Portway Infant School
What an amazing day we have had today on our visit to Longdown Dairy Farm. We loved our trip on the coach and when we got there we were greeted by Farmer Bob. He told us all about what we were going to do. We were to be the farmers for the day. The most important rule was if the animals didn't get fed we didn't get fed!!! The animals had to come first!!
We had a great time seeing the Chicks, Guinea Pigs, Pigs and Piglets, Horses, Goats and Kids and many more animals. We even went on a very bumpy tractor ride. How very lucky are we!!!
Mrs Mundy secretly had the best time as she got to get very close to her favourite animal 'Daisy the cow'!!!!
We were exhausted by the time we had finished our busy Jobs and there was just time to have lunch before returning home. Do you see anyone napping on the coach?!
We had a great time in Forest School this week! Look at all the things we got up to....
We have begun our learning about London this week. We read the story of 'The Naughty Bus' which is about a London bus that gets into all kinds of trouble!
We made our own naughty bus video in our classroom. You can Log on to Google Classroom to see it!
We have been learning about the author and artist Petr Horacek. Today we decided to take a trip to his birth place in the Czech Republic. We boarded 'Gosling Airways' with our passports and after a safety announcement took off to the Capital City of Prague. We enjoyed some in flight snacks and drinks delivered by our Flight Attendant and then touched down.
We learnt that the Czech Republic has 2,000 castles and Prague Castle is as big as 45 football pitches.
We spent some time designing and making our own castles and flags before Flying back to England just in time for Home Time! What a busy day!
We have been looking at three different artists lately; Vincent Van Gogh, Pat Hutchins and Petr Horacek. We decided to create our own pictures using their style of drawing and paintings!
Mrs Mundy thought our work was fabulous and decided to put them up on display. Do you like them?
We were very excited when some countdown balloons arrived in our classroom ready to help us in our countdown to be in Year 1.
Every Friday we will be doing a transition activity and then pop that weeks balloon for our reward!
Today we were excited to find out who our Year 1 teacher will be. We had some photo's and a video to watch and we played a guessing game to guess our new teacher. When we popped our balloon our reward was to do some Cosmic Kids Yoga. Perfect for a wet afternoon!
I wonder what we will be doing next week!
What excitement awaited us when we returned to school this week to find that our cocoons were empty and we had butterflies!
We decided that they would be much happier in our beautiful woodland area and so went out together to release them and say our goodbyes. We had a great time watching them fly away and even got some close up time before they flew off to their new home!
Today we said goodbye to our ducklings. We are sad to see them go but we know they are going to a better 'Runaround home' with even more space and other animals to play with. We are hoping that they will be able to come back to Portway for a visit in the future. We can't wait to see how tall they grow!
Have a look at the 'Splashing' fun they had with us before they left...
We have had a great time in Forest School again today! We spent some time talking about the different bugs we might find in the forest and talked about how to keep them safe. We then did our own bug hunting and shared our finds!
Some free play in the forest came next, with ball runs, story bags, mud kitchen, den building and decorating wood blocks as well as digging and pond dipping (our tadpoles are growing!)
We finished our time in the forest with a camp fire and a sing song!
Have a look at the fun we had....
Our ducklings have been having lots of fun in our outside area. They love splashing in the homemade pond!!
Our caterpillars grew bigger and bigger and bigger and then they turned into cocoons!
We are very excited to announce the arrival of Erin, Ellie, Ed and Eric! They hatched on Sunday and Monday and have settled happily into their new Portway home!
Goslings had a lovely time watching our new ducklings running around (they are very speedy!!)
We enjoyed a little cuddle too!
We are very excited! During the Easter holidays we had a delivery of a 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 had another parcel arrive and that was full of new life too! We have some Caterpillars to watch in our classrooms as they change into butterflies. We are learning all about their life cycle.
We have been learning all about Vincent Van Gogh. We looked at how he used dark colours in his early paintings and then after moving to Paris was inspired to use brighter colours. We loved his famous Sunflowers Painting and decided to make our own Sunflower paintings. We love how individual they all are! What do you think?
We are very lucky at Portway to have our very own library that we can visit each week and borrow books to take home.
We love to visit the library and spend time looking at all the different books. We even get to scan our own book to borrow.
We have had a great day today with our red nose day themed activities.
This morning we had fun out on the Bikes and Trikes. Can you spot our Red Nose Helmets?!!
After the excitement of the bikes we then came inside to tell each other our Red Nose Day Jokes. We all had a LOT of laughs! It was great fun!
Just in case you are interested here is Mrs Mundys Joke...
There were 2 cows in a field.
One cow said "Moooo"
The other cow said "Oh I was just about to say that"
(It works with other animals too!!!!)
We had a fabulous Superhero Day today! An extra special thanks to our lovely kitchen staff who made our lunchtime an extra special 'Superhero Lunch'!!
We had a great day out in the forest on Tuesday. We were so excited to be together in the big outdoors.
First we sat around the camp fire and talked about the hazards that might be in the forest. This was a great reminder to us to be careful and watchful while enjoying ourselves.
Miss Birmingham told us all about the 'Cuckoo Pint' plant that is now growing and we had to go and identify it with Hazard flags. This plant is not good to touch so we needed to know where it was to avoid it when we play.
After that we were really lucky to be shown how to make a fire and then we got to go into different areas to collect tinder and kindling to set up our own fires. Miss Birmingham then lit the the fire in the camp fire circle while we talked about what a fire needs to burn and how we need to keep safe from fire. We also learnt how to safely extinguish the camp fire at the end. We watched the fire burn and sang a camp fire song! It was so much fun!
We LOVED our time in the forest and were so lucky to have some glorious sunshine to enjoy as well!
We had a very exciting day today! At lunchtime we had our Christmas Dinner with our teachers and a special present from the P.T.A. Have a look at the yummy food and fun we had.
In the afternoon we watched a special pantomime of Cinderella… also a gift from the P.T.A. We are very lucky children!
We read the story of ‘Ruff’ by Jane Hissey today and we realised that our own Lost bear “Hubble” had never had a birthday.
We decided to throw him his first birthday party!
It was a very busy day of planning and preparation, we made cards, paperchains, banners and pictures. We even made Hubble a special chair to sit in as well as his very own 4 poster bed in case he got tired!
In the afternoon we played party games, danced and sang happy birthday to Hubble. Then we had cake to finish off what was a most exciting time for Hubble …. and us of course!!!
We had a great time on our Forest School afternoon. We had a recap safety talk from Olive and Mrs Mundy was very impressed with how much we remembered!
Then we played a special game which taught us what to do if we get lost in the forest. Half of us went into the forest and hid then the other half shouted “1, 2, 3 Where are you” and then stopped and listened, we had to stay standing still and shout “1, 2, 3 I’m over here” this chant kept going until we were found!
You might like to play this game at home to practise what to do if you get lost.
We had fun making ourselves camouflaged by making headbands out of the leaves and natural materials (ideal for going on a bear hunt!!)
There was plenty of other jobs to do in the forest too!
Look at all the fun we had…
We made a collage of the different places in the bear hunt story!
Can you see us in the picture?
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 dressed as superheroes to raise some money and awareness for Diabetes.
We decided that as we were being superheroes for the day we could do something kind for the people in our community.
We wanted to help those in care homes that may not be able to see their families at Christmas time. We thought it would be nice to send them some decorations for their Christmas tree and some decorated cards and gift tags that they could use to send to their friends and family. We also decorated some paper chain strips so they could make some Christmas decorations for their home.
So what a fun day we have had being kind superheroes!!!
We had a great time on our Wellie Walk exploring the Autumn leaves. The children talked about all the signs of Autumn that they have noticed over the last few weeks.
We have noticed all the different colours of the leaves on the trees and that lots of them have fallen to the ground.
We have noticed the mornings and evenings are darker, it’s even dark when we are eating our tea!
We have noticed the weather getting windier and colder.
Some children talked about the animals that will hibernate and the many many places that the squirrels hide their food. We learned that a squirrel can have up to 300 different hiding places!! We definitely think we could not remember where 300 places were!
Have a look at our photo’s to see the fun. You may notice why we came home so messy that day!!!
We had great fun on our Elmer Day. The children all dressed in bright colours to be Elmer while Mrs Mundy dressed in grey to be berry coloured Elmer!!
We made our own Elmer Parade…
Gosling Class had a great time in Forest School today!
We started our time with a safety talk from Miss Birmingham and her friend Olive the Orangutan. They told us all about the dangers in the forest such as low branches, prickles on the trees and uneven ground.
Then we were given Hazard flags to explore the area and see if we could mark out our own hazards.
It was then time for us to explore the forest some more and do some activities of our own.
We enjoyed bug hunting, digging a hole ready for a pond, den building, making giant marble runs, taking log dogs for a walk and playing in the mud kitchen. As well as general exploration of the forest.
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?
We have had great fun learning about the famous artist Pablo Picasso.
We loved finding out facts about him. I wonder how many facts you could remember?
We found it very funny that he has 23 names, non of us could reach that number with our names!
We took photo’s of our faces and cut them up (remembering to keep our thumbs at the top when using the scissors) to make new faces in the style of Pablo Picasso. Have a look and see how they turned out…
Do you recognise us in our pictures?!
We have been listening to stories about Elmer and making our own collage and printed 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?
We have had a fabulous start to our journey at Portway. We have been busy learning all about our new classroom and making new friends!
Look at all the fun we have had…
We have had a fantastic first week at school. Mrs Mundy and Mrs Garland are very proud of all the children. What superstars they have been!
We have been looking at the story of ‘The Rainbow Fish’ and have talked about how kind it is to share and how happy it makes us. I wonder if you can practise your kind sharing over the weekend with your family.
We made a display of our own ‘Handprint Fish’ and we all got a shiny scale from the rainbow fish to add to our design.
This is ‘Beethoven’….
This is ‘Dave’……
These are the Twins ‘Twinkle’ and ‘Star’……..
