To all our fabulous Highflyer families

What a fantastic learning experience we had on our trip yesterday! Our wonderful Year Two’s were super fortunate to experience a brief taste of what it means to be a modern-day ‘Field Explorer’ during our fabulous trip to Earth Trust, Little Wittenham. In the clumps, and adjacent woodlands, we had such an exciting opportunity to assemble an ‘ideas’ collection for our very own explorer’s palette (once back inside the Atrium classroom) - signifying a specific period of time with our lovely guide, Kristy, acting as our chief collector!  

An energetic ‘treasure hunt’ activity then saw the children looking for, and taking part in, an imaginary race to the top of the Hill Fort - to try to find our ancestors carefully hidden works of art/primitive tools; whilst the accompanying adults encouraged and cheered them on from ‘within the woods’ themselves. To provoke thought and stimulate discussion, there were even some beautiful hand-made artefacts strategically placed over which the children could ponder and home-made clay trophies, within the fences, to admire. 

The piece de resistance for most of the children, however, was the recreation of their very own “piece”. Much thought, teamwork and the joint accumulation of sticks, twigs, charcoal and bark culminated in their wonderful ideas being miraculously transformed into a series of beautiful ‘hand-drawn’ pieces with one of the Centre’s brilliant volunteers, Jackie. Fire lighting before bread tasting (including a generous dollop of local jam!) was also – of course – eagerly received and thoroughly enjoyed ;)

Back out in the outdoor ‘sites’, the children then went on to enjoy Kristy’s thrilling storytelling of “How our World became the wonderful place it is today”; with legendary tales of old … and how even visitors can still visit the woods today to look for new clues! 

The children thoroughly enjoyed a perfect day out (albeit a little rain?!) – complete with our various keepsakes returning for the classroom; as they had been busy, engaged and enthused by everything we had seen, heard, found and taken part in.

By the end of the day, there was no doubt that we all had a greater understanding of the ‘Wonders of our World’ (particularly from a historical aspect) – by discovering first-hand just how wonderous the different areas surrounding Nettlebed remain abounding with incredible life - if we just search! 

A truly great day – and HUGELY well done Highflyers :)

As for our week ahead, Forest School will take place again on Wednesday morning with our outside ‘Performance Sport’ P.E. on Thursday as timetabled. 

Our phonic focus is: Week 3 Words ending in: –y (happy) Contraction: what’s

Maths continues with multiplication (and ‘early’ division) given it is quite a large unit of work alongside our daily Mastering Number activities.

This week will see us finish off our Story Maps for our Class Reader of Kongy Arrives – with our ‘Have-A-Go’ spellings quiz back in its usual spot of Monday. Therefore, it would be much appreciated if all children could ensure they have their planner in school – so these can be recorded, popped onto our T3, W2 page and next week’s list securely attached on top!

Our new English text is ‘Wonderful Earth’, by Nick Butterworth and Mick Inkpen – with a large number of fun interactive pages, pop-up art, mixed matched animals and other entertaining surprises; yet with an inspiring message throughout of how we can ‘take care’ of our World – as Future World Changers …

Wishing you all a lovely week – as always,

Mrs Winters/the super Highflyers ‘Team’