6th March '25

Wow! What a week we have had! It started with our trip on Monday to The West Berkshire Museum. The children had a great day out learning about Victorian toys and comparing them with toys that the children have today. The children found out what Victorian toys were often made from, they handled some toys and they even made some toys! The children also really enjoyed looking around the museum and finding out about West Berkshire. They particularly enjoyed trying on different costumes! Have a look at the fun below!

At the museum the children had the opportunity to make their own kaleidoscope and thaumatrope. These are toys that Victorian children would have played with. A thaumatrope is a disc of card with a picture on each side and two strings attached. As the strings are turned quickly, the two sides of the disc merge to form one picture. The children drew a fish and a fish bowl. When they turned the strings, it looked like there was one picture of a fish in a bowl - very clever!

Maths this week has seen us counting in 2s, 3s, 5s and 10s, both forwards and backwards. Have a go at this at home. We have also been thinking about how many groups there are and how many objects are in a group. In the photo below, each child has five equal groups of two. This all helps develop the children's basic understanding of times tables.

World Book Day which we celebrated on Thursday was another highlight this week. We started off with a whole school assembly where everybody had a chance to show their costumes to the rest of the school. Kingfishers then had a focus on the Mr Men and Little Miss books seeing as the teachers were dressed up as characters from these books. We enjoyed the story Little Miss Inventor which linked in with our science for the term. Little Miss Inventor needed our help to find out which objects were made from metal, wood and plastic outside. In the afternoon the children created their own Mr Men and Little Misses. Some were ideas from the books and some were the children's own ideas for new characters such as Little Miss Butterfly and Mr Super!

Thank you for sending all your children in dressed up. The children really enjoyed being called by their character names! At the end of the day we had a big reveal of three boxes of brand new books for our classroom. The children were amazed at all the different books, fiction and non - fiction. They can't wait to start reading them. We are sorry that we don't have a photo of how excited the children were as mentioned on the letter home to parents.

It was suddenly Friday again and Spring had certainly sprung this week! We had been enjoying a week full of lovely sunshine and Friday didn't disappoint either, with the rain holding off we were set for another dry day and as we all came practically bouncing through the gate we were excited for the day ahead!

For some of us it was a day of firsts, the first time we were being taught by Mrs Brown! The first time we had been over at our friends for a playdate and even the first time we had played cricket! How exciting, what a way to end the week!

As we watched Newsround this week we discussed our favourite costumes from World Book Day as well as our own costumes and it soon became clear that the inflatable Dinosaur was a firm favourite with Kingfishers! However from our very own Dorothy to an Astronaut, Dog man (x2) to Spider Man we had plenty of costumes to choose from within our own class! 

All the teachers were Mr and Little Miss characters but I wonder which of these characters you would have been? 

As the morning whizzed by we were soon into our afternoon and it was time to take a step back in time and begin exploring Toys from the past. Today we watched a short video which showed us how toys have changed from the 1970s up until the 2020s, we then discussed what changes have happened.

Kingfishers were then asked to sort pictures of toys into whether they were toys from the past or the present, thinking about what material they were made out of, their colours and what the toy could do.

Mr Richardson was at the door, which could only mean one thing......it was time for Cricket!!!! We waiting to be asked to get our spare pair of shoes (please do ensure your child does continue to bring a spare pair of shoes for PE on a Friday but not studs please) and then we were off onto the field!

This week was all about throwing and for our first activity we were asked to form a 'w' with both of our hands if we were the ones catching the ball. If we were throwing the ball we needed to throw under arm and put our other arm out straight so that we were throwing 'under the bridge'! 

Mr Richardson then introduced the cricket stumps into our throwing practice! 

He showed us how to throw the ball overarm at the cricket stumps, aiming the ball towards the stumps to hit them and then if we managed to hit them we could then take the stump that we hit! If we didn't hit it the person who the ball went to got to have a go at throwing the ball next, it was so much fun aiming the ball carefully at the stumps!

We learnt that if we took our time and aimed carefully we could successfully hit the stumps!

What a fantastic throw!

Mr Richarson then set us the challenge of taking a step back and aiming our throws towards two stumps rather than three! We also just counted points rather than taking the stumps when we hit them, I wonder if any Kingfishers can remember how many points they got?

Important reminder

On Friday mornings we change our library books and some children haven't changed their library books since the 1st week we started them back in January so please do have a look at home for them so that we can change them next week. If you're unsure what book your child has at home then please do let us know, I will be sending slips home to children who haven't brought back a book next week as these books are an important part of our library collection and allow children to explore a wider range of books.

Thank you for your support with this.

What a great way to end the week, we even had time for a Danny Go before we went home! Next week we will be restarting our Show and Tell so if you've been given a slip for next week please don't forget to bring something special in to Show or Tell on Friday!

We are still looking for donations for our Toy museum so Parents/Grandparents, if you do have any toys that you are happy for us to look at within our Toy museum then please do let me know, it would be much appreciated!

Have a wonderful weekend!