Dear TLAS Community,

One of the joys of having prospective parents visiting our school is that we get to showcase the wonderfully varied and engaging creative education that is on offer throughout The London Acorn School. Last week was no exception. As you’ll read in our Kindergarten and Junior News, the teachers brought the curriculum to the children in creative ways to make an impact. This extends well beyond Art and Craft lessons and lends itself to introductory Maths in Kindergarten (matching conkers to written numbers and counting spoonfuls of rice to make sock bunnies), History in Willow Class (drawing postcards of their predictions for the future), PSHE in Hazel Class (creating freeze frames of different emotions), and English in Oak Class (creative writing about Service Dogs). We hope that by learning creatively, children enjoy their education and retain what they’ve been taught for life, not just for the next assessment.

This week, read more about what the Junior School have been learning, creating and playing in Woodland Craft. Thank you very much to our Parent Volunteers who have already started supporting our Woodland Craft Teacher, Karin, on Mondays and Tuesdays. If there is anyone else who would be interested in getting involved with our Wednesday afternoon Woodland Craft session, please email Tamara tamara@thelondonacornschool.co.uk.

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All the best,

The TLAS Team

In History, Willow Class have been looking at the Past, Present and Future. They studied printed photographs and then spoke about how the world had changed through time. The children identified in group if the photograph was from the past or present before sorting them into a collage on the board. The children spoke about clues and details in each picture that helped to influence their final decision. When speaking of the future, they talking about how uncertain it is and how no one can really predict what will exist. Consequently, pupils made guesses and drew their personal predictions on small pieces of paper, adding them to the class display.

In Art, Willow Class have been studying British Artist, Andy Goldsworthy. Pupils first studied photographs of his amazing nature inspired sculptures before trying their own hand at sand pattern and formation in shallow trays. The children loved the relaxing experience and got very creative in their spiral patterns and designs.

Hazel Class are delving deeper into their Rainforest Topic in all their subjects. From writing information texts about rainforests in Literacy, to classifying animals and their habitats in Science, to practicing cross-hatch drawing techniques of leaves in Art, to reciting William Blake’s poem ‘Tyger, Tyger’ in Rhythmic Time, Hazel Class are losing themselves in the natural world – and that’s even before mentioning Woodland Craft (see below).

Hazel Class have had a really positive social start to the term as well: welcoming new starters into the class, learning how to support one another emotionally, stepping up as reading role models to Willow Class, and taking initiative in RE group projects. May it continue!

As part of their topic, Our Wonderful World, Oak Class have started looking at Service Dogs in different roles around the world. They will continue to look at pollinators and working together with plants and mini beasts, as well as larger working animals, such as horses and camels, in varying terrains around the world.

Willow Class’s Woodland Craft afternoon was a joyously busy session: the children made up their own activities and games around a theme of the spirit of the woodland, after finding some mud balls and a huge face in the mud with stick teeth and shells for eyes. There was the Bear game, the Koala game, the mud ball factory, a very gentle mud fight, den-making with sticks and a tarp, and some austerely sage reflections on ‘creatures in the wood that only we know about’.

Hazel Class’s session included hearing the mix of birdsong, rustling trees and traffic sounds around them, as they made a clatter and a whisper first with body percussion, then with ‘scrap’ and bottles, bowls and sticks: what was vibrating to produce the sound? A lively mud-throwing game followed, and inventive making of a mobile, an elder wand, a flower, with some quiet chatting, balancing and climbing on logs.

Oak and Chestnut’s Woodland Craft session involved making cold-infusion massage oils, part of the ‘uses of plants’ thread in their botany studies.  Students examined an owl pellet on the living rooftop of our Snugglebug Hotel, the Elder tree, and little chives and sticky weed in the school garden. Then they played Bat & Moth, the ‘I like’ game, and ‘Sink and Fade’ (a form of hide and seek).