King's Somborne C of E Primary School
Love - Trust - Hope - Joy
Hedgehogs
Running down the hill at Mottisfont.
Mottsfont: A very special garden.
Green Fingers. This week, we’ve been thinking about why gardens are important. ‘The Last Garden’ produced some fantastic thinking from the children and we loved imagining and designing our own special gardens. We know we are very lucky to have our outdoor area at school and have been very excited to sample some homegrown strawberries! Next week we are off to visit Mottisfont; a very special garden close to our school. Look out for photos from our trip.
Wonderful Writing! In response to our Learning Adventure text, ‘The Boy with Flowers in His Hair,’ we asked the children what they would say to David if he was their friend. We were moved by their compassionate responses and very impressed by their writing.
Summer 2, Week 1 and the beginnings of a beautiful new text-inspired learning adventure...
Jubilee Week! What a wonderful, sunny celebration we had.
Our chicks fly the nest!
Over the past few weeks, we have had the privilege of hosting a family of Great Tits in one of our bird boxes in the outdoor area. This week, the fledglings flew the nest. The children have loved observing the parents flying in with food for the chicks, and listening to the ‘cheeping’ get louder each day. What a brilliant thing to witness!
Summer 1, Week 4: We have reached the end of our Learning Adventure based on the Oliver Jeffers text, ‘Here We Are’. The children have written and illustrated beautiful songs about their wonderful worlds.
What a Wonderful World
We’ve been learning this song in class and writing our own verses. Can you practise the tune together?
Summer 1: Weeks 2-3. We have had an action-packed few weeks. Maths has seen a real focus on shape and spatial awareness. We're really improving our ball and balance skills in PE. The children have written their own words to, 'What a Wonderful World' and are getting ready to record their first song. However, the most exciting news came from the nesting box you can see in the first picture. One of the children noticed some birds flying in and out and we used a bird-identifier sheet to identify them as Great Tits. A few days later, we heard the tiny 'cheeps' of new chicks. We are watching and listening for their progress!
Rain won’t stop us! Hedgehog class love to learn outside, whatever the weather. Here are some pictures from a very rainy day this week!
Summer begins! Last term lots of the children showed interests in both space and other countries, so Oliver Jeffers' beautiful text, 'Here We Are,' was a natural choice to inspire our Learning Adventures this half term. The children wow-ed us with their knowledge of the solar system and some wonderful writing! We also loved their '...best things about living on Earth' ideas - I wonder what yours would be? You may have noticed a colourful addition to our outdoor area; does anyone know how to dance around a Maypole?
Our Dotty Gallery
We loved welcoming so many of our grown-ups to our dotty gallery. It was a wonderful celebration of our learning this term which was that was inspired by ‘The Dot’ and the work of Yayoi Kusama.
Rehearsing for the Easter Service
Hedgehog Class love singing the songs we have been learning in preparation for the Easter Service at the church. Some children have made their own instruments. We would welcome donations of small plastic bottles or containers so we can make some more.
Spring 2, Week 5. Preparations for our Kusama-inspired grand gallery opening are in full swing. The exhibits are being perfected and we cannot wait to welcome our grown-ups on Wednesday 6th April. Alongside our Learning Adventure, we've been busy observing our frogspawn carefully; it's not frogspawn anymore! We've also been talking about talking (and listening)! What do you think makes a good Chatter Chum?
Spring 2, Week 2 - 4. A mysterious piece of art work arrived in our classroom. The children immediately guessed it must be the work of 'Vashti,' a reluctant artist in our focus text, 'The Dot'. They were delighted when we opened the frame to reveal her signature! It has led us to talk about what we think 'art' is and to find out about a real artist who uses dots in their work called Yayoi Kusama. We have decided to try and create our own 'dotty' gallery; we aspire to be artists just like Vashti and Yayoi! As always, there has been some wonderful independent learning too; enjoy.
Spring 2, Week 1 - World Book Week. The past few weeks have seen us reach the end of our Learning Adventure driven by the text, ‘The Story Machine’. The children have become fantastic story tellers; they tell us stories in their model making, in small world play and in role-play. Our adventure culminated in every child publishing their very own book, which they read to Eagle Class on World Book Day. Seeing the youngest children in the school confidently read their own writing to the oldest children, as they sipped hot chocolate around the fire was a magical experience! The joy of reading in action!
Spring 2 Newsletter
Spring 1, Week 4. This week, we were inspired by our class text to paint by torchlight. The children concentrated so hard on their objects and used new skills to blend and smudge charcoal. As always, our Hedgehog Adventures have been full of love and learning, enjoy!
Spring 1, Weeks 1-3. We’ve had a wonderful start to the term in Hedgehog Class. Our children are becoming more adventurous in their learning every week. Take a look back at their construction models from Autumn and compare them to this term’s efforts; we are seeing the children become more resilient to set backs in their building, which is wonderful to witness. Our Learning Adventure has sprung from a text called, ‘The Story Machine’ and the children were stunned when this mysterious machine arrived in our classroom...where will it take us?!
Spring Newsletters
Advent service
Autumn 2, Week 7. It’s been a busy and festive final week in Hedgehog Class. The children produced the most amazing writing to describe their Christmas Trees; we hope you loved celebrating their finished pieces at home. Forest school ended with delicious marshmallows. We wish all the Hedgehogs a wonderful Christmas. See you in January!
Autumn 2 Week 6. This week, we have continued with our Christmas Learning Journey and the children have painted Christmas trees using pine branches, which was lots of fun! We loved toasting apples at forest school and have been perfecting our balances in PE. We watched a wonderful puppet show about recycling and We rounded off the week with a very special visitor!
Autumn 2, Week 5. The festive season is upon us! This week we watched a time lapse video of the Christmas Tree being put up in Trafalgar Square, and read ‘The Christmas Pine’ which is a beautiful true story that explains where the tree comes from. The children have loved decorating our own garden tree and retelling the Nativity story outside. The mud kitchen has become a Christmas Shop and is full of the lovely smells of ‘pine soup’ and ‘Christmas tea’!
Autumn 2, Week 4. This week we finished our Learning Adventure that centered around the dark, and people who help us by working at night. Our last visitors were some soldiers who brought lots of interesting things for us to look at and told us how they help others who might be in danger. We continue to enjoy our forest school sessions and we had a beautiful Gruffalo hunt in the winter sun before whittling sticks to toast hot cross buns on the fire. Our balancing in PE is really improving and we LOVED the autumn leaves that line our garden.
Autumn 2, Week 3. This week we looked at ‘The Starry Night’ by Van Gogh and talked about what we saw and what it made us think of. We had a go at making our own versions. Our role play became a ‘Baby Bedtime’ area and we’ve been bathing, changing, feeding and reading to our babies all week. We loved coming to school in pyjamas for Children in Need. We made hot chocolate and even made a pretend campfire!
Autumn 2, Week 2. After our visit from the paramedic, we created an ambulance role-play and enjoyed using the bandages and medical equipment in our play. Our next visitors were our brilliant local PCSOs, who answered more fantastic questions and even showed us their police car! We talked about the meaning of poppies for Remembrance and proudly (and brilliantly!) took part in the service at the memorial.
Autumn 2 - Week 1. We came back to school with a bang; learning about Divali and thinking about fireworks and Rangoli patterns. Our new text, ‘Peace at Last’ made us think about nighttime, and we wondered, ‘Does everyone sleep at night?’. Our non-fiction book, ‘All through the night’ showed us that lots of the people who help us work at night! Mrs Davey invited a paramedic in to school to talk to us. We learned lots and loved asking her our questions.
Autumn 2 Newsletter
Week 7. In our last week of term we celebrated all things Autumn. After reading ‘Pumpkin Soup’, Wren inspired us to have a go at making our own. Everyone enjoyed it, even Mr O’Brien and Mrs Cartwright!
Weeks 5-6. Our focus text has been Owl Babies and it’s been wonderful to see the children retelling the story. There’s been lots of other learning too; take a look!
Week 4. Our first welly walk!
Week 3: The first full week! The children continue to amaze us with their resilience. Although they were very tired by Friday, it didn’t stop them embracing new experiences like whole-school worship or PE. Keep going Hedgehogs, we love how much you love learning with us.
Week 2! The children have continued to settle into school life. They have shown a fantastic attitude and we are really enjoying seeing lots of new friendships forming. Full days next week - we are ready!
Our first mornings at school! We were so proud of how beautifully the children came into school last week. They got stuck straight into their new environment and settled brilliantly. Here are a few snapshots of what we got up to.
Hello new Hedgehogs! We cannot wait to welcome you in to our school, and we are so excited about the home visits over the days ahead. For now, have a look at some of the exciting learning that we will be up to in Autumn 1 by exploring our Hedgehog Newsletter!