Welcome to Little Lambs
Summer 2
We have had such fun over the last half term. Many of us will be moving up to our reception classes in September, so we have been doing lots of work on transitions. After taking many opportunities to explore our new environment and meet our new teacher we set out making a transition basket. We used our voting station to pick our favourite books, songs and poems. These will come to reception with us along with our 'Colour Monster' emotion spoons. These items are all very familiar to us and are sure to help us feel at home in September.
After learning all about the life cycle of a butterfly last term, we visited a butterfly house! Our school trip was to Lakeland Safari Oasis. We had a great tour guide who showed us lots of different animals and gave us lots more information about caterpillars, cocoons and butterflies, reinforcing our prior knowledge. The correct use of vocabulary that was used during these discussions was commented on by safari staff!
During the last few weeks we had a special treat. Sophie Martin (Sophie Martin Illustration) came to do some expressive self portraits in the style of Yayoi Kusama. This was great fun and the children made amazing portraits that were later shown in our whole school art exhibition.
We ended the year with our Graduation, summer fayre and Pius Calling. We absolutely love being involved in whole school activities and events! It was a fantastic end to a fantastic year.
Summer 1
This half term we celebrated Pope Pius X. The children worked hard creating a stain glass window to display in class. The children were very proud of this piece of work. We also took part in the whole school May Procession. We made beautiful flowers to present before praying to Mary.
We have spent this half term learning all about, 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar'. We loved this book and had our very own caterpillars to look after. We learnt all about metamorphosis and the change from a caterpillar to a butterfly. This prompted us to look at other insects and before long we had a colony of ants, a clew of worms, a loveliness of ladybirds and stick insects!
In our RE lessons we have been looking at new life. To help us with this we had two new born babies visit us with their parents . We asked questions and found out all about how you care and look after a baby. We also had a very special visit from a 12 week old English Bull Dog. The children had fun on the field playing and learning about how to care for him. This then took us to our local reservoir where we observed goslings and ducklings in their natural habitat.
We ended the half term together as a school. All children from nursery to year 6 took part in sports day. It was a lovely day and we had great fun.
Spring 2
What a beautiful half term we’ve had! Whilst preparing for our Mater Christi Trust Feast Day (The Annunciation) we had a visit from Mrs Wright. Along with the rest of the school we took part in a workshop on the Angelus and made our own angels to take home at the end of the day. We went on to later celebrate our Mater Christi Trust feast day -The Annunciation.
Even our two year olds helped make a triptych depicting The Annunciation to display around the school.
We have made the most of the weather over the last few weeks. The snow provided a beautiful blank canvas for our Jackson Pollock art work and the sun shone on our trip to the farm. It was perfect for exploring signs of spring.
We have recently visited two farms to enhance our knowledge of farm animals linked with our reading spine. Before leaving Greenacres farm we got the opportunity to use on their play bus. Our other trip was nearly a two mile walk passing many farm animals. Our Monday Mile helped prepare us for this. As always on our outings we invited families to join us. We all had a lovely day.
Towards the end of the term we enjoyed story time with Cathy from The Book Trust. Cathy encouraged each child to join the local library and gave information on how to do this.
Spring 1
What a fantastic start to the year we’ve had. Our New Year's goal is to improve our Physical Development. Along with other activities we have started The Monday Mile! We begin each week walking in our local area for at least one mile. This has become a popular event with parents, grandparents and siblings joining us and not only are we getting fit but also learning about the world around us.
Our Maths lessons have also taken us out in the local environment. We have made triangles in the woods and learnt about their properties and noticed patterns on the beach using rocks and footprints in the sand. We also had great fun making circles!
Our reading spine has been as exciting as always. We have explored winter using the nonfiction book - Let’s Look At Winter; Harry and the Dinosaurs led us to learning new vocabulary about electricity and robots; and we explored Giraffes Can't Dance through exercise and dance!
We also had the responsibility of looking after Poppy the rabbit for the day. Poppy brought us a story about the the great race. We learnt that this year is the year of the rabbit.
Autumn 2
Our favourite time of the year! We began the half term looking at our families and ourselves as babies. We learnt that a long time ago our teachers and parents used to be babies and talked about how we have grown.
We have also really impressed our teachers with our super subitising skills! We had great fun exploring all kinds of natural resources that we found on our trip to How Tun Woods. Whilst looking at our environment we collected lots of natural treasures to bring back to school with us. Once back at school we independently sorted the items into groups that we later used to help us subitise.
One of our reading spine books was all about our senses. We learnt that we have 5 senses and took part in fun and exciting activities to help us learn about each of them. Our favourite was taste! We tried lots of yummy fruit and vegetables to see which ones tasted the nicest.
Along with many other activities we have taken part in, our older children also completed Bucket Time! Bucket time is a programme we use over the Autumn term. It builds up attention, listening skills and helps us to sit for short periods of time. This gets us ready for our longer phonics sessions next term. It has been commented on, by people from outside settings, that we are excellent at listening and paying attention.
We ended the term with our Nativity, Christmas party and whole school trip to the panto. Everyone agreed we were the cutest little lambs and preformed our song brilliantly!
Autumn 1
We have had a fantastic start to the term. We are really happy to see all of our friends and to welcome new ones.
We have had great fun exploring the books in our reading spine. Before reading each story our Key Workers taught us the vocabulary we were going to hear. We read Dear Zoo at the Zoo! Based activities around scenes in the stories and even incorporated the books in our weekly YoKids sessions!
One of our Topics this half term was Autumn. We have been finding out about Autumn and exploring the weather. We went on an Autumn walk and had great fun using our windy day box. Some of us even made our own kites to fly in the wind.
We also began our, 'Wiggle Me Into Squiggle' programme. We have been getting really messy and can already see improvements in our gross and fine motor skills.
Summer 2 2022
Over our final weeks in Little Lambs we have celebrated with our families. We all came together for our first sports day and learnt that the winners are the children who have the most fun. Even our Mums, Dads and teachers took part in the races.
We also went on our school trip. After reading the book Superworm, last half term, we furthered our learning by visiting Grizedale Forest and completing the Superworm activity trail.
To our surprise, a special delivery of bikes arrived. After only a short time some of us progressed to two wheeled bikes and can now ride with no stabilisers. Everyone was very impressed with our progress.
The school year ended with our families and friends. We preformed the story, Giraffes Can’t Dance by Gilles Andreae and each acted out a scene from the book. Then we celebrated our time in nursery, on the school field, with our families.
We had some lovely feedback from parents and are very proud of each and every one of our children.
“**** is going to miss you all so much! You've all been absolutely fantastic with her, I couldn’t thank you enough! What an amazing morning it was too”
What a beautiful assembly. Thank you for everything you have all done over the years. ***** will definitely miss being a Little Lamb after being one for so long now. I'm sure all of them will be regular visitors next year.
Summer 1 2022
What an exciting time we have had over the last few weeks. We had a surprise delivery which included a new book - The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle and some baby caterpillars for us to look after. We watched them grow, spin cocoons and transform into beautiful butterflies.
We also really enjoyed celebrating Eid Mubarak. One of our friends went to visit his family for this celebration and we decided to find out all about it. Some older children in the school came to talk to us about the festival and why it is celebrated. One of our parents made sweet gifts for every child. When asked what Eid Mubarak was one of our children replied, "It is about celebrating love and kindness."
In addition to this, we used our name cards to vote for which story we would like each day during National Story Telling Week, created a worm world linked to Julia Donaldson's Superworm and celebrated the Jubilee.
Spring 2 2022
What a busy time we have been having in Little Lambs. We began our half term focusing on being healthy. We learnt about not only keeping our bodies healthy, but also our minds. During this week we dug out our own planter to prepare it for growing vegetables in, took part in story massage and had a special trip to our local leisure centre. Some of us had never been to the leisure centre before and are all hoping to go back very soon.
We also celebrated World Book Day. This year this was based around the book 'Journey' by Aaron Becker. Just like in the book we drew a red door and talked about what magical land would be behind the door. To our astonishment, the next day, we had our own red door in class! Each day there was a different world behind the door and new books for us to read!
Along with spending lots of time outside we have also been learning about animals and what their young are called. This resulted in a trip to a local farm to see some real baby animals. We learnt lots from this experience and had a fantastic time.
Spring 1 2022
We began the new year by talking about British Values. We each used our mini me figures to vote on what outfits we would like to be out in continuous provision over the half term, what stories to read each day, and talked about how everyone had the right to their vote and choice regardless of what their friends picked.
During our phonics lesson our friend Metal Mike has been helping us with alliteration and oral blending and segmenting. This sparked a lot of interest around robots and how they work. We were lucky enough to to have 3 robot visitors in class and learnt all about how they need electricity to work, that electricity runs through wires and that the electricity created sound, movement and light in our robots. This led to us each designing and making our very own robots to take home! On of our children went home and told Mum all about it. She talked about it each night and wanted to continue the topic at home.
We were also lucky enough to go on two trips! Our first trip was to Ormsgill Reservoir. Before setting off on our trip we looked at where we were going on Google Maps. Our school looked strange on here, but we were unsure why. We compared the school on the picture to how it looks now and found that the fence used to be green not bright and colourful! We then looked at our own houses and found that they also looked different.
We then walked along the field to the Reservoir and took our mini - me viewers with us. We used these to help us look at the environment and notice detailed features along the way.
Our second trip was to How Tun Woods. We could not believe the difference in the woods since we last visited! The trees had no leaves on them and the once stoney path was now muddy and wet. We took our mini - me viewers with us and not only looked at our surroundings, but drew them around ourselves. We hope to go back and visit again next term to see what changes we can find!
We also took part in National Story Telling week. We explored our school library, read lots of books and were very excited when we actually became authors for the day! We told and illustrated our own stories that are going to be made into a real book for our reading area! When the book arrives we are going to share it with our families and friends.
Autumn 2 2021
We have had the best half term! We began with a visit from a local dentist. We learnt all about the importance of brushing our teeth and what kinds of food and drink are good for us. All of the children were given a goody bag including tooth paste, a tooth brush and a two minute timer. We challenged them to send in pictures of themselves using these items and gave dojo points each time a picture was received.
The next week was National Nursery Rhyme week. Our Little Lambs worked super hard and managed to learn all 5 rhymes with actions! To celebrate we had a special visitor in class - our very own sleeping bunny for the day! Blossom was very well behaved and the children took this opportunity to learn how to look after her and find out all about her needs.
Towards the end of the term we thought Christmas had come early! We had an order of new furniture and equipment! Our nursery is now looking even more amazing than it did! The children have all enjoyed exploring the resources and the new layout that has been created.
At the end of term our Little Lambs were super excited with Christmas approaching so, we decided to try Story Massage. We really enjoyed taking part in Story Massage and learnt the ten massage movements. This was not only extremely relaxing, but also teaches us about positive touch. We will be continuing these stories over the next term.
A member of our school family commented, "I can absolutely vouch for how wonderful this school is, the children are all very lucky to have such caring and fantastic staff around them and the children are very happy in St Pius with the creative and fun ways of learning. Children are often very over stimulated in their daily lives with screens etc so learning how to relax is so important for their well-being. I think this is absolutely fantastic.
Autumn 1 2021
This half term we welcomed our new friends into class and everyone settled in really quickly. One of our parents sent a message thanking all staff for how quickly her little one settled in, 'I would just like to put forward my teacher appreciation. So many great things to mention, but ultimately my child loves coming to school and being a Little Lamb so thank you for making her feel at home and happy.'
During our second week in class something very exciting happened. We had surprise package that contained a new book called, 'There's a Dragon in my Book.' Each day we would receive new and exciting gifts that linked with our book. This has sparked a lot of excitement in reading and the children have gone on to read and enjoy another 4 books by Tom Fletcher.
We have also really enjoyed taking part in various themed days. We had great fun on Roald Dahl day. Our activities were themed around the 'Enormous Crocodile' and we even learnt a song about him. On National Poetry Day we preformed one of the 5 poems that we have learnt, by heart so far this term, and shared the poem with our families and on Art Day we painted 'The Starry Night' by Vincent Van Gogh - it was great fun.
Other activities this term included our own story telling sessions. We each get the opportunity to tell a story to an adult who writes it in a special book. Later in the day we preform our story on the 'stage' in front of our friends. Our stories started off with one or two words in them and have now progressed to small paragraphs and it is super fun acting them out!
One of our parents said, "******" confidence has grown so much since starting Little Lambs just 2 months ago. He was always quite shy and reserved in front of an audience until we went to a party at the weekend and he got up and sang in front of the room on the microphone (he never would of done this 6-12 months ago) - Noah said this is because he does helicopter stories at nursery and acts them out on the stage for his teachers and friends which he said he really enjoys doing.
We ended the half term with a walk around How Tun Woods. One of the children noticed the the floor was covered in leaves and made the connection with a poem we have been learning called 'Leaves are Falling.' This sparked a conversation about the leaves falling from the trees, the colours of the leaves and how the weather was getting colder.
