Willow Class: We have been on the move recently – running through the park between lessons. It’s great to see the class starting to learn to run together, looking out for each other and setting the pace so that no one gets left behind. We are hoping to build up our stamina next term to run two laps around the school circuit.

Elsewhere, it was a pleasure to share with parents our class poem, ‘This is the House that Jack Built’. Again, another example of the class coming together as a team – they have done so well this term.

We will be bidding Joel farewell this week; he will missed in the class. However, we are excited to welcome back Maria-Bella and welcome Anastasia to the class after the Easter Holidays.

Birch Class: Birch Class presented a beautiful version of Francis and the Wolf. We are now winding down and preparing for Biomes Main Lesson in the Summer Term.

Oak and Chestnut Class: Congratulations for winning the Class Trophy from Usborne Books today for reading the most minutes in our Reading Challenge. Well done, readers!

Willow

On a ‘woodland babies’ theme, we tried on tiny green ‘moustaches’: sycamore seedlings. The stream ‘science lab’ found families of watershrimps. Outraged at the rubbish in the river ‘this is so mean!’ some children set to clearing it up with nets, bags, and sticks. They’re meant to let adults do this, but it was an impressive initiative. Also a forked stick became a coat hook, a long stick got refined and smoothed with sawing, and several special dens were found and embellished before we ended with a couple of games and reflection time.

Birch

This was a relaxed session, with philosophical debates about how the earth began when sitting with boots in the stream, and again on the walk back to school (‘ how did trees evolve?’). Some pupils made 3-D Easter chicks with a rare bit of yellow card, and others – boats, mainly of the bundle of sticks strapped together early form of raft variety. Once we get storage space for longer projects, more sturdy designs might evolve! Meanwhile, dreams of climbing huge trees had to be satisfied with a short scamper up a smaller one, and we all enjoyed the games of Coo-whit and Bat and Moth.

Oak Chestnut

Spring = wild garlic pesto! The students all chopped and pounded the leaves, mixed the oil, and bashed the salt with gusto. This pungent paste was a delight to produce and tasted quite as delicious as we anticipated.

Elsewhere, the suggestion that we could view the dark flat areas of winter earth as a blank canvas bore fruit in a quiet assemblage on the ground of ‘loose parts’ – found woodland objects – forming a vast and mysterious egg.