Year R- Jungle topic Week 1

This was the first week of our new ‘Jungle’ topic. We’ve enjoyed making parrots using paint, glue and tissue paper. We also made our very own binoculars to use for jungle exploring! There has been lots of den-making again this week using various materials and methods. It was so much fun to pretend that we were camping out in the jungle! It has been lovely to see so many children enthusiastic to write about our new topic! In other news, we had to say ‘good-bye’ to our butterflies, who emerged from their cocoons over the weekend. They’ll be fluttering around the school area so no doubt you may see one of the one day soon!

A week in Year R....

This week was SO much fun! We have been learning about bees! We had lots of fun tasting honey and exploring our bee sensory tray. We all dressed up on Wednesday for the 'Ugly Bug Ball' and had great fun in the sun buzzing and flying around showing off our costumes. We've added a pizza oven to our Minibeast Cafe and have been dishing up some very gross pizzas for the customers. Today was a very rainy day and so we built a den in the woods to shelter us from the pouring rain. We also used foam to play 'Minibeast Ice-cream Shop'. We hope you enjoy watching!

Year R-The Very Hungry Caterpillar

We've been very busy this week learning about the story, "The Very Hungry Caterpillar". We've really enjoyed painting symetrical butterfly wings, using our new minibeast cafe and exploring how we can use dance and intruments to retell the story.

Year R Supertato!

This week we have been reading the book, 'Supertato'! We have designed our very own veggie super heroes and have written sentences to describe their super powers. We've also been making our own super hero masks, cooking up some healthy potions for Supertato (to keep his strenth up) and making our own Supertatos to bring home. On Thursday morning we discovered something very suspicious in our classrooms, veggies had been taped to the walls and were trapped! We think the Evil Pea must have snuck in overnight and done this, how rude!

YR Leaf Man

The children in Year R have really enjoyed the story Leaf Man. They were inspired by the beautiful illustrations and have had a go at creating their own leaf man pictures with the fallen autumn leaves and other natural items that they have found such as sticks, conkers and acorns.

The children had a lot of fun making their pictures. What other pictures could you create?

Making Patterns

The children in YR have been in exploring patterns. They have recognised patterns, continued a pattern and even had a go at making their own!

Land Ahoy!

Today Year 2 had a brilliant day celebrating their topic 'Land Ahoy!' The children took part in a variety of activities all based around pirates. They found out their pirate names, made an origami pirate ship and lots more!

Y2 Willow Weaving

Y2 have been very creative working with willow. Everyone made a petal which was then put together to create a larger class flower.

Great team work showing how everyone can contribute to the bigger picture making it something beautiful.

Clay shields in Year 2

The children designed and made a shield out of clay.

Each design was personal to them just like a real knight would have.

Reading Dens in Y2

For World Book Day Year 2 created "Reading Dens" to enjoy with their friends and soft toys.

After reading "The Book with No Pictures" the children then designed their own page in the style of the author.

Year 2 Superhero Day

To introduce our new 'Superhero' topic, Year 2 spent the day all dressed up as their favourite superhero. We showed these off on our catwalk runway and danced to Superman.

The children then enjoyed more superhero themed activities, including making their own marshmellow superheroes.

In the afternoon, each child struck a pose over our superhero display, flying through the sky.

Which is your favourite superhero and why?

"London's Burning"

As part of their history work the children in Year 2 have been learning about the Great Fire of London.

To see and understand just how quickly the fire spread we created our own burning houses.

Physics Day at Oakwood

On Thursday 15th November, Oakwood pupils became physicists for a time. Each year group explored various aspects of physics with practical activities.

Mr Taylor performed 3 excellent experiments to demonstrate the effects of air pressure and how aeroplanes actually fly.

Year R explored the forces of gravity, magnetism and water; 
Year 1 explored floating and sinking; 
I had the pleasure of teaching Year 2 about gravity and friction. They made accurate predictions and talked about the results they observed with great understanding. They also grasped the concept of fair testing; Year 3 explored light including refraction and linking to understanding of materials by creating shadow puppets in 3CB:

"Light travels as a wave. When you put your shadow puppet in between the lamp and the wall, the puppet blocks some of the light waves.

The closer you put your shadow puppet to the lamp, the more light waves are blocked. This makes a bigger shadow. Moving the shadow puppet away from the lamp makes a smaller shadow as fewer light waves are blocked."

Year 5 investigated the effects of air resistance and friction with balloon cars.

Finally, Year 6 created periscopes to explore the law of reflection and combined a little chemistry with electronics. Potato battery anyone?

The children all loved getting stuck in to science today. We are looking forward to the next science day in the spring term, which will be biology based. 

Y2 Willow Art

As part of our topic "The Secret Garden" the children in Year 2 created flower petals out of willow. Then working as a team the petals were then brought together to create flowers.

Paper Planes

Year 2 have been looking at examples of instructions. Today they followed instructions on how to make a paper plane and then took them for a test flight.

Y1 Papier Mâché Rockets

Year one have created their own rockets. They started with a tube and then attached a card nose to one end. After that they used newspaper and papier mâché paste to cover the rocket. The rockets were left over the weekend to dry and the children were surprised to see that their rockets were then hard. Finally the rockets were painted and windows, doors and flames were added. Don't they look fantastic!

Natural Art

Year 1 have been enjoying the outdoors by creating animal pictures with what they have found in the woods at school.

Year 1 Observational Drawings

Today Year 1 have been outside in the quad drawing all of the beautiful wild flowers.

Flower Art in Year 1

Our topic this half term is 'Growing Things' where we are learning all about different types of plants.

In art we have painted our own version of Vincent Van Gogh's 'Sunflowers'. We learned that he uses bright colours and big brush strokes in his art work, so we did the same.

We have also created 3D flowers using cupcake cases and other collage materials. They have really brightened up our classrooms.

Paws, Claws and Whiskers Homework

This half term Willow class have produced some fantastic homework.

We had various pieces of homework including:
- facts files about different animals
- homemade bird feeders
- information about local wildlife
- animal stories