Northern Lights

As part of our minibeast topic this half term, we have been looking at butterflies and learning about pattern and symmetry.

During topic, the children cut out a butterfly and painted a design onto one wing. They then folded up their butterfly before opening them out again to reveal a beautiful, symmetrical pattern.

The children were amazed at how the paint imprinted on the other side and the different colours mixed together to create new patterns and designs.

Charlie was particularly impressed with his butterfly, telling Mrs Joyce excitedly that "It looks just like the northern lights".

"Art takes nature as its model" - Aristotle

A Solid Foundation

We are now in our second week of the new term and as ever, it is proving to be a busy one. The children have been settling back into the daily routines and joining in with lots of fun activities.

In our garden we saw a brilliant display of team work and problem solving from some of our Nursery children. After realising the house they had built was too small for everyone to comfortably fit in, the children thought carefully about how they could resolve the issue and worked together to reconstruct a bigger house.

 

These kind of problem solving activities are vital in helping children to develop their creative and critical thinking skills. Children who are able to problem solve in a variety of situations are often more confident and able to cope with new or different routines and situations. This can have a massive impact not only on learning in school, but is a life skill that can be carried forwards into the future. As we near the transition phase of our school year, finding ways to develop these skills is particularly relevant.

"Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve" - Roger Lewin

Red Nose Day 2017

This year at the Grove Academy Red Nose Day was BIG news!!

Our head boy and girl, along with their deputies planned a whole host of fun activities for the children.

The day started with an assembly, which saw the staff in Early Years and KS1 go head to head with each other in a race to see who was the best 'Mummy' in honour of the new red nose.

 

KS2 teachers were then faced with a series of challenges set up by our head boys and girls, including a doughnut eating competition and a very tricky tennis skills battle.

All the children (and staff) had a great time and lots of fun.


However, it is important to remember why we have this event and we took time to share the reason behind Red Nose Day with the children.


Thanks to the generosity of the children and parents in our school we were able to raise £453.85.If you would like to find out where the money raised goes to, please follow the link. http://www.rednoseday.com/


"No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted" - Aesop

Observational Drawing

Now that Spring is finally upon us, we are taking every opportunity to make the most of the (occasional) good weather and take learning outside whenever we can.


During our topic lessons last week we decided to take the children out into the sunshine to complete observational drawings of cars parked in our car park. The children were taught how to use pastels and were able to use this particular medium to create some truly stunning representations.

Through this task the children are of course developing the skills that come with working with pastels, but when children are faced with the challenge of representing a real life 3D object on paper they are practicing their recognition of shapes and awareness of proportion as well as advancing hand eye coordination and an eye for detail.

It was amazing to see the children so engaged in their task and how proud they all were of their finished artwork.


"Every child is an artist" - Picasso

The Train Trip

As part of our 'Transport' topic, the children of Reception wanted to see what we could find out about trains.


The children and staff made the trip to Garston train station and were able to have a look at the signs, tracks and platform.

We spotted some wires over the top of the tracks and Jamie told me that "It's for electricity".


As we were having a look around the station we were lucky enough to see a train pass through, stopping to pick up and drop off passengers on it's journey.

The children behaved beautifully, listening carefully to all of the grown ups instructions and following all of the safety rules.

Short trips like this, where we venture outside of the classroom, allow the children to experience things on a more personal level and really help to bring learning to life.


"Knowledge gained through experience is far superior and many times more useful than bookish knowledge" - Mahatma Ghandi

Sugar and Spice and All Things Nice!

Last week the children in Reception worked hard to bake lots of delicious biscuits in honour of World Book Day.
We sold the biscuits and thanks to the generosity of our fantastic Reception parents we managed to raise £41 to spend on new books for our book corners.


The recipe that we used is quick and simple (and tasty!), so if you enjoyed the biscuits then why not make some at home over the long weekend!

Recipe for Animal Biscuits

Ingredients:

175g 6oz butter, softened

75g 2half oz caster sugar

175g 6oz plain flour

75g 2half oz semolina

 

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180'C/350'F
2. Add butter and sugar to mixing bowl and beat with a wooden spoon until soft and creamy.
3. Then stir in flour and semolina.
4. Dust lightly with flour before kneading, roll out (£1 coin thick) and use animal cutters to make biscuits.
5. Bake for approx. 10 mins – keep your eye on them.

Let us know how you get on and if you bake a few too many, teachers never say no to a biscuit or two!!

Once again, thank you for the generous donations to our biscuit making venture and allowing us to provide even more resources for the children! 

Remarkable Writing

Amelia in RG has been very busy drawing her own story mountain.

She recreated the story of 'Little Red Riding Hood' in picture form and was then able to use this to help her write out the story. She used her phonics to sound out some really tricky words and ended up with a truly fantastic piece of work.

“You can make anything by writing.” – C.S. Lewis