We were very lucky to bump in to Bernard the Therapy Dog and his owner on our way back from dinner time. The children loved seeing Bernard and saying hello. 

Before the half term the teachers told us we would be having a tea party to celebrate the Queen's Platinum Jubilee! We have been learning all about the Queen in our story sessions and now know lots of facts about her. Together we talked about what food we wanted to eat at our tea party and had a vote. We then wrote a shopping list. On the week of the party we all went on a walk to the shop in small groups. We were very well behaved when walking there and back, carefully crossing the roads and staying together and in the shop too, the teachers were very proud of us all. Once we had bought all of the food we all had a go at helping to prepare the sandwiches and cheese straws. 

What a brilliant day we had on 25th May to celebrate the Queen's Jubilee. Everyone came dressed in red, white and blue, some of us had even painted our faces and brought flags! We started the day with the FS1 children joining us for a dance through the ages where we had a go at popular dances from every decade that the Queen has been on the throne. We then performed our Jubilee song we have been learning to the FS1 children, they loved it! After that we worked on strengthening our finger muscles with a special Jubilee themed dough disco. Some of us stayed inside to finish preparing our food for the tea party and some of us went outside to make bunting and flags to decorate our outdoor area. The afternoon came and it was time for our garden party, unfortunately the weather had other ideas so we had to move everything inside and decorate our classroom instead! We all put on the crowns that we had made and sat down to a yummy tea party of jam sandwiches, cheese straws, crisps and jelly and ice-cream! What a treat! We all left for the half term holiday with full bellies and big smiles, what a great day to celebrate the Queen's 70 years on the throne! 

We have some exciting visitors in EYFS this term, some tadpoles! When Miss Reynolds told us we would be getting some we were very pleased but we didn't have anywhere for them to live. We decided to turn one of our water trays into a pond by adding some gravel and filling it with water, Miss Reynolds then brought some pond plants in so the tadpoles would have something to eat and somewhere to shelter. The day the tadpoles arrived we were excited and all took lots of interest in looking at them and talking about them. We read the story Growing Frogs to find out about the lifecycle of a frog. The tadpoles are now happily swimming in the pond we made, we have added a net over the top to stop any predators eating them. We make sure to check on them each day to see how much they have grown and if any have started to change yet! 

We had an unusual surprise last week. Just as we were finishing our funky fingers time our doorbell rang, Miss Kershaw went to see who it was and returned with a basket covered in a sheet. Mrs Sanderson had also seen the mystery package and came over to EYFS to see what it was. We listened carefully to see if we could hear anything but we couldn't, so Mrs Sanderson had the honour of unveiling the contents. To our surprise it was a basket of eggs, all different colours and sizes! We talked to our friends and came up with some questions about the eggs which Miss Reynolds wrote down so we wouldn't forget them. Some of us then drew pictures and wrote what we thought were in the eggs. We also made a sign asking people not to touch the eggs as we didn't want them to break! This surprise led to lots of excitement and talk about eggs, what animals come from eggs and how the eggs of different animals look different. We used books and the internet to find out what types of eggs we thought were in our basket and find out some facts about different animals who lay eggs. We also watched an episode of Come Outside where Auntie Mable went to see the biggest egg on earth - an ostrich egg. We had such a busy end to the week and the egg-citement is sure to carry on this week too! 

'We have had a brilliant day for World Book Day! We all came dressed as a book character from one of our favourite books and loved looking at each other's costumes. Some of us brought our favourite books in too and we enjoyed sharing them with a friend. Take a look at our costumes on the picture and see if you can figure out who we came dressed as! 

On the 8th February it was Safer Internet Day, the theme this year was 'All fun and games? Exploring respect and relationships online.' In FS2 we read the book Troll Stinks as our story of the week (you can watch this story on the link below). The story was all about two goats who find a mobile phone and at first have lots of fun with it, after a while they find Troll's phone number and begin to send mean text messages to it. They get even bolder and decide to go on a hunt for Troll to take pictures and put them on the internet to show everyone how ugly it is, however when they get to the cave they find Troll isn't a mean bully but a sweet, little girl who is very upset about the messages she has been sent. We talked about how our words can have an affect on others and hurt their feelings. We freeze framed different parts of the story to show how we would feel if we were those characters, check out the pictures below, can you tell how we feel? We also talked about other ways we can stay safe online and watched the story Smartie the Penguin to help us to remember to make smart choices and always tell a grown up about what we are doing online. 

Last week we learned about Chinese New Year. We read lots of books and watched some videos to find out what it is and how it is celebrated. We explored rice in our sensory play, made dragons that moved using split pins, found out what animal year we were born in and some of us retold the story of the Great Race. We decided to make some Chinese stir fry. We all helped to chop up the vegetables, we talked about how to use a knife safely and we were all very careful when using one under the supervision of Miss Reynolds. Once all of the ingredients were ready Mrs Grange cooked it for us and we all had a taste, some of us thought it was delicious! Later in the week we decided to make our own dragon, we chose a big box and worked as a team to paint and decorate it. When it was dry we watched videos of lion and dragon dances and then put on some music. We took it in turns to dance around the classroom in our dragon and some of us played instruments to accompany the music, we even did a special parade for the Nursery children. What a busy, fun filled week! 

We have noticed lots of birds in our outdoor area recently, we enjoyed looking in books and identifying which ones we could see. We talked about how there are no berries on the trees for the birds to eat and it's too cold for the bugs to come out so the birds are really hungry. We decided to make our own bird feeders, we had to use lard and bird seed, it was really messy! We loved seeing the birds enjoying the food we had made for them! Some of us noticed the bird nests in the bare trees, we talked about what made a good birds nest. Miss Reynolds gave us a challenge to make our own bird nest that would hold our pretend bird eggs, we had to think really carefully about where would be a good spot and how to position our twigs and leaves.