Snowman

This week, we have been learning about The Snowman story by Raymond Briggs. 

The children enjoyed listening to the story and watching the film with the famous piece of music, We're Walking in the Air. They also had fun playing with the small world toys, depicting the story.

Some Bumblebees were very busy mark-making what the main characters in the story were saying to each other inside speech bubbles.

The children loved making snowmen from plasticine and a variety of other materials.

Moreover, they made Christmas dinner, wrapped Christmas presents and put them under the Christmas tree in Santa's workshop.

The children loved wearing their Christmas jumpers on Thursday.

They were also were very excited when their parents came to visit for The Stay and Play on Friday.

Together, they made some Christmas cards...

 

...did some patterning...

… and made patterns in baubles with masking tape and wet chalk.

They also made some reindeer food for Rudolph and practiced building some superfast cars to help Santa deliver all those presents!

Outside, the children were very excited to try out the sleigh and a ride on Upland's own reindeer.

One of the grown-ups tried out a very different form of transport...

Thank you to all the parents and carers for coming. We hope to see you back again next year. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all the Bumblebees and their families!!!

Christmas

This week, Bumblebees have been learning about the Christmas story and getting ready for their Christmas performance!

 
                                                 
                                                      

They have been working very hard to learn all the songs for the play and were very excited to get dressed up in their costumes for the dress rehearsal on Wednesday and then for the actual performance on Thursday.

The role play has changed to become Santa's workshop and the children had a go at decorating the Christmas tree when they came to school on Monday.

They enjoyed fixing toys before putting them in Santa's sack. They also had fun being Santa: ho, ho, ho!

And just look at the boys using stencils to draw different characters from the Bible story...

Meanwhile, the girls were playing Christmas bingo!

The children also enjoyed writing letters to Santa and practicing to post them before the trip to the post office on Friday.

Unfortunately, it rained heavily on Friday morning so the morning nursery children took their letters with them to post them after school when the rain stopped. The sun came out later in the afternoon so the afternoon Bumblebees walked to the post box to send their letters to Santa.

Let's wait and see what Santa does on Christmas eve...

THANK YOU to all the parents and carers who volunteered their help!

History week

This week, we had a fabulous time learning about our family history. The children brought in photos of their grandparents and talked to us about them. It was also fantastic to see grandparents coming in to talk to Bumblebees about their childhood, their time at school and teach us some games and songs from the good old days!

The children looked at lots of black and white and sepia photographs and compared them to colour photos we have today.

They also compared old books with yellow and slightly torn pages and faded pictures to books we have today. Moreover, they learned how to differentiate between old and new toys and had lots of fun along the way. 

Bumblebees also loved playing Snakes and Ladders with one of our visitors! They were interested to learn that when she was a little girl she had milk in bottles and had to take cod liver oil at her school!

Thanks to Karen, who brought some old style bottles in, the children could compare the packaging of milk in the past with today's packaging. 

We also had a visit from one grandma who has been working at our school for 19 years and whose children came to Upland Primary School. She shared some photos of the old buildings with us.

The children noticed that the old building was made of bricks and that the new building is made from wood. They told us that the roof of our new school doesn't have a chimney and that the windows are a different shape. 

The children enjoyed getting messy with Granny's soap flakes and learned how to play hop scotch! 

A big THANK YOU to all our visitors for making this week memorable and exciting!

Diwali

This week , Bumblebees have been learning about the celebration of Diwali. We had a look at countries on the map of the world and found England and India together. We then listened to a short clip of how Diwali is celebrated and looked at Indian clothes and jewellery. The children enjoyed looking at a real sari and learning words to describe it. 

We then found out more about Diwali by listening to the story of Rama and Sita and acted it out. The children were particularly taken with the 10 headed monster, Ravana, who at first pretended to be a nice old man, and many of them wanted to play his part!

One of the highlights of the week has been a visit of one of the parents wearing the most beautiful traditional sari! She braved the heavy rain to share her culture with us. Thank you so much from all the morning and the afternoon Bumblebees!

In maths, we learned about 2-d shapes, Rangoli patterns and had a go at making our own Rangoli patterns as a team!

We also made books about the story of Rama and Sita and made up our own stories, too!

Outside, we had a go at being fire fighters, putting out fires in houses and all over the place. Diwali is a beautiful time but remember that candles and lamps can cause fires, too!

Autumn celebrations

Over the last 2 weeks, we have been learning about Autumn and the festivals that take place during this season. The children went on an Autumn walk around the school and thought about what they could see, hear, feel and smell. We then made a book together.

The children took part in many seasonal activities such as picking up the pumpkins of different sizes to see what they feel like and had a go at scooping the seeds out and making a pretend pumpkin soup.

They also learned about how and why Halloween is celebrated and enjoyed learning songs, especially the one about the 5 little pumpkins as it involved acting out how the pumpkins were feeling!

The children also had a go at making Autumn pictures that involved printing with bottle corks.

Have a look at our favourite activities on the Busy Fingers table!

And here is some spooking writing inside spiders...

We have also been thinking about what the weather is like in Autumn and about what kind of clothes we wear to protect us from the rain.

In addition, we have been getting ready for the Bonfire night. We made lots of firework pictures, listened to the sounds fireworks make, learnt a song about fireworks and played different instruments.