We have really been activating our maths courage this morning with our first lesson on division. We used counters and collaboration to help us.
Super resilience Class Five!
Transition and co-operative play.
This week Nursery have been enjoying their outdoor learning/play at the same time as one or both of the Reception classes in EYFS. For younger children this can be daunting, having to share their space and equipment with older children and finding the courage and confidence to ask others for turns with toys. With support and modelling the children have began working collaboratively, beginning to resolve minor conflicts and starting to work co-operatively with each other ready for the summer term. The reception children were welcoming and kind, showing compassion to our youngest children. Thank you, beautiful work guys.
Oi Frogs!
Nursery have been very “hoppy” this week as they moved on to exploring the life cycle of a frog, continuing our “We are scientists” agenda of our expedition. We began our investigations with a very engaging and funny rhyming text by Kes Gray titled “Oi Frog!” The children immediately fell in love with the comedic main character Frog, who explored what a host of animals sit on, as he didn’t want to sit on a log, as Cat demanded he should. Nursery enjoyed matching animals to their rhyming seated objects and have practised independently over the week, even sharing their rhyming with their parents in our family stay and play session on Friday.
On Tuesday after the children were hooked into frogs, we investigated how a frog begins its life revisiting some of our prior learning from both caterpillar and chick life cycles. We placed toy models of the varying stages of frog into our cycle. The children connected that the caterpillars eggs and frogs were similar in more of a bubble kind of egg, rather than a shell. As we moved through the stages, the children suggested their own movements of how we could represent the cycle. We then played a game of “Froggy says…” called out the stages and the children demonstrated their moves to embed their learning.
During Tranquil Tuesday and Thoughtful Thursday crew the children followed models of how to draw a tadpole and a frog. They independently had a go with fantastic results! Such beautiful work.
The children used their scientific knowledge, construction and creative skills to create an egg box tadpole or frog, as a choice in provision. They copied examples and produced some amazing models!
Even our Maths work was frog themed, as we have been getting better at counting to three, using careful counting (touch counting to check our thoughts). We sang three little speckled frogs and acted out the song, supporting each other to count in sequence. Next we considered if we had three frogs, how many lily pads would they need to have one each? How many tadpoles if each had one baby? And how many flies they would need to feed the mummy frog? Of course I threw a few too many tadpoles and flies in the mix to check the children’s understanding, but there were “no flies on them” – the children could “toad-ally” see through my trickery.
Nursery then demonstrated and consolidated their understanding by counting out three frogs from a pond to a lily pad.
As a lovely end to our week we shared our learning with our families, playing in the provision during a family play and stay session. Mums, Dads, brothers and sisters, Grandmas, Grandads and Uncles all had lots of fun spending time and playing with their special little people. Thank you to all who attended and for all of your support, they were two beautiful sessions and we even squeezed in a demonstration of our daily Nursery Rhyme singing as part of our phonics!
EYFS Community Meeting
Well done to all of our superstars this week. It was lovely to share some wonderful acts of kindness and lots of examples of children working hard and trying their best, especially in phonics and maths. Keep up the super work Reception.
Marley Magic
Yesterday KS1 celebrated Bob Manley’s 80th birthday by joining a worldwide singalong. We have been working really hard to learn the Marley Magic medley.
Sharing our Stories: 07/02/2025
Beautiful Work This Week
Here’s a selection of beautiful work from across the XP Trust from this week. To read about other stories from across the XP Trust, visit xptrust.org.
Top of the Blogs
X31 Skipper – Bringing a ‘Storm in a teashop’ to life! @ XP
E30’s Powerful Work on Macbeth @ XP East
Share your stories with us!
Self Regulation Strategies.
This week is Children’s Mental Health Week, so to advocate for this Nursery have been taking part in some mindful and relaxing activities to help them understand how it feels to feel calm and relaxed but more importantly how they can achieve this in times of upset, sadness or anger.
In our Mindful Monday Crew the children took part in animal yoga. They worked hard and had lots of fun recreating the modelled poses and practising yogi breathing.
During our Wise Wednesday Crew the children talked around what they noticed about the faces of some characters on a feeling thermometer as we checked in. Some children said that the characters from 3-5 on the scale looked; “Sad”, “Scared”, “Frightened”, “Worried” or were “Crying”. The children then pop corned, what they could do to cheer themselves up? Some of our ideas were fantastic, the children said “Go for a scooter ride”, “Get a hug”, “Play with toys”, “Bounce on my trampoline”, “Stroke my doggy”, “Read a book”, “Bake”, “Watch Bluey” and “Sing”.
Nursery then took part in a carousel of four different activities, each lasting 3/4 minutes which taught them strategies of what they can also do in school and at home to help them calm, relax and self regulate. These activities were;
Dancing to guided movement songs.
Completing a jigsaw.
Guided breathing patterns including; Balloon breath, Bumblebee Breath, Snake breath and Finger breathing.
And mindful colouring.
At the end of the session we all checked back in to share how the children thought the characters on the feeling thermometer would feel now, if they had taken part in the activities we had? The children said “happy and calm”, “excited” or “relaxed”. The children then suggested which was their favourite activity – lots of fun and relaxing had by all. Great, powerful work Nursery!
Know Yourself Grow Yourself!
As part of Children’s Mental Health Awareness Week, we decided to start off our day by drawing a ‘happy picture’. We had a range of drawings including Spiderman, rainbows, love hearts, Sonic and our families…
In crew, we then spoke about our feelings and that it is OK to be in the blue zone sometimes. We discussed what we can do in school that would make us feel happy and calm, and how important it is that we know how to make ourselves feel good again. The children came up with some wonderful ideas…
Leading our own Learning
We have been learning about imperative verbs and time conjunctions this week to help us with our writing. We really have been leading our own learning by using the iPads to check our work before moving own.
Very impressive work class five – well done.
Mrs Parsons x
How are you feeling today?
It might be Mental Health Awareness week this week but we think it is important to understand and talk about how we are feeling everyday. We decided to make some bookmarks to remind us to think about how we are feeling and to ask others too.
