Coxhoe Primary School

Donaldson & McKee Class

Mrs Barron & Mrs Marsden supported by Miss Smith

What we've been up to...

Coxhoe's Coolest Car Wash

The children have worked so hard this week to plan and prepare for our very own Car Wash. The funds that we earned will go towards our Ice Cream Dojo Party. We created posters and price lists to advertise the car washing service, completed booking forms with some of our teachers and wrote instructions on how to clean a car. This resulted in an amazing opportunity for our children to enjoy themselves on Friday, cleaning the teachers cars whilst dancing to some groovy tunes. The teachers were so impressed with the results...

Balance Bikes

What an amazing day we've had learning new skills on a balance bike. We worked so hard and listened so well to our instructor in order to ride the balance bikes. We limboed under barriers, rode over ramps and zig-zagged our way through cones. We are amazing!

Colour Run

We had so much fun celebrating inclusion and diversity with our rainbow colour run! We read the story, The Same, but Different Too! By Karl Newson & Kate Hindley and carried out classroom activities centred around our differences and similarities and celebrated how diverse we are.

Listen to the story on the link below;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDuTr8au24c

Potting Project

The children have been busy planting seeds in our new potting beds today. We know that plants need water, sunlight, soil, air and space to grow. Let's hope we have some beautiful flowers, tasty fruit and vegetables soon...

Hall Hill Farm

What a fantastic day we've had at Hall Hill Farm! We met some wonderful animals, took a ride on the bumpy tractor and got to feed the fluffy lambs too.

We learnt how to take care of the animals and what foods they like to eat. We said hello to the grumpy turkey, Henry and watched excitedly as we cheered on the sheep in the sheep race, which Lady Baa-baa won!

We ended the day with a play on the huge outdoor play park and then off inside to the soft play. Phew! What a day!

Landscape Art

This week we have been reading, What the Ladybird Heard. We have discussed the setting of the story and have been very interested about the animals that live on the farm. Today, we went outside to create some landscape art. We used natural materials to create a farmyard and thought about ways in which we could create an animal using natual materials. Look at the wonderful farmyard animals that we created. Can you make out the chicken, the horse, the woolly sheep and the cows? Let's not forget the beautiful farm house and floral gardens.

Marvellous Mini Beasts

We have been fascinated by mini beasts since reading, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We learnt all about the life cycle of a butterfly and went on a mini beast hunt around our school. We looked closely under rocks and dug in the soil and carefully collected them in jars. Later we closely observed the mini beasts and did observational drawings of them. From these drawings we used play-dough and clay to create 3D sculptures...

Butterfly
Snail
Worm
Ladybird
Spider
Ladybird
Bee
Caterpillar

Stick Insects

Children have been so interested in mini beasts lately. We have learnt so much about them. We have been on mini beast hunts, looked at their preferred habitats, what they like to eat. From this we were able to make fact files and made some amazing 3D clay sculptures.

Mr Hopson kindly let us babysit his stick insects today. We were fascinated by them! Some of us more than others. We looked closely at them and even sang a little song to them, as we found out that they like to dance to music!

Signs of Spring

Spring is in the air, which means it's time to get outside! The weather is changing and we had a beautiful sunny day so we decided to go outside and explore the beautiful Spring flowers. We looked carefully at the bright colours and used paints to mix colours to match. We used a variety of materials to make observational drawings. Some of us even used malleable materials to create a sweet, smelling daffodil garden.

Spring Time Poetry

We have been reading some poems about Spring which led us to talk about Spring time and the things we like to do with our families. What do you like to do in Spring?

Listen to our beautiful poems...

Traditional Tales

We have had so much fun, listening to and recalling familiar phrases from traditional tales. We have read a variety of tales this term. We thought about the characters in the stories and how sometimes they change as they are retold. We decided to create our own tale based on Goldilocks and the three bears. Donaldson class wrote the story, Goldilocks and the three sharks. Listen to Willow read our story...

Who's been eating my porridge?

Oh no! Goldilocks has knocked over the bears porridge as she escaped from their house! We had to help clean up the mess and make sure the bears got their favourite flavoured porridge. We had to taste three different flavours.

Daddy Bear likes his porridge salty

"Oh that's my favourite!" Elijah

Mammy Bear likes her porridge sweet.

"Yummy! I like the sweet flavour." Willow

Baby Bear likes his porridge sour.

"Urgh! That's disgusting!" Maci

The Gingerbread Man

Run, run as fast as you can you can't catch me I'm the gingerbread man!

We were shocked to find our classroom in a state this morning! Who could have left such floury footprints outside of our oven? ... The gingerbread man, that's who! We had to stop him from causing more chaos in school so we quickly made some 'wanted' posters and hung them up to alert the rest of the school. We felt so sorry for the old man and lady that their yummy snack had ran away that we decided to make them some new gingerbread people. Take a look at our fantastic designs...

Snow Day!

We were so excited to see the beautiful snow. We all got wrapped up and headed outside to explore the frosty snow. We had so much fun making snow angels and snowballs. Some of us even managed to help make a snowman!

Art and Design

This week we have made spicy smelling paint. We mixed cinnamon, cumin powder, ginger and vanilla into our paint. We created some beautiful tones, which smelt good too!

Not only did we make our own paint but we also made our own paintbrushes using natural materials! Look at Maci's feathery paintbrush. She created some wonderful abstract artwork with it...

Exploring Our Senses

We have been learning about our senses. We have 5 senses that we use;

smell, touch, taste, hearing, sight

We have explored all of our senses this week. One of our favourites was taste. We used our sense of taste to describe different foods, some of them we liked better than others. Look at our funny faces...

Our Bodies

Children have shown a keen interest in keeping fit. They have set up a gym within the classroom, using rolling pins as dumbbells and watching fitness videos online. The EYFS team decided that we would direct our learning around this theme to expand their interests and learning.

We kicked off the term by asking lots of interesting questions. We focussed on the following;

How do we breathe?
How do we move our hands?
Where do teeth come from?

Inhale - Exhale

We took time to listen to our bodies. We felt our ribs and inhaled oxygen into our bodies and noticed how our bodies moved. We discussed how our soft lungs were protected by the rib cage. We used balloons and straws to represent the lungs and discussed how lungs inflate and deflate as we inhale and exhale. We learnt about the role of the lungs, bringing air into our bodies and passing oxygen into the bloodstream.

Robot Hands

We looked closely at how a real hand works. Looking at the different sections of our fingers and how they work together to bend. We discussed how the muscles and tendons work together to grasp and move. We created robot hands by drawing around our own hands on card, cutting them out, sticking segments of drinking straw on the fingers and threading string through them. Children discussed how they used their fingers to make the hands. Once finished, the children were able to pull the five strings and flex the robot fingers.

Happy New Year!

Children have worked so hard to make beautiful calendars for 2023. We know that you will be so impressed with them ...

A HUGE thank you to Elijah's Daddy, Mr Martin. He was very kind to allow Elijah to bring in his old army helmet and medals. The children were fascinated with the items and took turns to try on the helmet. It was very heavy!

Remembrance Day

This week’s focus was, Remembrance Day. We discussed how on 11^th November we remember all of the brave soldiers who gave their lives in WW1 and WW2. We shared our thoughts and feelings around war and looked at the important roles of the children during this time. Some children joined the scouts and girl guides where they learnt how to knit socks and scarves for the soldiers. We were very lucky to have Mrs Ghandi in to show us how to weave our own hat.

As well as this, we discussed how people kept happy during this sad time. One of the ways was listening and dancing to music to lift their spirits. We learnt a new song, popular amongst the soldiers, ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary’. The children loved it so much they asked to make musical instruments to create a marching band!

Happy Diwali

Reception would like to wish you a happy Diwali. We have learnt about the festival of light and looked at how Diwali is celebrated. We especially enjoyed dancing to traditional music and getting crafty with the following activities...

Diwali activities:

making lanterns
drawing and colouring rangoli patterns
making diva lamps using play-dough
colouring henna tattoos

Remember, remember the 5th of November

To celebrate Bonfire Night we took part in a variety of fun and exciting activities.

Firework Toast!

We painted bread with coloured milk for a tasty snack. Look at all of the fantastic colours and shapes.

Bonfire Collage

During provision, children were excited about building their own bonfire out of blocks and straws. We decided to create some collages using our craft materials. Look how effective they are.

Firework Painting

* Children shared their excitement of fireworks, explaining how much they loved the colourful explosions. We snipped the end of cardboard tubes and used them as stamps to create a spectacular array of colour.

Active Maths: Representing 1, 2, 3

This week we have been identifying representations of 1, 2 qnd 3, whilst also subitising and counting collections of objects. Today, children took part in active maths where they were challenged to complete a carousel of activities.

The children were able to count how many points they scored and recorded their scores using their own mark making, representing 1, 2 or 3. Take a look at all the imaginative ways they chose to record...

Happy Halloween!

We hope you all have a spooky Halloween holiday. We can't wait to hear all about your costumes and the tricks and treats. In the meantime, have a look at what we've been up to this week, if you dare.... mwahahaha!

What a spooky week we've had this week. We have dressed up in spooky costumes to scare our teachers and danced along to some gruesome tunes. Can you do the Monster Mash?

Who knew pumpkins could be so much fun? We've drawn and painted them, hammered them, scooped them out, counted seeds using tweezers and compared the sizes.

We created some amazing spooky, scary skeletons too using cotton buds on black card.

Mwahahah! We have had some witchy visitors in Reception this week! They challenged us to explore some suspicious looking feely boxes. Some of us were very brave and took on the challenge... would you dare to put your hand in the box?

We used some wonderful vocabulary to describe our senses...

Can you guess the contents by our descriptions?

Box 1: slimy, cold, wet

Box 2: warm, bubbly, disgusting

Box 3: big, furry, fluffy

Watch out...Evil Pea about!

This week has been a disaster! The Evil Pea snook into our classroom and left us a note to say that he had captured the veggies and there's nothing we could do! Was this the end for Supertato?!

Do not fear Reception are here!

We used our crafty skills to make an army of super veggies, then made telescopes to hunt high and low for the Evil Pea. Luckily, we managed to hunt him down and found him the kitchen!

We then decided to design and make a trap for him to put a stop to his mischief!

"We need to come up with a cunning plan to capture that Evil Pea!" - Henry

Take a look at how well we worked together to create maps and traps to capture the Evil Pea...

Matching, sorting and comparing...

In maths this week, we matched items that were the same by playing lots of fun games. We challenged our friends to build models that were the same height, shorter and taller. It was very tricky!

Later, we moved onto sorting into groups. We sorted a variety of objects and even came up with our own sorting rules.

"I have a group of objects that are yellow and a group of objects that are not yellow." - Reggie

We then compared quantities, using vocabulary such as, more/most, less/least, same/equal.

"I have more conkers than you. I have 7 and you have 5." - Lucy

Computing

We have been using Mini Mash on the ipads. We logged on and navigated our way around the app, following instructions to create an autumn scene. We learnt how to select autumn colours, patterns and edit the brush sizes to create a beautiful autumn tree. We even used the keypad to type out our names at the bottom of the page!

Photo Collage

We took the ipads to explore the outside environment. We worked in pairs to identify interesting close up shots, (using the zoom function) of the natural world. We then swapped our ipads with a friend and they had to locate the objects in our photos. It was so much fun!

We extended our leaning and interests further by printing off our images and creating a wonderful autumn collage. We incorporated text, leaves, pine cones and acorns. We experimented with materials, such as tissue paper; tearing, twisting and scrunching it. As we did this we discovered that it sounded like crunching leaves. Take a look at our creative collages!

Autumn Adventures!

This week we discussed the changing seasons. We explored our local environment, taking in the rich autumnal colours all around us.

Red, gold, brown, orange, yellow and green

We then created autumn crowns, and used wax crayons to take leaf rubbings. We even painted the leaves and used them to create prints. It was so much fun!

PE with Mr Todd

Making a mark...

Snack Time

The children have enjoyed being more independent and helping themselves to snack when they are hungry. They are super careful to pour their fruity water using two hands. The children have enjoyed eating plums, apples, pears, oranges and bananas. Yum!