Squirrels News - 15th September 2023

This week the Squirrels have enjoyed reading the book Our Class is a Family by Shannon Olsen. We have been thinking about what makes a family and how people can be part of your family even if you are not related to them. To go alongside this theme we created paper dolls of ourselves and then drew pictures of our friends and things we like in the Squirrel classroom such as Tango the class fish.

The children also worked hard to identify the initial letter sound of all the children in the class. We have been recapping our classroom principles and developing our knowledge of 2D shapes as well as our feelings. This week the children took part in their first Weekend News discussion, sharing the things they got up to over the weekend, drawing a picture of their weekend and then practisting their writing by either tracing over shapes or letters.

In the Outdoor Learning Environment the children have been working to identify initial letter sounds of bugs. This was initially a little tricky for the Sqiurrels but we persevered and worked together to help identify the different letters We also became builders who came to fix our climbing frame and developed our counting skills as we found out how many balls we could roll down the guttering.

The Squirrels were excited for this week’s Outdoor Learning Day and many of them exclaimed "I can't wait to go on Outdoor Learning again." As we set off for Wandsworth common we extended this weeks classroom learning by looking out for 2D shapes on our way. We noticed circles on road signs and wheels, squares in tiles, rectangles on the pavement and bricks as well as triangles in a few signs.

We decided to walk a little bit further this week to explore under the trees. As we got closer the children asked if the space marked out by cones could be extended and I explained it could be as long as we stay within the parameters. On arriving we had snack then discussed our Outdoor Learning rules before we went off to explore logs, sticks, holes and play Hide and Seek. The children found a few logs which had been used to create a bonfire and were fascinated as to why these logs turned their hands black.