Portway Infant School
We have been learning all about the artist Vincent Van Gogh. We practised our colour mixing to make greens, oranges and different yellows and copied one of his famous sunflower pictures. We tried hard to match the shapes and textures he used to create a painting in his style. We were very proud of the sunflower pictures we painted.
We have been learning about the artist Vincent Van Gogh and decided to take a Far Away visit to the country that he was born.... The Netherlands. We went on our plane and then made flags, windmills and built Amsterdam with the houses right next to the canals. In our outside area we built dams and dikes then tested our building with water to see if they worked. We also found out that there are more bikes than people so we went on bikes oursleves this afternoon and then tasted some Edam cheese and stroop waffels. They were delicious!
What a busy week we have had! We have been learning all about different farms and sowing seeds ready to grow our own vegetables to harvest in the Autumn!
We also made a shopping list of the vegetables we might need for a delicous soup and some of us were lucky enough to go to Kenyons to buy the ingredients we needed.
We then practised our bridge cut to cut up the vegetables ready to cook.....
Finally we could take our soup to Forest School where we sat around the fire singing songs and eating the finished product..... it was delicious!!
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?
The whole school shared a special story called 'Where Has All The Cake Gone?'....... I think I may know......
We have been learning all about real life superheroes and the jobs that they do. We have also been finding out what they need to help them do their job and the uniform that they wear.
Nurse Lizzie came and told us all about her job and how she helps to keep people well and safe.
We had a dentist who has told us all how to look after our teeth and keep them clean.
And today we had a visit from two Police Officers who showed us all of their gadgets on their uniform and in their car!
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'.
Before lunch we lit a real fire and sang songs before putting it out with water.
We started our week with a Far Away Trip to China where we found out all about the flag, dragons, pagodas and The Great Wall of China. We looked at the writing and numbers and worked together to create music for own dragon dances. We even practised using chopsticks to eat noodles ready for our celebration of Chinese New Year in the afternnoon!
We were also lucky enough to have our own Chinese Dance Workshop where we learnt how to dance like chinese lions and dragons and made our own long dragons to move around the Hall. We also found out that you can dance with parasols!!
Today we had our own Cinderella Ball. We got ready into our special clothes so that we were turned into Princes and Princesses!
We have been practising patterns in our dance to match the music. We used this learning when we went to the Ball.
When the clock struck 12 we had to go back to class and change into our uniform clothes!
We had a brilliant time!
We have been making Forest School into a magical place to be!
In the past we have used oil pastels and collaged photographs to make Picasso faces but today we used clay and collage from our environment to make faces on trees!!
We squashed a ball of clay onto the trunk of a tree and then collected eyes, noses and mouths to make the clay into a face. This is what they looked like when we had finished them......
We noticed that new life has started to grow and we will have lots of daffodils growing around school soon.
We have also been busy with our 'Learning Time' and can do it all without grown up help, asking our friends to help us instead. There is a lot of 'secret learning' at Forest School.
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!
Lots of us have been busy decorating trees in our homes for Christmas but today we have been decorating the trees outside by making ice decorations!
We started yesterday by choosing objects from the environment to put into plates and then added water and handles. If the temperature fell below zero overnight then the water would freeze and we would have ice decorations in the morning..........
It worked!! The water froze and we could hang our decorations up in the trees. They looked beautiful .....
We have been learning all about the artist Kandinsky this week. We looked at lots of his different pictures and then decided to make our own art in the style of his 'Squares with Concentric Circles'. We chose colours for our art and then practised our cutting skills to cut out the circles.
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 Chrismassy and special!!
Today we had a birthday party for Buttons. We made party hats, cards and decorations and then invited Buttons for his very first birthday party. We played musical chairs and had juice and cookies as our special celebration food. We have had so much fun with our learning!!
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....... especially our lovely big oak tree outside our classroom so today we had the best fun playing in the leaves in our outside area.
We have been off on our travels again today but this time we have been to India to celebrate Diwali. We went on our plane and then were very busy preparing for our celebration making flags, play dough sweets, decorations and jewellery. We also learnt that Diwali is a celebration of light so we put lights on our window sills and made firework pictures to put on the windows and rangoli patterns to decorate the floor.
This afternoon we did dancing and ate some food from India while listening to Indian music. We have had a brilliant day!
What lucky Ducklings 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...
This week at school we have been reading the story Brown Bear, Brown Bear and made up new characters for our own story. We designed our masks before making them and used collage to create the features.
Can you guess the characters by looking at the masks and make up a new story using the repeated story language?
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 oursleves 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 done .......
We have flown to Spain today because it was the country where Pablo Picasso was born. We all had passports and got on our plane while we found out about Spain. We then had lots of fun making flags and fans and even did some flamenco dancing in the Hall!
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 ......
