Pre-Prep Newsletter Article - Friday 30 September 2022

The Pre-Prep children have been immersed in a wide variety of wonderful stories this week from traditional tales to stories about colour and shape.  Not only are the stories fun, but they teach story structure, expand imagination and teach children about decisions, consequences and morals. We have also been exploring our PSHE topic of “Being me in my world”, building an understanding of who we are, how we fit in, what makes us special and unique and what are our rights and responsibilities in school and at home. It’s wonderful to watch our amazing Pre-Prep children develop their character and learn to celebrate themselves and others.

This week in Nursery, linking to our focus story, The Dragonflies have been looking at shapes that we might notice in the Hazlegrove community. The children were fascinated by "Mr Benbow's House" (aka the main school house) which has small shapes within one big shape. We then created our very own landscape of buildings. The Butterflies have been looking at the story 'Nibbles Colours'. The children went on a colour hunt around the school, matching their beanbags to colours in the environment. 

The clippity clop of high heels and thump-thump of boots could be heard from Reception class this week! Linked to our focus story ‘The Elves and the Shoemaker’, the children have enjoyed spending money and giving change in our class shoe shop. In Maths we have been measuring and comparing our feet, using cubes and learning the importance of measuring accurately. After designing their own magical shoes, the children wrote descriptions of what they could do. Would you like rainbow shoes that could fly? Or perhaps some colour changing skates? The children practised their sewing skills in forest school using Autumn leaves and enjoyed identifying them using the key from Mrs Millard.  It has been a magical week!

In Year 1, our new week came with some very exciting learning! In English, we continued to explore more traditional tales with an old favourite, “The Gingerbread Man”, writing and publishing our very own version of the story. In Science, we explored our five senses, tasting and describing sweet and salty foods whilst considering what they brought to each sense. We turned on our super brains in Maths as we worked with some big numbers (some all the way up to 100!) looking at finding more and less or counting on from a given number. We did not just remain in the classroom either! We went on a walk around the School, following a map and looking at the features as well as putting ourselves and our own homes on a map!

Porridgies are a great favourite of Katie Morag’s and now the children of Year 2 love them too. On Wednesday, the tantalizing smell of the baking porridgies filled the air, with the children eager to taste them as soon as they came out. We all wrote down the recipe and many of us are eager to try making them at home! Here is the recipe:

100g butter, 75g soft brown sugar, 2 tablespoons syrup, 200g oats and most importantly a pinch of salt. Melt the sugars and the butter use the mixture to coat the oats and bake 110c or gas mark 3 for 30 minutes or until golden brown. When cool, enjoy with a warm beverage.

We look forward to welcoming our Reception and Nursery parents into School next week for a “stay and play” session on Monday and of course, everybody else for our Harvest Assembly on Wednesday at 9.10am.

Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Jenkins