Homes and Habitats
Week 5
23rd-27th March

This week, we are learning about Easter and reading the Easter story.

  
We read lots of books about rabbits, eggs and Easter. We learnt that rabbits live in burrows and dig tunnels under the ground. We also got to explore our new role play and become vets!

 
We made some Easter headbands, designing our own rabbit ears out of card.
 
In our maths learning, we completed a focus activity where we matched two halves of patterned eggs to make a whole egg.

We also painted our own beautiful patterns to create large patterned eggs.
  
We did lots of exciting Easter themed activities, including an egg hunt in the Nursery garden!

We hope our Easter Cards make everybody smile at home!

  

In phonics, our sound this week is 'c for cat'. We thought of lots of other words beginning with the ‘c’ letter sound including; cat, crab, cap, clock, corn and cup and practised writing all the phase 2 letter sounds we have learnt so far. ‘s,a,t,p,i,n,m,d,g,o and c.’
After the Easter holidays, we will be moving on to our new topic; ‘Living Things and Life-cycles.’ We will have the opportunity to observe some real life-cycles!!

Wishing all our children and families a happy, safe and healthy Spring term break.

Homes and Habitats
Week 4
16th - 20th March
Snails and other mini-beasts

This week, we have continued to learn about mini-beasts and their habitats, by looking for mini-beasts in the nursery garden.

We read lots of books about snails and other mini-beasts.

  

We enjoyed creating our own paper plate snails, using paper collage, paint and pens to design some amazing snail shell patterns.

  

In our phonics, we matched animals to their initial letter sounds and wrote initial letter sounds to match some pictures. Our writing and phonics is really improving!

  

  

   
Our letter sound this week is, ‘o for octopus’, so we painted some beautiful octopus pictures and carefully painted and counted 8 tentacles.

Next week, our letter sound is, ‘c for cat.’ We will be learning about Easter and reading the Easter story, before the Easter holiday.

Homes and Habitats
Week 3 - Minibeasts
9th - 13th March

This week, we continued our work on our topic, Homes and Habitats. We started the week by drawing our own families and making a house shape with lolly-sticks.

   

We have been learning about mini-beasts and their habitats. We read the story, ‘Edward Goes Exploring’ and then went on our own mini-beast hunt in the Reception garden wild area. 

 
We looked in the long grass, under wood and rocks. We found worms, woodlice, spiders, beetles, slugs and snails and drew what we found. We also did lots of work on minibeast habitats and learning where they live!

 

We learnt about symmetry and painted one side of a ladybird then folded the paper to print the other side, making the ladybirds symmetrical. 

  

       On Friday, we had an amazing reptile experience, where we learnt about lots of different animals including; a chameleon, geckos, a red-footed tortoise, a skink, a snake and a bearded dragon!

   

  

   

 

In our phonics work, we have been learning the letter sound 'g for goat'. We have now learnt, s,a,t,p,i,n,m,d and g.

Next week, we will continue our ‘Homes and Habitats’ topic and will learn about snails and their habitats.  We will continue to learn more phase 2 letter sounds.  Next week we will show the letter sound 'o'.

Homes and Habitats
Week 2 - Immersive Week
2nd - 6th March
What a busy and exciting week we have had. Our week started with a surprise message and letter from visitors from outer space! The aliens came on a mission to find out about our planet Earth.
  
We found strange signs and evidence of the aliens visiting, including slime and spaceships.

We made comparisons between the aliens and ourselves. We talked about the similarities and differences between the aliens' home and our own homes, before working together to make the aliens feel happy and safe by creating homes, spaceships and rockets for them while they are on Earth for the week.

  

    

  

We painted our own pictures of aliens, and used bubble printing and collage to create aliens. We talked about colours and features of an alien.

  

We built rockets carefully balancing different shaped bricks and other construction blocks. We talked about shapes, counted bricks and talked about what we might see if we went to Space.

In our mathematics lessons, we used size language to order aliens by size and used Numicon number shapes to make rockets.

We enjoyed pretending to go into Space in a rocket and enjoyed exploring the texture of slime.

  

  

We visited the Space Dome, learning about the solar system; the eight planets including our planet Earth and that the sun is a giant star.

    

Throughout the week we read and listened to lots of different space and alien themed stories.

   

On Friday, we celebrated World Book Day by dressing up in space themed outfits and said, “Goodbye” to the aliens by making cards to thank the aliens for visiting us. 

Next week, we will continue our ‘Homes and Habitats’ topic and will learn about minibeasts and their homes.  We will continue to learn more phase 2 letter sounds. We have now learnt, s,a,t,p,i,n,m and d. Next week we will learn letter sound, g for goat.

 

Spring 2
Homes and Habitats
Week 1
23rd - 27th February 2026

Our topic this half-term is ‘Homes and Habitats.’

We started the week talking about our own homes; who we live with and our house numbers. We drew our families, wrote our door numbers and our names on a house template.

  

  

We have been enjoying building, using tools; hammering, sawing and playing together in our builder's and construction role-play area.

  

We have been having lots of fun with our friends and teachers in the nursery garden, developing our balancing, and gross motor skills. We have developed some lovely, positive friendships and have been sharing the bikes, swings and resources and taking turns. 

 

 

As part of our topic, we sorted pictures of different items and objects found in the home and placed them in the relevant room on a house.

We used 2d shapes to create our own house pictures.

  

We read the story, The Three Little Pigs’ and made a straw, stick and brick house and three little pigs using paint, collage, glue, and paper. We used lots of design and technology skills.

We looked at the book, ‘You Choose’ and chose the type of house we would like to live in.

Next week, we will have a ‘special surprise’ week with some immersive learning! Don't forget to look at Tapestry and our Class Page to find out more about this special week.

 

Healthy Living
Week 6
9th - 13th February 2026

This week we made our own rainbow fruit salads which we ate during our snack time.
We could choose from the fruits; strawberries, pineapple, tangerines, green grapes, blueberries and red grapes.

  

     

  

We have enjoyed learning about our five senses this term and will continue to make connections as we use our senses everyday in our playful learning.

We learnt about the Lunar New Year and the year of the horse. We practised our pencil control by tracing around dotted lines to complete a horse picture and wrote our own names.

Our sound of the week has been 'n for nest.' We thought of lots of other things that begin with the letter sound, n.
This half-term we have learnt the phase 2 letter sounds; s.a.t.p.i and n.

We learnt about, 'The Great Race' A story about the twelve animals that make up the Chinese zodiac.
We painted Chinese banners by having a go at writing Chinese looking symbols and letters.

  

We used our scissor skills to make Chinese paper lanterns and used red and gold paper to make collage lanterns.

 

We made our own Chinese dragon masks.

 

Our number of the week has been number ten. It was tricky using chopsticks to pick up counting objects and place them in numbered bowls.
We have practised our careful counting of objects to ten by carefully placing ten objects on a ten frame.

                                      In our 'My Happy Mind' lessons we have been talking about our 'five character strengths.' These are:           Love and Kindness, Friendship and Teamwork, Bravery and Honesty,  Learning and Exploring and Love of Life and Our World.

  

   

In our P.E. lessons we completed our Speed, Agility and Quickness (SQA) skills.
Next half-term we will be learning Handling, Throwing and Catching (HTC) skills.

Wishing all our families a happy, safe and enjoyable half-term.

Our topic next term is 'Homes and Habitats.'

  

 

Healthy Living - Week 5

  2nd - 6th February

This week we used our imaginative and expressive skills to perform a Story Steps story called, 'Teddy Bear's Picnic.' This helped us to sequence a story, name and describe different fruits and vegetables.

We have also been reading ‘Handa's Surprise.'  We used a story sack with a Handa doll, animal puppets and food props to sequence and retell the story.

 

We completed a pairs game around the story to help further our understanding; incorporating matching, subitising, counting, comparing quantities and identifying which group had more.

 

  

Over the next two weeks, we are celebrating children's mental health week as a school. To support this, we focused on kindness and working together. We each made a class kindness project and designed a leaf to be part of our school 'kindness tree' or printed hand prints to create a class 'kindness heart.'

     

We also had a Rock Kidz workshop in which we worked together to sing, dance and perform. There was a focus on Kindness, Inclusivity and Valuing Others.

  

  

     In our literacy and phonics lessons, we have been reading and writing the letter sound 'i' and learnt the action 'i for insect.’

    

In our mathematics lessons we have been looking at the number 9. We created our own repeating patterns, printing with fruits and vegetables and using two colours to make our own AB pattern. 

  

On Friday, we celebrated the NSPCC’s Number Day with a variety of number and shape activities both indoors and outside.

  

   

Next week, we will be learning the letter sound ‘n for nest’, focusing on our senses of taste and sight, the number ten and learning about Chinese New Year.

     Healthy Living - Week 4
      26th - 30th January

This week we have been learning about our sense of hearing. We played lots of listening games trying to identify environmental sounds, animal sounds and the sounds of different musical instruments.

In our literacy and phonics lessons we have been reading and writing the letter sound p and learnt the letter sound action, ‘p for pan.’

We have also been practising our name recognition and writing. We read and found our names, sequenced letters to make our names and practised writing our own names. 

  

  

  

We used paper shapes, paint and sticky eyes to create some pictures of pigs in mud linked to our sound of the week, ‘p.’

  

 

Our focus books this week have been poems, nursery rhymes and non-fiction books.

In our mathematics lessons we have continued to practice our careful counting with a focus on number eight.  We printed Numberblock characters using cubes or cuboids to print 8 squares, adding eyes, arms and legs.

  

We made an octopus and carefully ordered the numbered tentacles from one to eight.

 

In our P.E. lessons we have continued to practise our Speed, Agility and Quickness (SAQ) skills with our P.E. Coaches.  

  

Next week, we will be learning the letter sound, ‘i for insect’ and the number 9.

 

HEALTHY LIVING
Week 3
19th - 23rd January 2026

This week, we have continued to explore our five senses with a focus on our sense of touch.

We drew around our hands and explored a range of creative materials, describing what they felt like and creating a texture based collage.

    

    

We also used our feet to feel the different textures of the sensory mats. 

  

 

To expand our 'touch' vocabulary further, we had a go at exploring a feely bag full of different vegetables, all correlated to our story 'Oliver's Vegetables' and had a go at describing what they felt like.

In the story, Oliver explores Grandpa's vegetable patch, and so to support both our understanding of the story and reinforce our number of the week '7', we chose seven different vegetables to cut, stick and create our own vegetable patches.

We also completed some printing activities, expanding our mark making skills by using both vegetables and shapes to print and create a picture.

 

We went for a walk around the school and found some vegetables growing outside the year 3 classrooms.

In our phonics this week, we have begun to learn the letter sound 't for tap'. We have completed lots of literacy activities around this, writing the letter sound in lots of different ways (in sand, on chalkboards, on the interactive whiteboard), finding the letter sound in a story, and learning some new words that incorporate the sound, such as; tap, tin, pat, tent, tiger, coat.

Next week, we are focusing on our sense of hearing, and looking further into the importance of fruit and vegetables and where they come from. We will also be learning the letter sound 'p for pan'.

 

HEALTHY LIVING
Week 2
12th - 16th January 2026

This week, we have been continuing with our topic of healthy living. We have begun to learn about our five senses and particularly focused on our sense of smell.

We explored several different scents and had a go at guessing what each one smelt like or reminded us of.

   

We also drew around someone as a class, painted in their features and labelled all of their senses in a group.

    

Continuing our topic work, we completed a sorting activity in our key worker groups, sorting foods into healthy and unhealthy categories. We also completed a more independent food sorting activity looking at recapping 2D shapes, sorting lots of different foods into their correlating shape.

 

In our literacy lessons, we have continued to learn our phase 2 phonics, moving on to the letter sound 'a for apple'.

We have been thinking of and finding things beginning with the letter sound 'a' and practising writing the letter shape.

  

We completed a sensory foam activity, drawing the letter 'a' and an object that begins with this sound in a tray of shaving foam.

We have also been focusing on reinforcing our maths from last half-term, recapping our number recognition and rote counting to ten.

 

Next week, we will be continuing to learn about our five senses, this time with a focus on our sense of touch. We will be reading the story Oliver's Vegetables and learning the letter sound 't for tap.'

HEALTHY LIVING
Week 1
5th - 9th January 2026

Our topic this term is Healthy Living.
We will be learning about how to keep ourselves healthy with food, exercise and hygiene and will learn about our five senses.

We talked about our favourite foods and drew these on a paper plate.

  

We started to talk about foods that we can eat more of and foods that we might only eat a small amount of linked to healthy and unhealthy foods and sorted toy food into two categories.

In our literacy lessons, we have started to learn the phase 2 phonics, starting with the letter sound s for sun.
We have been thinking of and finding things beginning with the letter sound s and practising writing the letter shape.

   

We drew pictures of things beginning with s and made spiders from paper and paint, carefully counting and adding eight legs.

To further embed our 'S' sound, we had an immersive phonics session focused around gardening, where we got to use words like 'soil', 'seeds', 'spades' and 'sticks', creating a home for some vegetables, in line with our healthy living topic.

   

We read the story, 'Lulu's Lunch' and retold the story by sequencing the pictures.

Next week, we will be learning about our five senses with a focus on our sense of smell and will be learning the letter sound 'a for apple.'