What a wonderful start to 2025 we have had!! The Penguins have been super busy having lots of fun learning. We have had lots of laughs and smiles too!! 
Here's a little snippet of what we have been busy doing this half term! 
 

Literacy
There has been lots of excitement in our writing area recently!! From painting to cutting and sticking, colouring and writing. The children love to be creating wonderful masterpieces to take home! We have made snakes for Chinese New Year, making love pictures to celebrate Dydd Santes Dwynwen and, of course, our big messy marks!! The children love to show their handwriting and some write numbers and names and draw shapes! It's wonderful to see progress as the year is going on!

 

Numeracy

We have some super mathematicians in our class! The interest in numbers is great and there's always lots of chatter about how tall something is or how we could make it even bigger or taller. Building castles and houses is super popular at the moment with different sized bedrooms and multiple floors for people to live on. The language used is rich and memorable and the children are totally engaged and enjoying themselves! Some children are keen to start writing numbers and matching them up and some are keen to count out objects. Bracelet making was a hit and the question was - how many gems could you fit on your bracelet ?!

 

Expressive Arts 

The improvement in confidence over the last few weeks has been amazing!! The children are far more enthusiastic about participating in class discussions and many more want to come to the front to sing our Bore Da song!! We celebrated Dydd Mwsig Cymru and all the children stood on the stage and performed Welsh to members of our community so brilliantly! They had the biggest round of applause! It was wonderful! Super proud! 
Music is integral to our everyday life - we sing, we dance, and we play musical instruments! It makes us happy! ❤️

 

Humanities 

It has been a busy time celebrating different cultures this half-term! We learnt about Santes Dwynwen and why we celebrate her in Wales. We made love pictures and love biscuits and made sure we showed each other that we loved them. We also explored Chinese New Year and the different animals they celebrate. This year is the year of the snake - the children wanted to make snakes and hang them up. They also wanted to have a Chinese meal in our home corner. Whilst we encourage children to lead our learning, we still value the importance of exposing them to different cultures and beliefs. We then let them decide what activities we do. 

 

Health and Wellbeing 

The most important thing in our Penguins class is that children are happy. It is so important to keep our minds happy and healthy. It's imperative that we form positive relationships at this young age as that's what is going to take us forward as we grow up. In our Penguin class, we strive to have a happy space where children can explore, question and develop their own personality and identity. We believe that being outdoors and active is key to being happy. The children love to be outside. We are lucky to have the space that we do! 
We celebrated Children's Mental Health week with a variety of activities which the children all engaged well in and enjoyed. A cuppa and chat is always the most popular thing! 

 

Science and Technology. 
We have inquisitive minds in our class!! Lots of "why" questions!! These are the best questions! The class penguins (not the children!) were trapped in ice! We needed to free them - but how?! Lots of great ideas were tried - using the hammers, smoothing the ice with our hands, but the best idea was to use warm water!! Why I hear you ask!!! The children will tell you!!! 
Every day we have little scientists noticing how things change - from colours to paints to ice and water. I love the question "why!"