Langland Community School

Happy New Year Aspiring Acorns! and hope you all had a lovely Christmas break.

It’s lovely to see you all back ready for the new term.

I'm super excited to share with you all the wonderful activities the Acorns have been involved with this week, inspired by the classic children's book "The Three Little Pigs" by Heather Amery. The children will be excited to tell you all about it!

We began our week with a lively reading of ‘The Three Little Pigs’. The children were enthralled as we followed the pigs building their homes—one from straw, one from sticks, and one from bricks—and saw how the big bad wolf tried to blow their houses down. After reading the story, we had a talk about the characters and their choices. We talked about which pig was the smartest and why the brick house was the safest.

Acorn's story 'Three Little Pigs' small world. We are learning all the words in the story.

Acorn class have been very excited started the RWInc picture sounds. We have been learning mmm...mountain, aaa...apple, ddd...dinosaur, sss...snake, ttt...tower and iii...insect.  

The children selected the resources from the art trolley and painted the pigs from the story ‘Three little Pigs’ to go onto the Acorn gallery wall. Mums and Dads please come and visit our paintings of the pigs on the gallery wall.

Acorns shared and took turns to build with the wooden blocks. The children concentrated and built a tall tower, balanced it.

We’ve been Mark Making, drawing lines and copying patterns by forming large movements on the electronic board. We also learnt how to operate the colour key, when using it.

Acorns are so excited to announce that, we have been learning the beginning of a talk for writing text map. We are really enjoying the actions to tell the story, ‘The Three Little Pigs’. This involves learning and repeating the vocabulary from the story.

The children have been practising to mark make all around the classroom and outdoors, using different mark making resources. We've been following the patterns to build our fine motor skills.

Nursery children have been learning through water play by developing their fine and gross motor skills through actions like pouring, splashing, and squeezing.

Acorn class have also been learning, what a challenge is and how to keep trying. We have used different obstacle walks like stepping over low hurdles, walking on uneven surfaces to build on our physical development.

Acorn children have been taking turns to water the class plants. This will support children a variety of skills, including responsibility, patience, and science. It can also help them develop a connection with nature and a sense of care for the environment. 

Children have been learning to take responsibility for a task and feel pride in their accomplishments. 

Acorn children have been learning about Chinese New Year, we looked at the traditions like decorating with red colours, eating special foods, receiving red envelopes with lucky money, watching lion dances, and understanding the concept of the twelve animal zodiac cycle associated with the Lunar New Year.

The children really enjoyed making Snakes to celebrate the Chinese New Year, it is the Year of the Snake. This activity was not just about creativity, it also helped develop their fine motor skills as they cut and glued the snakes together.

The children have been choosing ways to create Chinese Lanterns, with paints or collage. At the same time, we have been concentrating on developing their creativity skills and learning how to use the resources around them independently.

This week...we have visited our school, World of Wild Area and were so impressed with how well the children have shared resources and taken turns, showing kindness and enthusiasm in their interactions. 

Outdoor play has been a particular highlight, with plenty of fun stirring the muddy water and cooking up delicious imaginary treats in our ever-popular mud kitchen!

Whilst in the mud kitchen, Acorns were practicing numeracy…they had lots of fun counting the leaves as they placed them into the Pestle and  Mortar.

While indoors the children have been learning number games during circle time and develop early math skills. During the activity, we learnt how to take turns, look at the number they see and saying what it is. At the same time… we have been concentrating on their other skills…listening, attention, co-ordination and language development.

Aspiring Acorns have followed the story text map and worked at sequencing the story together, using pictures from "The Three Little Pigs".

"Once upon a time"…..

"Mummy pig said....you need to look for your own house"

"The pig built a house of bricks"

"The Wolf said"…..

The children have been so excited to make valentines biscuits and decorate them. We all worked together to gather the equipment and ingredients ready for making the biscuits.

We learnt how to mix ingredients and build on their fine motor skills by shaping the biscuit dough into shape when rolling out the dough, by using a cookie cutter.

While we made the biscuits, we we’re introduced to basic numeracy concepts. We’ve been counting the spoonfuls of flour, margarine, sugar as we placed it into the weighing scales.

We had extra fun at the end, when we got to decorate the biscuits. 

Aspiring Acorn have also had a discussion during circle time, which house is the strongest? the straw house? or the stick house? or the brick house? We looked at and felt the real materials…talked about the straw, the sticks, and the bricks. How do they feel? Light or heavy?

It’s so lovely to see all the children refreshed and back after the half term break.

This week in nursery, we stepped into the well-loved tale of ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’, by Miles Kelly. The story of a curious little girl who ventures into the bears house and creating opportunities for us to explore concepts like size, comparison, and emotions. The children were thoroughly engaged, and we had so much fun bringing this classic tale to life through a range of creative and educational activities. 

Acorns have also been singing lots of different nursery rhymes throughout the week, to build our confidence and support early language and communication development.

Singing the nursery rhyme, Horsie! Horsie! Don't You Stop!

Star of the Day

Aspiring Acorns have continued to celebrate the children’s achievements. We’ve been so proud ourselves to receive a certificate.  

Well Done Acorns for all your hard work.

Hello and welcome to Aspiring Acorns.

It's been lovely to meet our new children starting school for the first time.

The children had a fantastic start in nursery class this week. Everyone enjoyed exploring their new classroom, the children had ago with lots of activities and shared the resources with their new friends. We had a great time outdoors playing with the water and in the mud kitchen.

We look forward to seeing you all next week. :-)

This week Aspiring Acorns have been enjoying our story of the week, ‘The Elephant and the Bad Baby by Elfrida Vipont’. We are learning how to sit nicely to listen to the story and talking about using our manners.

Our focus this week was building on the personal, social and development skills. We have been involved in lots of role play with our peers and exchanging language.

We've all been amazing at learning to line up 'The Langland Way' and have been  practicing all week to do this. We are very proud of ourselves. 

Well Done Acorns. 

This week Aspiring Acorns have been enjoying our story of the week, ‘Elmer by David McKee’. We focused on all the different colours we could see on Elmer.

This week we created some Elmer elephants, from our class story of the week. Acorns enjoyed using different coloured tissue paper and glue to make a collage Elmer elephant. We finished off the activity with The Rainbow Song.

Acorns also took part in celebrating The European Day of Languages. The children came to school in clothes to represent their choice of a country.

It’s so lovely to see all the children settling into Acorn class and are now grasping our class routine.

This week we have started a new class story ‘The little Red Hen’ and will be learning lots of things around it until the half term break.

The children were surprised to find a new story on Monday morning and were all happy to explore our new story and got stuck in straight away.

We really enjoy working together to gather lots of ‘Red’ items. We found red cushion, bricks, shapes, cars, trains and more talked about them at circle time. We looked at the names of each item and how we use it.            

Today we had some Paramedics visiting us with an Ambulance. We got to look inside the Ambulance with the Paramedics and try on their helmets and coats. It was very fascinating, we learnt lots from the visit.

Thank you, Paramedics

We had an extremely busy this week with the Mosaic Artist visiting us too.

We created an Ambulance mosaic with the Artists with lots of colours. It was very exciting to see an Ambulance all bright and beautiful.

Thank you to the Artists for helping us achieve this.

Acorns have had a wonderful time learning around the story ‘The Little Red Hen’, we have looked at lots of different objects the hen uses in the story and have been practicing some nursery rhymes.

We are super excited to share what else we’ve been doing this week. Aspiring Acorns have had a trip to the Pet Shop. 

On another day, Acorns made little Red Hens to celebrate the story for their display. We got very creative with using paper plates, glue, red wool, googly eyes and a yellow/orange paper.

Please watch the video below. Thank you

This week’s focus was learning about Harvest Festival. We looked at how foods are harvested and visited our school Harvest table to place some donations onto it.

We were delighted to make bread this week, just like the character from our class story ‘The Little Red Hen’. We started with gathering all the ingredients from our list. Then we began to mix the flour, knead it, shape it and at the end bake the bread…it smelt delicious.

First, we placed flour, quick action yeast, sunflower oil and water onto the bowl. Then we mixed it all together.

Then when the dough was ready, Acorns all kneaded their own dough for five minutes and left the dough to raise a little.

Once the bread had risen beautifully and was ready to eat as it came out of the oven. It smelt delicious! yum yum!

Aspiring Acorns took their bread home to share with their families.

This week, we learnt about the Hindu festive Diwali and created some Rangoli Patterns! Acorns drew lots of beautiful patterns outside the Early Years front entrance to welcome all the children and their parents. We worked together and used all the different coloured chalks to draw the Rangoli patterns.

Acorns also made Divas in stages. First, we made Divas from salt dough and then we left them to dry for a day. When they were ready, we decorated them using exciting paints and glitter.

The children enjoyed looking at several traditional indian saris, with different colours, patterns fabrics.

Acorns were super excited to try on the sari, look at the petticoat and a choli, which goes with a sari as one outfit.

We were proud to create the Halloween props, made with tissues, felt pen, cello tape and sticks. The cute little ghosts were used for singing and counting nursery rhymes.

Welcome back everyone, and hope you all had a great week off. We immediately got busy, as we have a new story this second half of the term 'Rosie's Walk' by Pat Hitchens.

We made firework pictures, used icing sugar on the black paper and dripped the different colours onto the paper and watched the colours spread. We finished our artwork by adding some sparkly glitter to the picture, we found creating the whole fireworks scene very interesting. 

After the firework pictures, we had time to fit in some fireworks dance to the classical music. We used the ribbons to go up, down, sideways and behind us while dancing.

This week the children have also been looking at the seasonal photos of our Acorn tree outdoors. We’ve been busy with collecting the autumn leaves and enjoyed scooping them up into containers. We listened to the sounds the leaves made under our feet, with a crisp and a crumble on the ground...they were noisy.

Acorns have been extremely productive this week with making poppies to mark our soldiers on Remembrance Day. We watched the King place a wreath onto The Cenotaph. We talked about what happens on Remembrance Day and why?  

We immediately began to paint our poppies, during the activity... we also learnt how to share all our resources well, while painting their own poppies for a wreath to go onto nursery The Cenotaph.

When all our poppies were dry, Acorns acted out putting the poppies onto the Cenotaph at school.

We’ve all been very lucky to be visited by the General Practitioner and her team. We learnt about our bodies and how the doctor's instruments are used. The Doctor talked about each instrument and what it’s used for and how it tells them information about your body.

It was very exciting to have ago with the doctor’s instruments on our friends, teachers and the doctors.

Acorn class learning about the doctor’s instruments and what part of the body it measures or helps. 

Children sharing the doctor's bag and mark making the results.

We kicked off the week with a cosy storytime, reading ‘Rosie’s Walk’. The children labelled the other objects, they could see in the yard, as they watched Rosie Walk calmly around the farm, completely unaware of the fox’s attempts to catch her!

We are so excited...Acorns have now leant how to sit beautifully during the carpet time. Well Done Acorns. 

During the week, we have also carried on with learning about the characteristics of a hen and a fox.

The children have been so busy sharing the books with their friends and repeating phases together using the book, puppets or the small world props.

We were super excited to learn about the world around them and how to adapt to it by playing in the snow. They learnt that they needed to change their behaviour outside while making footprints in the snow, because it was slippery.

We listened to the new sounds we could hear outdoors, ‘Crunch! Crunch! Crunch! While walking over the ice on the ground.

In our mud kitchen, we had something different than mud today to mix and stir...there was some exciting snow!

We had so much fun!

This week, we’ve continued to use the phrases from the story ‘Rosie’s Walk’ while outdoors. We’ve been walking around, across over and under the objects in the garden…just like Rosie the hen.

We also left some water outdoor overnight in different containers and went back the next morning to investigate and we found some lots of ice.

The children examined each container. It was very exciting, we just had to get to work straight away. We pretended the some ice were tarts. 

We also worked together with our friends, to choose tools and took turns to crush the ice into pieces to make some milk shakes.

The Acorns have been super excited this week, as we’ve had a special visitor appeared in the classroom. During circle time, we talked about, "who is The Elf?" and "where did he come from?"

We found The Elf had been up to something different every morning, and we enjoyed discovering it. This meant Acorns had to write letters every day to Santa to let him know, what was happening in the Acorns classroom.

The children have also been looking at Christmas things, children understand that each material has unique characteristics, and the exploration gives them an idea of how different each material are.

The children have also been building on their sharing skills with their friends. We have been joining our train track together.

This week, the children have been very busy making props for our Christmas Performance. We were very creative using paints, glue, wool brushes and different size boxes.

Acorns have been learning the colour ‘Silver’ and have been busy gathering sliver shiny objects to go onto our colour table.

Acorn children have been also started their festive cards…we love bright Christmas lights. The cards look so beautiful. Well done children.

We’ve been enjoying looking at Christmas books. It’s very exciting to discover lots of Christmas things happening on each page.

We’ve had so much a fun this term, learning about different facts about a hen and a fox. Acorns will be learning a new story in the Spring term, so we would like to say bye to Rosie’s Walk.

During learning time on the carpet, we have been learning the colour ‘Gold’ and had gathered gold shiny objects to put into the middle of the circle to examine each objects closely.

It’s super exciting as the Christmas holidays is approaching very fast upon us. We enjoyed talking about the Christmas the festive items we saw in the photos.

Acorns have been extremely busy learning the Christmas songs and actions for the Carol Concert. We all were dressed up for the performance and we had lots of cheers with smiles in the audience.

Acorns wish you all a Merry Christmas are looking forward to seeing you all in the new year.