Week beginning 11th July 2022
Another super week this week. The children are still working incredibly hard and embracing their learning with great enthusiasm. This week was our annual sports day - it was so wonderful to be able to welcome our families back into the school environment. It was great to see such incredible support for the children and so many happy smiley faces. Our sports day was a great event with a carousel of different races which all of the children took part in. The children showed great determination, perseverance and, above all, brilliant sportsmanship. Well done Gateshead for being absolute superstars!
Week beginning 4th July 2022
It is so hard to believe our school year is almost complete - it's so true what they say 'Time flies when you're having fun!' This year has been an absolute joy and privilege to see how far the children have come and all they have achieved. A particular highlight in Early Years is to see the children's active learning and exploration as they access the independent learning environment. This week I had the pleasure of observing the children at the water station in the classroom. The children gained so many skills from this activity including developing hand-eye coordination, understanding measuring, estimating and volume, using key scientific vocabulary (heavy/light, float/sink, full/empty), problem solving and sharing with others. These experiences occur many times throughout the day and are real 'magical moments' to celebrate!
Week beginning 27th July 2022
This week we have been reading and recapping our class spine books. These books have been used extensively throughout the year and the children are very familiar with them. The main focus for these books involves repeated phrases and patterned language, but also lots of opportunities to discuss the content. The children absolutely love listening to stories in class - our reading tree is full of a wide range of books we have covered throughout the year. Well done Gateshead - it is such a privilege to be a big part of your love of books and stories!
Week beginning 20th June 2022
This week we have been recapping all of the poetry we have looked at this year. The children were amazing at remembering all of the words and actions to each of our poems. We also learnt a new poem called 'The Fox' - I have attached a clip below of our fabulous poetry performance. As you can see from the clip, the children have developed wonderful oracy skills throughout the year and showed great confidence and performance skills for their poem.
The words to the poem are as follows:
The fox is smart and sly as can be,
A great big bushy tail has he,
He can run very fast,
His fur is red,
And he lives in the woods in his tree trunk bed.
Have a lovely weekend everyone!
Week beginning 13th June 2022
It has been so lovely this week to have some beautiful sunshine - it has certainly put a little spring in our step. The weather continued to be kind to us on Friday for our Rainbow Run. The children showed great enthusiasm, determination and sportsmanship as they ran their lap around school and finished by running through the balloon arch. Miss Armstrong was at the finish line to provide us with some lovely cool ice lollies as we cheered on some of the older children. Another fabulous Emmaville event to end a wonderful week. Well done Team Gateshead!
Week beginning 6th June 2022
Welcome back to our final half term of the school year! It has been another wonderful week - full of learning and fun. This week I would like to share some wonderful maths work we completed. The children have spent the week familiarising themselves with rekenreks. These are tools which are used in a hands-on way to help children build number sense and master early years maths skills. This week we used our rekenreks to help with our subitising skills - the children were amazing and thoroughly enjoyed using them. By the end of the week the children were able to place their rekenrek into the 'ready' position and quickly subitise a quantity by moving the correct number of beads in one move. You really blew my socks off with your super work Gateshead - a big 'well done' to you all.
Week beginning 23rd May 2022
Wow - what an amazing day we had to celebrate the Queens Platinum Jubilee! On Friday, not only was it our last day of the half term, but it was also our school garden party - and what a party it was! Our day started off with some surprise visitors - Elsa, Ana and Christophe who danced, sang and chatted with us. We then got a class photograph with a very special guest - Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth! Our surprises didn't stop there though - we also had a session on the bouncy castle, a delicious party picnic and ice creams from Miss Whippy. It was a truly brilliant day and such a delight to see the children's faces as each surprise unfolded. A big thank you to Miss Armstrong for organising a fabulous day - we are such a lucky bunch!
Have a wonderful half term and Jubilee weekend - we look forward to welcoming you all back for your final half term of the year!
Love Mrs Johnson & Miss Holmes.
Week beginning 16th May 2022
Another superb week of fun and learning! This week I would love to share some wonderful independent work I observed this week in the construction area. As a morning starter we looked at local landmarks and discussed their shape and structure. During choosing time the children were keen to replicate some of these landmarks in the classroom. They used lots of tools to help them with their designing and building and I was blow away with some of their work. We had some wonderful models and sketched designs including St. James' Park, Grey's Monument, the Angel of the North, Northumberlandia and the Millennium Bridge. Maybe we have some future architects and builders in our class!
Week beginning 9th May 2022
This week I would really like to congratulate the children on their super English work. For the past three weeks our Talk for Writing unit has been 'Supertato'. We started off by learning the story using a story map and actions, we then decided to innovate our story by changing the main characters. We created a magpie list of new heroes and villains which we could use in our story - we then voted for our favourites and innovated our original map. The children then created their own story maps for their English books and thought of some amazingly inventive characters to use in their stories. This week we received a letter from the Evil Pea telling us he was still on the loose causing havoc with the other vegetables. We thought that we could write him some letter replies to try and encourage him to be a kind pea instead. After modelling a letter template during our focus session, each child wrote a letter to the Evil Pea which will be delivered to him and will (hopefully) help change his ways!
Well done Gateshead for a wonderful unit of work - you really are superstars!
Week beginning 2nd May 2022
Our PSHE topic for this half term is 'Relationships'. This week we listened to a story about some sea life characters who needed to work well together as a team. We then had a go at our own teamwork challenge. We had to make a circle by holding hands then pass the hoop around without breaking the circle. The children demonstrated great communication and teamwork skills as well as using their growth mindset. Each group managed to complete their challenge successfully - well done Gateshead, what a great team you are!
Week beginning 25th April 2022
What a fabulous first week back we have had! We all had such a wonderful day at the farm on Wednesday. We found out so much about the animals as well as holding and feeding them. We met chicks, sheep, lambs, pigs, rabbits, guinea pigs, wallabies, donkeys, alpacas and a peacock with his feathers out! We also enjoyed a tractor ride and a play in the park. The children were absolute superstars and a real credit to Emmaville. Thanks so much to the lovely grown ups who came to help us too - we hope you had as much fun as us! What a lovely start to our summer term.