It's Christmas!

We have really been looking forward to Christmas at school. First the snow arrived in class! Then, Father Christmas left ‘Harvey Slumfernburger's' present. We tried to guess what was inside it,  before sending it back to Father Christmas.

We enjoyed our performances of ‘Nursery Rhyme Nativity’ and our Christmas craft morning with friends and family.

Our Christmas party was very lively with dancing and games. 

Then to our surprise we had a special visitor. Yes, it was Father Christmas himself. Wow! We all promised to go to sleep on Christmas Eve, even Mrs. Wharton and Mrs. George! We all can’t wait for Christmas…

Jack Frost

On Monday morning we noticed that ‘Fairy Lake’ was frozen over and there was frost surrounding ‘Fairy Village’. 

We decided this was the work of Jack Frost!  We looked for further clues on the ground and followed the trail of ice and frost.  On the field we discovered Jack Frost’s footprints. He had been running all over the field.

Everything he had touched had turned into ice, including the school pond, leaves and a plastic water bottle!

We followed a trail of ice and frost along the footpaths, down the steps, over the field, right down into forest school.

We thought we had found Jack ‘Frost’s Bed’ in Forest School. We looked underneath it to see if we could see him.

We looked across the frosty field to catch a glimpse of him, but he had disappeared!

One morning there was a strange appearance of a pile of logs and a mysterious object.

On close inspection we thought it could be the skin of a snake and the logs looked like the log pile house from the story of ‘The Gruffalo’. The logs looked as though they had come from the Silver Birch tree down in Forest School and matched the bark on the logs of the log pile house in the story.

We haven’t found the snake yet…! We have found a hazel nut this morning so maybe a mouse or a gruffalo might appear next…

Who is afraid of the dark?

This week we discovered a message from the Forest Fairies. The writing was very small but we managed to read it! The message read:

‘Dear Mrs. George’s class,

 Please can you help us? We, the fairies of the forest are frightened of the dark! Can you think of a way to help us with our fear? 

Love from,

The Forest Fairies xxxxx

Amber thought of an idea which might help the fairies. She made a link with the recent story we have shared in class : ‘Can’t You Sleep Little Bear?', by Martin Waddell, by suggesting we should try and make a lantern out of paper with a light inside. We liked this idea and set about designing and making a paper lantern. We gathered and organised our resources and equipment. Through active learning we were involved and concentrating the whole way through the design process. We kept on trying and persevered to solve problems.

We quickly observed how confident and competent Rosa appeared, whist she was designing and making her own lantern, so she became our ‘design consultant’. Rosa supported and helped us achieve a positive result. We also, found other experts in design. Rowan was particularly helpful with handles and Oscar with bottoms to lanterns. 

When we had finished our lanterns we inserted some glow sticks and turned off the lights. The classroom glowed and we were sure the fairies would be happy to use our lanterns down in the forest.

Bella wanted to look at the message from the fairies. She noticed the stars and the snowflakes which were on the front of the message and said:

 ‘I noticed glitter, stars and snowflakes outside Mrs. Marsh’s classroom window last night, when I was outside playing in the after school club.’

So we went outside to look for the clues and found them where Bella had told us to look.

Thea decided she would send a letter to the fairies explaining what we had made for them.

This week we have been busy creating a cave in class so that our bats made from Lorimer’s template could have a home. Some of us created batman caves out of lego!

We have had a fantastic week and can’t wait to carry on with our learning next week.