Portway Infant School
We have been enjoying the story of Rosie's Walk as part of our new topic this half term. We absolutely loved watching Rosie escape the sneaky fox all around the farm so we decided to paint our favourite part of the story. We carefully looked at the pages from the book to decide what colours we would need and layered our paintings so that it included lots of detail. Once our paintings were dry we went over them with black pen to add the finer details using iPads to zoom in on the pictures and make ours look exactly like the book. We are so proud of our work!
Spring Walk
We went on a Spring Walk to look for signs of spring. We took an identification sheet to spot any spring flowers on our way! We saw lots of flowers and we also spotted small buds and blossom on the trees .
We listened carefully and heard the birds singing in the trees (we also saw a cat on the field!!)
Yesterday was Superhero Day at Portway in Year R. Everyone dressed up to be a real-life superhero or a fictional superhero. We had lots of fun and posed for a photo which we can use for our big classroom display and some comic strip writing. We look forward to sharing our learning with you.
To continue with our learning of real life superheroes, today we learnt all about The Dentist. We learnt about why it is important to keep our teeth clean and brushed twice a day. We even learnt a song about it! We talked about what types of food are good for our teeth and sorted the food into healthy and not healthy.
We had lots of fun drawing decay onto teeth sheets and using toothbrushes to brush the decay away!!
This half term we are learning all about real life superheroes and today we had some special visitors to help us with our learning.
The Police came to visit us today and talked to us about how they keep everyone safe in Andover. They showed us the different parts of their uniform and the equipment they use to do their job. We had lots of questions which they answered for us and then after all of that, we went outside to see their Police car and even got to sit inside!
We have had a great day dressing up as some of our favourite book characters for World Book Day...... come and see!
The sun was shining brightly all day today for our Forest School and what a great time was had by all.
We are going to be looking at real life superheroes this half of term and so in preparation we learnt all about fire. This is what Firefighters need to know all about. We used the words ignite and extinguish and talked about what needs to come together to allow a fire to start. We made or own little fire squares by using tinder, kindling and dry sticks. After this we learnt how to make sparks with steels and then Miss Birmingham lit our camp fire, we had a great sing song around the fire and then we learnt how to extinguish the fire safely.
We are looking forward to World Book Day on thursday and have been reading books by Julia Donaldson. We read 'Stick Man' and made our own stick people in the forest!
Farm to Fork Week!
We came back to school last week, raring to go on our second Farm to Fork week. We remembered the different types of farms we have around us and learnt about how we get the yummy food we enjoy so much. We've been busy being Portway Farmer's again this week, this time planting cress seeds ready to grow and hopefully eat when it is ready!
'Castle Gosling' had the greatest time at the ball today! We got to dress up in our finest clothes and dance the morning away in the hall! We used our pattern learning to remember our dance moves and we gave a bow and curtsey to our partners.
We enjoyed biscuits and a drink too! When the clock struck 12 the magic went away and we had to return home to our castles!!
We had a great time in the forest on Monday. We were learning all about following trails, just like in the story of Hansel and Gretel! We had to look out for different signs that were left all around the school grounds! We followed the signs which brought us to the fire circle where we enjoyed a warm cup of hot chocolate as a treat!
We enjoyed making our own signs and trails in our special time. What a fabulous day!
Yesterday we went on 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 how they use symbols to represent letters and numbers and made our own flags and red lanterns. We even practised using chopsticks to eat noodles!
Today we had a special visitor who told us the story of the great race and we performed our own 'Dragon Dance'.
We have loved learning all about China!
In PE this half term we are 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!
With all of the cold weather we have been having, we thought that we would use it to explore the water that had frozen into ice in our Outside Area. This gave us the idea to make ice decorations. We worked in partners to collect natural resources and put them into a plate. We then added water and left it overnight to freeze
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.
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 bear 'Hubble' 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 had a great day in the forest today! We made camouflage crowns using the natural materials in the forest and then we went on our very own BEAR HUNT!!!! We sang "We're Going on a Bear Hunt, We're going to catch a 'little' one, what a beautiful day, We're not scared!" It was a beautiful day and we were not scared at all! We found a Bear and lots of little bears too! We got to keep a little bear to keep as our very own bear!
We had lots of fun doing our favourite jobs in the forest for the rest of the day.
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 Wednesday we had the best fun playing in the leaves in our outside area.
'Brown Bear, Brown Bear what do you see...'
I see all of Gosling'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 had a great week this week looking at where are food comes from and how it gets from the farms to our plates!
We have been busy learning about different types of farms – Pastoral, Arable and Mixed – We have planted our own Radishes after reading the story ‘Rosie Plants a Radish’ and we have been doing lots of special time jobs linked to our learning.
On our bikes and trikes we tried to stay with our partners along a line as if we were harvesting in the fields.
On Wednesday we prepared and tasted lots of fruit and vegetables, we were very excited to do this job and there were quite a few empty plates at the end of it!
We have had the best day at our first Forest School today. First we learnt how to keep ourselves safe if we got lost and marked all of the hazards with red flags.
We played a game where we had to pretend to be lost and stand still while the other group shouted "1,2,3 where are you?" then we shouted back "1,2,3 we're over here" we took turns in shouting while they followed our voices to find us!
Then we had lots of fun bug hunting, cooking in the Mud Kitchen, digging and making music!
In the afternoon Miss Birmingham taught us how to make dens in the forest using pegs and tarporlin. We had a little Robin visit us while she was talking, he was so friendly! He even hopped into one of the dens!
We can't wait to go again!!
When the sun is shining we like to take our learning outside and what better way to get some exercise and practise our turn taking than going on the bikes and trikes! We have lots of different designs - even some that move by using our hands! We can develop our gross motor skills and balance by having some fun with our friends.
We have been learning about Pablo Picasso! We loved looking at the funny faces he created and decided to cut up photo's of our faces to make pictures in the style of Picasso!
Can you tell the pictures are of us?!!
We have been to Spain today to learn about the place that Pablo Picasso was born. We each had a passport and went on a plane to Madrid. We said hello and goodbye in spanish, made flags and fans and even did some flamenco dancing!!
We had our first taste of PE this week at Portway. We only took off our shoes and socks this time but we did so brilliantly and with hardly any help! We headed into the hall to perform some Write Dance. We listened to music and made circles and eights with our arms to music. Once we had practised this we used floaty scarves and performed to our friends!
We have had a great time starting school at Portway. We have been very busy learning all about the different areas in our classroom and the outside area. We loved having playtime on the pirate ship playground and we have made lots of new friends at school!
Mrs Mundy is so proud of our good choices and how well we have settled into school life!
Have a look at our photo’s to see what we have been up to…
