Happy New Year!

Welcome back and I hope you all had a lovely Winter break. Apologies for the minimal blog over the last term. With OFSTED, Christmas preparation and an 'alternative' jam packed timetable it was proving rather difficult for us to keep track of the blog. New year and a new regular blog!

Firstly, at the end of last term, you will have received the latest OFSTED report in response to a visit we received back in November. As you will have noticed, the Early Years received the judgement of 'Good'. This was an excellent improvement upon the previous inspection which was judged as 'Satisfactory'. This reflects the hard work and structure that has been put in place over the last two years. As you can appreciate we, as an Early Years team in Class 1, have a big challenge that faces us due to the demanding Early Years Cur

riculum requirements and what is actually possible in a small school with a mixed class. However, we have worked hard to overcome these constraints, to provide a learning environment that is more than effective in providing for the children in both the Foundation Stage and Year 1.

This term our topic will be 'Houses and Homes'.

Today we began the new term by recapping the class rules. Each child (and adult!) drew a hand to show that they will try hard to remember all the rules to make our classroom a happy place.

Foundation stage began their focus 'The Gruffalo' for the week. The read the story together and tomorrow will be making scrambled eggs similar to 'scrambled snake' in the story! They will also be making Gruffalo masks and retelling the story.

Year 1 began looking at Wallace and Gromit's 'A Grand Day Out'. We talked about trips they had been on in the holiday and 'A Grand Christmas'. Children began planning their recounts about Christmas day.

This afternoon we had some music time and some of the children made some excellent instruments that we will be using tomorrow in music time.