Summer Term 1 2025

Week 1

This week, we have celebrated Easter (albeit a little late) which has been eggsellent! We have enjoyed lots of crafts including creating our own Easter bonnets, colouring our own Easter bags, making plaster of Paris Easter eggs and decorating cards for our families.

It has been a short week and we have used this as an opportunity to settle back into our school routines. We have also been preparing for our exciting school trip on Monday to Rand Farm Park where we will be able to spend time with the animals, enjoy the outdoor play areas and use the ride-on tractors scattered around the place.

Next week, we will be back to our normal planning with summer being our focus! 

Week 2

Our learning this week has been all about the weather. We have been thoroughly enjoying the sunshine and have spent lots of time outside. Our focus story was Peppa Pig’s Very Hot Day and our nursery rhyme was ‘The sun has got his hat on’. Our favourite activities this week have been outdoor painting, making a sun using playdough and counting the pegs on the sun.

In bucket time this week, we loved watching ‘sun blow’ where we used straws to blow the paint to represent a picture of the sun. We also enjoyed having a go at sprinkling sand on paper, tapping it off and revealing a sun.  

In phonics this week, we introduced our new sound ‘z’ – zig, zag, zig – zzzzip. We finger traced our sound, identified pictures beginning with our sound and read our ‘z’ book all about Zebras.

On Wednesday, our core word bucket focused on the word ‘drink’. We practiced our Makaton sign and then used a jug to practice pouring and drank from an open cup.

In life skills this week, we made mashed potatoes. We peeled, boiled, mashed and added some butter to our potatoes to make a delicious dish.

What a fun and hot week 😊

Week 3

This week, we have continued our learning about the weather. We have extended our learning into shadows and exploring what is wet and what is dry. We enjoyed our focus story ‘I have a little shadow’ and put this into practice with making our own shadow devices and testing them with a torch. We also loved our songs this week including the ‘Swimming song’ which inspired us to get the paddling pool out to dip our feet in.

In bucket time this week, we explored wet and dry through washing a pair of socks. We kept some of the socks dry and then used warm water to dip the other socks in observing the difference between wet and dry. We also enjoyed experimenting with ‘what dissolves?’ and tested out a number of items to see if they would dissolved or not. We found that salt disappears whilst cornflour just changed the liquid completely (who knew!).

In phonics this week, we introduced our new sound ‘ch’ – ch ch choo. We enjoyed making our sound with playdough this week and then finger tracing it around the caterpillar and down the horses neck to it’s hooves and over it’s back. We also used the sand to write our sand and this was very tricky.

On Wednesday, our core word bucket focused on the word ‘food’. We practiced our Makaton sign and then used a number of foods to sort into healthy or unhealthy. We finally made a choice of a healthy snack to eat – yum!

Week 4

Our learning this week has been all about 'Swimming'. We had such fun with this topic where we got to dress up in swimsuits, armbands and we even tried on a shark floaty which was a firm favourite. Our story of the week was Topsy and Tim learn to swim and we loved singing along to the Swim Song.

As you can imagine, this topic was quite wet and so in bucket time this week, we explored water. We loved our magic water stage 2 activity where we watched what happens when colours mix within water. We started with red, yellow and blue and managed to create colours such as orange, purple and green! In a stage 3 activity, we pretended we were going swimming and practiced putting on safety equipment including armbands which we had to blow up and the shark fin which we all loved trying on.

In our phonics learning this week, we introduced our new sound 'qu' - qu qu queen. This was a very tricky digraph to get to grips with but reading our 'q' story all about quokkas was fun to explore the sound.

On Wednesday, our core word bucket focused on the word 'finished'. We practiced our Makaton signing and then all had a turn at pumping the rocket toy and signing when we had finished our turn. Ask us to sign finished, we are brilliant at it now!

In life skills this week, we made an Atlas frittata. We chopped and fried potatoes and peppers until golden and smelling delicious. We then used the eggs from the chickens to create an eggy recipe of deliciousness. It was an absolute hit and most of the children had a taste :)

Week 5

This week, our learning was all about 'Summer Fun!'. We enjoyed exploring what summer looks like through making ice creams, dressing up in shorts and t-shirts, making sandcastles and enjoing picnic role play.

In bucket time this week, we made shaving foam ice creams which had paint as the sauce and sequins for the sprinkles. We also read a picnic sensory story which was brilliant! We laid out a picnic blanket, acted out eating jam sandwiches, felt the wind (fan) on our faces and listened to the birds singing. 

In our phonics learning this week,