Bakers and Forde Autumn Term
Autumn: first half
Bakers and Forde settled well into Foundation this half term. J It has been lovely to welcome new children to our Foundation setting at Wolborough, as well as helping our existing Nursery children transition into Reception Class. As a school we held a Reception Church Service-to welcome the children. They each received their own Bible to keep, which the children were really pleased about!
This half term we have spent a lot of time getting to know the children and finding out about their individual and unique interests! The children have had the opportunity to bring in toys from home for ‘Show and Tell,’ and staff have spent a lot of very important ‘talking time’ with the children. The children have formed new friendships with one another which is lovely to see. Children have brought in ‘WOW’ slips from home and shared their ‘wow’ moments with their classes.
The children have been learning new rules and routines and can now talk about our shared ‘Golden Rules’.
We have introduced one of our schools new ‘Core Values’-‘Peace’. We talked to the children about the meaning of ‘peace’ and together, we decided that this means quiet time! We followed our discussion by organising a trip to a quiet place- Newton Abbot Library. (‘Library Day’) The children enjoyed the outing and were excited about borrowing books, bringing them back to class to read! Afterwards we set up our own library in the Foundation Unit-children have enjoyed being librarians and telling the children to be quiet, “sshhh!” We have spent a lot of time sharing the library books each day, as we develop a love for reading.
‘Bookworm Club’ has been a new venture this term, for children and parents in Reception Class. It has been great to see so many parents come along to read with their children at the end of the day. We are now lending ‘bedtime stories’ to children who come to the club, to enjoy at home.
Autumn: second half
We began the second half of the term by going on an ‘autumn walk’ to Courtenay Park. The children found lots of ‘autumn treasures’ to bring back to school. We found conkers, acorns, pine cones and lots of different coloured leaves. We continued naming and describing the treasures during Playing and Learning Time. We celebrated Harvest with the whole school at the church - Forde Class sang ‘Big Red Combine Harvester’.
This half term we have spent a lot of time exploring our feelings. We discussed different feelings and what might make us feel a certain way. We then moved on to think about conflict and how we could resolve difficult situations. After that, we looked at conflict within ourselves and talked about what might stop us from doing something. This led us to talking about resilience and ‘growth mind set’. We have been remembering to ‘try, try and try again!’
We were very lucky to have a visit from a Reception Teacher and author, ‘Clare-Helen Welsh’. Clare shared her brilliant story- ‘How Rude!’ The story is all about a duck who turns up at Dot’s house for a tea party. He is a very rude duck so he needed to be taught some manners! The children helped to act out the story, it was a lot of fun! Afterwards, the children made their own duck puppets!
We are now very busy practising for our Christmas play- ‘A Little Nativity’.
