Nursery had so much fun splashing  in the rain and chasing leaves blowing in the wind today! 

The children enjoyed using challenge cards to locate mini beasts, nature and making shapes with sticks and stones. The rain was never going to stop our play! 

As part of our Scream Machine topic, year 5 learned Bon Jovi's song, Roller Coaster. Head over to the video resource centre of our website and have a look at the Year 5 videos. We very much enjoyed singing this together and hope you love it as much as we did! 

The children really enjoyed shooting the ball through the hoop. They began near the hoop and then challenged themselves by moving back further away! The children had to wait their turn, share the balls and aim the ball, great fun and learning! 

The internet is a wonderful resource. It allows experts to teach us in our own classroom! This term, to support us with our fine motor and drawing skills, we have been exploring the work of ‘Art Hub for Kidz’ and learning to draw frogs, zebras and fish! Today, to link with our weekly text, The Red Best, we learnt to draw a monster! As always, we draw from memory first and then follow the tutorial and compare the outcomes. Nearly always, the taught drawing is better than our original efforts! After the session we apply our new skills in Challenge Time! 

Year 3 learnt about the creation story and made an instruction list from God to Christians! Well done Year 3 :) 

Year 1 have been building on their observations skills in art to make 3D sculptures of dinosaurs! They have been following a recipe and using non standard measures to combine flour, salt and water to make salt dough to use as a crafting material. 

We have been doing this in groups which we will carry on next week and we have been focusing on techniques to manipulate the dough to create shape and detail. Here are a few photos of some of the children so far... 

Year 2 put the last 3 weeks of learning together whilst looking at flight, ensuring that they were safe in both taking off and landing. They used their shapes, balances and rolls as they negotiated the equipment. Brilliant work year 2!

In EYFS, as in the rest of the school, we plan carefully to allow our children to build upon the knowledge and skills that we have taught them since September. Learning is never an isolated occurrence; what has gone before builds upon what comes next. Today we made crowns for our Christmas show. We used the taught skills of: cutting, sticking, sprinkling,  decoration, selecting for a purpose, drawing and writing to create our crowns. This is what is known in education as the ‘application of learning through independent tasks’. As the children go on their journaling pathway at HPS, they will learn new skills and techniques, building upon these solid foundations in art and design, to apply in their SOLE learning.

Pipes, guttering, racks and running water provide the perfect back drop to explore basic scientific and technological principles. We are always amazed at how different groups of children interpret the resources. However they choose to construct with the equipment, the learning is the same. Gravity, angles, pitch, water flow, distance, measures, resistance....it’s all there! 

We love whiteboards and white board pens in Reception! From handwriting practise to developing our art skills, these resources are used everyday by our children. If you have one at home, get it out! The skills you can practise are endless and if you make a mistake (which is ok because that is how we learn!) you can quickly rub it out and try again! Good, Better, Best!