Portway Infant School
What a super Far Away Friday we had today, taking a trip on our Portway plane to The Netherlands. We spent our day learning some Dutch words, creating flags, and learning all about the beautiful country and its capital city: Amsterdam. We tried some local cuisine of stroopwafels and edam cheese (the stroopwafels were a particular favourite) and finished our day riding around on bicycles like the people of Amsterdam do.
Wow, what a super week it has been! This week we have become Portway farmers and have learnt about where our food comes from. Some of us took a trip to the local farm shop Kenyon's to buy the vegetables we needed to make soup. Cygnets then got to work chopping and preparing the vegetables before turning it into delicious soup! Unfortunately the rain stopped us from heating the soup on the fire at Forest School but that didn't stop us enjoying it with our friends. We have also been busy this week planting seeds in our own Cygnet Greenhouse. We are ready to water them and can't wait to watch them grow.
Today we were treated to a fantastic performance from a Ukulele Band! Everyone enjoyed clapping and singing along to popular songs and we were even taught some new songs too. Some children from Year 2 played a piece of music from their weekly ukulele lessons. A huge thank you to the wonderful musicians who came to visit and share their talents with us.
Today is 'World Book Day' and we have all dressed up as different book characters. Can you guess which stories we come from?
This half term has been all about real life superheroes! We have had some special visitors to help us with our learning.
Nurse Lizzie talked to us about all the different parts of our body and showed us some items that the nurses and doctors use to help us feel healthy and well. The Dentist talked to us about how to keep our teeth healthy and the Police talked to us about how they keep everyone safe in Andover. What a lot of learning we have been doing!
Today we all had Forest School and to match our learning about real life superheroes we learnt all about how to keep safe with fires. Miss Birmingham taught us how to make a real fire and we practised making sparks with fire steels. We then worked hard with our friends to practise building a fire, finding tinder, kindling and testing twigs with the 'snap test'.
We had the most brilliant first day back after the half term holiday this week by heading off on the plane to China! We spent our day learning the language, creating flags, dragon masks and even our own Chinese Pagoda's out of construction. A particular favourite part of the day was trying some of the local food - prawn crackers and noodles yum yum! Lot's of Cygnets were asking for more! We learnt all about Chinese New Year and the story of the Chinese Zodiac signs. Have a look at our fun filled day...
We then had another treat in school as we had our very own Chinese Dragon Dance Workshop where we got to actually be the dragon! It was so exciting and we had lots of fun!
Today we had our own Cinderella Ball. We got ready into our special clothes so that we were turned into Princes and Princesses!
We had such a lovely day at Forest School yesterday. Thank you Miss Birmingham for always leading such a wonderful day for us all! We moulded our own clay faces using natural resources found in our Forest School area and had the best time building on all of our previous skills! Take a look at what we've been up to...
In PE this half term we have been learning all about the 5 basic shapes. These are: Straight, Star, Tuck, Pike and Straddle. We have practised them carefully by holding our bodies strong and still just like gymnasts do. We are experts now and can't wait to teach everyone at home!
We have had great fun in the past few days taking advantage of the very cold weather! We looked at how water turns to ice when it freezes and then investigated what happens when the sun shines. Have a look at our Ice Sculptures that we made using natural materials from our outside area.
This week we have been learning all about the artist Wassily Kandinsky and one of his most famous pieces of art: 'Squares with Concentric Circles'. We created our own concentric circles and practised our cutting skills to make the different sizes. All of our amazing work is on display in Year R and we are very proud.
Today we were lucky enough to be joined by some very talented Portway parents for our Christmas assembly in the hall. The grown ups impressed us with their musical talent and it was lovely to see so many different instruments. What a great way to come together and sing some well known Christmas carols! Thank you to our wonderful performers for joining us.
A huge thank you to everyone who helped plan, cook and wrap presents for our Christmas Dinner today. We had such a lovely time and it all felt very Christmassy and special!!
We read the story of 'Ruff' this week and talked about birthdays and why we celebrate them. We talked about how a birthday is about remembering and celebrating the day we were born. We then realised that our class pet Gilbert had never had a birthday - Just like Ruff! So we decided to throw a birthday party for him. We talked about all the different ways we celebrate a birthday at home and planned some fun things for Bears Birthday!
We have been learning all about how our environment changes from Summer into Autumn and how some animals hibernate or migrate to warmer places. We have noticed how the leaves have been changing colour and falling off the trees. So on Friday we had the best fun playing in the leaves in our outside area.
Namaste everyone. We have been to India on a plane today because we have been learning about the Hindu festival of light called Diwali.
We added our India sticker to our passports and set up our classroom as an aeroplane.
When we got to India, we did some Bollywood dancing, made some Indian flags, created Rangoli patterns, and paper chain garlands like some Hindu's do during Diwali celebrations.
We even got to try some delicious Indian food which we thought was delicious especially the Poppadums!
What lucky Cygnets we were today! We had so much fun at Forest School and we avoided the rain! We created camouflage crowns using natural materials from the forest. We then remembered all of our safety rules while exploring! Have a look at all the fun we had...
'Brown Bear, Brown Bear what do you see...'
I see all of Cygnet's amazing animal masks looking at me!
We had so much fun creating our animal masks this week. First we decided what animal we wanted for our mask and then we made a careful plan. Once we had our plan we painted our mask and started decorating all of its features! Have a look at all of our hard work!
We have been doing lots of different P.E. this term. We have done some WriteDance to help us with our Handwriting, bikes to practise our gross motor skills and this week we have had our first lesson in the Hall. Our homework this week was to practise changing our clothes without grown-up help and we did really well to change our clothes and pull our clothes the right way round!
What an amazing first Forest School Day we have had! We have found out how to keep ourselves safe, what to do if we get lost and even been around the site putting out Hazard Flags whenever we found something that might be dangerous!
Then we were ready for our learning time... we have been bug hunting, digging and sieving, building harvesting machines, making dens and lots lots more. Come and see what we have been up to...
We have been on a visit to Spain today in Cygnet Class! We arrived at school and got straight on the aeroplane with our passports!
We found out lots of interesting things about Spain, especially the fact that Pablo Picasso was born there.
We have had lots of fun making the Spanish flag, Spanish fans and doing our very own Flamenco dancing!
We then finished our afternoon travelling back from Spain but due to our flight being cancelled we ended up biking back to Portway!
We have been learning all about the artist Pablo Picasso this week. We practised our scissor skills to cut up photographs of our faces to then stick down and create our own piece of art in the style of Picasso. We had lots of fun and tomorrow we are of on our first 'Far Away Friday' to visit Spain, the place that Pablo was born.
We have been learning all about ourselves, drawing self-portraits and finding out about the different things that we like. This week we have found out about our families and been on a visit to our role play 'Family House'.
What a busy first week we have had a Portway! We have been finding out about the different places inside and outside of our classroom, learning about how to use the different resources and making lots of friends. We have had a great start to our time in Year R! Come and see what we have been up to ......
