Remember Remember the 5th November!

What a FANTASTIC week in the EYFS! 

This week our learning has been bursting with colour, creativity and excitement as we explored the topic of Bonfire Night!

We began the week by learning all about Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot. We discovered that, a very long time ago, in 1605, a man called Guy Fawkes and a group of people made a plan to blow up the Houses of Parliament using barrels of gunpowder. Thankfully, their plan was discovered before anyone was hurt! We talked about how this event is remembered each year on 5th November, with bonfires and firework displays.

We then introduced lots of exciting activities linked to our topic. The children explored firework-themed playdough, used scratch art to experiment with mark making, created colourful cityscape firework collages and enjoyed imaginative play in our Bonfire Night small world. We also brought maths into our play with a firework dice activity, counting and recognising different quantities. Outside, we had even more opportunities to explore, with mark making in colourful rice and splashing about in our sparkly water play!

Our Clever Fingers activities were particularly creative this week. The children made beautiful firework pictures using paint and cotton buds, explored mark making in loose tea to represent the night sky and continued to develop their scissor skills through carefully cutting different materials. These activities provided wonderful opportunities to strengthen the little muscles in their hands and develop the fine motor control needed for future writing.

On Wednesday, we turned our attention to firework safety. We talked about how exciting fireworks can be but also why it is important to stay safe. We learnt about keeping a safe distance, always staying with a grown-up and never touching fireworks or sparklers. Hopefully, the children will be able to share some of their new knowledge with you if you're heading to a firework display this weekend!

Our first outdoor learning adventure!

Friday brought a VERY exciting day as we enjoyed our very first outdoor learning session! We spent the morning in the garden exploring, creating and getting wonderfully hands-on with our learning.

The children made beautiful firework pictures and their very own 'sparkler sticks'. We worked together to build a pretend bonfire and experimented with cups, balloons and dried leaves to create our own 'natural fireworks'. We even took our creativity to a much BIGGER scale, using paint and water in spray bottles to create a fantastic firework-inspired piece of artwork!

We also enjoyed a very special Bonfire Night snack today! The children made their very own edible sparklers by dipping breadsticks into melted chocolate before decorating them with colourful sprinkles. They looked fantastic and, even better, were delicious! A lovely little treat to round off our week of firework fun.

There was so much to explore, discover and talk about today. The children showed wonderful curiosity as they experimented with different materials, shared their ideas and watched to see what happened when they tried something new.

At the end of the day, we were delighted to welcome so many of our families into school to see what we had been up to and have a look around our classroom. It was so lovely to see so many of you and share a little glimpse of our learning environment. Thank you for coming!

What else have we been learning?

Alongside all our Bonfire Night excitement, our everyday learning has continued at full speed!

• Phonics: Lots of fun Little Wandle learning, practising our sounds, blending and developing our early reading skills.

• Maths: We have been exploring the number 5, thinking about what it looks like, how we can represent it and finding different ways to make it.

• Writing: We have continued practising our letter formation and developing our confidence with mark making and early writing.

Learning through the EYFS

There has been so much more to this week than just making wonderful firework pictures! Our activities have provided opportunities to develop skills across all seven areas of the EYFS curriculum.

Some of the key learning opportunities have included:

• Communication and Language: Learning new vocabulary linked to Bonfire Night, listening to the story of the Gunpowder Plot, sharing ideas, explaining our creations and talking about how to stay safe.

• Physical Development: Strengthening fine motor muscles through playdough, cotton bud painting, cutting, spray bottles and mark making, alongside developing coordination through outdoor exploration.

• Personal, Social and Emotional Development: Working alongside our friends, sharing resources, taking turns, developing confidence and showing pride in our achievements.

• Literacy: Developing early writing skills through purposeful mark making, exploring different materials and continuing our daily phonics learning.

• Mathematics: Counting, recognising quantities, exploring the number 5, using dice and investigating patterns.

• Understanding the World: Learning about a historical event, exploring different materials and their properties, noticing what happens when we experiment and talking about keeping ourselves safe.

• Expressive Arts and Design: Exploring colour, texture and different artistic techniques, creating individual and collaborative artwork and using our imaginations in small-world and outdoor play.

Throughout the week, we have also seen all three Characteristics of Effective Learning in action:

• Playing and Exploring: The children showed curiosity, explored unfamiliar materials and investigated what they could do with them.

• Active Learning: They showed enthusiasm, concentration and perseverance, particularly when trying new techniques and developing their creations.

• Creating and Thinking Critically: They made their own choices, experimented with different ideas, solved little problems and thought carefully about how to achieve the effects they wanted.

What a wonderful week of learning, laughter and creativity! We are so proud of how enthusiastically the children have embraced our topic and, especially, how well they approached our first outdoor learning session.

Have a lovely weekend, and stay safe if you're enjoying any firework celebrations! 

Below you can see some lovely photos from our week, the first photo is a piece of art that the whole class collaborated on! It will be visible at the West Farleigh fireworks display on 06/11.

EYFS - Fireworks