EYFS

 

• Mrs Riches
  EYFS Class Teacher
  Mrs Riches

• Mrs Groves
  EYFS Teaching Assistant
  Mrs Groves

Letters

Spring Term Parent/Carer Consultation Evening - 20.01.2022

Autumn Term 2 Information - 01.11.2021

Welcome to Cromwell - 06.09.2021

 EYFS BLOGS

21 January 2022

Snow and ice has been our focus this week.

As we haven’t had any snow or icy days this week we made our own ice by freezing water. We then explored the ice by using our senses.

“It’s freezing!” It’s melting away to water”, “The ice is getting smaller and my hands are wet and cold”, “It’s very hard, I can’t crack it”, “The warm on my hands is melting the ice”, “Look there’s water now”.

 

We then added warm water and salt to the ice to see what would happen.

We have been inspired to paint winter trees after observing the Grandmother tree at forest school. We noticed her branches were bare and glistening with frost.

During maths this week we have investigated ways to make 4 and 5. We played a target game to find the different ways which we then recorded.

  

14 January 2022

After finding out that penguins live in the Antarctic we wanted to find out more about them. We then recorded some of the facts we found out.

 

We have been measuring penguins using cubes to find out how tall they are. We then counted how many cubes tall the penguins were and recorded the numeral. 

We were also inspired to create our own penguin pictures by painting, collage and using our loose parts. 

 

 

17 December 2021

Another very busy week in Reception Class preparing for Christmas.

We have been learning all about Christingle which is a special church service often held during advent.

We have been making our own Christingles. You need an orange, four cocktail sticks, red ribbon, some sweets or raisins and a candle. 

Each part has a special meaning. The orange represents the world, the candle is the light of the world bringing hope, the red ribbon is God’s love for the world and the cocktail sticks and sweets represent God’s creations and the four seasons.

We held a special assembly for Christingle where we lit our candles and had time to think about how we can bring light to other people who might be feeling sad or lonely.

 

We have also been very proud of ourselves this week as we managed to collect 20 blue smileys. Throughout the autumn term we have been working together as a class to collect the blue Smileys. We have been awarded with blue smileys for going above and beyond what is expected. Smileys have been awarded for things such as showing kindness to others, using our initiative to tidy up, using good manners at all times and helping a friend. After much discussion we decided our reward would be to have a party.  

We made party hats to wear, planned party games and iced biscuits to eat as a party treat. It was a lot of fun!

 

We wish everyone a very happy, healthy Christmas and New Year.

10 December 2021

This week has been very exciting as we got to perform our Nativity show that we have been rehearsing for. We can’t wait for our family and friends to see the video of it. We feel very proud!

Other preparations for Christmas have also continued. We found out that people send Christmas cards to their family and friends to wish them a Merry Christmas so we made our own cards to give to our families.

We also found out that at Christmas people eat special food. So we made our own Christmas cakes. We weighed out all the ingredients, mixed them together and cooked them in the oven. We then decorated the cakes by adding icing and a sprig of holly. We can’t wait to taste them!

 

We have also made angels to decorate the top of a Christmas tree. These represent the angel Gabriel in the story of The First Christmas. We listened carefully to follow lots of instructions and practised our cutting skills to produce these beautiful angels.

Forest School was also Christmas themed this week. We used the saw and drill to make Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer tree decorations and Santa sticks.

 

 

 

3 December 2021

This week we have been finding out about the Festivals of Hanukkah and Christmas.

Hanukkah is the Jewish festival of light and lasts eight days which started on Sunday 28 November this year. Every year Jews remember the eight day festival and celebrate the miracle of oil by placing eight candles in a menorah and lighting one each evening.

One of the best known symbols of Hanukkah is the Dreidel. Spin the Dreidel is a popular game played during the Holiday. Players chocolate coins (gelt) as tokens. The player spins the dreidel. When the dreidel stops, the letter that is facing up decides the fate. It was lots of fun.

We have also started preparing for the celebration of Christmas. We read The First Christmas which tells the story of the birth of Jesus. We know that Christmas is celebrated on December 25^th every year and lots of people prepare for this celebration for example by putting up Christmas trees and decorating their homes.

During Maths this week we have focussed on one more and one less. We used Christmas baubles to add one more to the tree or take one away to find one less. 

Lots of acting, singing and dancing has also been happening this week as we prepare for our Nativity show next week. We can’t wait to share this with you, it’s going to be fabulous!

19 November 2021

We have been busy this week preparing for Children in Need. We donated money to come to school in our pyjamas! We also wanted to raise more money to support Children in Need. We talked about how the money raised will be used to support children less fortunate than us such as poorly children and their families, helping children stay safe and warm and giving children a safe place to have fun.

To raise more money we planned a cake sale. First of all we made cupcakes using the balance scales to measure out the ingredients. We then stirred the mixture, put it into cupcake cases and baked them in the oven. Once the cupcakes were cooked and cooled we decorated them with icing and sprinkles.

 

We designed posters and made invitations to advertise our cake sale. We set up our cake stall and sold our delicious cakes to our friends and teachers.

 

We also had a lot of fun making Pudsey masks, measuring the height of Pudsey’s friends, painting and cutting out Pudsey bears and practising our counting by adding the correct number of pom poms to Pudsey’s band.

 

We raised an amazing £78.85 from our cake sale!

12 November 2021

This week we found out that Remembrance Day is a special day in November where people wear a special symbol called a poppy. On Remembrance Day we remember people who have suffered and died in wars.

We made our own poppies and observed poppy paintings and photos which inspired us to paint our own poppy pictures and create poppy pictures using paper. We also used the loose parts to represent poppies in different ways.

 

On November 11 at 11 o’clock we all observed a two minutes silence to show our respect.

 

5 November 2021

In Reception this week we have been learning about the Festival of Diwali and Bonfire night.

Diwali is celebrated by Hindus in India and all around the world in October or November. It is also known as the festival of lights. We have made our own Diva lamps, painted Rangoli patterns, made Indian sweets and enjoyed learning a Diwali dance. This year Diwali started on 4 November.

 

 

Bonfire night is celebrated on 5 November. We learnt all about Guy Fawkes and how he tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament. We practised our writing skills by using our phonic knowledge to describe what we could see and hear at a firework display.

We also created our own firework pictures and made firework rockets.

 

 

At forest school we had a fire which we sang bonfire themed songs around while we waited for our chocolate orange cake to cook in the fire. It was delicious!

 

 

22 October 2021

Pumpkins have been a focus in Reception this week. Jacks Supermarket kindly donated them to us.

We have explored the pumpkins by cutting them open and scooping them out. The pumpkins were soggy, wet, cold, mushy, squishy and smelly!

In maths we used the pumpkin seeds to explore the different compositions of numbers 3 and 4. We found out that there were many ways to make 3 and 4 such as 2+1=3, 1+2=3, 2+2=4 and 3+1=4.

Mrs ‘Witches’ helped us to create our own spells. We put lots of ingredients in to the cauldron such as a frog, ghost, pumpkin and a bat. Then we wrote down our spells using our phonic knowledge.

In the art area we explored colour mixing orange to paint pumpkins and collaged our own pumpkins.

 

15 October 2021

Autumn has been our focus this week. We have been collecting lots of autumn treasures such as beautiful red, orange, yellow and brown leaves, conkers, acorns and sycamore seeds. We have used these treasures to enhance our learning.

We have used the autumn treasures to develop our maths skills by counting sorting and matching. We have also enjoyed story telling in our woodland tuff tray using the forest animal puppets.

We found out that acorns grow on oak trees and conkers grow on horse chestnut trees. We wondered how these trees grow so Mrs Riches suggested we plant some conkers and acorns. She also told us we need to be very patient!

We loved reading the Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert this week. It inspired us to create our own leaf people using our autumn treasures. 

To remind us of how beautiful autumn trees and leaves are we did some leaf printing, leaf threading, leaf rubbing, made leaf confetti and created our own autumn trees by painting and printing. We are very proud of our autumn display.

 

8 October 2021

This week has been all about apples. We have found out that during the autumn apples and blackberries grow.  We used these to make an apple and blackberry crumble. We prepared the apples by peeling off the skin and chopping the apples up. We then put the apples and blackberries into a dish added the crumble and cooked it. It was delicious!

 

 

While preparing the apples for cooking we found lots of apple seeds. We planted some of these hoping we can grow our own apple tree.

We had enough apples to experiment with apple printing, which proved to be lots of fun! 

We finished our week off at forest school with our first fire. We learnt how to whittle sticks to make skewers and then toasted marshmallows over the fire and enjoyed with a cup of hot chocolate, delicious!

1 October 2021

This week we have shared the story The Colour Monster by Anna Llenas. We have talked about expressing our feelings and what makes us feel happy, sad, angry, scared and calm. We created our own monsters in the art area and then talked about how our monsters feel and why.

This week we have started learning letter sounds with the Phonic Fairy. We have focussed on the phonemes s, a, t and p this week enjoying the stories of ‘My Pet Snake’, The Big Sneeze, Tip Tap Dancing Cat and Pirate Pete.

In maths, we have been making comparisons between objects, finding the odd one out and comparing amounts and identifying more and fewer.

We have been on many adventures this week through our story telling using small world toys, role play, Mighty Writer and acting out stories scribed for us.

Forest school was all about the mud this week. We made mud faces, painted with mud and rolled down the hill in it!

24 September 2021  -  Making Friends