It is Michaelmas. A time to celebrate the harvest from our work in previous seasons and a time to take on new tasks. In Kindergarten, after the initial warming up period, children’s play themes are growing more varied, as well as narratives and new vocabulary from stories and circle time being incorporated into their play.

Older Kindergarten children are keen to work on maths, weaving, woodwork and skipping; younger ones are enthusiastic about every activity that is on offer. Last week, we used colourful leaves collected from the park to create leafy bearded gnomes. Some children made conkers into necklaces while some are visiting sleeping snails in the bushes. In mid week, the whole Kindergarten said, “Happy Birthday!” To dear Sebastian. We were so excited to help shaping dragon eggs on the day of Harvest Festival and shared a really joyful time with the families!

Willow Class have enjoyed retelling the story of Aladdin as they blend phonics practice with storytelling in Literacy. In Maths, students have been focusing on their number bonds to 10, which will act as a foundation for more advanced addition and subtraction calculations.

In Maths, Birch Class have been creating calendars to help with their understanding of time and counting on practice. Birch Class have also completed their instructional writing on how to use a bow drill to make a fire.

Chestnut Class have been carrying our air resistance experiments in Science, looking at ideas of surface area and streamlining in creating different parachutes for an egg. This has led to a temporary class mascot of a hard-boiled egg called Eggy! Chestnut Class have also started reading Tony Bradman’s Viking Boy, and we are excited to join Gunnar on his adventure.

Oak Class are currently studying World War 1 as a theme in Literacy and are looking at personal family experiences of WW1 with a view to writing a biography. As the 105^th anniversary of the Armistice that ended the war will be in November, this feels like a good time to be exploring this theme, which will be done in a sensitive manner, with an emphasis on daily life in the trenches, and acknowledging the high mortality rates of this conflict as we do so.

Willow Class 

The children all helped to make a beautiful and ephemeral Leaf Dragon Spiral to celebrate the Autumn Equinox. There was enthusiastic mud play, making ‘soup’ and other tasty morsels from the soil.  We also began acting out The Apple Tree Man story, which the children approached with gusto! More of that this week.

Birch Class 

Back in the woods with sunny weather, we prepared our hedgerow fruits for jam-making, and used stones to grind four different colours of paint: charcoal black, chalk white, ochre yellow and ochre red. These last two sourced from the riverbeds in northern Australia, gifted by knowledgeable Aboriginal children. We will use these to make paintings using ancient styles and methods.

Chestnut and Oak Class

 We celebrated the Equinox with autumn treasures round the lantern, a small feast with apple pieces and thoughts of gratitude.

Following on our work on animals, we considered what they might symbolise and mean to us. Looking at the sacred First Nation tradition of the Spirit Shield, students designed their own spirit shields using the elements, animals, birds, and plants. Some whittling and stream-wading was also enjoyed.