Welcome to Badger Class!

Badger Class is our Reception class, where Mr. Waddington is the class teacher and Mrs. Dyer is the teaching assistant.  This class page will be regularly updated with news and photos of the exciting learning we have been doing at school. 

Please check your child's book bag on a daily basis, as information is often sent home in them.

Our PE days are Monday and Wednesday.  On Monday's we will doing indoor PE and will change at school.  Please come to school in your PE kit on Wednesday for outdoor PE. 

Daily Check List:

Book bag (With reading book, reading record and Phonics book)

Coat

Water bottle

Lunch box (If not receiving school dinners)

Reading Records and Reading Books

We will put a phonetically decodable reading book into your child's book bag, which we would like you to share with your child at home.  Please get your child to read their phonetically decodable book at least five times a week and record it in their reading record. Please only record school books in the reading record.  These phonetically decodable reading books will be changed weekly on a Friday.  The children are really good at recalling the stories from memory, so we have put a folder in the book bags with the green words list for each book; please use the list to practice sounding out and blending the words out of sequence.

Your child will also be choosing a reading for pleasure book each week.  This is for you to share with your child at home.  When you share this book with your child you can record it in your child's reading record.  Please note: Your child is not expected to read this book, but may be able to sound out and decode some of the words.  These books will be changed weekly on a Friday.

Red Phonics Books

Each week we will be learning new Phonics GPCs.  Copies of these GPCs have been put in a red phonics book in your child's book bag.  Please don't write in or stick anything into these books, they are a record of the GPCs that we learn each week and are for reference so that your children can practice at home with you.

Our Classroom and Garden

We are very lucky to have a wonderful classroom, a sheltered decking area and and a large garden, to play and learn in.

Please follow the link below to access information on our Badger Class Curriculum.

Term 3 (2022-2023)

Week 4

This week, as part of our science learning, we have been exploring ice.  The children helped to melt the ice and free the dinosaurs.  It was a lovely way to explore the different physical states of water.  Some of the children were even able to tell me what happens to water when it gets really hot, using words such as evaporation, steam and condensation.

In topic this week we looked more at the role of Police Officers.  We read the story 'Burglar Bill' and talked about how the police catch burglars.  We then created finger prints and looked at them under the magnifying glasses.

We learnt about Chinese New Year.  We started by looking at where China is located on the globe.  We then learnt a little bit about Chinese New Year and then we made our own Chinese paper lanterns.  

Week 3

This week we wrote some sentences about 'The Three Billy Goats Gruff'.  We also carried on with lots of role play.

Our Maths learning was heavily influenced by the Numberblocks this week.  The children had to put themselves in order by repeating the rhyme 'I'm bigger than you, I'm smaller than you, Diddly diddly doo!'.  They then repeated the process with resources.

We continued our topic learning this week by exploring 'People Who Help Us' at hospital.  The children thoroughly enjoyed bandaging themselves and each other up.

In science we continued our learning about the different seasons.  We found some ice that had formed in the water table and the bucket.  The children enjoyed breaking the ice up and watching it melt.    

Week 2

This week we started our new English story 'The Three Billy Goats Gruff'.  We went on a troll hunt.  We checked under the wooden bridge to see if one was hiding there.

We started our story themed 'continuous provision' activities.  It is amazing how quickly the children are able to retell a story and act it out nearly word for word!

A Veterinary Surgery opened up in the role play corner and the children got straight to work caring for sick animals.

Our topic this term is 'People Who Help Us'.  The children have really enjoyed dressing up as different people who help us.  

We have been playing dice and counter games in Maths to help us with our subitising and counting skills.  It has also been quite good at helping us to practice taking turns and being a good sport! ;)

Week 1

What a first week back it has been.  It may have only been a four day week, but we have worked so hard that Mr. Waddington, Mrs. Dyer and most of the children feel exhausted!

We launched straight back into our Phonics learning this term, and the children were eager to show that their letter formation had got even better over the Christmas Holidays.

This week we have been exploring shape.  We have been looking at both 2D and 3D shapes and the differences between the two.  

The children went on a shape hunt around school with Mrs. Dyer.  They spotted lots of different 2D and 3D shapes.

We started our topic learning for this term.  'People Who Help Us'.  The children coloured in, cut out and made split pin puppets of different people who help us; we made firefighters, paramedics, police officers, doctors, nurses, librarians, mechanics etc...

Be warned parents, we will be asking those of you who's jobs fall into the category of 'People Who Help Us', to come in to school later in the term and talk to the children about what you do!

For topic learning we drew pictures of 'People Who Help Us' and wrote down key words to explain who we had drawn. 

For our Literacy learning we drew pictures and wrote words to show/describe our Christmas news.  It sounds like Badger Class got some pretty fantastic presents this Christmas, and got to do some pretty amazing activities.

We eventually had some better weather towards the end of the week, and were finally able to venture outside.  Sensibly, we stayed on the decking as the ground was too wet and muddy.

Term 2 (2022-2023)

Week 7

This week was filled with Christmas Activities and Christmas themed learning.  We also had Christmas Jumper Day, as you can tell from the photos.

The children continued to learn about the Christmas Story.  They sequenced pictures in the correct order and retold the story.

We explored the Numberblocks 1 - 5 and created some number sentences.  We used the Numberblocks to add, subtract and compare numbers 1 - 5.

We have found exciting ways of learning our reading words (HFW).  Here is one of the fishing games that we have been playing.  If you don't know the word on the card you have to throw it back in!

We continued exploring our numbers to 5, finding different ways of composing them.

The children enjoyed the Christmas themed writing activities, but most of all they enjoyed setting up their own library again.  They seemed to particularly enjoy demanding fines for late returns!

We celebrated Austin's birthday and we made Christmas wishes and prayers.

It wasn't all fun and games, we had to do some writing as well!  We practiced using our new Phase 3 phonics sounds.  These have been introduced this term and will be recapped at the beginning of next term.

Happy Holidays Everyone!!! :)

Week 6

Wow! What a week it has been.

We had not one, not two but three successful Nativity performances.  The children were amazing and looked fantastic in all of their outfits.

Daniel from The Bridge Project visited us this week to talk to us about 'The Colours of Christmas'.  The children thoroughly enjoyed the narrative, the message and the activities but they especially enjoyed singing 'Little Donkey'.

Children have been running a post office in the home corner this week.  They have been cutting out stamps, weighing parcels, writing out postcards as well as posting and collecting mail.

This week in P.E. we learnt and practiced different types of roll.  We learnt the rocket roll and some of the more confident children learnt and practiced their forward rolls.

We went out and explored the frost.  We looked at how the water in the water table had changed and how the sand in the sand table had changed.  We made footprints in the frosty grass and watched our breath float away.

We have also learnt the Christmas Story and the children have sequenced the story using picture cards.  

Week 5

This week we carried on with our topic learning for 'Homes and Celebrations'.  A lot of the activities focused around building and construction.  We also started getting into the festive spirit.

We painted our class 'Advent Calendar' pictures, which are now hung across the classroom and will be unveiled daily.  The pictures have been heavily decorated with glitter, so the children may sparkle a little more than usual at the moment.

Some of the children have been setting up their own library in class, complete with laptop computer and checking out slips.  Mr. Waddington checked a book out, returned it 5mins late and received a hefty fine.  Fortunately the fee had to be paid in plastic play money, which Mr. Waddington has lots of!     

The week ended in a very exciting way! Father Christmas came to visit badger class.  He read us a lovely story and gave out presents.  The children had a wonderful time and were fully revved up and ready to hit the Christmas Fayre and home.

Week 4

We made up our own versions of the Enormous Turnip story this week.  The children made some changes using an instead of grid.  There were some very carefully considered changes and some very imaginative ones too!  The children also did some independent labelling; showing off their independent writing skills.

In Maths this week we have been making 'stampoline' patterns like the Numberblocks.  We printed them, made them, stuck them and stacked them.

In Topic we built houses out of different materials.  We talked about how strong our houses were and read the story of 'The Three Little Pigs'.  We read the U rated version where no pigs got eaten and no wolves were boiled in a pan!

In science we looked at different materials and talked about their properties.  There was a lot of excitement generated over all of the different materials and what they felt like.

In PE we continued with our Gymnastics and this week we worked on our moon tuck, moon rock and moon roll.    

Week 3

This week we explored parts and wholes.  We started by looking at the parts of a whole where the whole was a complete shape or object; we can see the parts but we can't separate them from the whole.  The children recognised that they were a whole and their arms, legs etc.. are all parts of them.  We went on to explore breaking a whole into parts, where the whole is an object with removable parts or a collection of smaller objects.

In literacy we built character names with magnetic letters and wrote the names onto a sheet to complete the sentences about  'The Enormous Turnip'.  For language and communication we re-told the story of 'The Enormous Turnip' using sequencing cards.

Our new role play area in the classroom has been a very popular addition.  The children have really enjoyed playing houses and running a cafe.  This has been a great provision for both communication and language, and understanding the world.

This week we painted pictures of houses.  I think we have some budding architects in Badger Class.  I hope to see some of these houses on 'Grand Designs' in the future! :)

Week 2

This week we have been learning the story 'The Enormous Turnip'.  The children have been completing story-maps and building CVC words.

In Maths we have been learning about 'One to One Correspondence'.  We organised a picnic for some of the class teddies and made sure that we had enough cups, plates, straws, food and cutlery for all three teddies using our skills of 'One to One Correspondence'.  The children went on to complete some of their own examples independently.

In music this week we learnt the song 'I'm a Little Teapot'.  As you can see in the photo, the children were very good at the actions!  In PSHE we reflected on what makes us special.

In PE we did some more gymnastics, and practiced playing follow my leader through a series of different gymnastics poses.

This week we planted some daffodil bulbs with Mrs. Smith.  With all of the rain we have had recently the ground was nice and soft; perfect for planting bulbs.  We look forward to seeing the daffodils grow in the spring. 

Week 1

This week we did lots of activities and learning based on Bonfire Night, Guy Fawkes and Fireworks.  The children were all very excited about events they were going to this weekend.  Hope you all have fun and stay safe!

Our Maths focus this week was the number five, making five and how we can use our hands to quickly show five.

In P.E. this week we made different space themed shapes with our bodies in Gymnastics and we continued working on our balance in Multi-skills.

We had a visit from our Badger Buddies on Friday afternoon.  They listened to us read and they played games with us.  

Term 1 (2022-2023)

Week 6

We have made the most of this week's fair autumnal weather.  We created a 'Land of the Dinosaurs' in the digging area.  The construction area was very busy with all sorts of important operations going on.  The mud kitchen was used to create some fantastic creations and some of us worked hard on our gross motor skills.   

We have enjoyed our exploration of numbers.  We enjoyed learning about Numberblock Four and all of the different ways he can arrange his blocks.  We played subitising bingo with different number representations. 

We have celebrated three birthdays this week.  I will let the children tell you who the third birthday girl was.

We had a visit from 'The Bridge Project' on Wednesday.  We learnt about the Christian Creation Story and the seven days of creation.  We created a beautiful display.

On Thursday it was Skilful Day, and the children took part in a range of skill based activities and learnt some new skills too - like making bread.

Week 5

This week we have been using our phonics skills to spell the animal names from 'The Little Red Hen'.  The children are getting good at spotting the sounds in words.

This week in Maths we continued to deepen our understanding of the numbers 1-4.  We made our own subitising cards and demonstrated our number knowledge by making numbers in lots of different ways.

We had a visit this week from our Badger Buddies.  They came along and helped the Badgers with their Maths exploration.

Mr Waddington was very brave this week and we changed into our indoor P.E. clothes for indoor P.E.  The children did really well and there were only a few mishaps with inside out clothing back to front trousers and a little bit of clothes swapping.  Please do check labels in school clothes and return any items that have been swapped and worn home by mistake.

Also, we would be incredibly grateful if you could practice getting changed at home; changing top half and then bottom half separately rather than trying to do it all at once.  Thank you.

P.E. was short but fun.  We practiced balance and dismount.

Week 4

This week we introduced the story 'The Little Red Hen'.  Our English activities all centered around the story and we have been learning to retell the story from memory.  Hopefully the Badgers will have told you it at home!

This week in Maths we continued our exploration of counting.  We explored the skill of accurately counting objects, actions and sounds.  We also carried out surveys to record and count our results.

In R.E. this week we continued to explore 'Creation' and we created our own jellyfish.

Week 3

Phonics: This week we learnt about the letters s, a, t, p.  We learnt their letter names, we learnt what the Grapheme looks like, what the Phoneme sounds like and how to write the Grapheme.  Copies of these GPCs have been put in a red phonics book in your child's book bag.  Please don't write in or stick anything into these books, they are a record of the GPCs that we learn each week and are for reference so that your children can practice at home with you.

Maths: This week we learnt how to subitise the numbers 1 - 3.  We went on a number hunt and spotted numbers that were hidden all around us and made some of our own as well.

English: We read the story 'The Tiger Who Came to Tea'.  We sequenced the story, used masks to role play and drew/wrote what we would buy the tiger for tea.

Science: We went on a nature walk and looked for any remaining signs of summer.  We spotted quite a few, including green trees, dry grass and flowers. 

We also met our 'Badger Buddies' this week.  'Badger Buddies' are assigned buddies from Owl Class.  They help and support the Badger Class children at breaks and lunchtimes.

Week 2

This week we have done lots to counting activities and fine motor skills activities.

We did our first Art learning this week and produced a lovely display of self-portraits. 

We had our first PSHE lesson and talked about what is important to each of us and what makes us all different. 

We had our first music lesson, learning to follow a rhythm and sing 'Pat-a-cake', and our first class worship. 

We made some predictions about what the book 'You Choose' might be about and then we drew a picture of something that we would choose, and tried to write down some words to explain what we would choose.

Week 1

What a great first week of school we have had, despite the awful weather.

We have had our first ever 'Badger Birthday', which was a lovely way to start the week.

"Happy Birthday Liam"

We have explored the classroom and learnt how to get out activities and how to pack them away correctly.

We have had fun with 'Tuff Tray' activities; practicing writing letters in the sand, building towers, matching numbers and counting gems.

We have explored the garden and have cooked in the mud kitchen, played 'house' and 'shop' in the play houses and pretended to fly the climbing blocks to the moon.

Useful Phonics Information

Badger Class 2021-2022

Term 6

This term our topic will be 'The Magic Carpet'.  During this term we will be travelling on a magic carpet to learn about different places in the world. In phonics, we will continue to apply the phonics we have been learning to our reading and writing.  We will not be learning any new sounds, but please continue to use the red book and flashcards to support your child's learning at home.  Please continue to share story books and your child's reading book as often as possible - we change reading books on a Tuesday and Friday, if your child has read their book twice - please ensure you have made a note of each time they read in the yellow reading record.  This term we will be learning to tell the story 'The Sleepy Bumblebee' and will be describing the characters in the story and creating our own version of the story. In maths, we will be consolidating the learning we have been doing this year, applying the facts we have learnt to other areas of maths.  We will be thinking about 'Changing me' in PSHE and developing our athletic skills in PE sessions, and demonstrating these skills during Sports Day.  During our travels on the Magic Carpet, we will be looking at different environments around the world.  In RE we will looking at special places for people to worship and we will be visiting St Nicholas Church.

Week 2

This week we have enjoyed using our new equipment to enhance our physical development.  We tried to throw balls into the hoop, walked along the balancing equipment, played with the rope and climbed on the climbing blocks.  Our Magic Carpet took us for a trip to the rainforest, so we then made a jungle collage and drew animals to go in our rainforest.

Week 1

This week we have been learning to catch using beanbags, exploring different ways to make bridges using the planks and took our 'magic carpet' for a ride to explore the arctic.  We also had the excitement of releasing our butterflies.  Miss Pistell came to help us with her children.  She read us a story about a caterpillar, then we had a close look at them in the butterfly net.  The butterflies took their time to fly away, which gave some of the children the opportunity to handle them, taking care not to harm them.  We were joined by the children in Squirrel Class and Hedgehog Class who also enjoyed watching them fly away.  We then had a closer look at the cocoons which were left in the net.

Term 5

Week 5

Our final week of Term 5 has been filled with lots of exciting activities.  We had lots of fun during
'Skillful Day' where the children completed some first aid and learned ways to stay safe in a fire.  They had great fun dressing up in firefighters outfits.  During the afternoon they completed their activities for the sponsored athlete.  We ended our Eric Carle topic with a bug ball.  We invited the Year 5 children to join us and played musical statues and parachute games with them.  After we said goodbye to Year 5 children we had some fruity snacks and played some team games before heading back to the classroom to create our bug bracelets.  We enjoyed the sunshine on our last day with some outdoor maths, using dice, giant ten frames, number bond bricks, giant numicon and stepping stones.  We ended the day by joining with Squirrel class for more parachute games.

Week 4

This week the children have been enjoying watching our caterpillars eating and moving.  We made our own butterflies out of playdough, using sequins, pasta and counters to create symmetrical patterns.  Some of the children used some left over water to create a pond in the digging area, working together and adding plants and stones to make it a pond like environment.  We enjoyed completing 'Hungry Caterpillar' yoga, following the instructions carefully.

Week 3

'Who's been eating our fruit?' 

The children were excited to see that some of our fruit had big holes in it.  We thought about what could have eaten it and came up with the idea that 'A Very Hungry Caterpillar' may have been eating it.  We looked at some models of the lifecycle of a butterfly before reading the story.  We have continued with this story all week and have been learning some actions to help us tell the story.

We have also enjoyed using phonic cubes to help us with some writing during choosing time.  Again we have been using our outdoor area to play in the sand pit, water tray and paint with water on our chalk board.  We have also used real paints to create pictures.  

Week 2

This week we have been enjoying the lovely weather and taking advantage of the outdoor area.  We have been creating our own models using junk materials, paining with water on our chalk board, reading stories in the Story Shed and digging in the sand pit.  We had some special visitors in our digging area (dinosaurs) which created a bit of excitement.   We spent an afternoon in the sunshine with our Badger Buddies.  We chased bubbles from a bubble machine, played 'duck, duck, goose' and 'Dusty Bluebells'.  We then got the parachute out and played games with beanbags, running under the parachute and a few games of cat and mouse.

Week 1

This week we have been reading the stories Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? and Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What do you hear?  We have been outside looking for things that we can see, then wrote about those things adding adjectives to describe them.  We have also been outside listening to the things we could hear children talking, birds tweeting, leaves rustling, cars brrring and wind whooshing. We have also had lots of fun in the sand pit and using the new planks to build our own obstacle course.

Term 4

Week 6

This week we have had Spiritual day, Commonwealth Games activities, a visit to the church for our Easter Service and an Easter egg hunt.  On Tuesday we got to see a Commonwealth Games Baton and then raced with it before passing it to Squirrel class.  On Friday we went on an Easter egg hunt.  We made rabbit ears to wear, then hunted for plastic eggs in the field.  At the end of the day we exchanged our eggs for real chocolate!

Week 5

This week we have been learning about the importance of keeping clean and washing.  We washed our hands, some of our toys and some vegetables for us to eat.  We enjoyed reading to our Badger Buddies outdoors and enjoyed playing games with our Badger Buddies when we dressed in yellow and blue for Ukraine.  We also enjoyed exploring some new toys.

Farm Trip

We've had a wonderful day at the farm and the weather couldn't have been better.  The children thoroughly enjoyed the day and made us all proud!

Week 3

This week we have been enjoying the sunshine (except Wednesday) and making the most of our outdoor area.  In PE, we have been practising our throwing and catching skills, while on Friday we took our dance outside where we practised  both our superhero dance and some traditional dances like 'In and out the dusty bluebells' and 'The farmers in his den'.  On Wednesday, we finally got to taste our Turnip Soup.  Lots of the children really enjoyed it, while some weren't so sure, however we were really proud of the children, who all had a try.  In the afternoon they got to taste some hot cross buns and noticed how the Easter story is represented in the hot cross bun.  In maths this week, we have been making 7 in lots of different ways and noticing the number bonds for 7, including using dinosaurs, farm animals and duplo.  We have spent lots of time planting seeds, and learning about what plants need this week.  We planted herbs in the tyres outdoors and planted other seeds in small pots to grow in our classroom.  We have also been examining the plants we are growing from the vegetables indoors.  This week we have been adapting our story 'The Enormous Turnip'.  We have changed the turnip, the farmer, the farmer's wife and the dog to different characters.  We have then been telling our adapted stories to each other and we have been busy recording the stories individually.  

Week 2

We had fun pretending our pirate ship was Santa's sleigh this week.  We are trying to grow vegetables from other vegetables this week.  We have set up the experiment and will continue to watch to see if they will grow.  We enjoyed examining the lettuce too, and then even used it to draw on.  Lots of the children have enjoyed feeling the rice this week.  We started using it to form letters in, but making piles seemed more fun!  Today we told our story to Owl Class and made some turnip soup.  Unfortunately it was not delicious like our story.  The turnips we used we far from enormous as you can see in the photo (unless you are a doll), so there was not enough mixture for the soup maker to work.  We had fun watching it being prepared and smelling all the ingredients.  Mrs Hedges has said she will make some more at home and bring it in for us to try on Wednesday.

Week 1

We've had a busy start to our first week of term.  We began the week looking for turnips in some soil but none of them were enormous like in our story we are learning.  We had fun with some Pancake PE on Tuesday.  In maths we've been thinking about 5 and a bit - 8 is 5 and 3, 6 is 5 and 1.  We had a wonderful day filled with books on World Book Day (see below) and on Friday we managed to enjoy some sunshine and have tried our best to save a bee we found.

World Book Day

We have had a great day exploring books in many ways.  We loved looking at each others  costumes and even drew pictures of our wonderful costumes.  We made reading crowns where we decorated crowns with different book marks.  We listened to World Book Day Rap and tried to spot all the books that were in the song.  Later our Badger Buddies read some of these books to us.  Of course we shared lots of stories throughout the day.  

Term 3

Week 7

This week we had a visit from Mr Bales, who talked about the job of a police officer.  We got to wear lots of different pieces of uniform and learn about the different roles of a police officer. We have been learning about 2d shape in maths and noticing shapes within shapes.  We have been completing jigsaws and have created a wonderful piece of art by using triangles to create the sea, circles for the sky, then we created houses and boats using squares, rectangles, triangles and circles.  We also filled our marble jar, so as a reward the children chose to use the dressing up clothes.

Week 6 

This week we have had 2 visitors to help us with learning about People Who Help Us.  Mr Thornes came to talk about his role as a paramedic.  The children had to take good care of the soft toys and learned to carry them on a stretcher.  Mr Lawrence came to talk to us about his role as a Harbour Pilot and the different roles on ships.  The children enjoyed taking on different jobs such as captain, navigational officer and of course the cook!  In maths we have been sharing objects equally and the children have enjoyed creating their own homes using the construction materials.

Week 5

What a lot of learning done this week! We learnt about the celebration of Chinese New Year. We painted our own dragon to do a dragon dance, made our own lanterns and learnt about the traditions of Chinese New Year. In maths, we have been looking at the composition of the numbers 6 and 7 so that we know what numbers 'make' them. We also wore our number tabards to help us learn how to order numbers. We looked carefully at the world around us by taking part in our own mini 'Birdwatch'. There were lots of crows and pigeons - but we spotted our resident robin in our outdoor area too!

Week 4

This week we have been taking our fingerprints like a police officer may do and examining them closely with a magnifying glass.  We have also been getting creative, enjoying the junk modelling materials. On Friday, we had lots of fun creating our class picture as a reward for filling our marble jar.  I know many of you got to look at our wonderful piece of art while it was drying outside.

Week 3

We've had a busy week, telling the story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff using the masks we made, playing in mud and looking at the outdoors look in winter.  We've also been ordering numbers, wearing numbered tabards and using the song from the Numberblocks episode 'Off We Go'.  We had an amazing day on Thursday during Wordly Day (see photos below).

Wordly Day

We've had a wonderful day learning about the qualities we need to be Worldly Global explorers.  We looked at a timecapsule that we found that children who went to our school 50 years had made.  We then talked about the things we liked to do and drew pictures and wrote a sentence about those things.  We then talked about how we will be celebrating the Queen's Platinum Jubilee and thought about a pudding we could design to celebrate.  We drew a picture of our own design and then made our own puddings using custard, jelly, rice pudding and angel delights - we didn't eat them, we just had fun making them.  Next we learned to say a few words in Spanish before tasting some Spanish food.  Not many of us liked the olives or gazpacho but almost everyone (including the staff) liked the churros!  We also talked about how we can be show courageous advocacy by looking after those who don't have a voice of their own.  During the afternoon we learnt about the art of origami - Japanese paper folding and made our own paper planes and tested them inside and outside. Then we re-used materials to make some junk models, lots of us made octopus, which we looked at examples of, but some of use made their own models.  Finally we learned a little about Kenya from our parent visitor.  

Week 2

This week we have been learning the story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff.  We have been enjoying telling the story using masks, and toys and making our own masks.  We have been learning new graphemes - the actions are in the red books and flashcards are in the coloured wallets.  We have continued subitising and have been playing games with dice - I hope you get a chance to play the game that we sent home this week.  In our indoor PE we have been learning the beginning of a dance which we will keep building on. 

Week 1

Welcome back to school after, what I hope, has been a lovely Christmas break.  We have had a busy start to the term, with children writing lovely sentences about the things they received for Christmas and reminding ourselves of our phonics.  In maths we have been naming and finding 2 d shapes, looking for lots of different shapes in the classroom and outside.  We have introduced our new topic to the children and talked about all the different jobs that people who help us do.  We decided to change our role play areas to a Vets and a police station and are in the process of doing this.  We have also completed the NSPCC PANTS lesson - please see the link below for more details and if you get a chance, you may enjoy the Pantosaurus song.

Term 2

Week 7

What a wonderful week we have had, to end Term 2.  The children were magnificent in their Nativity production and looked amazing in their wonderful costumes.  We have continued with lots of learning based around Christmas, creating Christmas crafts and enjoying taking on the roles of elves and 
Father Christmas in the tree houses.  On Thursday, we were joined by our Badger Buddies and the rest of Owls for a small Christmas party, where we played pass the parcel, musical animals and over under game.  On Friday, we joined Hedgehog class to play our story action game, where we each had a character and whenever we heard that character in the story we ran around the circle.  The children looked great in their Christmas jumpers.

Week 6

This week, we have been enjoying preparing for Christmas.  One Monday, we celebrated St Nicholas Day and made images of St Nicholas using red paper.  We have been learning about the 3 kings and their journey and made crowns for the king and dressed up as Mary and Joseph.  We have been experimenting with colour with our paintings.  When the weather has allowed, we have been having lots of fun in the treehouses.  We decorated a tree to go in the home treehouse and dressed up in Santa's workshop. We have also been practising lots for our nativity performance.

Week 5

We have loved starting to celebrate the build up to Christmas this week. We had a visit from The Bridge and they showed us all the meanings of the different colours of Christmas. On the 1st of December our class advent calendar arrived! Each of us have created a festive piece of art to be revealed each day. Our treehouse has also been transformed into Santa's Grotto. We have had a lot of fun dressing up and wrapping presents. We also used snowflakes to help us with our numeral recognition. 

Week 4

This week we have been learning about the number 5. We have been subitising to 5 and counting objects up to 5. We have loved grinding up the wheat for the Little Red Hen so much that we decided to test out other food materials to see if we could grind them as well. In PSHE, we thought about what makes our homes special. In small groups, we made a house for teddy and explained what made it special for him. In RE, we were learning about the symbols of Christmas and sorted which were Christian symbols and which were not. Finally, we have had lots of fun building obstacle courses in our construction area.

Week 3

This week we have continued to learn our Little Red Hen story and have enjoyed grinding wheat to try to make flour, forming letters in the flour and acting out the story using our masks.  We have also been writing CVC words for the characters in our story.  In maths we have been looking at groups and identifying which group has more and which has fewer.  We have dressed in our waterproof clothes to play in the mud and have created our own obstacle courses.  We are getting quicker at changing for PE and have enjoyed being stars in our gymnastics sessions.  The children all dressed up for Children in Need day, wearing either yellow, spots or PE kit.

Week 2

This week we introduced our story, The Little Red Hen.  The children followed a trail of corn to find the Little Red Hen and some bread, which we then ate.  We have spent the rest of the week learning to tell the story and making masks to use in our retelling of the story.  We have been using tools, by cutting wheat and mark making in flour.  We have also been enjoying Autumn, using leaves and seeds to make repeating patterns and going for a walk to look at the environment and the changes that Autumn has brought.  We are very fortunate to have so many trees to observe the wonderful colours.  We attended the remembrance worship at school on Thursday and managed the 2 minute silence without any issues.  This meant we managed to fill our marble jar, so enjoyed an extra play on the playtrail as a reward.

Week 1

We've had a busy start to Term 2 with lots of special things to celebrate.  We've introduced our next quality for our Global Explorer Curriculum which is to be 'Aspirational' with a special Aspirational Day on Wednesday.  We learned about science from some parent visitors from DSTL, built bridges from different construction materials and enjoyed a science show in the afternoon.  We also discussed what jobs we'd like to do when we grown up and drew pictures or wrote our chosen careers.   We also enjoyed dressing up as some people who help us. (Please see the gallery for more photos).  On Thursday we celebrated Divali, by creating Rangoli pictures using coloured rice and shapes and on Friday we celebrated bonfire night by colouring pictures, creating more pictures with shapes and tracing our name in glue before sprinkling them with glitter.  

Term 1

Badger Buddies

We are thrilled to be able to have Badger Buddies again this year.  Each child in Badger class has been paired with a Year 6 child from Owl class to be their Badger Buddy.  We will often link up and the Owl children will help the Badger children to feel settled, safe and secure at school.  They will also listen to them read and help with other activities where many hands help.  We have had a couple of lovely sessions with our Badger Buddies, playing with them and getting to know each other and the Owls have enjoyed listening to the Badgers telling their stories from their reading books and showing us their classroom.

Week 8

What a busy last two days of term! On Monday we had our Resourcefulness Day and we did lots of fun activities to show teamwork, independence, kindness and perseverance. We passed around a hula hoop without breaking the chain and worked together to keep a balloon off the ground. We also created a beautiful rainbow - we made a couple of pieces each and then put them altogether.

Then on Tuesday as part of our class treat for filling the marble jar we had a Gingerbread Man Day! We made our own gingerbread and had lots of fun making gingerbread men playdoh and designing our own bridges for the gingerbread man to cross over safely. Have a lovely half term! 

Week 7

We've had another busy week as we've reached the final full week of our first term at school.  This week, we have been learning the rules of counting:

1. Count everything once

2. Say the numbers in the correct order

3.  The last number is how many you have

We've also had fun playing schools, mark making in glitter and enjoying our new giant numicon.  We also had a visit from The Bridge Project, who regularly visit our school for Christian workshops.  This week we continued our learning about creation.  We also got to use our bikes for the first time on the playground.  Thank you to all the parents who came to look around our classroom and joined our phonics session.

Week 6

This week we have been reading the book 'Whoever You Are' and talking about things that are the same as others and things that are different.  We then chose our favourite colour to create a handprint and created a display for the book.  We have also enjoyed examining the sunflower seeds and playing on the play trail.

Week 5

This week we have been creating our own self portraits, planting daffodils with the rest of the school, learning the sounds some letters make, finding matching pairs and ordering objects by size.  We've also been for a walk around the school grounds looking for the last signs of summer and enjoying observing the insects we found - we also used these for counting groups and finding the total of 2 groups.

Week 4

We've had another busy week with yet more new experiences.  This week we've been sorting items in different ways in maths and enjoying the books 'The Tiger Who Came to Tea' and 'You Choose' in English.  We've also experienced our first fire drill, our first full worship, school photos and show and tell - we earned lots of marbles for our jar for how well we have managed these new activities and earned a reward of an extra play on the playtrail. We have also been examining sunflowers and enjoyed reading to our Badger buddies again.

Week 3

We've had a fantastic week with the children managing so well in their first week of full days.  We had lots of new experiences, such as PE, Badger Buddies and our first worship.  We've even enjoyed the cows visiting us in the field next door.

Week 2

We've had lots of fun during our first full week of school, and I'm sure the children are feeling tired.  We've celebrated another birthday in our class this week!  On Thursday we wore our class waterproof jackets to play in the rain.  All children have now been given a reading book, please share this book with your child. Next Monday the children will meet on the playground in the morning and line up with the rest of the school.  

Week 1

We have had a wonderful beginning to our school year, with the children making lots of new friends and enjoying exploring our school environment.  We've even celebrated a birthday this week.

Badger Class 2020-2021 

Sports Day

Please use our link to the gallery to see lots of photos from our EYFS and KS1 sports day.  We had a wonderful morning, with the children making up for the lack of spectators with lots of cheering for their friends.  

Bump Up Day

We had a lovely afternoon visiting Squirrel class.  We made our own rockets and decorated them, then fired them into the air and measured how far they went.

Football

We all have our fingers crossed that England will win the Euro 2020 this evening, or at least do their best, just like Badgers did when we were playing football last week. 

Creative Day

Today we held the first of our Curriculum days to launch our Global Explorer Curriculum. We kept asking the question 'What ideas have you shared today?' and we found that we had lots of ideas that we can share with each other to work together.

We began the day by making Leaf Mandalas.  We collected leaves, stones, bark, chippings, sticks, daisies and other natural materials we found.  We then worked in groups of 2 or 3 to create our own mandalas on large pieces of paper.  Our creations were wonderful and we enjoyed learning about each others mandalas. 

After that we enjoyed listening to some Folk Music by Dovetail Trio, where we learned about different instruments, learned some new songs and even enjoyed a bit of country dancing.

After break we made some paper lanterns, spending lots of time on colouring our lanterns and carefully cutting them. 

During the afternoon, we made wands, by cutting out shapes for the top and gluing them around a willow stick, before decorating the wands. 

Finally we made crowns, cutting the shapes at the top and decorating them. 

RE Day

Today we spent the day concentrating on RE.  We talked about the schools Christian Values, concentrating on the value 'Thankfulness'.  We talked about what we are thankful for - parents you will be pleased to know that lots of children mentioned that they were thankful for their 'Mums and Dads' and 'family'.  'School', 'teachers' and 'food' were also mentioned.

We spent some time learning the story of The Ten Lepers from the bible, which demonstrates 'Thankfulness'.  We all contributed to a collage of the story, which will be put up in the hall, as well as doing our own images and acting out the story.  We then performed our story to Mrs Smith and Squirrel and Hedgehog Classes during worship at the end of the day.

Bug Ball

During our topic on Eric Carle, we read lots of stories involving insects that he had written, including The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Very Busy Spider and the The Bad Tempered Ladybird.  To celebrate the end of the topic we held a Bug Ball, where we made masks to wear before enjoying some party games, such as Bug, Bug, Beetle (Duck, Duck, Goose), musical statues and balloon games and enjoying some bug inspired snacks - some vegetables that insects like to eat like cucumber and carrots and some food that looked like insects like our grape beetles and raisin flies.  

Fire Safety Session

On Thursday, we had a zoom visit from Wiltshire Fire Service, where we learned about what a firefighter does and things that are safe for us to play with and things that are not safe.  We had some fun joining a firefighter for some Wake and Shake activities.

World Book Day

We had lots of fun dressing up as book characters and learning about the characters from James and the Giant Peach.  We watched videos of real bugs, then made ladybirds using paper plates, spiders by printing using tubes and drawing grasshoppers using step by step instructions.  We caught bugs from our own magic similar to the magic left by the Old Man in the story James and the Giant Peach.  We also had the opportunity to look at books!

Christmas

We have had a lovely couple of weeks in Badger Class getting ready to celebrate Christmas, with our nativity, Christmas lunch wearing our festive jumpers, a visit from Father Christmas and then enjoying the wonderful playground gifts he bought.

Term 2 

This term, we have enjoyed lots of firework activities on Thursday 5th November, celebrated Remembrance Day and have had fun playing estate agents linked to our topic on Homes.  We have also made houses using shapes and wooden bricks.  We have been learning about different materials through the story of The Three Little Pigs.  We have attempted to make houses using straws, sticks and bricks, with differing levels of success.  We have also enjoyed painting fingerprint leaves on our tree.  We have enjoyed lots of Christmas activities, sorting wrapped numicon pieces to unwrapped pieces, creating Christmas trees using numicon pieces and creating baubles on a Christmas tree by dropping coloured vinegar onto Christmas trees created from bicarbonate of soda. 

Phonics Training

Thank you to those parents that were able to join us for our phonics training.  Please find a PDF of the powerpoint used in the training - if you have any questions, please ask.

Badger Class Learning

Have a look at the learning we will be doing this year by following the link below.

Reading

The children in Badger Class will now be bringing reading books home.  To begin with books have no words and are used to encourage children to talk about what is happening in the pictures.  We will listen to your child read at least once a week, but in order for your child to make progress in their reading, we need you to support them and listen to them read at least 5 times a week.

Making Friends

The children have settled really well at school and have enjoyed exploring all the different areas of the classroom, both indoors and outdoors.  They have all been learning to make friends and cooperate with each other, taking turns and sharing.  We are very proud of the way they have adapted to school life at St Nicholas CE (VA) Primary School. 

Help

As our topic is All About Me, we would really like to give the children the opportunity to share something they enjoy doing with the class.  If you have one or two photos of your child taking part in a hobby or something that they would like to share with their friends, please email office@stnicholas.wilts.sch.uk and head it Badger Photo. You may like to add a little information to enable us to help your child share their photo with their class.

Thank you.

Class Reward

We have already earned our first class reward and went for a walk in our school woods.