Summer 2024
What could be better than having some transition time and thinking about our Summer Seaside topic than on the beach?!
It was a wonderful way to celebrate how our current Reception Class have worked hard on beach days over the year and are soon to hand over to Preschool as the new Alnwick Castle Class.
We set off on our adventure in our Crew teams for the day and were quick to spot some wildlife along the way and pay special attention to the level of the River Aln as we crossed the bridge. Once we were at the beach we had a good warm up of our team skills by making a castle in our Crews. They were most creative and we worked hard on on our collaborations.
After a story break and reading the story 'The Snail and the Whale', we then collected shells for our whale on our way to lunch.
The afternoon was spent as pirates as we made our pirate ships - they had so many features and thought; it was a great display of work which we followed with making treasure bottles!
We were rewarded with a lovely play in the park and returned home with happy smiles and tired legs ready for a good rest.
Well done, Alnwick and Warkworth Castle Class - great Receptions and Reception class to be!
We talked about times when we'd need to call for the emergency services and how to do it. We knew that 999 called for the ambulance, fire and police services as well as the coast guard and mountain rescue teams.
We found out what to do if our grown up was hurt or unwell. I wonder if you can tell your grown up what we'd do? If there's a grown up in the house we'd ask for help but if there's no one else there we'd use our eyes to look for anything that might hurt us (for example broken glass) and if it's safe to move
We also learned how to open up someone's airway if they're lying down by tilting back their head.
Our final challenge was to learn how to put on a bandage if someone has had an accident and is bleeding - this was lots of fun! We applied a pad to stop the bleeding and carefully wound a bandage around before tucking in the end.
We are really proud of how responsible and resilient the children were during their first aid training today!
Today we were treated to another brilliant beach school day and this time it was all about our topic, 'The Great Outdoors' with the focus of Bees, Bugs and Butterflies!
We hadn't set off far before we were identifying all our plants, flowers and bugs on route. We talked about their features and how to spot them and the names of different species. Once down at the beach, we created different bugs in our Crews to talk about and show the rest of the class. We then went off into the woods for a bug hunt and learnt how to identify different species of bugs and insects whilst hunting. We explored the woodland and considered how creatures have adapted to where they live.
We also thought about the life cycle of a butterfly and bee and were lucky enough to spot so many different types of bees.
We finished the day thinking about birds and thought about all the different types around the world. There was so much imagination and creativity as we made images of them on the beach.
It was yet another wonderful day full of so much wildlife and wonder - lucky us!
We started off our day with a walk along to Alnmouth Friary. We stopped to observe and learn about lots of different types of plants on the way, and spotted some wildlife such as geese and jackdaw's too. It was a great experience exploring the Friary gardens, there were new fruit trees beginning to grow and lots of colourful flowers. After sharing the story of Leaf whilst having our snack, we headed to the allotments to see what vegetables were growing. The children were very knowledgeable about different types of vegetables - especially about the types they like to eat!
We headed back to school for our picnic and spent the afternoon exploring our school's outdoor areas. Bridie went pond dipping and found lots of tadpoles! Can you remember how they moved? Some of our friends thought they looked like tiny mice as they whizzed around. To finish off our adventures we went on a scavenger hunt to find some outdoor treasures such as leaves, petals and pine cones. We then used our treasures to create some beautiful mini gardens in teams. It was lovely to hear the children describe their creations to the rest of the group.
We are all very proud of everyone who joined us today, they walked to and from our school very sensibly, listened to instructions well and represented our school brilliantly in our local community.
The Great Outdoors
This week we have continued to think about our wonderful Great Outdoors and used some great stories to enrich our learning.
In English, we have continued with 'Katie and the Sunflowers' where we have been thinking about 'wow' onomatopoeic words! Alnwick Castle Class have really enjoyed trying some exciting language in their writing as a result.
We also used a great story 'Snail Trail' that got us thinking about creatures as well as art! We reminded ourselves of the artist we have looked at before, like Picasso and then learnt how to make shapes by cutting paper so we could construct our own version of Henri Matisse's famous 'Snail' picture.
The class is becoming full of creations for our topic but as always we love to actually be outdoors. Therefore, our forest was the perfect spot to enjoy listening to our VIP of the week and get ready for our EYFS Outdoor Day tomorrow.