In English we ended the Spring half-term by exploring a wide variety of different texts.  The children enjoyed reading more about Samuel Pepys using extracts from his diary to gain further information into what it must have been like to experience such a significant fire.  I think the children were more fascinated by the fact that he buried cheese and wine in his garden over the fact that he shared important information with the king about the progress and severity of the fire.  They certainly enjoyed including this information in their own diary entries.  We then went on to explore Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters and the children were able to spot lots of similarities with fairy tales they know, such as Cinderella.  Our English finished for the term with some spring poetry and the weather leant itself brilliantly to us going on a nature walk around the school grounds and collecting ideas about things we could see, hear, smell and feel.  The Summer Term has introduced the children to a classic book by Enid Blyton.  We have enjoyed making up our own lands and characters that would be at the top of the Faraway tree and predicting what we thought would happen next in the story.

DT was our focus for the last part of the Spring term and the children really enjoyed making boxes for a precious item.  Despite the boxes not quite being strong enough to store Samuel Pepys' cheese and wine, the children worked hard to reinforce their boxes and secure them in different ways.  The children took time to explore whether Velcro, tying or creating a lock system would be best for their box.  Those that chose Velcro even worked out how to solve the problem of the Velcro being so secure that it even ripped the cardboard! This half-term we will be working on our sewing skills for a group project.  So look back on the class page to see what we create with this.

The whole school was very lucky to enjoy a quick visit to the farm animals that came in for the Reception classes.  Along with the ducks, worms and butterflies we had for Science Week it was a great half term filled with animals.  This half term, we have already had visits from the NSPCC, who talked to us about how to speak up and stay safe.

We are very much looking forward to having more swimming lessons now the bank holidays are over.  Hopefully all our hard work getting changed for PE in under 5 minutes will help us out at the pool! 

Please make sure everything is named clearly enough for all children to end up with their own clothes at the end of each session.  Additionally, we would like to thank in advance all the parents who have signed up for a volunteer slot to help us with this.