Autumn Term 2 2025

Week 1

This week, our topic focus has been about fire and fireworks. With last week in mind, we enjoyed lots of bonfire themed activities such as ‘wet chalk fireworks’ where we dipped our coloured chalk into water and then drew patterns onto black paper. Our favourite activity was using the spinning wheel to create our own Catherine Wheel creations by attaching paper to the spinner and adding paint splodges then giving the wheel a good spin to create a unique circular pattern on our paper. We learnt that not everyone enjoys fireworks when we watched Woolly & Tig at Bonfire Night and then had fun singing Katy Perry’s Firework song along with a traditional nursery rhyme ‘London’s Burning’.

In Bucket this week, we listened to a firework sensory story and helped Nia, Meg & Elise to toast some marshmallows by the fire then went into the dark tent to enjoy eating them. We also had fun creating our own firework art using cardboard tubes dipped into our favourite colour paint and dabbing them onto black paper. We have begun stage 4 activities recently and some of us were able to match the fireworks to their corresponding colours.

In our Oracy bucket this week, we focused on the word ‘more’ and loved watching Nia squirt shaving foam into big piles telling her to add ‘more’ and ‘more’ and ‘more’! We then had a turn at blowing bubbles and signed or said ‘more’ to allow us to blow again 😊. Our stage 4 activity was fun where we used a dark sky picture and had to cut and stick our chosen fireworks onto the picture.

In our phonics learning, we have focused on the word ‘bin’. We helped Nia to decide what could go into the bin and what couldn’t repeating ‘bin’ every time it was decided what could be thrown away. We also used our series of segmenting, blending and writing activities throughout the week such as identifying the matching magnetic letters to the large letter sounds, writing our word in sand and stamping the word into playdough.

Our Wednesday bucket has now changed to our music focus and we had great fun this week playing a hand clapping game whilst singing ‘Twinkle, twinkle, little star’. We really enjoyed this and you can have a go at home too if you follow this link: https://youtu.be/5he1sCixSLM.

In our maths learning, we have been looking at 1 more. This week, we used our nexus pegs to create large towers and using our oracy skills to sign or verbalise ‘more’ to add 1 more to the tower. Some of our towers got so big that they fell on their own without pushing!

Week 2&3

This fortnight has seen our learning focus on ‘Light & Dark’. We have had lots of fun exploring light and dark through craft activities such as sculpting Diwali lamps from clay, letting them dry and then painting them with chosen paint colours; creating light and dark pictures, using black and blue paper and adding moons and stars to the night sky whilst adding fluffy white clouds and a big golden sun to the daytime. We loved the contrast of the light and the dark. Our favourite story this fortnight was ‘The owl who was afraid of the dark’ and our songs included ‘You are my sunshine’ and ‘This little light of mine’.

In bucket this fortnight, we watched carefully as Nia created a night sky picture using glue and gold and silver glitter to make a great big moon and glittering stars. We had fun making ‘fizzy stars’ by sprinkling bicarbonate of soda into star cutters and then dropping white vinegar all over them to make them fizz around the tray and lastly in our stage 4 activity, we had great fun in painting our own night sky and adding glitter and sequins to make dazzling stars.

In our Oracy bucket, we have been focusing on the words ‘finish’ and ‘stop’. Our finish stages included squirting shaving foam into a cupcake case and having to tell Nia to ‘finish’ using sign and vocalisations just before it all spilled out of the case! We popped bubbles until they were all popped (finished) and lastly, we had a turn at adding the cogs to the pole then turning it over letting them fall to the floor and using ‘finish’ when our turn was over.

Our stop stages included watching … being poured all over a tray and signing and saying ‘stop’ to pause mid air then repeating over and over again. We bounced a balloon into the air and catching it to stop and lastly we had a turn at rolling balls down a pipe saying/signing ‘stop’ when each had rolled down.

In our phonics learning, our words were ‘sun’ and ‘star’. We had great fun watching a special sunny and starry glitter reveal alongside our usual series of activities throughout the fortnight including segmenting and blending with our large letter sound cards, finding the magnetic letters on a tray to recreate our words and highlighting over our words with our chosen highlighters.

Our Wednesday music bucket continued our tapping and clapping games and we again used the hand clapping song to listen and repeat. This has become a firm favourite and we even found some more songs to clap along to.

In our maths learning, we explored the concept of bigger and smaller. We used star cutters of different sizes to shake flour into then revealing whether it was ‘bigger’ or ‘smaller’ than the previous star. We then had a turn with the star cutters by creating bigger or smaller stars in playdough.

Week 4

This week, our focus has been all about day and night. We enjoyed listening to Eric Carle’s ‘Day & Night’ story and singing along to a science song. We have loved creating starry skies and practicing our bedtime routines in our role play area.

In Bucket this week, we had great fun making some fizzy stars. Nia cut out a moon and star template from paper and then sprinkled bicarbonate of soda into them. She then filled our spray bottles with white vinegar and added food colouring which we had a turn at spraying to create a fizzing night scene. We then had a turn at making a night sky picture using black and white paint inside the lid of a cardboard box. We dropped the paint inside the box and added in some marbles which we shook and shook until it created an abstract work of art.

In our Oracy bucket this week, we have been focusing on the word ‘go’ where we used our rocket balloon toy to help us to anticipate and then watched the rocket fly off around the room! We then had a turn at ‘Rocket Stomp’ where we loaded our chosen rockets, counted down from 3 and stamped the rocket high into the classroom 😊.

In our phonics learning, we loved our new word ‘day’. We loved Elise’s red glitter ‘day’ reveal alongside our usual series of activities throughout the fortnight including segmenting and blending with our large letter sound cards, finding the magnetic letters on a tray to recreate our words and highlighting over our words with our chosen highlighters.

In our maths learning this week, Meggan created a fun activity for us using ‘1 more’. She used black paper and gold glitter to make a night sky and then she used gold star stickers saying ‘1 more star’ for us to add them on. We then used a peg board with a star template on it and added yellow pegs on it.

Week 5

Week 6