Unicorn Class Blog                     Term 5 Week 1                         Week Commencing 22nd April 2025

This week we have had lots of excitement about our new topic ‘Is Spring here yet?’ These are some of the brilliant inquisitive questions children asked and wanted to find out the answers too, “During the Winter hedgehogs hibernate and wake up in the Spring, what other animals wake up from their long sleep in the spring?”, “Do animals sleep in the Spring?”, “What baby animals are born in the Spring?”, “What animals hatch out of eggs in the Spring?”

When we arrived at Forest School it looked different and we noticed some signs of Spring there was blossom on the trees, stinging nettles and some spring flowers had grown. We enjoyed using the hammock, looking in the pond, and working as a team to carry large wooden planks and branches to make a police station and dens. We found a big brown spider that we observed and noticed was a very good climber, liked to scurry and was good at hiding. 

At Nettlebed school we are very lucky to have a beautiful stained glass window, by Lyn Clayden, a local artist, we have enjoyed looking at her sketches and the large window. We were very impressed by it and loved spotting the different creatures we could see including a ladybird, ants, spider, a stag beetle, snail, a snake and a family of field mice. We noticed the spider had 8 legs and the ladybird and stag beetle had 6 legs. We spotted the different colours used for different creatures. We noticed different stages of the lifecycle of a butterfly such as eggs, caterpillars, chrysalis and butterflies. There was a small tortoiseshell butterfly, a peacock butterfly, a red admiral and a painted ladybird butterfly. We took some pictures and have started to draw some pictures using colouring pencils. We used folded butterfly paper and paint to make butterflies and frogs by folding paper to make springy concertina legs.

We enjoyed sharing and retelling the story of ‘The Hungry Caterpillar’ using puppets, acting and playdough.

We have been acting out the life cycles of a butterfly and frog using the vocabulary curl, crawl, wriggle, turn, twist, flutter and jump. Some of us wanted to use chalk on the big playground to draw pictures of butterflies and caterpillars.

Outside we have also enjoyed using the large sandpit to make sandcastles and digging for treasure. We played ‘What’s the time Mr Wolf?’, counting carefully how many steps we needed to do and enjoyed running away when it was dinner time. We were able to move around the climbing frame, challenging ourselves to move around in new ways. Lots of potholes and arrows were drawn around the track and then cones were put out so that vehicles, the balance bikes, did not go over them and get damaged. On ‘Earth Day’ we started to add compost to our planter so that we could get ready to plant our herbs. We were good at helping and were fascinated by the different smells of the plants and the look of their roots when we planted the herbs. 

During phonics this week we have continued to play rhyming games, alliteration and play Georgie’s Gym. We are continuing to learn the words and actions to our Alphabet chant. We have been recapping all the letters we have learnt so far and learning the letter ‘v’ ('The vulture veers over valleys.’). The writing cue we use to write the grapheme ‘v’ is ‘ Down one wing and up the other.’ We practiced writing the letter ‘v’ using our magic fingers in the air, using pencils and whiteboard pens. We also practised saying the sounds in words with these letters and breaking words down e.g. v-e-t vet and van v-a-n.

Our main Maths focus this week has been sequencing and comparing. We have been sequencing lifecycles and making comparisons between the size of each stage of the lifecycle e.g. The egg is smaller than the butterfly. We have also been ordering the story of ‘The Hungry Caterpillar’ and completing a challenging layered lifecycle of a butterfly puzzle.

We enjoyed wearing our pyjamas to school this week and playing dancing games as the class reward for working together to fill the marble jar through doing good tidying, being kind and helpful.

Our SCARF focus this term is ‘Being my Best’. This week we have been looking at ‘What my body needs’ such as food, water, sleep and exercise. The children learnt that healthy food and water gives our bodies the energy to make us feel great and ready to learn. They also learn that the very hungry caterpillar had a stomach ache after eating lots of unhealthy foods such as chocolate cake, cupcakes and lolly pops.

Some of the other things we have enjoyed doing this week is making music, singing, threading, exploring items in the water tray with holes in, using the magnetic shapes, playing with different vehicles especially in the sand tray and making vehicles using junk modelling. We also enjoyed making meals and looking after the babies in the home corner.

The Unicorn Class are very excited that they are going to be having real caterpillars arriving in their class on Monday to look after and will be able to watch them transform into real butterflies.

This week we will also be looking at the lifecycle of plants which will include planting beans and sunflowers seeds.

Thank you for all of the cake donations for the cake stall on Friday.

Hope you have all had a lovely weekend and look forward to seeing you all this week.

Best wishes

Mrs Fenwick