Welcome to Little Lambs
Spring 2024-2025
In nursery this term, the children have been busy exploring a wide range of exciting topics! They’ve taken part in fun movement sessions, learning how to control their bodies and develop coordination through active play. Linking to the story Harry and the Robots, they explored the world of robots through imaginative activities and creative learning. We also focused on animals, discovering where they live, what they eat, and even learning the names of their babies. A special highlight was welcoming some furry visitors—two playful puppies and an adorable kitten—who helped bring our learning to life and sparked lots of joy and curiosity! The children have also been out and about in the community, enjoying visits to Barrow Library and Ormsgill Community Centre, helping them to feel connected to their local area and expand their learning beyond the nursery walls.
Autumn 2024-2025
Our Little Lambs have settled in beautifully, making new friends and bonding with their key workers. They kicked off the term with the "All About Me" topic, a fun way for everyone to get to know each other. Together, they dove into the wonders of Autumn—exploring seasonal changes, colours, and themes. The children loved discovering every corner of their new classroom and got especially excited about messy painting activities, where creativity and colour took over!
We ended the half term with an exciting trip to the zoo to bring the story Dear Zoo to life, giving the children a chance to see the animals up close and connect with the story in a whole new way. Before delving into Christmas!
Summer 2 2023-2024
Throughout June we took part in the '30 Days Wild' challenge. This consisted of 30 nature based activities. On the weekends our families carried out the tasks at home which everyone really enjoyed. During the challenge we made binoculars and bird feeders. We then used these to go bird watching. One of our Little Lambs took her binoculars to the beach with the rest of her family and spotted a family of seals!
We also took part in a whole school arts programme. Each day we explored different ways to express ourselves through the arts. We painted landscapes, became characters from our 'Helicopter Stories' sessions, recited poetry and invited our parents in to see one of our dances. After sending all of our pictures off to the organisers of the programme we found they were so impressed with everyone's efforts that the school won first prize!
Our D&T topic lead us to exploring boats! We experimented floating and sinking with different materials, before making our very own boats!
This was the last term in nursery for some of our Little Lambs. We worked hard on transition, making sure they were ready for the challenge that reception will bring and also met our new starters! We concluded the year with our Graduation. It was super fun and a fantastic way to end the year.
Summer 1 2023-2024
We began the term with the 'Sunflower Challenge!' We began our challenge by looking at sunflowers and talking about all the knowledge we already had about these plants. Next we investigated different kinds of fruit and dissected seeds from each of them. When it came to planting our sunflower seeds we used fives frames to see how many seeds and pots we would need before planting them. We measured our plants to see how much they had grown and drew detailed pictures after noticing how they had changed. We used a wide range of non-fiction books to help us look after our sunflowers and are looking forward to them flowering!
Our younger children had a special delivery of caterpillars along with 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' book. They had great fun with story and took part in all different kinds of activities including fruit tasting. They were very excited to watch the transformation into butterfly and we invited our parents into to help release them.
Spring 2 2023-2024
What a fun packed half term we have had! During our afternoon nursery session, at the beginning of term, we could hear a strange noise coming from outside. We went to investigate and to our astonishment there was a cockerel in our nature area! We read about all about hens and cockerels and this began our farm topic! We had great fun exploring all about farm animals and their young and linked this in with, 'Farmer Duck' a book on our reading spine.
Our love of reading continued to flourish with a visit from the Book Trust. We had some beautiful stories read to us and were given our very own book pack to take home. We all enjoyed reading these books with our families.
Our inspiration came from Jackson Pollock in our art area this term. We had great fun splatting, dripping and flicking paint all over our canvas. Our finished work became wonderful Mother's Day cards.
Our favourite day of the year brought us the book, 'Mixed.' This heart warming story taught us acceptance and to celebrate differences. We made our own different characters and mixed colours to create brand new ones.
Spring 1 2023-2024
What a busy half term we’ve had! We began the term by looking at the story, ‘Harry and the Robots’ by Ian Whybrow. To our surprise this lead to us getting a robot delivery! We had so much fun exploring the different robots that we decided to make some of our own!
Our non fiction book this term was called, ‘Let’s Look at Winter.’ We explored our surroundings looking for signs of winter and made some beautiful ice decorations to hang in our outdoor area.
During our PE lessons Brontë from Movin Monkeez came to do some work with us. Brontë taught us about Chinese New Year through movement and we took part in lots of fun games during Number Day!
Autumn 2 2023-24
We began the half term with a non-fiction book, 'My Body, Your Body, Senses.' We had a wonderful time exploring this book. We learnt all about our senses and even got our science lead to join in! Mrs Crellin took on the challenge of I'm a science lead! Get Me Out Of Here!! We set up 5 activities involving each sense. Mrs Crellin had to complete each challenge to win a Mr Potato Head figure for each group of children. The figures came with ears, nose, eyes, hands and mouths to help us remember all of the senses. It was lots of fun.
Our next topic was space using the book, 'Super Space!' We looked at the book and learnt new vocabulary before designing our own space helmets and jet packs! During the day, we were astonished to find that one of our year 6 pupils had been kidnapped by an alien and went to search for her. We found her in out of space! The alien read us a story before we came back down to earth. Parents commented on how excited the children were about this topic.
Our favourite week of the year was once again a huge success! National Nursery Rhyme Week brought us 5 new rhymes to learn and activities to go with them. After learning all the rhymes we went on to teach our baby and toddler group the words and actions.
We had the best time getting ready for Christmas. We preformed in the KS1 nativity and retold the birth of Jesus through songs for our baby and toddler group. During the last few weeks we were amazed to find that an elf had left us a dummy tree! We had 5 children give up their dummies to elf! We then ended the year at the panto along with the rest of the school.
Autumn 1 2023-24
We have had a fantastic start to the new school year and all settled in quickly. We have spent a lot of time with our new key workers and taken part in fun activities that helped us get to know each other and our families.
Along with the rest of the school we took part in Roald Dahl day. We watched a short clip about the BFG then shared our hopes and dreams with our friends. Our Key workers helped us draw a picture of our dreams and then we added them to a magic jar. We then looked at some other stories by the author Roald Dahl and read, 'The Enormous Crocodile' finger puppet book. We all really enjoyed this story.
During the half term we explored natural resources. We made self portraits with objects found in our nature area and went on an Autumn walk with our families. During the walk we found different Autumn treasures that we brought to school. These were used in our maths lessons. We sorted objects into different categories, practiced our subitising skills and learnt new vocabulary linked to our non fiction book - Let's Look at Autumn.
Our reading spine allowed us to explore the book, 'Owl Babies' by Martin Waddell. We had great fun retelling this story with new exciting props and our two year old children's 'Dear Zoo' book took us to the zoo!
We ended the half term with an art lesson with Sophie Martin. She helped everyone decorate crosses linked to the Gospel Values. We used sharpie pens and fine liners then added a dark paint wash on top to create a stain glass window effect.
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Summer 2 2022-23
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 2022-23
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 2022-23
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 2022-23
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 2022-23
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!
