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This Week in Westbourne

Preparatory

12 January 2024

As school began on Tuesday after the busy holiday it was clear that the girls were very pleased to be back at school.

There was much laughter coming from the Reception corridors as the girls had clearly missed their friends.  A great deal of catching up was done, especially in the new role play garden centre, set up in the classroom.  Reception’s topic this term is ‘Gardens and Growing’ and pupils heard the story of Jack and the Beanstalk then painted pictures for the display board.  Next week they will be writing the story in Creative Writing.  

Even though the week was shorter, the girls managed to pack a lot into it.  In Mathematics, they listened to the story of Rosie's Walk by Pat Hutchins which taught them about prepositions.  Girls used dolls to demonstrate their understanding of new words such as; in, above, over, under, beside and between.  In our Religious Education lessons, girls learnt about Hanukkah and made playdough hanukkiahs, whilst in French, they practised counting to five! 

Kindergarten have been discussing the seasons this week with an obvious focus on winter. The weather has supported their learning as they talked about the colder temperatures at this time of the year. Girls enjoyed learning new art techniques to create snowmen. They also enjoyed listening to the story of The Snowman and retelling it in their own words. In numeracy activities, children worked hard on one to one counting and number formation. Creating stripy scarves gave them the opportunity to work on their repeating pattern skills. Finally, girls have used their phonic knowledge to begin blending words along a winter theme.

Nursery rhymes will be a topic for Nursery girls this term and ‘Humpty Dumpty’ was the first focus giving many opportunities for developing a range of skills.  They have researched eggs and which animals lay them and have painted faces on eggshells and planted cress seeds to make Humpty's hair.  They particularly enjoyed looking at the different ways we eat eggs and made their own scrambled eggs and soldiers.  

In PE lessons they sang the rhyme and practised rolling when it was time to 'fall off the wall'.  Then, using their fine motor skills they traced the paths that Humpty fell and helped to stick him back together again. They realised why the King’s horses and men from the rhyme found it hard!  Mathematics lessons gave the opportunity to consolidate number recognition to 3 by completing a colour by number egg picture.

Westbourne girls are looking forward to learning more next week.

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