This Week in Woodlands

This was the week that…. Bog Baby went missing but returned on Wednesday lunch time, much to everyone’s excitement. The week where the children were given freedom to choose their own books at our Pop-Up Bookshop. The week when the teachers and children had fun creating and wearing their World Book Day costumes.

The week where they learnt about Monet. The week when we made homemade pizzas and luxury hot chocolates.

From last week’s learning, we haven’t told you about when the children in Orange Class learnt about nocturnal animals and den enclosures. In groups, they created large fact sheets about nocturnal animals – badgers, bats and moles. They then presented their findings to the rest of Orange Class. The children also learnt about camping traditions, sleeping in a tent, making s’mores and toasting marshmallows on an open fire. We weren’t able to toast s’mores, so instead they made chocolate sprinkle marshmallows which they took into the forest, ate with a drink of hot chocolate, all whilst listening to a story. What a fun treat!

Back to this week now; The children have been SO excited to have some of their favourite stories read to them by our ‘Secret Story Tellers’. Watching their faces light up as they realise that it is a member of their family on the big TV screen is so gorgeous!. You have spoilt them with a variety of stories so we want to thank you so much, parents and family members. If you would still like to send in a secret story on Tapestry, please do feel free to do so and we will watch it next week.

Green Class‘ ‘Travelling Flat Folk’ have started to send back reports from their various trips! We have had news (and pictures) of them visiting Northern Ireland, Canada, Sydney, Melbourne in Australia and New York City. It is amazing that they have managed to get so far, especially considering that Royal Mail suspended overseas deliveries during most of January and February, which was not helpful! Green Class would like to send a big ‘thank you’ to everyone who joined in the fun. We are going to review our Flat Friends’ adventures in a couple of weeks’ time so, if yours is still lurking at home, there is still time to send them off (especially now that overseas postal deliveries are happening again).

By popular demand, the children in Green Class built themselves a castle and turned their role play area into a home suitable for knights, princesses and dragons. We continued the castle related fun in some of our other activities too. We created ‘magic’ wands from fruit (and the odd marshmallow) and thought about healthy eating, used our skills at recognising and manipulating shapes to design castles and became scientists when we mixed sodium bicarbonate and vinegar to make magic potions full of carbon dioxide bubbles.

About our N1’s

First of all, we would like to welcome Maxy, a new N1 to Woodlands. During these past few weeks, we have really started to notice our younger N1 children’s imaginations developing. We have seen this especially in the garden when they are role playing with one another and also with our older N2 children. During these moments, the children have been playing chase and catching each other with hoops, pretending the quoits are doughnuts and asking each other which flavour they would like. They have also been creating cocktails in the sand with fancy glasses and handing out different flavoured ice creams using small coloured balls! It is so wonderful to watch these early interactions. We cannot wait to see the children’s imaginations develop even further throughout the year.

Here are just a few of our photos from this week:

With best wishes from all the team at Woodlands

Shirley, Donna, Emma, Catherine, Natalie, Ruth, Sophie and Tracy.