat. We finished the week by making some delicious Halloween cupcakes! Our favourite stories this week were The Dinosaur Who Pooped Halloween and Christopher Pumpkin. 

In Maths we were comparing quantities using our new stem sentences:

'____ has more than ____'

'____ has fewer than ____'. 

Week beginning 14th October

This week we continued to think about Autumn. We shared some more Autumn stories together including The Leaf Thief and Leaf Man. We learnt about why some leaves change colour in Autumn and fall from the trees. We learnt there are two different kinds of tree, deciduous and evergreeen and we spotted some different kinds of trees while we were outside. We also thought about some of the animals we could see in the woods such as hedgehogs, squirrels, foxes and owls. We learnt about what some woodland animals are doing during Autumn to get ready for Winter including hibernating, migrating and gathering food. 

Over the past few weeks we have been learning some Autumn poems. Here are some of us performing 'Leaves are Falling'. 

Week beginning 7th October

This week we began thinking about our next Big Idea, ‘If you go down to the woods today, would you believe your eyes?’. We discussed the changing of the seasons and thought about some of the changes we have noticed outside. We went on an Autumn hunt around school and lots of us collected some wonderful Autumn treasures of our own to bring into school. We shared the story ‘Fox’s Favourite Autumn’ together and thought about what makes Autumn special. We learnt that there are many celebrations during Autumn including Harvest. We found out about what happens during Harvest and performed a song for our special people at our Harvest Festival. 
 

During Drawing Club this week we shared the story of The Little Red Hen. We were so shocked that the animals on the farm didn’t help the Little Red Hen that we decided we would instead! We drew pictures of her and then helped her to make some bread of our own - it tasted delicious! 
 

In Maths we were looking at ways to make the numbers 2, 3, and 4. We learnt some stem sentences to help us remember and used cubes to represent what we had done. 
“1 and another 1 makes 2”. 

”1 and 1 and 1 makes 3”. 
“1 and 1 and 1 and another 1 makes 4”. 

Week commencing 30th September

We began this week thinking about feelings. We shared the story 'The Colour Monster' and thought about how the monster was feeling at different points of the story. We compared this to how we feel sometimes and thought of ways we could help ourselves, or our friends, with different feelings. We worked together to create feelings jars to represent the different feelings in the story - happy, calm, angry, sad, scared, and loved. This week we also thought about being a good friend. We sorted different qualities between a good friend, and a not so good friend. We thought of strategies to help us share and take turns. 

This week we also began Drawing Club. Our focus text was The Gingerbread Man. We learnt some new vocabulary to do with the story - leap, accelerate, cunning and soggy - ask us to show you what they mean! We learnt that a character is somebody or something a story is about. We drew the Gingerbread Man and wrote a special code to make the Gingerbread Man come alive. You will never believe what happened while we were in assembly on Friday...

Week commencing 26th September

This week we continued to think about ‘What Makes Me, Me?’. We thought about why it is good to be us. We used the story ‘I Love Me’ by Marvyn Harrison to give us some ideas about why we are all so special! We came up with words such as brave, happy, kind, imaginative, helpful, strong and grateful to describe ourselves. 
 

This week we also thought about special people in our lives. We discussed how everyone’s special people are different just like us! We drew pictures of people who are special to us and used loose parts to create them. 

Week beginning 16th September

This week we began thinking about our first Big Idea, ‘What Makes Me, Me?’. We shared the story ‘What Makes Me a Me?’ by Ben Faulks. We discussed what it means to be unique and thought about the ways in which we are the same, and the ways in which we are different. We thought about and drew our favourite things, including going to the park, dinosaurs, Thomas the Tank Engine and spending time with our family. We decided the world would be very boring if everyone was the same and liked the same things!
 

This week we also started our Read Write Inc sessions. We learnt the sounds m, a, s, d and t. In Maths we focused on subitising (recognising without counting) quantities to three and described what we saw. 
 

On Thursday we had lots of fun exploring Forest School during our first session of the year.