The Evil Pea Returns!

This week, Chestnuts were shocked to discover that the Evil Pea had returned to their classroom once again. This time, the Evil Pea had been very mischievous and froze their fruits and vegetables in blocks of ice. The children were quick to work together to save them from their icy predicament! They spent time discussing the different ways that they could melt the ice and came up with a plan to warm the ice through or chisel away at it using tools. Following on from this, the children enjoyed ‘checking’ the school’s CCTV footage and observed the Evil Pea entering the classroom. This caused huge excitement and the children were keen to write letters to Supertato asking for his help. Alongside this in Literacy, the children have been creating story maps to retell the story of Supertato. We have been really impressed with their story tellers voices!

In Maths this week, the children have been exploring 3D shapes and have been learning about their properties, looking for the 2D faces within them and have enjoyed being shape detectives, looking for shapes around the school. What a fantastic week of learning!

Super learning in Chestnuts

What a brilliant week of learning!

As part of their Literacy learning, the Chestnuts have enjoyed exploring the book ‘Supertato’ by Paul Linnet and Sue Hendra. They have spent time thinking about the key characters and have worked together to identify adjectives to describe them. Alongside this, they spent time thinking about the Evil Pea’s behaviour in the story and discussed what ‘good and bad’ means to them. This helped them to also think about what qualities make a good superhero.

The children have been incredibly creative this week and have been painting their own versions of the Evil Pea along with working collaboratively to create a giant Evil Pea in the field using natural resources such as grass and sticks. They have also spent time learning about the artist ‘Giuseppe Arcimboldo’ and used pictures of fruits and vegetables to make their own portraits inspired by his artwork.

In Maths this week, the children have continued their learning on measurements with a focus on time. They have explored time in seconds, minutes, hours and days by timing themselves in different activities and sequencing their daily routines into time order.

Fantastic work Chestnuts!

Evil Pea invades Chestnut Class

 What a fantastic first week back in class. The children came back refreshed and ready for a new term of learning.

This week, the Chestnuts were shocked to discover that their classroom floor had been covered in peas and that their snack time fruit was taped and held hostage to the wall. They worked together to unpick the clues and came to the conclusion that it must be…THE EVIL PEA!
This caused a flurry of excitement and the children created plans to catch the evil pea and got to work making traps and designing their own superheroes to protect the class. Along with their investigations, the children interviewed lunchtime staff to see if they had any missing peas in the school freezer. Some of the Chestnuts insisted on checking some of the staff members hands to see if there was any green evidence on them. Luckily they ruled the staff out as culprits and focused back on the Evil Pea.
This has been a fantastic way to hook the children into our new topic ‘Are all vegetables evil?’ inspired by the book ‘Supertato. We look forward to seeing where the learning takes us next!

Jack and the Beanstalk

This week, the Chestnut class have had a wonderful week exploring the story ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. They have enjoyed working collaboratively to create a class beanstalk for their role play area and have have had lots of fun retelling the story using props. Alongside this, the children have been thinking about how to grow their own beanstalk and created a class set of instructions before planting their own bean plant. In our Science lesson, the Chestnuts have been thinking about the different parts of a plant and their functions. They challenged themselves to piece dissected parts of a plant back together and labelled the different parts. Following on from this, they used their observational skills to create their own pictures of plants.

On Thursday, it was World Poetry Day and the children had lots of fun listening to a range of different poems. They then had a go at creating some of their own ‘What am I?’ riddles which they performed to the rest of the class. What a fantastic week of learning!

British Science Week

The children had lots of fun participating in British Science Week. The theme for British Science Week
this year was ‘Time’. The children have enjoyed focusing on the key scientific skill of observing things over time and have conducted a range of exciting investigations.
They enjoyed investigating with light to create shadows, observed changes to apple cores and learnt how water moves through plants. Alongside this, the Chestnuts teamed up with Year 2 to take part in a live farming lesson with the NFU.

World Book Day

This week, the Chestnut children had a fantastic, fun-filled day celebrating World Book Day. They enjoyed dressing up as their favourite book characters and were excited to tell each other all about their favourite stories. The day was filled with book themed activities from; costume parades, whole school book swaps, teacher story swaps and a collaborative whole school story write. The children had a lot of fun and ended the day feeling very inspired. We love reading in the Chestnuts!

What a lovely end to February!

What a fantastic week we have had in Chestnut Class!

This week, the Chestnut children have enjoyed being fully immersed in ‘History Week’. Across the school, the children have been learning about prominent women in medicine through time. In Chestnut Class, the children learnt about Marie Curie and the impact that her discoveries have had on life today. As part of this learning, the children enjoyed sequencing her life on a giant class timeline, dressing up as nurses/scientists in the role play area and used different materials to create their very own x-rays.

Alongside their History learning, the children were excited to work with the Chance 2 Shine cricket coach and practised the key skills of batting and bowling. One of the Chestnut’s said “this is my first time playing cricket and I have loved it!”

Fabulous first week back!

What a fantastic first week back!

The Chestnut children have come back refreshed after the half term break and have shown great enthusiasm for their learning.

This week, we have started our new topic ‘traditional tales’. The first story that we have been looking at is ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’. The children were excited to arrive to school to discover a huge mess in their classroom with chairs tipped and porridge oats on the floor. They used their detective skills to soon discover the culprit was in fact- Goldilocks! This sparked great excitement and they eagerly started writing letters to Goldilocks along with wanted posters!

To end the week, the children have had a treat afternoon to celebrate filling their class marble jar. They voted as a class and decided on a pancake party where they decorated pancakes with a range of delicious toppings. There wasn’t a crumb left!

Chestnut Explorers

This half term, the Chestnuts have enjoyed exploring different journeys through our stories. They have travelled under the sea, through space and then dipped in and out of different countries!

They have loved hearing the tales of the snail from the story ‘The Snail and the Whale’ and were excited to discover postcards from the different places that he had visited. To immerse them in their learning, they enjoyed trying different foods, explored sensory trays and played in our travel agents role play area.

What fantastic learning!

Maths Week

What brilliant mathematicians we have in Chestnut Class!

This week, the Chestnuts have had lots of fun exploring numbers. They enjoyed listening to a number story ‘Spinderella’ before completing challenges linked to the story. They had to work together to count the objects in the spider webs and then spent time as a class comparing their numbers and putting them into order.

Alongside this, the Chestnuts have been exploring the composition of numbers to 8. They used part-whole models to help them to find different ways to make the numbers.

To end our brilliant week of maths learning, the children came to school dressed as their favourite numbers. Well done Chestnuts!