Stanningley Primary School

Recently we have been looking at our balancing skills and co-ordination. With the weather being on our side we managed to take the balance bikes out in o the big playground to put our balancing skills in to practice. For some children at first it was tricky however, by the end of the sessions children were confidently using the Balance bikes and picking up speed. The children thoroughly enjoyed getting outside on the bikes.

Here you can see and hear Lola reading the French stories to the children in Early Years. Have a listen, do you understand any of the words or can you learn any of the words that Lola uses?

Along side World Book Day Aydan's favourite books were French one. Lucky for us Aydan's mummy kindly came in to school to read them to us. First Lola read in French and then she translated for us in English! a couple of words we could even work out and translate ourselves. Have you got any books written in different languages?

On world book day we came to school dressed up as our favorite characters from books and stories. We also brought our favorite books from home to share with everybody, we wrapped the books up so it was a surprise to see whose book was inside.

We have been listening to the story of Oliver's Vegetables by Vivian French. Oliver learns to eat healthy vegetables. We have been tasting some vegetables and we have been playing games to help us to learn how to identify different vegetables. How many vegetables can you name? Oliver loved chips and we now know all the steps that are involved in making chips. Did you know, lots of vegetables can be eaten raw as well as cooked?

In Early Years we are beginning to look at a new story, The Wise Man and The Foolish Man.The Wise Man built his house on a solid rock base. The Foolish Man, who was also rather lazy, built his house on the sand.We made the story using props and we could see that when the rain fell the house that the foolish man built was not secure, the sand moved and his fell down. We found ways of making rain and storm sounds using instruments. We even made some rain by pouring water through the colander.

The New Luna Year was celebrated on Tuesday 1st February - the year of the Tiger - and we had a great week exploring the different celebrations and trying on special outfits. We even had the chance to try some Chinese food, not all the children agreed on the taste but most of them gave it a good try.

The children have been socializing in our little café . They have been serving food and even using chop sticks to eat up the dumplings, noodles and vegetables. It is quite tricky to control the chop sticks with one hand but with perseverance it can be mastered!

The children have been making puppets using paper folding and cutting skills. Dragons are an important part of the New Year festival in China and our paper dragons can be controlled to move to music and Tallulah’s finger puppets can also dance!

This year is the year of the Tiger on the zodiac calendar. We have listened to the story of The Great Race and we have been talking about each of the characters and their special skills. We know that tigers are strong, they are good hunters and like some other big cats they can be very fierce. They are also very beautiful and they have stripes on their coats.

Pumpkins have inspired us to do lots of interesting things this autumn. We listened to the story of Pumpkin Soup and we gathered our own pumpkins and made our own tasty soup. We had to slice and dice the pumpkin flesh. We discovered that some pumpkins can vary in colour and size and that some large pumpkins are very very heavy. We made some drawings of our pumpkins which required close observation .

We have been learning all about the possibilities of paper! We have been using scissors to cut and curl paper strips. By using just a few materials and a lot of imagination we have created interesting pieces of work that demonstrate our newly learnt skills. We have been working very hard to refine these skills and we have transferred them into other projects.

The road safety team came in to talk to us and help us to learn about keeping safe on and near the road. Using a giant storyboard, we made pictures to illustrate safe places to walk and play. nWe know that we must always walk holding on to an adult or pushchair when we cross the busy road. We know that pedestrian crossings are the safest place to cross the road. nWe have reconstructed roads and safe crossings outside in our play area. n

We make our own playdough. We are learning to do this by following simple picture instructions. We use cups and scoops to measure out our ingredients and by adding food colouring we can change the look of our dough. We keep our playdough in our own individual tubs and this helps us to remember to store everything after we have finished exploring. Our tubs are named and have photographs to help us to identify and select our own play dough. Working and exploring with playdough helps us to develop fine motor control. We use different tools to roll, squash, squeeze and shape the dough.

Making friends and building relationships is a very important part of our Early Years curriculum. We learn to share our ideas and cooperate. We begin to understand the importance of turn taking and working together. Making friends is lots of fun.

We enjoy learning how to climb safely. We have a willow tree to help us learn these skills. We make towered stacks with our big bricks and some of us we even went into the school garden to gather apples from the high branches of our fruit trees.

Building and constructing helps us to understand the properties of shape and how we can transfer our ideas into reality. We work with different materials and on different scales. Building can be a team effort or something that we can work on independently. Sometimes we save what we have constructed for others to enjoy, sometimes we like to knock down or deconstruct what we have made.

Every day the children can enjoy a healthy snack. Sometimes children choose to drink milk and sometimes they have water. Children can choose to have a small bowl of cereal first thing in the morning. This independent activity helps children to manage their own healthy diet and at the same time they learn pouring skills. The children wash up and tidy away after their snack.

Boxes are fun! Big boxes are great! Boxes can become dens and places to meet with your friends. We have been lucky enough to have been given a huge box... what do you think was in the big box before we got it? Boxes can become magical places to fill with imagination. If you get a box, keep hold if it and turn it into something else.