Columbia Grange School

Autumn 1

This half term our topic is

Weather

Please take a look at our Medium Term Plans. There is an 'At home' section filled with ideas you and you child could enjoy together. We would love to hear and see photographs all about your adventures at home and in the community. Please keep us updated through the dojo app.  

What we have been learning about ...

We have all settled lovely into our routines, meeting new friends and having fun! We have worked very hard on walking nicely around the corridors and choosing our lunch independently. 

This half term in Scarlet Class, we have been learning all about the Weather. Our weekly topics have been clouds, sun, rain, rainbows, thunder and lightning, snow and ice and wind and tornados. Each week, we have been learning the Makaton signs for the different types of weather and practised signing them in our daily weather song. In cookery, we made rainbow bread for the first couple of weeks, where we built up to adding more colours each week and using our symbols to request which colours we wanted to use. Then we moved on to making tornado chocolate milkshakes, where we had to follow instructions to mix the chocolate powder and milk in the blender. We have had a big focus on writing this half term and we have been taking part in drawing pre-writing shapes. In our Squiggle sessions we used our whole body to move in those shapes, such as up and down, round in circles and left to right, then we drew those shapes onto whiteboards or paper. Moving our whole body in those directions has really helped us draw more controlled pre-writing shapes on paper. In PE, we have been completing assault courses in the hall with moves that match the different types of weather. For example, we have been spinning like tornados on the scooter boards, climbing up the big steps and jumping into ‘puddles’ and running with rainbow coloured voiles. In our art lessons, we have been making so many amazing pieces of art! We made sun catchers with tissue paper and laminating pouches, rain clouds with tissue paper, snowy clouds with paint and sponges and wind pictures with leaves and sticks from outside. We have displayed these around our classroom and on our outside classroom display board. In maths, we have been practising ordering and counting up to and back from 10 so have used our weekly weather topics to make it extra fun! We counted pegs onto suns, rain drops onto clouds, colours on the rainbow and leaves on the trees. We have been exchanging and requesting using some fun resources during our communication box sessions. In our Sensory story sessions we have been listening to Rosie’s Hat by Julia Donaldson. We explored the matching props and began to build simple sentences. We used all of our senses in our Sensology sessions to touch, taste, feel, smell and taste different weathers! We have also enjoyed exploring all of our shared areas around school including the Hedgehog Hideaway, Adventure Playground, Light and Sound room and the Discovery Park. 

We have really enjoyed learning about the weather this half term!

Well-being 

Every morning in class we have well-being time and this half time we have been focusing on hand washing. Each week the children have been becoming more independent with rubbing their hands together and drying them on the towel. Some of the children were apprehensive at first to dip their hands in the water, but now all of them will join in which is excellent!

Columbia Grange 20th Birthday

This half term we celebrated Columbia Grange’s 20th birthday! The whole school enjoyed Ice Cream as a special birthday treat and we all enjoyed some in Scarlet Class!