Slideshow
Autumn
On the third week of Advent ✝️ we made Bambinelli’s for our home learning. We brought them into school and Father George blessed them. A fantastic effort had been made by our wonderful parents. 🌟👶🏼🙏🏻
We wanted to say thank you to our families for their continued support this past term. So, Mrs Palframen helped us to make a special treat for our families. Today we made a deliciously chocolatey Yule Log. The children had great fun making them and licking their fingers!!!!! 🍫🎅🏻🎄♥️
Wednesday was a fun filled day at St Anne’s Catholic Academy… our day started with some Christmas dancing, it was Christmas jumper day too, we had a delicious Christmas dinner and a very 🎅🏻 special visitor arrived in school with 🎁 presents!
On Tuesday we went to the cinema 🍿🎞 to watch Ron Gone Wrong. We went on a big coach, sang songs and pushed the magic button to relax in the big chairs. The film was really good and the staff at the cinema said the children were very well behaved. 🍿🎞
This week we have been busy retelling the story of ‘The First Christmas’. The children loved dressing up, performing, singing and watching themselves on the big screen. A huge congratulations to all of our stars and a big thank you to the EYFS Team and Miss Bishop for their hard work and efforts.
Apprentice Week!
The children were involved in ‘Apprentice Week’ as a whole school project, it started on Monday 6th December and went through to Friday 10th December. For one week only the children worked as Elves helping Santa to complete some Christmassy tasks and crafts. Calenders, baubles, wreaths, reindeer jars, cards, cakes and angels were just some of the goodies sold. The craft bags were sold for £2 and all the money paid will be going towards what children wish to spend the profits on. Well done to our creative little helpers!
During Advent, the children have been learning how we prepare for a special event. The birth of baby Jesus, we learn about the journey and the story of ‘The First Christmas’. We notice changes such as the liturgical cloth and create an Advent Wreath to help us count down the weeks. We prayer for others, we have learnt to be kind and giving as we join in with the ‘Reverse Advent Calendar’, thinking of others.
‘The Tiger That Came To Tea.’
This week our focus text has been 'The tiger that came to tea.' We have been beginning to understand the difference between print and pictures, learning about lines and creating squares with these lines, gaining more confidence to join in simple conversation with a small group and starting to show vocabulary related to the subject. We’ve been learning about where different animals come from and the sounds they make, becoming more confident with my fine motor skills by using different equipment when creating my tiger print artwork (paintbrush, balls, marbles, crayons and pencils) and we have been am using our hands to create artwork. Lots of fun ☺️
Today we have been making collections using natural resources in our outside garden. The children matched the numeral to quantity, counted carefully with 1:1 correspondence, subitised and made collections. Maths is fun! 🧮
Balance Bikes 🚲 - The children are building on their balance bike skills. Some children are completing training in an after school club with Mr Percival. As part of our Holy Spirit Experience for Reception, the children use the balance bikes every other week to develop pre riding skills. We rotate the balance bikes with our bikes with pedals to help children progress onto being able to ride a bike at the end of Year 6. 🚲
‘God’s Creation’
This week we have been learning all about God’s wonderful Creation. During our group time we have listened to the story from the Bible and have shared what our favourite part of the story is.
We talked about how and why we start our prayers with the Sign of the Cross and then shared our prayers to God about our family and friends.
We have created paintings and drawings of the world and ‘God’s creations’ too. There was a provocation of natural recourses to use our imagination by asking ourselves “What do you think?” “What do you see?” “What do you wonder?”
We have built on the children’s own experience of the world around them, making links to UTW and our RE Curriculum ‘Learning and Growing as the People of God’.
We're going on a 'Bear Hunt'
This week we have been learning about positional language for our Maths topic of the week! Following on from last weeks story "Rosie's Walk" our text this week has been "We're going on a bear hunt." The children enjoyed going 'over' and 'on top' of the tree stumps, climbing frame and slide. They stood 'next to' the benches, trees and bikes, went 'underneath' the P.E frames and the climbing frame and 'went through' the gates to the playground. During Work Outside Wednesday the children created hedgehogs with natural objects to use their fine motor skills too. We also worked this into our P.E lesson by having lots of fun using the climbing apparatus and listening along to the story, copying the actions in real life!
🐻 We’re going on a Bear Hunt… following on from Rosie’s Walk the children continued their interest in maps, routes and pathways. We have been using the outdoor space to create maps and to see if we can find a bear! In PE this week, we have used the apparatus to use and give instructions to show our understanding of positional language. 🐻
Skipping Workshop - Today we invited Lizzie to our school for a ‘Skipping Workshop’. The children had great fun engaging in pre- skipping skills. We found skipping tricky so, we will be revisiting the skill in PE throughout the year.
🐻 Today we were kind and generous. We made a donation to Children In Need. We dressed in our pyjamas and learnt about all the charity work that Children in Need do. We talked about our feelings and the feelings of others who are less fortunate. The children had fun dancing, creating Pudsey Bear flags and colouring Pudsey pictures. Thank you to our families for their kind donations. 🐻
🌺Remembrance Day🌺 Today we gathered for a collective worship where the children talked about showing empathy, care and respect. The children had been busy creating their own poppies this week. We used them to share a prayer for a loved one as we gave our respects in a two minute silence. We listened to the last post and watched some soilders lay their poppy wreath. 🌺 Article 38: Children have the right to be protected during war
💙👶🏼🍼 We have been learning all about celebrations. Today we celebrated Miss Hadland’s Baby Shower. The children were invited to wear blue and join in with some special baby games. We invited our parents to guess the weight of the baby too! We hope you all had fun, we even brought special presents for the new baby. 💙👶🏼🍼
Drama Tots!
Today we had had a very special visitor from Drama Tots. Drama Tots is dramatic play that engages children in both life and learning. It increases their understanding of the world they live in, while developing all important personal skills such as confidence, self-awareness, communication, language skills and creative thinking. Every session has a different theme with interactive props. This session has focused on harvest and pumpkins, leaves falling in Autumn and the colour change, tractors and transport, dingle dangle scarecrows and how to get yourself dressed (all with music instruments and actions.)
Diwali
This week we are celebrating Diwali and Autumn Festivals within Reception and Nursery. We are very excited to share the story of Rama and Sita and discover lots of wonderful traditions that are shared within different religions. It is the festival of light and Hindus celebrate it with joy. During this festival, people light up their houses and shops. We have been investigating and exploring the enhanced provision to find out about a special festival, Diwali. The children have been active learners finding out about Diwali by creating Rangoli patterns with shapes, manipulating clay, listening to tales about Rama and Sita, mixing natural spells in the outside and we have been tasting Indian food at snack time.
Celebrating Our Cultures!
During this very special week we have been celebrating how we are all beautiful, unique and different. At St Anne’s all cultures are shared, celebrated and respected. We continuously implement and put emphasis on respecting and embracing our differences and respecting the beliefs of those in our community. The children have discovered different cultures in a super interactive and fun P.E lessons involving different cultural dance tutorials with musical instruments, sensory scarves and a wide variety of music. The text of the week was ‘Handa’s Surpise’ where the children enjoyed talking about how they are unique and what makes them special, they loved to create self portraits and models with playdough. They also participated in a fruit tasting session where they could use their senses to describe a variety of fruits such as mango, passion fruit, pineapples and tangerines- the children loved to share their thoughts on the different fruits.
Oral Health Week
This week we have been discussing and demonstrating the importance of oral health with the children. With thanks to Warwickshire Health Visitors for providing home packs and supporting lessons and Camp Hill Dental Surgery for toothpaste tubes, the children were able to learn actively how to take care of their teeth. Along with learning about healthy and unhealthy food and drink and when, why and how long we brush our teeth for, the children were all happy with their certificates to take home to show parents they have taken great care of their teeth. Each child also took home a oral care package containing; toothpaste, tooth brushes, charts and important information!
Owl Babies
We have been learning all about the story of Owl Babies. Today we made a story board using the illustrations from the book. The children used their phonics skills to to write ‘s’ for Sarah and ‘p’ for Percy. We retold the story using a story map and talked about the characters, the setting and what happened first, next and finally.
A Very Special Visitor…
As a part of World Animal day, we have had a very special visitor come to our setting today. Winnie the miniature dachshund came to see us and have lots of fun. We compared Winnie to ourselves- we keep our teeth clean by brushing them, Winnie has her teeth cleaned with a special stick. We sleep in a warm comfortable bed, Winnie sleeps in her warm comfortable bed. We must eat healthy foods to keep up fit and strong and so must Winnie! We all took it in turns to care for Winnie and to throw her a toy. Lastly we walked her around the play ground and kept her safe on her lead. After a full day of playing Winnie was very tired but loved her visit to St Anne’s!
Annie’s Place
At St. Anne's we believe in developing children's life skills. This is where Annie's place will be a home from home for our children and hopefully their families. Children need to understand how what they do at school relates to everyday life and Annie's place will be a central part of this incredible journey that we take our children on.
Today we have had the pleasure of taking EYFS to visit Annie’s Place and explore all that it has to offer. The children all said how much they enjoyed their visit and looked forward to learning essential life skills there!
Music and Movement
Today we have introduced PE to Nursery. We went though to the main hall all together and looked at how we could keep our bodies fit and healthy!
We discussed how we could keep safe in the hall and then what foods we could eat to be healthy. The children suggested apples, bananas and pears. They also said that fizzy pop and chocolate is a special treat that we should not eat all of the time.
Together we moved out bodies in time to the music and listened to the instructions. We can bend, stretch, wiggle and jump!
Exploring Environmental Sounds
As a part of Work Outside Wednesday we have been outside exploring our beautiful, natural environment. Today we have been on a lovely walk around our large school grounds to see what we can see and hear.
We switched on our good listening ears and began our walk by our Big Garden. Here we found lots of logs where we could see some wildlife living. We found lots of spiders, daddy long legs and wood lice. This sparked lots of questions from the children such as- how did the bugs get here? What might they eat? Do they live with their families here? We then proceeded along the boundaries of the school fence to see lots more wildlife. We could hear the wind blowing and some birds chirping. It then began to rain! So we stopped for shelter under a big, green tree and sang some songs together. The weather must have been listening because the rain soon stopped and a beautiful rainbow appeared!
Further up the school field we discovered some woodlands through a secret passage! We could hear the sticks breaking under our feet and the leaves blowing in the wind, they make a crinkle and crunch sound. We explored the woodlands and thought about who might live in this habitat.
We finished our long walk in the vegetable patch. We found lots of delicious fruits and vegetables. We even stopped to smell the fragrant herbs that grow here.
After a long walk we were very hungry, so we enjoyed a healthy snack and some milk under the tree and sang some more songs and rhymes.
The children all commented on how much they enjoyed a walk outside. They saw so many amazing things and liked stepping into please 1 phonics together.
Macmillan Coffee Morning
Today we have began our Holy Spirit Experience in the form of fundraising for a charity. We have chosen to raise money for Macmillan. The children were very generous and donated what they could to this fantastic cause. In return we iced, decorated and ate cakes whilst discussing all of the important work that Macmillan does for so many families. We ask God to look after all of the people who are under Macmillan’s care and we hope that he keeps them safe.
Beginning Our Journey Into Phonics
We have begun our learning journey into phonics. The children have been busy learning new sounds each day.
Today the children have revisited and remembered their new sounds and linked them to the letter shape.
We set a challenge to look up high, look down low to find the same letter and match it. Look at all the letters we found in our learning environment. Some children even wrote their own letters.
Work Outside Wednesday!
This week we have began our Work Outside Wednesday programme. All children within EYFS have explored our outdoor environment and continued to develop their skills. They have been challenged to be creative and critical thinkers throughout each activity such as building dens from loose parts to resourcing natural ingredients to make delicious mud pies. The children have also practiced using their gross motor skills through running, climbing and accessing a variety of balance bikes.
The children have also been harvesting some delicious home grown vegetables from our garden. We discussed where our vegetables come from and the benefits of a healthy diet. The children took great pride in sharing their vegetables with their families at the end of the day!
Welcome New Nursery Children!
Today we have welcomed our new Nursery students. They all been superstars, they have came into the setting beautifully and it has been a real pleasure to watch them play, have fun and make new friends. We cannot wait to see them learn and grow together at St. Anne’s…
Talking To God
At St. Anne’s we have a school motto of, Love God, Love Learning, Love One Another. Today we have taken some time to practice making the Sign Of The Cross. We have a special prayer area in our provision called an Alter, this is where we can go to take some time to talk to God, to ask him for help, thanks or to say please or sorry. The children have enjoyed looking at some of the special objects that are on our Alter such as; the Bible, candles, mirrors and objects that reflect a time of harvest…
We ask God to keep the children and families of our school safe and healthy this year.
Healthy Snacks
Today the children have looked at what makes a healthy snack. Whilst we are at school we have access to our snack area, the children are able to choose their own fruits, vegetables and drinks. We have discussed what could make a healthy or unhealthy snack. The children said that lots of fizzy pop and sugary sweets would not be good to eat every day. They also said that drinking milk would help our bones to grow strong, water would keep our brains working and fruits or vegetables keep us nice and healthy. The children also said it was very important to wash our hands with soap and water before eating to stop the germs!
Welcoming Our Children
Today we have had the pleasure of welcoming our returning Nursery students and our new Reception class into the setting. We had lots of fun making new friends and exploring the environment together. After being very brave and waving their parents goodbye at the gate, all of the children settled beautifully and were eager to play and learn
