We have had an amazing start to the new academic year!  All the children have settled in well, made new friends and memories.  During the first week of term the children took part in a STEM challenge (we called it the zip-a-dee-doo-da challenge) where the children were asked to collaborate together to produce a zipwire that could transport a small object.  They came up with a design and created it using a range of materials, but testing them out was definitely the most fun!

Our focus book this half term was `Pumpkin Soup.` The children did some fantastic work around this story including; drama, writing speech bubbles for what they imagined the characters might be saying and poetry.  We also invited parents / carers into our classrooms so that we could share the story with loved ones and enjoy taking part in some fun activities (the children were not so keen on tasting the pumpkin though).

In Geography we have been taking a closer look at maps-understanding how we use them, what the keys mean and understanding the difference between human and physical features around us.  We were able to use our fieldwork skills to explore the local area in order to produce a map with a key to show where we had walked.

In science we covered our topic `Animals including Humans.`  During this topic we spent time in the forest school area looking for a variety of mini beasts and decided to concentrate on woodlice.  We looked at their natural habitat and discussed why they chose to live there.  We also carefully collected some woodlice so that the children could explore their curiosity by taking a closer look at their bodies and how they moved.

On the last day of term we combined our International day and black history month to look at the county `The Gambia.` The children really enjoyed listening to the true story `One plastic bag` by Isatou Ceesay and reflected on what an impact her actions had on the local environment-inspired by her actions the children used their imagination to create new things out of the plastic bags.  To my amazement, the highlight of the day for the children was trying rice and black beans that had been cooked in a vegetable stock-they could not get enough of it!