Robins Class

Good bye and good luck!

So... We have closed the blinds on Robins Class for the final time and waved the children off with smiles and tears. It has been an outstanding year full of friendships, coping with the most unusual of times and outstanding explorations. 

We have learned so much from the children and it has been amazing to see the world through their eyes! They have taught us so much as we build on their learning and enjoyed each discovery.

We are all going on to new experiences. Anna and Jeanette are beginning new adventures in KS2 whilst Kate, Tally and Jodie are heading to Early Years to support the children during their first steps on their learning journey. 

All of our children are going to new classes with the most amazing teams that will help them grow in their learning and life experiences. (Kate has warned the new teachers that she will be checking in regularly because she is nosey and excited for her class and the wonders ahead of them!)

We hope that one day we will open our classroom again to these phenomenal children as they grow in their learning. 

Have a lovely summer all and thank you so much for your support, kindness and letting us teach your wonderful children. 

Kindest regards, 

The Robins Team.

Sports day!! 

Team Robins were fantastic this week!! We were so proud of the children and their fantastic efforts at all of our events. We particularly liked the dressing up race. 

Next stop... The Olympics! 

The last half term of the school year...

This has come around so soon. It doesn't feel that long ago that we welcomed our Robins through the door for their transitions days and first day of the school year. This will be an exciting half term for the children as they learn their new classes and the adventures that await them.

We aren't letting them go just yet, though! We are on our holidays with Robins Class travel agents and jetting off using books, our senses and a range of media! The children will have their passports ready and we will make sure we are packing appropriate clothes. 

Not to mention science week (hooray!) and sports day! 

So are we ready? Let's go!

Happy half term! 

We have had such an amazing half term. The children have made huge progress and we have enjoyed visiting soft play, sensory rooms, the swimming pool and hall! It has enabled us to explore the way we move and our place in the environment around us. 

The children have made so many creative pieces of work based on the artist Wassily Kandinsky. We have made a brilliant and bright display with their work. 

Healthy eating and drinking have been the focus of our work in my independence. We have explored different food and drinks and made honey flapjacks and healthy bugs! It has been an experience and quite yummy.

Our topic has been mini beasts and our books for this half term have reflected this. We have done so much written and sequencing work based on them whilst supporting it with fine motor skills and colourful semantics. Anna has made story massage stories with mini beasts in mind and the children have loved them! 

We have also had music with Alison and Tally ends our week in the best way possible with Music and Communication! 

We have done so much that it is impossible to write it all down! We have had so much fun and all of Robins are looking forward to the adventures ahead of us after half term.

Have a lovely break.

Week 2

Robins Class were very lucky to have soft play and the swimming pool this week and it has been so good for the children to have experiences in these two areas again! 

First week back! 

We have started our mini beast topic with the classic tale of 'The very hungry caterpillar' which led us to explorations of healthy eating, number work and making pom pom caterpillars using our fine motor skills. 

We have used the outdoor spaces around us to collect craft materials and to use our bodies in a range of ways. We also had the hall this week as a fun way to explore movement. 

We celebrated Earth Day by reading '10 ways to help the Earth' and 'Someone swallowed Stanley' and thinking about how we can help the planet. We made kites from plastic bags and used the offcuts to paint pictures of sea creatures. Our experiment was about oil slicks and the best way to clear them up. we almost flooded the classroom with oily water! 

It has been a brilliant start to the term!

We are at the start of the summer term!

There are so many exciting things planned for the term ahead. We are able to go back into the sensory rooms, pool and the hall which will mean we have even more great experiences to explore! We will also have soft play sessions which Robins team are very excited about because it will be the first time this year that we will have access to soft play! 

Our theme for this half term is mini beasts and our Forest School area will be the perfect place for discovering the insect life around us! We do love the freedom of learning outside and this is the best time of year to hunt for mini beasts. 

So.. Shall we get started?

We are back!

We are so proud of how our robins have coped with all the changes that have been going on around them and this week has been no exceptions. The children were in full time and we had a very loud, very busy and very creative classroom. It was the best!!! 

Our book this week has been 'Marvin wanted more' and we had so much fun exploring it. This week has definitely had a food based theme and we have explored not only healthy eating but also creating art in a multi-sensory way. The classroom definitely smelt differently this week with lots of herbs and onions! 

Next week we are looking at our bones and skeletons with the book 'Funnybones' as well as looking ahead to Mother's Day. Hopefully, the fun will continue!

It is also British Science week and as robins class is a class full of scientists we will have lots of opportunities to do scientific exploration!

Home learners.

I have created a version of my weekly planning that can be followed at home and I will add various resources as we go along. Be creative with the activities! We often find the children changing the course of the lesson and the learning outcomes far surpass what I had planned! We learn so much together when the children are having fun whilst they are doing the activities. 

What a week!

The sun has been shining on our first week back! It was Blackmarston well-being week and we had so much fun with the activities that Assistant head Kel planned. The children loved doing the treasure hunt and the well-being rainbow challenge saw us getting messy (and a bit smelly with sprouts!).

Robins class were very lucky to be able to plant two of the trees that our school have been gifted. It was a very muddy job and we all worked together to achieve our goal. 

The planting didn't stop there! We planted some primulas for Headteacher Mike and they are looking lovely outside the school. Have a look! 

Robins Class is a class of scientists and we have signed up to take part in the Crest Awards for science. Our first challenge was to explore the best way to clean clothes. We discovered that soap and water is the most effective and leaving it to dry is not! 

It has been a really busy start to this half term and we are really looking forward to next week. 

Bienvenue! Welkom terug! Tere tulemast tagasi! bine ai revenit! Croeso nôl! Welcome back!

We hope that you have all had a wonderful half term and had lots of fun adventures. We are looking forward to seeing you all either in class or on video call. Our home learners will be revisiting the world again in part two of our multicultural exploration.

In class; we are starting our topic for this half term which is 'My Body' and learning about what is inside us both emotionally and physically! It's going to be full of lots of interesting explorations and experiments (especially during British Science Week!).

Our wonderful assistant head Kel has created a package of work to help our well-being. It really is important to look after ourselves and our well-being during the current climate and how unsettling it is. 

If you are finding things difficult please, please know that you aren't alone and there is always someone to listen. Just get in touch and we will help in any way that we can. 

Shall we start the exciting half term ahead?

Hello! Dzień dobry! Halló!, Namaste!, Bună ziua!, Hallo!

Welcome to our multicultural week! Liss and Cate have put together such an amazing set of my communication activities and we have videos from around the world of people saying 'hello'! It has been such fun to research and put together activities for this week and I have learned so much. Both yellow and green activtivies are wonderful so have a look at both and don't forget to share what you have discovered from your trip around the world! 

Thank you for a lovely week!

We have had a brilliant week and got to see some of our home learners during video calls. It was amazing to be able to share our mornings with you all! Next week we will be doing it again and we really can't wait. We have finished our Farm topic and next week is very, very exciting! We are travelling the world and can't wait to take you on a journey of discovery and creativity. 

Have a wonderful weekend Robins Class!

Hello! 

We have had so much fun in the snow this weekend! We have made snowmen, listened to our footsteps in the snow and threw lots and lots of snowballs. Our noses were red, our cheeks were pink and the ground was white! It was so much fun. We hope that you all had a lovely weekend as well. 

As we head to another two week package of remote learning we would just like to let our robins and their grown ups know how amazing they are. We know that it isn't easy and the moment and we know that the learning packs look a little overwhelming but you are all doing a phenomenal job. Don't worry if your child is reluctant to read, share a story or play some of Cate's videos in the background. Immersing yourselves in stories in a variety of ways is a brilliant way of learning and a wonderful way for a child to develop pleasure in reading.

Count out snacks, sing number songs and maybe bake or cook dinner. Weighing and measurements can be explored through life skills or water play (we love water play!).

Explore the outdoors, there is so much that can create a learning opportunity in the world around you. Kate M is a huge advocate of Forest School and outdoor learning but that makes it sound very rigid! It isn't, it is learning through freedom.  

Play, play and play some more! Our robins are still so young and a lot of the ways they experience the world is through play. We adapt our lessons following the child's lead in class and usually it is because they have shown us what they enjoy and we build on that. Use our packs as a springboard. We have created it but you may take it in a direction we could never have predicted! Trust us, it happens and it is wonderful when it does! Our topic is farms... Where would that take you?

Although the majority of Robins Class is in the green group you do have access to the yellow group page. Feel free to look at that and get in contact if you would like some of those resources. 

We are here for you whether the children are in class or at home. They are robins either way and we are so proud of them. 

Take care, 

Robins Team 

Class closure

It's not been an easy start to the half term and I would just like to thank all of our parents for their kindness and understanding. I have created a social story to explain why we weren't open this morning and I hope that it provides some comfort to our children. We never thought that this would happen and the whole team is sending their love to all of our little robins. 

Home learning (week beginning 11.01.2021)

It's Thursday today, yes it is!

Today's planning is now here! I don't usually teach Thursdays but Kate P and the rest of the senior management team are doing the most amazing job during this time where things are changing rapidly. So... I had to put my Kate P hat on and try to plan something worthy of her! I hope that you enjoy it. 

Thank you for all your kind messages and support. We know that this is a worrying and unsettled time. It does mean a lot to hear from you and if you need anything we are only an email, teams chat or call away! 

Please don't stress over the home learning. Play is a valuable learning tool, the more you can play together and share books the better! 

Take care,

Kate M 

Welcome back! 

What a crazy time! I had hoped to be writing about the start of our farm topic and the exciting experiences ahead of us but it would seem that this isn't to be the case for now. 

I have created a simplified version of my planning which I have already sent home to some of our Robins. I will be sending it via email today to the rest of the class. You will also find it (and my resources) right here! 

Feel free to follow my plans but don't worry if your child doesn't want to do the work I have planned. It is completely understandable. This half term is very much about the natural world and how we experience and interact with it. I had planned lots of activities that involved planting various plants and flowers. Perhaps you could do this at home and observe them growing as time goes by. Or maybe you could take photos of outside your window and see how the world around you is changing. 

Food played a fairly big part in my number planning! We were going to make pizza, sandwiches, shortbread and cookies to explore fractions. Maybe you could make something at home and look at how you could cut it in half. You could also use play dough.

Keep sharing books and enjoying stories together. There is so many worlds to explore using books and it is a wonderful activity to do together. Look at the pictures and chat about what is happening, what the characters are feeling or what do you think will happen next? 

There will be a lot of information over the next few days and please please get in touch if there is anything that you are unsure of. 

Kate M and the Robins Team 

Jesus' Christmas Party

This week we have had such a lovely time creating Christmassy artwork and singing with the rest of the school for our nativity play. We have been so busy and the week has flown by. 

On Friday we had a Christingle Celebration which the children really enjoyed and were so good with their candles. They listened to our instructions and followed them beautifully to ensure that they were safe. 

Next week is the last week before the end of term and we have lots of fun planned. We may even have a special visitor.... Shhhhh……………..

Welcome back! 

It was lovely to see all our Robins back in class this week! We did miss them so much and couldn't wait to open our doors on Monday morning. There were so many smiling faces! 

We are starting on our Christmas activities and it has been so much fun with glitter and paint! We have created a window display, an e-card and we started practicing our Christmas play. 

The children are making amazing progress with their sound work and their reading. We have had some amazing intensive interaction sessions as well. 

School closure

Hello!

We hope that all of our Robins are keeping safe and well. Kate M has sent out emails to all of our parents with an overview of what will be happening over the coming weeks. It is an unsettling time for us all and Robins team would just like to let our children (and parents) know that we are thinking of them. Kate will be available via email for any questions, support or requests for resources. 

Nobody should feel alone at this time and we are here to help in any way we can. Home learning packs will be posted on Monday and the home learning pages will also have lesson plans and resources on. 

We hope that you have lots of fun with the home learning packs and we would love to see what you have all made! 

See you all very, very soon.

The Robins Team.

Welcome back! 

It was so lovely to open our doors to our wonderful little Robins once again! We have started this half term with a bang and done lots of work about bonfire night. Kate P encouraged classroom redecoration with splatter painting and glitter tray work! The children had so much fun doing this and their artwork was amazing.

The queen is our focus for this half term and we have so much planned to learn all about her! We have started our topic by painting a large portrait to adorn our display board in the hallway. It just needs some embellishments before we hang it up because every queen needs some sparkle! 

We explored London using a map and the landmarks from our book 'The Queen's Hat' and the children were outstanding map readers! They found all the landmarks and discussed all the other things they could see. We are off on a trip around England in a couple of weeks time so we are looking forward to them guiding us then! 

Our budding scientists discovered the differences between light and heavy objects in our classroom and were able to separate them into groups that reflected their weight. There was some fascinating hypotheses about what item would be heavier and why! 

This half term our my number topic is addition and subtraction so we have started with addition and the children have shown real confidence with adding one more. We will continue to build on this over the next few weeks. 

We are also looking at 2D and 3D shapes. The children were able to identify basic shapes in the landmarks from our book and to create their own using lolly sticks. 

We took advantage of dry weather and the newly created Forest School area to enjoy child led learning in the open! The children enjoyed it so much and their imaginative play was just mind-blowing and a real pleasure to watch. We had an old man, a wizard, magic seeds and a great game of hide and seek. We will definitely be using this valuable resource much, much, more. 

It has been a great start to this half term and we cannot wait to see what next week brings. Well done Robins Class!

Happy half term everybody!

I have said it many times but I feel like I should say it again; Robins Class is the best class at Blackmarston. The children are just phenomenal in all that they have achieved this half term. I look around the classroom at all the hard work they have done and I am just overwhelmed at their creativity and clear signs of engagement. 

The whole of Robins team feel lucky to have this wonderful bunch to teach us new things daily and we always come away with a smile. 

Our book this week was 'The worrysaurus' and we even had a visit from the dinosaur himself! He did knock a table over and poo in the classroom which was a bit yucky and the children wrote him letters to find out why he didn't use the toilet. He kindly replied to each child that wrote to him and I think it is safe to say that they forgave him.

We had a bit of spooky fun as well. The classroom was covered in all sorts of Halloween decorations and we made witches hats, fizzing pumpkins and did size sorting using real pumpkins (which we cut open the feel the insides). 

We went to the hall and had the large equipment out. The children climbed so high! They are very brave (braver than me). We also saw some outstanding balancing along the bench and stepping stones. 

One of the most rewarding parts of this half term is the friendships that all the children have fostered. You can see the connections being made and growing stronger with each interaction. Every day is a new reason to smile in Robins Class. 

We also had the first ever Robins awards which gave us the opportunity to celebrate the progress made this half term. The awards were:

My independence: Elijah 

My social skills and relationships: Evelyn 

My communication: Leo 

My science: Nathan

My letters and sounds: Sofia 

My number: Travis

Speech and language: Wesley 

Well done Robins! 

Have a lovely half term everyone.

Happy Week! 

Robins class had a happy week this week with our main text 'Where happiness begins'. We made binoculars to look for happiness and talked about what made us happy.

The class had fun with Kate P on Thursday and did a floating and sinking experiment! The children had an amazing time and lots of scientific discovery.

Alison added to our happy week with her music session that everyone loves joining in with (even the adults!). It is always a brilliant day when Alison is in.

Not only did we have music but we also had dancing. We made raisins dance using fizzy water. There were some outstanding investigations and descriptive language used during this activity!

On Friday we had a happy party to celebrate what was a very good week. We did lots of sensory activities and had the music playing so we could have a bit of a dance. What a lovely way to end the week. 

'We are together' week.

Wow! This week has just flown by! I think it must be because we made kites at the start of the week.

This week we have been exploring friendship using the book 'We are together'. It is such a beautiful book with lots to use as inspiration for our work. We did word formation work using the word 'friend' and made a piece of work using our best friend's face and their name. 

We also made paper dolls which the children decorated to look like themselves and their friend. There were a lot of smiley faces drawn on our paper dolls! 

Using the description of a cold place we made ice lanterns which really didn't work but we did some really focused, child-led, learning to explore the ice and what happens as it melts. The children used some amazing scientific language to describe what had happened to the water after we had put it in the freezer and what was happening when we sprayed the ice with water.

We had the hall this week and we used the large apparatus to practice turn taking with our friends. There were some very big jumps from our little robins! 

Group 1 had their first lesson in the pool and it was so lovely to see them experiencing it for the first time this year. We had a rendition of 'baby shark' and lots of bobbing in the water. We had such a good time that no one wanted to leave the water! 

Thank you to everyone who has returned the forms and surveys we have recently sent out. We really do appreciate your support a lot. 

'Here we are' week.

We have had such a fun week in Robins Class! We have travelled into space and looked back at Earth from the International Space Station, drawn around our bodies, explored who we are and made eruptions in a volcano experiment. 

The children have been absolutely amazing and used the materials we were experimenting with in so many different ways! Each piece of work that has been created is so unique to each child and is the result of a wonderful problem solving process! 

I love the book that we had this week and think I could have done a whole half term on it alone because the children really engaged well with it. But, we are moving on and back to Earth for 'We are together'. I'm really looking forward to what wonders next week will bring...

'While we can't hug' week.

This week we have made lots of rainbows because hedgehog and tortoise painted rainbows to show everyone that they were good friends. 

We did experiments making rainbows using a torch and a CD. The torch made lots of different rainbows on the CD and when we moved the CD the rainbows changed shape! Then, we made walking rainbows! We each put water into a tub and added some dye then created a bridge using filter paper between each tub. It was fascinating to observe the colours climbing up the paper and joining in the middle!

Making rainbow noodles was great sensory fun! Everyone put noodles into a bag and chose a coloured dye to squeeze on top. Then we shook and squidged it until the noodles changed colour. They looked very bright when we finished. 

More sensory fun was had when we made flower squish bags. We looked at giving gifts to friends by reading the story 'Footpath Flowers' and passing out flowers to each other. Then we decided to make sensory bags using the flowers, baby wash and glitter which we hung on the window so that our friends can see them when they are in the playground. 

We also did a big rainbow collage as a class which we are very proud of and we can see from outside and in the circle when we gather for 'hellos'. 

Next week we will be looking at 'We are here'. Our experiment will be making volcanoes. We can't wait!! 

21.09.2020 Welcome back Robins Class!

It's a new school year in your new classroom and we have really enjoyed seeing your friendly faces come through the door each morning! 

The world has been upside down and inside out recently so we have been taking time to explore our emotions, how we can be kind to our friends and focusing on our own well-being and the well-being of those around us. 

We have looked at two books so far and we are just starting on our third. We started the year with 'This is the nest that robin built' to welcome us all as the brand new robins and also to build our own nests for our display in the corridor. It looks really good and the children worked very hard on it! 

The second book we looked at was 'The colour monster' and this book really engaged the children. They joined in with the story and were able to act out each emotions. They used the props after the sessions were over and it was amazing to see them acting out the story! Our little robins make very good teachers!! 

We also used the colours from the story to make a colour collage for the classroom which we can look at when we are feeling some of the big emotions from the book and remember that it is okay to feel this way because there is always someone there to help us. 

The book for this week is 'While we can't hug' and it is a really good book for chatting about the current situation and not being able to hug the people you love. It also describes other ways you can show people you love them. The funny faces are my favourite and we have some brilliant ones pulled in circle time. 

Phew... I didn't realise we had done so much... But we didn't stop there!! Oh no! We have been outside a lot enjoying the lovely weather. We have decorated our courtyard after looking in our cupboards and seeing what we could use. It looks really good and the children love being out in it.

We have also been in the sensory garden and the children seem really keen to get their gardening gloves on to do the weeding and planting. So that is going to keep us busy for a while. 

Alison has been with us on Thursdays and the children all enjoy her sessions. She has the most wonderful songs and is so good at getting everyone to join in (even the adults have fun pretending they can sing as well as Alison). She is definitely a highlight of our week! 

We have also been getting out of the classroom and going to the hall or the sensory rooms. The children love the freedom that these rooms give them and revel in exploring them and all they have to offer. Their smiles light up the room and it leads to some phenomenal interactive play. 

There is so much more that could be written but I think I will stop for now!! We have another week of fun ahead of us and I look forward to sharing that on here and in Robins News. 

Kate M