Stanningley Primary School

The children did an amazing job of getting sponsors to run in our Race for Life event which took place on the 21st July. We raised lots of money for our very special charities, Candlighters, Everyman, Maia Mouse foundation and Wills Way. We hope the money we raise will help lots of worthy people.

We have been very lucky to have 8 of our eggs hatch into chicks. We are continuing to watch them grow and talk about all the changes we can see. Some children have been able to give them a little stroke with the help of a grown up. We are learning about the life cycle of a chick and we can not wait to see what happens next!

We are problem solvers. We use our skills of communication, social interaction and logic to work out how to reach satisfactory conclusions to problems. We work independently and as part of small groups.

We had so much fun exploring outside! We built, climbed, cooked, poured, balanced, performed and learnt lots of things. Some children role played in the mud kitchen creating lots of lovely meals for friends, by mixing mud, water, leaves and things they could find. Children were able to put a story line to their play within the water and used boats and animals to aid there play. Look at our amazing photos.

We used our interactive whiteboard to build a caterpillar by ordering the numbers, some children worked together to order the numbers. We looked at matching numicon and used them to match numbers; we also used it to add one more to a given number. We used numbers to match to a numicon piece. We are becoming fantastic mathematicians.

As you can see we enjoy making models. We are now building with a purpose and extending our models to be able to use them in role play situations. We are planning our models and building them using lots of different media and materials.

We all celebrate our birthdays and we have had lots of fun sharing these special times with each other. We have listened to different stories about birthdays and we have even made our own birthday book!

We used the Bee-Bots to help us learn about directions. The children had to programme the Bee-Bot to move to different places on the maps. The children were encouraged to work as a team and communicate using positional and directional language to achieve a goal.

The Little Red Hen We listened to the story of The Little Red Hen. The Little Red Hen wanted to make bread and she needed help along the way. The animals did not want to help. We also wanted to make bread, we worked together and we learnt how to make simple flat bread and we all agreed that it was very tasty. We even made a little stall to ‘sell’ and share our freshly made bread.

We have learnt lots of wonderful things in nursery. We have made some transient art pictures using our special number 3. This evolved into making spiders and other wonderful things. We have made marks and described them to our friends and adults, we made an obstacle course and balanced across it and we had a great time building towers as big as we could with Duplo. We listened to lots of fascinating stories involving the number 3. Goldilocks and the three bears was our favourite. We played role play games and explored in porridge and even made porridge with Mrs Pritchatt to try.

During the freezing cold weather, we liked exploring the ice in the water tray outside…. So much so we froze more and brought it inside for the children to construct with, explore with animals and paint.

We were very lucky to have a lady from the dogs trust come to see us and teach us how to look after a dog, and what to do if a dog becomes unfriendly around us.

The school had the talent show on the last day of the term. We thought the Early Years children should be given their chance to perform for their friends. We had lots of fun listening to the different songs.

The children were exploring with the straws in the water with bubbles. We gave the children the chance to blow paint to create some wonderful pictures. We extended the children’s learning by adding liquid soap to paint and allowed the children to blow into the paint to see what would happen

We welcome adults to stay and play on a Tuesday morning, where we have different activities and the chance to explore the environment together. We read stories, build models, use bricks, Lego and other construction materials to complete a challenge. We use the sand to construct or bake wonderful looking cupcakes, biscuits and pizzas from the play dough. We paint and explore the water area all whilst our grown-ups have fun joining in too!

We move our bodies around the outside areas in different ways. We are challenged to make obstacle course using the large bricks and planks to extend our bodies to move in different ways, for example stretching, balancing and jumping.

We used the magnetic letters to make our names by matching the printed letters. We made marks in sand and salt to begin representing our names. We were very proud when we finished our names.

We listened to the parable of Noah’s ark. As a team we sequenced pictures to retell the story. Then we used our wooden bricks to make our own arks to carry the animals. We spent some time during our literacy time writing the key points of the story, using our ‘stretchy’ sentences. As a challenge we enjoyed making masks of all the different animals. We used our cutting skills to cut the shape of the mask and made sure we used the correct colours for the animals. We did have a little adult help to cut out the eye holes.

We learnt how to weigh different objects using the weighing scales. We put one animal in one side of the scales and then made the scales balance by adding multilink bricks to the other side. We recorded our results on a sheet. We found out that the penguin was the lightest and the sheep was one of the heaviest animals.

The children took it in turns to read the instructions from the recipe and we worked together to add the ingredients for the dough into a bowl. We had a chat to see what colour we should make it, before deciding on red. The children enjoyed it so much that we decided to make another colour.

We have enjoyed music time with Mrs Rivers, we have played with different instruments and have learnt lots of new songs. We had a very exciting time with Dave the drummer. We played on different sized drums, followed rhythms and got excited when we could play the drums by banging them really hard with our hands. We had lots of fun!

We raised money for Save the Children through donations on Christmas jumper day and we also dressed up in our special clothes on party day! Our term ended with a traditional pantomime and this year we shrieked and clapped to the story of Aladdin.

We celebrated Christmas in December and we all enjoyed listening to the Christmas story and learning some Christmas songs. The children in nursery retold the story using our beautiful toys and in Reception the children dressed up and performed the Nativity for their friends and families. As part of our festive celebrations we made cards using printing skills and we made hanging decorations that were constructed by fastening together a trio of lolly sticks.

In Nursery we had a wonderful time being creative and having a wonderful Christmas time during our sparkle time show. We made cards, decorations and biscuits with our friends and families as well as listened to a lovely Christmas story and sang some songs we had learnt.

Julia Donaldson is the author of the book; Stick Man and listening to this story inspired us to make our own little stick men. We also used sticks for counting, drawing and digging into the sand. We know that some sticks float and we even discovered that sticks can be used for painting, stirring and tapping out a musical pattern

In November we celebrated Diwali and we learnt the story of Rama and Sita. Sita was saved from the Ten Headed Monster Ravana. Rama and Sita walked through the forest which was lit by diva lamps. We made our own diva lamps and decorated them with glitter and sparkles.

We’re going on a journey…. The children were playing with the steering wheels, running around pretending to be cars. With the ‘little plant of a seed’ the children began creating the giant car out of wooden bricks to go on the journey. Where shall we go? “Disney land”, “Seaside”, “moon” the children suggested!

Music Time We are learning lots of new songs during music time with Mrs Rivers. We especially love the popcorn song and using the instruments and scarves to accompany the songs and games.

The new early years environment is an exciting place to learn. We are exploring all the new equipment and accepting the challenges that are set. We have been very creative and are trying hard to tidy up!

Buddies The year six children came to help us at lunch time, they showed us how to go about the lunch time routine and made sure we were safe in the big playground.

We have enjoyed settling into our new classroom routine and have started to make friends. We are beginning to learn lots of new things and have looked around the whole school.