Tuesday 29 January 2013

Green tights and helpful uncles






Hurrah! The Sunnysiders are off timetable all this week.

This week is "Inspirational Week." This means everyone at Sunnyside School will have the opportunity to participate in exciting activities, led by various visiting artists and performers.

The idea is that after taking part in these exciting activities, all learners in every year group, will be inspired to take their experiences and newly acquired skills, and use them in their own independent creative activities throughout the coming week and hopefully beyond.

The Reception team can't wait to see what their little learners will come up with, because as it is, they are naturally very inquisitive and extremely imaginative.

Take for instance the little learner today, who sidled up to Mrs Organised and whispered in her ear. "Do you know... my Uncle, is Robin Hood." 
Mrs Organised learnt that "Uncle Robin Hood" helps the Easter Bunny every year to hide Easter Eggs for the all the children of Whippy Cove to find.

The team never cease to be amazed by the little learners' wonderful and original imaginings. And it's moments and conversations like the one about Robin Hood that, as far as the Sunnyside team are concerned, make the job of caring for and educating the littlest learners in school, such a brilliant one. 

It goes without saying that it also provides Mrs Crayon with the best ever doodle material.

"I've laddered my tights! So I'm not coming out!!!"



Thursday 24 January 2013

Deadly frogs and skinny legs



It was a very different day for the Sunnysiders today.

As the snow lay deep and crisp and somewhat uneven all around Whippy Cove, the little learners gathered their packed lunches, magnifying glasses and cameras and jumped aboard the Sunnyside mini buses. Their destination... Whippy Cove's very own under cover tropical rainforest.

The trip was arranged to give the little learners the opportunity meet first hand, some of the animals they've been learning about as part of their current animal topic.  

And what a wonderful variety of animals they encountered on their jungle journey! Everything in fact from a teeny, tiny, Poison Arrow Frog to an over grown guinea pig like creature called a Capybara.

Cameras were clicking non stop as the little learners explored their tropical surroundings, snapping not so much anything that moved, but more the ends of their own fingers, as they continued to cover the lens with them.
Never mind, the resulting photographs will never be as dreadful as Mrs Very Jolly's notorious, spooky, out of focus/headless offerings. 

The Flamingo enclosure caused much debate among the little learners. The debate being, how to actually say the word flamingo correctly. The little learners were saying all the right sounds... just not necessarily in the right order! By lunchtime, the team had heard so many variations of the word flamingo, that not even they could say it properly. So from that point on it was agreed to only refer to them as, "those skinny pink birds!"

"We need to be very quiet... he's going to take a picture of a Flangmenco!"
"It's not a Flangmenco, it's a Flingmengo!!!"





     



Friday 18 January 2013

Long queues and missing teeth



Mrs Very Jolly braced herself as she approached the jungle den at the end of today, in anticipation of what she might find lurking in Lester the hungry lion's mouth. Nervously she put her hand in and pulled out, a plastic cow, a wax crayon and a plate. In total disbelief, she rummaged around further feeling sure she'd find more, but no, that was it, there was nothing more! Still, it's early days yet, who knows what the team might find tomorrow.

Mrs Crayon's literacy activity which involved the little learners posting sounds and words into Lester's mouth went extremely well this morning. Little learners were queued up twice round the den to feed Lester their sounds and words. They even went the trouble of serving them up on a plate.

One little learner in the feeding queue, was clutching his word in one hand and a paper towel in the other. When Mrs Crayon asked him why he needed the paper towel, he told her that his tooth was wrapped up inside it. It seems his tooth fell out whilst he was playing outside and somehow he managed to catch it before it hit the ground. He went on to tell her that the tooth fairy will  come and take his tooth away and turn it into gold. The little learner then began to speak about his Daddy who apparently has no teeth at all, only holes where his teeth should be. He said that it was his Daddy's birthday today and he was going to be very, very old.
"Just how old is Daddy going to be?" Asked Mrs Crayon curiously.
"Twenty four!" Replied the little learner.

Mrs Crayon is sure she'd had just been spun a very long yarn indeed. However, it made for an irresistible doodle.


"I'm going to need the blender son!"

Monday 14 January 2013

Sharp teeth and little postmen!



The first little learner to walk through the door this morning, held up his school bag and proudly announced. "I've got two books and a crocodile in my bag!" The very next little learner to walk through the door shouted at the top of his voice. "Good morning... kangaroos bounce on their tails!"

There is no doubt in the team's minds that the little learners are enjoying the current animal topic and just to confirm this further, there were plenty of squeals of delight when the little learners walked into the den to find a hungry lion, with his jaws wide open, awaiting their arrival. 

Lester the hungry lion is rather unique because instead of eating things with two legs or more, he only ever eats letters and words.
The idea is, the little learners name the letter then say the corresponding  sound. If they name it and sound it correctly, they can then feed to the hungry lion. Similarly, and depending on their ability, little learners who are able to blend words are given a  cvc word to blend, if they blend it correctly they can then post it straight into the lion's mouth.

It is a well known fact that little learners love to post things. 
Over the years the team have seen everything and anything posted everywhere and anywhere. For some little learners, posting things is essential to their learning and understanding of the world. So the team don't exactly  discourage posting, but it does need to be monitored.

So, to capitalise on this natural tendency to post, Lester has been created to support some of the literacy activities this week. It will be very interesting to see what else ends up in Lester's mouth as the week progresses. 


"Eat up all your sounds, then you can have some glue sticks."
,

Friday 11 January 2013

Slow coaches and leafy hats



Mrs Crayon went into the PE cupboard today to find some beanbags for a PE session. However, what she actually came out with was a monstrous fake (but very realistic) fur tree. After staggering back to the classroom with said fake fur tree and leaving a trail of overturned pencil pots and broken Lego towers in her wake, she carefully dismantled the tree and arranged it's branches all around the animal den. 

She then thought it would be fun for the little learners to make camouflage hats for when they played in the den. Subsequently, one of the activities today involved the little learners making leafy hats from a variety of collage materials.

The little learners thoroughly enjoyed this activity and once they'd made their hats, they were very reluctant to remove them. So, during today's whole group numeracy input, Mrs Very jolly appeared to be teaching a classroom full of cheery tree saplings.

Today was the first PE session of 2013, and whilst the changing time has reduced dramatically and the time doing PE has increased greatly, there are still one or two little stragglers who tend to sit around and wait for the PE fairies to come along and do the changing of clothes bit for them.

Miss Kind, who is known for her endless patience, spent a great deal of time this afternoon encouraging a little learner to change back into his uniform following PE in the hall. There was some urgency as it was almost three o'clock and home time for the Sunnysiders. 
"You're doing very well." Said Miss Kind. "But you need to try really, really hard to speed up a little bit."
The little learner stopped what he was doing (much to Miss Kind's dismay) and said...

..."But my Mum taught me to do it really slow!"



Miss Kind had no words!

Wednesday 9 January 2013

Baked beans and giant monkeys


Welcome back Little Learners, welcome back team, welcome back faithful readers and welcome to any new readers to Sunnysiders 2012.

Today is the first day of the Spring Term and just the mere mention of Spring sends the team rushing for the compost and daffodil bulbs to set the little learners off on planting activities.

However, before all that can happen there is the important business of transforming what was the nativity stable into a hide/camp/den type of thing, complete with cameras, binoculars, magnifying glasses, clipboards, cooking equipment, bedding, in fact everything a little learner might need to set up camp and do a spot of animal watching and recording. 

 Yes, the topic for this half term is "Animals" and over the coming weeks the team have some wonderful animal inspired activities planned for the little learners.

The Role Play area is one of the most important and most popular areas in the setting, so the team always ensure that the little learners play a big part in setting it all up.

This afternoon Mrs Caring and a group of little learners set to work to paint some large jungle animals to go in and around the den. By the end of the day they'd produced an enormous monkey, a giraffe with the longest neck in the history of long necked giraffes, a tiger so orange that he can't be viewed without first putting on a pair of sunglasses and a Zebra, which only a couple of weeks ago was the all important donkey in the the stable, but now with a multitude of thick black stripes painted all over him, makes a splendid, if not slightly scary Zebra!

Earlier today during some whole group numeracy input, Mrs Very Jolly wanted to convey to the little learners the importance of being able to count accurately. So, to start the activity off, she asked the very simple question, "Why do we need to count?"
Immediately a little hand shot into the air and unable to wait to be asked, the little learner confidently blurted out...

..."Because it's good for you!"

The team couldn't agree more, and would like to suggest that perhaps along with fruit and baked beans, counting should be included as one of our five a day!!!