We have been doing so much Science this term in so many different parts of our learning.  We used our time outside and in the Nature Classroom to identify different trees based on their leaves.  We checked in on our apple tree again to see what seasonal changes we could spot…the apples are growing well.  We have also been showing our knowledge by creating large plants in the Nature classroom and labelling the different parts and taking photos of plants in ICT and using the mark up took box to annotate them with a pen and using a text box! We have also been planting in our own class garden so have been able to see lots of roots before the plants went into the flower bed and we are trying our hardest to remember to look after them.  A watering team is now responsible to remembering when Mrs Jones is bound to forget!

HUGE thank you to all the parents who were able to make it this afternoon to build our castles! I think you will agree they all look AMAZING! 

We have been practicing lots of the skills we will need to create our castles this week.  We have been working on our cutting and rolling skills, evaluated different joining methods, creating different types of crenellations and having a moving draw bridge.  We look forward to sharing these skills with an adult on Friday if you can make it! 

We had a fantastic morning at St Mark's Church in Bilton this morning.  We got to see all the different parts of the church which we have been learning about in RE and we got to hear the organ being played.  Every single Butterfly showed all our core values and the ladies in the church were very impressed with their knowledge, questioning and behaviour.  Well done Butterflies! Super proud of you all! They walked both ways really sensibly and in record time too! Thank you to the adult who came and helped us.  Without your support we would not be able to go! 

We have loved completing our design and technology topic this week! We have tasted lots of different fruits and vegetables and then chosen our favourite to make our own salads.  We have been using skills of cutting and grating and then evaluating what we have made. They were delicious! 

We have been extremely lucky with the weather out in the Nature classroom this half term.  We have enjoyed exploring all the new path ways which have been put in and creating dens and lairs for our mythical creatures.  We continued to study the apple trees for our Science learning about seasons and found lots of beautiful signs of Spring last week.

We have had a great day thinking all about space.  We weighed all sorts of moon rocks in Maths, looked at and performed a range of space poems in English and then created rockets in the Nature Classroom! Butterflies really are out of this world!!

Who knew a PJ day could be so much fun?! We used 'We're going on a bear hunt' as our theme for our PE lesson this morning which was so much fun and we used our books to help us measure in Maths.  We have shared so many stories together, loved going to the book swap and thoroughly enjoyed our hot chocolates!  

It was great to have lots of animals in the classroom today.  We had giant hissing cockroaches, two corn snakes, a gecko, a bearded dragon, an owl and finally a skunk.  Hopefully the children have been able to share a little bit about each of them at home. 

Butterflies have had a great morning with the Fire service learning all about the roles of a fire fighter, their clothes, what starts fires, what is safe and unsafe, smoke alarms, fire escape plans and the stop drop and roll technique. 

Butterflies have enjoyed their gymnastics theme for PE this half term. We have experimented with different ways to move, roll and jump using a range of apparatus developing our agility and balance.

We looked at a new skill in the Nature Classroom this week as we tried to create tripod shelters.  This took used so many different skills: maths for measuring, gross motor for collecting sticks and fine motor for the string wrapping and knot tying, teamwork and perseverance which is our learning value for this week! Well done Butterflies!  

We have started out topic all about our wonderful world so where better to start than with a globe! We have loved finding out where we live on the globe and there was quite a shock to see how small the UK was in comparison to other countries! We have been looking at continents and their locations too!

We had a great time in the Nature classroom taking a check on our 'sticky knowledge'.  There were lots of animals hidden around the Nature Classroom and the children had to find them, decided if they were a mammal or not and if they were mammals, then mark their location on a map of the Nature Classroom.  Excellent work being geographers and scientist all in one go! Rest assured all animals were found and returned safely! 

We have loved starting our Art topic this week on African Art.  We have looked at the artist Edward Tingatinga and his work and are now starting to create a piece of our own in his style! We have been using wash techniques for the background, printing for African patterns and dabbing to decorate animals.  They are going to look great when they are finished! 

We have been working hard on our seated balances.  They make our core very strong.  

 We have started our computing topic of coding. We have been looking at the way we can give instructions to make the bee bots move in the right way.  We had to give it special algorithms in the right order to make it follow a path! 

We have completed our unit on making instruments today. We followed our plans to make our own instruments and then preformed in a group to check they all work.  They all look and sound super!  

We have had so much fun today for the Santa Dash.  We completed all our laps...and even a few more! 

We may have started Advent a little early in Butterflies as we have 30 different Christmas stories to read.  We will unwrap two every day and share our stories together.  We have loved being able to explore all the different Christmas stories on the carpet with our friends. 

We explored with sound in our Nature Classroom this afternoon by hanging different things from the tree branches and tapping them with different sticks.  We had to use simple knots to tie them to the branches which was very tricky with our cold fingers! 

We have started our Design and Technology unit on making musical instruments.  We have had time to explore the different ways we can make sounds and the effects of these.  We watched a firework display and thought how we can recreate these sounds.  Our next task is to plan exactly what we want to make for our own instruments.  

We used our time in the Nature Classroom this week to explore our English story of Goldilocks. We created porridge, chairs and beds of different sizes and even tried to make a cottage.  We then role played the story and changed parts to help us with our own innovated stories when we write them! We did our best team work too!

We wore odd socks to school today to support Anti-Bullying week.  We read a great story called Simon Sock by Paul Linnet all about how it is great to be different.  We each designed a sock and look at how different we all are.  One will join our whole school display too.  This years theme was 'One Kind Word'.  We made paper chains writing kind words on all the different links....look at how many kind words we could think of! 

We used our time in the Nature Classroom this week to test the properties of different materials. We worked in groups to see which material would make the best roof for a shelter.  We would recommend the tin foil and the rigid plastic to make a waterproof shelter out of.  We were really creative with out designs. 

For our PE dance lesson today we were fireworks and used scarfs to create lots of different shapes. 

We have been writing firework poems using onomatopoeia.  We had lots of fun coming up with all the words.  

We had a challenge in our Nature classroom session today to be Guy Fawkes and the plotters.  We needed to work together to move the gunpowder from the house to under the Houses of Parliament and we could not touch it with our hands as it might explode. 

To celebrate Diwali, we had a short workshop to learn a Diwali dance.  We learnt lots of dance moves which are used in Bollywood dancing and we had lots of fun! We were even quite good in the end! 

It was time to go back to see how the apple tree in the Nature Classroom was doing now the season has changed.  We spotted lots of changes from when we last looked at the start of September when it was still Summer and we even made some predictions about what might happen in the next season. 

Even at our playtimes we are exploring Autumn! 

Today was our last lesson on throwing and catching.   We practiced our underarm throwing and started to try overarm throwing too. We used hoops as targets to begin with and then practiced throwing to our partner! 

Here are some of our fabulous Autumn Poems! We have been thinking about all our senses and trying to choose brilliant vocabulary to describe the different Autumn things. 

When Autumn was set for our homelearning we all thought about hot chocolates so hot chocolates it was! Delicious!!

In the Nature Classroom this week we thought again about the land art we have looked at by Richard Shilling and Andy Goldsworthy and had another go at creating our own with the new Autumn colours we have.  We made some on the ground but also created some sculptures too. Great work Butterflies!

Some children started experimenting with making a seesaw using the logs in the classroom.  A group worked together to create a fabulous one! 

Finally, we thought lots about the changes we have seen in the Nature Classroom this half term due to Autumn starting (we even spotted a pumpkin or two!) and we will use all these ideas in our writing this week! 

We have been working on a story called Monkey See Monkey Do for the last 2 weeks.  We have learnt the story by drawing our own story map with lots of pictures and so we could retell it all.  We have then written it this week.  Hope you enjoy the story! 

In PE today we pretended to be pirates and moved around the ship in different ways.  We also had to climb the rigging and scrub the decks.  We practiced our one leg balances which we have to do for 10 seconds with out moving.  We also tried them with our eyes closed! 

This half term we have been looking at materials in Science.  We decided to test out paper in an investigation to see which type of paper would hold water the best.  We had tissue paper, paper towels, card, sugar paper and printing paper.  We measured it by counting how many steps we could take before all the water emptied out.  It was a good job we were in the Nature Classroom and had our wellies on or we would have had soggy feet!

Butterflies took part in Hello Yellow day where we thought about the importance of looking after our mental health as well as out physical health.  We decided talking to a friend and snuggling under a blanket with a teddy were our top two tips for looking after ourselves!

We have been learning to move in lots of different ways including side stepping, galloping, hopping, skipping and hop scotch.  We are trying to use both legs first and it is all about control and fluency not speed.  Let me show you when we are walking home from school! (We were just so fast we couldn't get any more photos!)

We have continued our theme of weather in our English this week as we started our new text called Cloudy with a chance of meatballs.  The children were set the challenge of investigating why there was so much food all over the courtyard.  When it is surrounded by walls, we decided there was only one place it could have come from and that was the sky! We loved then exploring the book and discovering what fell from the sky in it. We can't wait to explore the text even more! 

We spent our time in the nature classroom this week thinking about our Art topic and designing and creating some of our own land art like Andy Goldsworthy.  The children did an amazing job working on their own, in pair and even as a whole class to make a giant piece of land art for other classes who visit the nature classroom this week to enjoy! Well done Butterflies!

We use our tens frames with cubes and counters to represent numbers below 10 and also to show how we can solve one more/one less calculations. 

We loved working together with our friends to sequence our class story of Walter's Windy Washing Line.  Walter had to help lots of his neighbours in the story and it was great to think how we can all be helpful too. 

We have been showing numbers in lots of different ways this week using lots of different resources.  We have been practising lots with our tens frames which we will be using all year to help us with our numbers.  

We loved our first session in our nature classroom this year and we were looking at all the different parts of the environment.  We enjoyed exploring the different areas and then looked at the seasonal changes which were starting to happen and tried to record them for our Science learning.