Welcome to Kingfishers Class

 Curriculum Newsletters 2024-2025

This half term we have been exploring measurement of full and empty, heavy and light and long and short through our story Dear Zoo. We have weighed the animals to see what is the heaviest and measured using bricks and non standard units to see what is the longest. We have also been looking at patterns and how we can make these using the peg boards.

We have celebrated Eid today in school on 11th June 2025. We have explored the beautiful clothing, tried some amazing food and made our own crafts to celebrate the day.

What a fantastic Sports Day Kingfishers have had this morning- take a look at some of the beautiful pictures 

In Maths our number focus this week has been the number rhyme of '5 little men in a flying saucer'. We have been practicing counting backwards and matching amounts to numbers through practical and sensory activities.

We have started our story called Dear Zoo. We have explored the animals and the different textures of the animals through sensory play. We have created our own stripy tiger from tissue paper and made colourful semantics from the illustrations in the story.

We have been celebrating summer week and for our DT learning we have designed our own ice cream sundae and today we went to ASDA to collect the ingredients we needed. This afternoon we got to make , taste and evaluate our creations!

In PE we have been exploring some team games and we have played duck duck goose as a class and then practised some ball skills to play some football as a team.

We have celebrated Numeracy Day on 14th May 2025. The focus this year was on money. We have linked this to our transport topic. The children enjoyed multiple number and money sensory and practical activities throughout the day to embed the understanding of money further.

This half term we have started our topic on transport. To start we have identified and matched different transport items using our computing skills. We have also used various transport vehicles to mark make and to create our own art with these.

Today we have celebrated Earth Day on 25th April 2025. The focus has been 'Our Power Our Planet'. We have looked at how the ice is melting for some animal homes. We have also explored the world and the colours of the Earth and even made some bird feeders for the birds to have some food and energy.

We have celebrated St George's Day today on 23rd April 2025. We have focused on the colours white and red for the flag of England exploring sensory activities alongside this. We have enjoyed the story of St George and then created various crafts to represent the day e.g. rose, lion and dragon.

We have been developing our skills in music with tuned and untuned instruments. We have been following actions to songs and we are now beginning to choose appropriate instruments according to their sound.

Today (2nd April 2025) we have completed our bunny hop and doing lots of laps around the lower woodlands. We have been raising money for Pendleside Hospice. This is Kingfishers completing their bunny hop!

Our Art and DT subject leader has put together work from DT and Art for a beautiful exhibition. Pupils from the whole school have contributed their work to this and today we had the opportunity to go and view what pupils have been learning about through DT and Art. Kingfishers contributed our 3 little pigs houses, some plant pots that we have made and some wonderful art projects that we have been working on.

The past few weeks we have started our group work learning and our writing has progressed significantly through using different mark making tools and fine motor activities.

We have been on a plant hunt to find: a stem , tree, petal, plant root, flower, bush, gardening tools and a plant pot. We practised our computing skills and took some pictures of the things we have found.

We have been looking at different things that adults do this week e.g. drive cars, wash their cars and the different jobs that they can do.

All year we have been working on  our colourful semantics and Kingfishers are now beginning to complete longer sentences independently. Well Done!

We have been practising recognising numerals through our maths learning this week.

In Kingfishers we have looked at St Patrick's Day on Monday 17th March 2025. We have enjoyed a colourful tray to represent Ireland with the different colours and rainbows and gold coins. We have made some wonderful creations including printing with an apple to make a shamrock, making a rainbow handprint and using paint sticks to create the Irish flag.

We have celebrated Science Day on 11th March 2025. Kingfishers focus was on plants and seasons linking with our topic. We enjoyed an Attention Autism session linked with seasons all the way up to stage 3. We have also made some beautiful artwork to share in our assembly on Friday.

We have celebrated World Book Dat on 7th March 2025. Our chosen book has been Zog. We have explored through the story and practised breathing fire like dragons and capturing a princess. We made medals just like Zog got at the end of the story.

This half term our topic is From Seed to Flower. We have been exploring all things to do with plants and flowers. We have used real and fake flowers to identify the different parts. We have been looking in our own Kingfisher Class Tray and have explored what seeds we might put in there in the next few weeks. We have also enjoyed some fun craft activities too.

We have celebrated St David's Day on 28th February 2025. We have been explored what St David's Day means and what country it represents through various sensory and craft activities.

Today is PML day and we have celebrated all things French. We have looked at the colours in the flag, and the names of some of the colours in French. We have also explored the Eiffel and created some paintings after French artists.

This half term we are focusing on the book The Tiny Seed. We have explored a sensory story to to with the story, a sensory seed tray, completed some comprehension questions and colourful semantics.

We have completed a Valentines theme Attention Autism session this afternoon and we completed some activities to go with it. We explored the colours associated with Valentines and made our own valentines day cards.

We went on our first full outing in the minibus today and we all worked hard to see the different materials on the journey. The children were challenged to find straw, sticks and bricks and we found them all!

Over this half term in shape, space and measure we have been exploring 2d shapes and identifying the names of each of them. We have looked at volume and capacity and enjoyed some lovely sensory activities to demonstrate full, empty and half full.

In PSHE we have been exploring managing feelings. We listened to happy, sad, angry songs and painted along to this to represent our emotions.

Three children in Kingfishers class have been completing MATP in their PE lessons to build their mobility and dexterity this term. We have been practising crawling and grasping and releasing.

Look at these fabulous superstars doing some outdoor learning in Maths! They were using the stepping stones to practise rote counting with modelling. They used the bikes to park in the bays numbered 1 and 2 and would drive it into the correct one.

We have celebrated Chinese New Year on 29^th January 2025. We have danced like a dragon, tasted different foods (chinese, leaf, noodles, sugar snap peas and prawn crackers), made lanterns and practise mark making and exploring our name in Chinese.

Our new story is the Three Little Pigs. We have role played and had a sensory story to explore the different stages in the book.

In PSHE we are exploring managing feelings. We have looked at the zones of regulation and know the emotions can match colours. We saw that green was happy, yellow was excited, red was angry, blue was sad through sensory and practical activities.

In this half term we are exploring materials. Today we have been on a material hunt. We used a communication boards to find some materials around the school and felt what they feel like. We also completed a WOW experiment to see which items were waterproof and if our toys will get wet.

We have started our new book called What unicorns are made of. We have been exploring many different fine motor activities, a sensory story and sharing reading books together.

In Kingfishers this week we are celebrating Winter Week- we are exploring all things Winter. Take a look each day to see what we have been up to 

See what we have been up to on the lead up to Christmas!

We have been exploring the nativity story in RE and how Christians celebrate Christmas. We have made our own suncatcher nativity scene, explored the story, made our own wrapping paper and completed mark making on wrapping paper.

We have been exploring weight and capacity. We have been seeing what things weigh when they are full and empty and also understanding what full and empty means.

We have been exploring the different representations of the number 5. We can see 5 boats, 5 cotton reels, 5 spots on a dice, 5 fingers and 5 piece of numicon. We have matched numerals to amounts to 5 and completed concrete and pictorial representations.

We have celebrated St Andrews Day today (29th November 2024). We have made our own thistles, kilts and explore what we can see in Scotland.

We have started a new book called Paddington in the Palace- we have used a sensory version of the story and explored these resources. Paddington discovers flowers during this in the royal garden and we have been printing using flowers.

We have been practising our recognition of numerals and matching these to amounts through various activities including computing.

This week has been enjoying the chilly weather and making the most of it. We have been exploring what cold means and enjoying playing with some of the snow.

We have been thinking about different ways that we can mark make. Today we have used the bee bots with mark making apparatus attached to make makes and observe what we have done.

Kingfishers have celebrated Children in Need day today (15th November 2024). We have focused in English and Maths on the colours of pudsey's bandana and spots. We have created some masterpieces and explored a variety of sensory and practical activities.

We have been learning about why we celebrate Remembrance Day. We have looked at why the poppies grew and what they look like

We have taken Barnaby Bear around Asda today - can you spot him anywhere?

We have been celebrating Bonfire Night on the 5th November. Please have a look at what we have been up to.

This week in Maths our focus is the song 1,2,3,4,5 once I caught a fish alive. We have been exploring matching numbers to amounts.

In English we are linking to our topic of Where in the UK is Barnaby Bear. We have looked at the story of Barnaby Bear at the Farm. Some of the children went on a trip to the farm in their prior class and we referred back to these experiences.

In RE this half term we are exploring Christianity and looking at Jesus in particular. We have started exploring that when Jesus was born he was a baby. We have looked at what babies would need to survive in the world.

We have been epxloring what is in our local community and thinking about what we would find. We have role played doctors and opticians and explored what we would find in farmers fields. We have also thought about the British Values and created some artwork around this.

Have a look what we have been up to for all of Autumn Week!

Some pupils from Kingfishers went to Asda today to practise life skills and PSHE. They have chosen some items they would like for snack in the next week.

We have explored numbers today through various different sensory trays.  Kingfishers have explored the songs ten fat sausages and reenacted it ourselves. We had to search for the numbers and match to amounts. 

Today in topic we have been exploring the 'garden' in our topic of My Home and My Family. We have explored the tuff trays of different garden items, made our own flower paintings and even exploring in the sensory room.

We have been exploring a new book called 'Our Class is a Family'. We have looked at our likes and dislikes in the class. We have explored this through sensory trays with our feet, reading different parts of the story, and choosing our own likes.

We have been looking at long and short in Kingfishers this week and big and small last week. The pupils have really taken to it and got involved in a variety of practical and crafty activities.

After exploring our topic of 'My Home and My Family'. We have been going out on the bus and exploring our local community and looking at the different houses.

In our topic today we have been looking at the term bedroom under our topic My Home and My Family. We have been singing lullabies, making a moon picture, putting the babies to bed and practising our routine before bedtime.

In Maths today we have practised our rote counting of 1 to5- we have enjoyed different water activities linked to our song.

We have explored a variety of activities for Jeans for Genes Day. Thank you for all your donations!

We have been exploring the book "In Every House on Every Street". We have been looking at the different rooms and the different senses that we would have in each of them. We have explored around the house and created our own wobbly house and garden.

We have had a messy afternoon and enjoyed a variety of mark making activities linked with our topic of bathrooms. We have also had RE looking at different sensory aspects of Hindu Dharma.

We have used computing today to create a picture of our home. We have see that we can use the screen to manipulate colour and observed the effects of our actions.

In Maths this week we have been looking at number songs to explore the numbers 1 to 5. The children have enjoyed lots of different practical activities

We have been practising our mark making skills using a variety of sensory activities and utensils linked to our topic.

In RE we have been exploring our subject of Hinduism. Today we looked at Rangoli patterns and explored the different sensory experiences of light and smells.

In Maths we have been exploring lots of practical learning. We have been repsonding to different stimuli to find the children's interest.

In Kingfishers we have been practising our movement and balance through an obstacle course. We have had to move in different ways, climb and balance on different apparatus.

In Music we have been exploring our voices and expressing ourselves through music on different instruments. We have sang the music man and looked at keyboards, tambourines, bells, shakers and a big drum.

We have started on new book of ' In Every House on Every Street'. Today we looked at the sounds we might here in the street from different animals and environment. We explored a sensory story together. On one of the pages it explains about making silly faces in the mirror- we tried to see what silly faces we could make too !

In Music today we have been looking at nursery rhymes. We have chosen our own ones to sing and then explored some sensory trays relating to this after.

Kingfishers have been settling in well and partaking in lots of activities. We really enjoy messy and sensory activities. The pupils have really taken to back to school and are beginning to get use to routines within PVPS.

Welcome back Kingfishers! We are looking forward to exploring lots of learning this year. Our first topic is about My Home and My Family