Portway Infant School
We have been very busy being farmers today at Longdown Farm....... just look at all of the jobs we had to do before we got our lunch!! Watch our slideshow to see how busy we have been.
We went to Forest School today and were busy making habitats for earthworms, woodlice and black ants. We thought carefully about what we knew about them and then used this information to build them a home which was just right for them. We then had a chance to do some of our favourite Forest School Special Time jobs and finished with lunch at the Forest School Cafe! We had a fantastic time! Come and watch our slideshow to see what we did.
We have met a London bus who has been off on some adventures!!!
Log in to our Google Classroom to watch the movie that we have made. We are very excited to share it with you. (I have downloaded it onto our stream as it was too long to put onto our website but please let me know if you are unable to find it!)
We have been learning about the author Petr Horacek who was born in Prague so today we decided to pay a visit to the Czech Republic. We got our passports out, collected our sticker and boarded the flight to Prague.
When we arrived we made flags and said 'Ahoj'!
We found out that there are over 2,000 castles in the Czech Republic so we designed and made our own castles.
Prague Castle is the largest, ancient castle in the world so we even made that too!!
We have loved learning different art techniques from different artists. We have learnt new skills from Vincent Van Gogh, Pat Hutchins and Petr Horacek!
First, Van Gogh taught us about colour mixing to create different colours and we used this technique to paint our own sunflower paintings.
We used these colours again when we looked at the pictures in the story 'Rosie's Walk' by Pat Hutchins. This time we added extra detail with a whiteboard pen.
We have just finished looking at artwork by Petr Horacek and used his video of 'How to draw Suzy Goose' to draw our own Suzy Goose. He likes to cut out his pictures and add them to a background so we did the same. I love how every goose looks different! The speech bubbles tell you what we are good at as the story tells us that everyone is different and special in their own way. Rroarrhonk!!
We are very excited as some countdown balloons arrived in our classroom ready for Year 1. Every Friday afternoon we can do our transition activity and then pop the next balloon for our treat.
Today we found out who our Year 1 teacher is going to be! We had some fun photos and videos to watch as a guessing game. When we popped our number 6 balloon it was cosmic kids..... perfect for a rainy Friday afternoon.
I wonder what it will be next Friday!!
What a lovely surprise when we came back to school..... our butterflies had emerged and were in our butterfly net. We have had them in our classroom to watch but today we set them free ready to lay their own eggs and start the life cycle again.
Today we said goodbye to our ducklings so we had them over to our outdoor area for a 'play date'. We have loved having them but the good news is that we will be able to keep in touch with them and we know that they have moved to wonderful 'runaround homes'.
We have had the best time at Forest School today and the sun was shining at last!
We have been learning about different bugs and spent some of our time bug hunting in different habitats. We found slugs, woodlice, snails, centipedes, worms and even some ants.
Then we went to our Special Time. We had some new activities this time including 'story bags' and and the soft toys, as well as our old favourites.
Did you know........ ants can lift 20 times their own weight, that would be like a 7 year old lifting a small car!
Did you know...... if you accidentally cut an earthworm in half, the half with a 'saddle' will still live!
Did you know....... a woodlouse has it's skeleton on the outside. It is called an 'exoskeleton'!
Our four ducklings have been busy growing and have been outside every day. They love to paddle and explore in the grass.
Our caterpillars have also been growing and eating so much that they have turned into cocoons. We are very excited for when they emerge as butterflies!
The ducklings have safely hatched and we now have four very excited ducklings at school.
Let me introduce you to Ellie....
Erin
Ed
Last of all, the youngest, Eric.
They were very excited to move into their cage!
The ducklings came for a visit to our classroom too. We were able to meet them properly and see them running around.
We are very excited! During the Easter holidays we had a special delivery of a strange parcel...... inside were 4 duck eggs.
The eggs are now in our incubator. They have to incubate for 28 days and this weekend the time is up. We have our fingers crossed that there will be four runner ducklings very soon.
This week we another parcel that arrived and that was full of new life too. We have some caterpillars to watch in our classrooms as they change into butterflies and we can learn about their life cycle.
We have been finding out about the artist Vincent Van Gogh and how he liked to paint pictures of sunflowers.
We then had our own turn at painting in the style of Van Gogh to create our own sunflower pictures and they are absolutely beautiful. We mixed colours to match the ones in the original paintings and then used different sized brushes to paint the flower heads, thinking carefully about the shapes and details that we needed.
We have started to borrow books from our Portway library. It is a lovely place to visit with displays and lots of books to choose from.
Today we all wore red in support of Red Nose day for Comic Relief.
A huge thank you to the kitchen for making our Superhero Day super special and giving us our own lunch to match our learning. We even had Superhero cupcakes to match our costumes!!
We had a great time at Forest School this week out in the sunshine. We put out our Hazard Flags and then learnt how to make a fire by collecting 'tinder' first and then building it up with bigger and bigger twigs in a pyramid shape. We also found out that it is a good idea to snap the twigs to check whether they are dry enough to burn. We then had a real fire together with our adults. After that we had Special Time in the forest....... come and see what we did!
We have had a lovely day today, it was such a treat. We all got ready for Christmas Dinner and wore Elf hats to lunch. When we got to the Hall, the tables were decorated and we even had presents from the PTA!! Thank you!
The grown ups brought our Christmas Dinner and we all ate together.
In the afternoon we even had a Pantomime and popcorn….. oh yes we did!!
We have been learning about birthdays and today we gave Hubble his first ever birthday!
We stapled paper chains to decorate the classroom, made him cards and made our own hats. Then we played ‘Musical Chairs’ and finished with cake! What a great day.
We went to Forest School this week and made our own Bear Hunt ‘camouflage crowns’ using things from the environment. We were very proud and wore them for the rest of the morning! Then we had lots of fun finding hazards and marking them with flags, building dens and marble runs and moving earth to the vegetable plots. Some of us even went on a Bug Hunt!
How are you doing with learning your words in your Word Wallet? Oakley has been working hard with his words and he can help you with yours too. Just watch his videos and you can learn together.
He has a video for white words and another one for green words.
We all dressed up as Superheroes today to tell everyone about World Diabetes Day.
We used our day being Superheroes to support the care homes over Christmas and made things for the Portway hampers.
We made notelets and Christmas cards…..
We have so enjoyed playing in the Autumn leaves this week. We talked about how the weather is changing and that the leaves on the trees are changing colour and falling off.
We used the iPad to take photos of ourselves having fun in all of our Portway Autumn leaves.
Today it is Elmer Day in Year R so we all dressed up in different colours and patterns.
Come and look at our Parade!!!! Did you spot Elmer?
We had the best time at Forest School and the sun shone for us!
First of all we listened to how we would stay safe and then we worked in pairs and took our ‘Hazard Flags’ off around the site to mark anything that we thought might be a hazard. We found holly, brambles, sticks, holes and our fire pit.
Now that we knew how to keep ourselves and our friends safe, we could go and have some fun.
We built huge marble runs and dens, went bug hunting, dug and cooked in the mud kitchen. We enjoyed ourselves so much that we didn’t realise it had got to lunch time.
We have been learning all about numbers and counting this week. We have found lots of different things to count at school.
What can you find to count at home?
Don’t forget….. always move the objects when you count them so that you know when to stop! How many have you counted?
We have been learning about the artist Pablo Picasso. He loved to make pictures of faces that looked sideways and forwards at the same time and had lots of different colours. We decided to make our own Pablo faces by cutting up photographs of us and then sticking down the features in different places. We had lots of fun and also practised our cutting skills at the same time.
Have a look at the different faces that we made …..
We have been listening to stories about Elmer and making our own collage and chalk Elmers.
He was an elephant that was lots of different colours but on Elmer Day all of the other elephants make themselves different colours and Elmer makes himself elephant colour.
Here is our display of Elmer Day. We printed with shapes to decorate the elephants.
How many different Nursery Rhymes do you know? Our Book Corner in the classroom has got some Nursery Rhyme pictures and this story uses the characters to tell a new story about Humpty Dumpty.
What do you think Humpty Dumpty should have been when he grew up?
Do you know what you want to be?
Oh my goodness! The sun has been shining, we have been learning both inside and outside and we have had so much fun. Look at how busy we have been and see how many of your friends you can spot….
We have had such a good first week at school. We have been making new friends and learning where things are in our classroom and outside.
We have even got some fish that can be part of our Portway family!
I wonder if you can think of any names for the fish. There is one that is orange, one with stripes and two that shimmer when they swim.
We have also been listening to the Rainbow Fish story and used our hands to make our own fish to add to our class story picture. If you look really closely, you can see where Rainbow Fish has shared some of her special scales. This story made us think about how important it is to share when we are with our friends.
