Page 8 - Abberley Adventures - April 2022

ABBERLEY ADVENTURES
8
Pre-Prep Roundup
Nursery 1 children have been learning to recognise colours by playing matching games, sorting coloured blocks, and painting umbrella pictures. There have been many opportunities for the children to practise using scissors with finger-gym activities and also cutting and sticking spring pictures. The children have enjoyed lots of lovely walks, looking for Spring flowers, visiting the chickens and spotting frogspawn in the garden pond. In the Adventure Playground, the children have shown confidence and independence when climbing on the apparatus, with the slide being the firm favourite.
In cookery sessions we have made fruit kebabs, fairy cakes, chocolate crispy cakes, Welsh-cakes, and tiffin. The children have drawn some wonderful pictures in their books, they are now putting meanings to these marks and are experimenting with drawing their families.
Nursery 2 children have been learning new sounds and drawings and their Phonic books are beginning to contain a lot more detail. In Mathematics they had lots of fun ordering a variety of objects by height and length. Creatively, the children did not only use paint but a mixture of materials and different media to produce a variety of flowers, trees, birds in nests and umbrellas to create a beautiful Spring-themed display in their classroom. They have enjoyed their French session with Mrs Blackmore and are delighted that they can count to ten in French. We celebrated Chinese New Year by colouring in a picture of a tiger and writing tiger in Chinese and we celebrated St David’s Day by making Welsh-cakes. We learnt about Fair Trade and used Fair Trade bananas in our muffins, which were very yummy.
For the Reception children, the second half of term began with the excitement of their first school trip to the Swan Theatre to watch a production of ‘The Smartest Giant in Town’. Back in the classroom, the children produced some wonderful written accounts of the tale. In literacy, Reception children have been learning to write their tricky words. In Maths, they have been measuring lots of objects using non-standard units. As the sun came out this week, Reception were inspired by the first signs of Spring and produced beautiful Mothers’ Day cards!
Despite the disruption caused by staff having to be off with Covid, Classes 1 and 2 have had a fabulous and busy second half of term. Class 1 have gone ‘castle crazy’ and learned about the Battle of Hastings as well as about the different parts of a castle. They each applied for a castle job and had great fun playing imaginatively with our toy castle. In DT they made a castle-themed moving picture using sliders and levers and they finished the topic with a class trip to Warwick Castle where they walked the ramparts, climbed to the top of towers, had story time with a princess and watched a fabulous falconry display. They loved every minute!
Class 2 finished off their topic on toys by bringing in old toys from home and finding out more about the history of their favourite toys. They also made some delightful peg dolls as well as designing some intriguing Heath Robinson-style machines to carry out everyday chores such as getting dressed. Classes 1 and 2 enjoyed participating in the whole- school project of planting trees for the Queen’s canopy and they are looking forward to seeing these grow over their years ahead.
There have been many highlights including World Book Day with a magical theme and all children came dressed for the occasion. Jon Lawrence was a massive hit with the children and his amusing songs had them in fits of laughter! The children also had a Shakespearian dance workshop which they all enjoyed. We all celebrated Shrove Tuesday by making pancakes and Reception and Nursery 2 children cooked theirs in the woods. We were delighted to welcome parents to our Swimming Galas where they had the opportunity to see the children compete in House teams. The two galas gave the children an opportunity to show off their amazing swimming skills and from the round of applauses and positive comments, we can only assume that this successful event will become annual! Scores have been combined and the winning Patrol were awarded a cup at our Prize Giving ceremony on the last day of term.
To end the term, we had an Easter Egg Hunt in the Early Years and Pre-prep Forest school. The sun was shining and once a child had found a hidden paper egg they were transformed into bunnies with a painted nose and whiskers. They returned to class to find an Easter treat had been left for them curtesy of the Easter bunny!